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The police kept saying to me: `Don't worry he'll turn up in

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"The police kept saying to me: `Don't worry, he'll turn up in a few years with a baby and tell you you're agrandmother', and I think I'd convinced myself that that would happen," she says. The struggle to come to terms with the death of her child is intensified by the knowledge that for all that time his body lay hidden less than two miles from her home and by the realisation that her hope-filled journeys to London began by passing within 500 yards of the tank. Not until the inquest would it be revealed that Jason and a friend, Stephen Hall, had spend two days wandering aimlessly around Ellesmere Port, until Hall decided to leave for Scotland, leaving Jason on his own.Shell's head of Public Affairs, Brian Moffett, explains the company security policy: "Because of the size of the site, it's impossible to seal it off completely, despite a high profile deterrence policy that includes regular security patrols, cameras, ahigh fence and razor wire." He refuses to speculate as to how Jason came to be in the tank.For Jason's mother, it is the question of how he got into the site, rather than what he was doing there, that concerns her. They had been manufactured in September 1987, and sold two months later, at the time he disappeared.

Smokers tend not to keep cigarettes for long, and this, together with the fact that there had not been one positive sighting of Jason, pointed to 17 November 1987 as the most likely date of his death. As to pinpointing the date Jason died, police concentrated on the batch number of the Benson and Hedges cigarattes found in his pocket. The only access to the tank is through the roof manhole, which nullified theinitial theory that he had crawled inside through the ground level entrance, looking for shelter - the hatch being impossible to open due to the pressure inside. Pat believed he son had made his way to London, the traditional magnet for provincial runaways and she and her husband were to make many fruitless trips over the next seven years, looking forJason.When the body was discovered by workers preparing to demolish the tank, Shell was as mystified as the police as to how Jason had been able to get inside the 30ft by 90ft vessel. He foundi t through sniffing glue and other solvents with friends.On the tree-lined street where he lived, someone has sprayed "Come Home" on the tarmac.

Kids hanging out say it is a reference to the song by James, but the words have a poignancy unintended by the graffiti artist. On the evening of 16 November 1987, Jason left the family home after a disagreement with his stepfather - nothing serious, just what happens when three boys are growing up together. When he did not return the following day, his mother, Pat Andrews, reported him missing. The police conducted what they describe as the "the standard missing person inquiry": posters around the county and eventually nationwide.There were no sightings of Jason in or around Ellesmere Port. The much vaunted "economic boom" of the mid- E ighties did not have much of an effect on Ellesmere Port, though Jason had a part-time job in the local market as a way of ensuring that he had some future where many could see none But he also wanted to put a bit of excitement into his life. They began to explore different ways of getting through the day. Drug and solvent abuse were some of the methods used to do this."It was in this environment that Jason Waterworth entered his teenage years.

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