Madeleine (16 page)

Once we were left with our leaner support group, we allocated general roles: Trisha and Nicky took over the childcare, while Sandy and Michael dealt with mail, admin and finances. Trish and Sandy ended up staying with us for three solid months. I don’t know what we’d have done without them.

It had been suggested that I should record a televised appeal aimed at Madeleine’s abductor, and this is what we had been discussing that morning with Andy and Alex. I was concerned about how I might come over on film as I was beginning to feel numb, almost detached, from everything that was happening. Since this seemed worryingly unnatural, both Gerry and I had talked it over with Alan Pike. He told us it was a perfectly normal reaction at this stage. It was physically impossible, after all, for me to keep on crying twenty-four hours a day. I was simply physically and emotionally drained. We both were.

In fact I would soon be advised by British police experts to try to stay as calm as possible and not to show any emotion in public, so it was probably no bad thing that my feelings seemed to be temporarily on holiday that day. The thinking behind this advice was that Madeleine’s abductor might get some kind of perverted kick out of my distress and perhaps change his behaviour in some way. Of course we were terrified by the implications of this theory. It meant that quite natural actions or expressions of emotion caught on camera could potentially jeopardize Madeleine’s safety.

Alex and Andy had arranged for the appeal to be handled on a ‘pooled’ basis, which meant that one company, in this instance the BBC, would be chosen to record it and they would then distribute the film to all the other media outlets. This was a system we would use often, because as well as significantly reducing the time we would otherwise have spent recording separate statements and interviews, or facing a barrage of cameras and microphones, it involved dealing with only one reporter and one cameraman, which made the whole experience less intimidating. Nevertheless, shooting the appeal was totally unfamiliar territory for me. I was very anxious, mainly because I was so aware of how important the way I delivered my message could be, but also because I found it difficult and unnatural to talk into a camera lens as if it were a person.

Andy Bowes had proposed delivering part of my appeal in Portuguese, which I did. Gerry sat beside me with a reassuring arm around me.

Madeleine is a beautiful, bright, funny and caring little girl. She is so special.

Please, please do not hurt her. Please don’t scare her. Please tell us where to find her or put her in a place of safety and let somebody know where she is.

We beg you to let Madeleine come home. We need our Madeleine, Sean and Amelie need Madeleine and Madeleine needs us. Please give our little girl back.

Por favor devolva a nossa menina
.

I was hugely relieved when it was over. My numbness was evidently visible to my closest friends: one later commented that she wondered if I’d been given something to sedate me. I hadn’t. In fact I hadn’t taken anything to help me through my ordeal since Madeleine had gone missing. I didn’t want to. I felt I needed to be constantly alert, sharp and focused, though initially, God knows, I was nothing of the kind, drugs or no drugs. In any case, there was no magic pill that could dull pain like this.

Around teatime, Father Zé turned up with twenty or more local people to say a decade of the rosary with us and our family (a decade is one ‘Our Father’ followed by ten ‘Hail Marys’ and a ‘Glory be to the Father’). At Mass the day before, we had been aware of him announcing a possible gathering for the rosary but the details had been a little confusing. So their arrival at our apartment was a pleasant surprise. It was an amazing experience. Mothers and their children hugged and held us, placed rosary beads in our hands and spontaneously offered prayers out loud for Madeleine and for us. There were many tears but the warmth of our new friends helped to sustain us. They left giving us heart with those three increasingly familiar words –
esperança
,
força
,
coragem
. Father Zé’s mother, now in her eighties, took my hands, looked into my eyes and said simply, ‘Be patient.’

British consul Bill Henderson and Ambassador John Buck were visiting us on a fairly regular basis and we were seeing the Leicestershire FLOs every day. The flow of information, however, was slow and limited. The Portuguese police were divulging very little to the British police and vetoing many of their suggestions – bringing out specialist dogs, for example, or staging a reconstruction. What was forthcoming, particularly in terms of the quality and depth of the investigation, would become increasingly concerning to us. Grounds for elimination, for instance, often seemed very flimsy. I remember Gerry and me exchanging quizzical looks after the FLOs tried to explain how one couple had been ruled out of the inquiry. When we asked them if they were comfortable with this decision, there was an awkward pause before they replied, ‘No, not really.’

That Monday evening, completely exasperated, we lost it with the liaison officers. Within a few seconds of arriving they were telling us, ‘We’ve had a very frustrating day today.’ It transpired that they’d had to spend the whole day without an interpreter. In other words, it had been a complete waste of time. We were raging. ‘
Why
did you have to spend the whole day without an interpreter? If you haven’t got one, then get one! This is our daughter’s life, for Christ’s sake. We don’t have days to waste and she certainly doesn’t. And if you can’t get one, then let us know and we will.’ I couldn’t believe it.

A couple of days later, the FLOs’ efforts were bolstered by the arrival from the UK of the specialists from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). The director of the forensic psychology unit, who was a detective superintendent, and a social worker came to see us to outline their current lines of inquiry. In the weeks ahead the input of the UK experts would encourage us to feel more optimistic that the investigation was gaining momentum. This initial discussion, though, was unsettling, focused as it was on the typical profile of a paedophile. All I could think was, not Madeleine. Please,
not Madeleine
!

8

THE BIRTH OF OUR CAMPAIGN

We were existing in an information vacuum. A big part of the problem was the fact that in Portugal all criminal cases are governed by the law of judicial secrecy, which means that once an investigation is under way, neither the police nor anyone else is allowed to reveal anything about it, including details of potential suspects, on the basis that this could jeopardize a trial. Even the statements and appeals we made, quite usual in the UK, were not something the PJ advocated.

Of course, this was torture for us. The British media were not accustomed to it, either. For those familiar with police and court reporting in the UK, the Portuguese system is a ‘hall of mirrors’, as one reporter described it. Because nothing can be confirmed on the record, and the police often don’t bother to contradict false reports, rumours proliferate.

Although it wasn’t apparent to us at the time, because the PJ were not guiding the press, particularly the international press, no agenda was being set. This left the media with a free rein and would soon lead to speculation on a massive scale and the broadcasting and printing of erroneous ‘facts’ in the interests of filling column inches and airtime. It is incredible, looking back, how so much could be said with so little hard information available.

In the first few days after Madeleine’s abduction, the media in general were very respectful and their coverage was largely sympathetic. Aside from when we were delivering a pre-arranged statement, we were pretty much left alone. Yet although there didn’t seem to be very much happening in terms of the investigation, the media presence grew. This was very surprising to us and we’ve always been at a loss to understand why our ‘story’ attracted quite such unprecedented attention. Obviously the circumstances were extremely rare: a British child being abducted on holiday. The only other such case we knew of was that of Ben Needham, who had been snatched sixteen years earlier from a Greek island at the age of twenty-one months, and who still hasn’t been found. The world had changed dramatically since then, particularly in terms of communications. In 1991 the internet and mobile phones had been in their infancy, and there were no twenty-four-hour news channels to be fuelled. The fact that Gerry and I were both doctors seemed to make the story more newsworthy, as, no doubt, did the fact that Madeleine is such a beautiful little girl.

We came in for some criticism, of course, for leaving the children in the apartment while we had dinner. Some initial reports were very misleading, suggesting that we had been sitting several hundred metres away. Journalists who were actually in Praia da Luz and saw the proximity of the Tapas restaurant to the apartment (as the crow flies, just under fifty metres; a little further walking round ‘the road way’) were clearly shocked that Madeleine had been grabbed at such close quarters, and we were given the definite impression that they wanted to help. This also went for their bosses, the TV executives and newspaper editors. There was unquestionably a sense of ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ I looked on them as allies in the search for Madeleine. And although I don’t doubt that many of them did genuinely want to help, it was a while before I realized that finding our child came some way down their list of priorities and learned the hard lesson that the media are not about spreading news but selling products. Their overriding concern was not us or, sadly, Madeleine, it was someone shouting down the phone that the editor needed eight hundred words by ten o’clock.

For the first few days after Madeleine was taken, with the apartment full of people, the English-language news from Sky or the BBC was on pretty consistently in the background. We saw quite a bit of the coverage ourselves but once the speculation mushroomed it crucified us. Gerry said to me, ‘We have to stop watching this.’ We also began to avoid the English newspapers, readily available from Baptista on the same day as they were published at home.

In the village, drivers had to find alternative routes and parking places because of the roadblock outside our apartments and the satellite trucks stationed permanently nearby. Reporters hung out in Baptista and the Hugo Beaty bar, or trawled the beaches, assailing locals and holidaymakers alike for quotes and soundbites.

On the plus side, it became apparent very quickly that Madeleine’s plight had struck a chord with huge numbers of the British public. Messages of support, sympathy and empathy came flooding in. Mark Warner’s email was bombarded soon after the news broke and hundreds of letters were arriving on a daily basis.

That first gruelling week was so hectic and seemed so long. The unrelenting agony made every minute feel like an hour, but for us the days literally were long, as we slept so little. By midweek we were starting to manage, through sheer exhaustion, a few hours’ sleep every night, though if I happened to wake up, that would be it until morning. The moment I opened my eyes, Madeleine was the first thing on my mind and I would be instantly aware of a painful heaviness in my chest and an unsettling dread. I was always awake by 6am and usually I would get up, go out on to the veranda and make a few phone calls – nobody at home was sleeping well, either. I had begun to eat a little, too, though nowhere near enough. (Reports of my weight loss were greatly exaggerated: in the first week I did lose about 4½lbs, which I could ill afford, and which it took me months to regain, but nowhere near the stone removed from me by some of the press. I have always been thin. It’s the way I’m made.) There were days when I would say to myself, ‘How can I sit here and eat breakfast when Madeleine is missing?’ or ‘How can I possibly take a shower?’, but somehow I did. As Gerry kept telling me, ‘Crumbling into a heap and doing nothing will
not
bring Madeleine back.’ He was right, of course, but there would be many crumbles along the way.

We spent so much time closeted with various advisers that we didn’t see much of our holiday friends, except for Fiona. She knew us and our children so well: she understood, as far as anyone else could understand, and that made her support very important to me. I bumped into the others at the Tapas area one day. They were standing there helplessly and Jane and Russ were crying. Soon we were
all
crying and hugging each other. It was just so awful.

On Tuesday 8 May, we said an emotional goodbye to the family and friends who were leaving us, including my parents and Gerry’s mum. It was so sad, but we all knew it was for the best. Later, I went down to sit on the beach for a while with Fiona. I still felt oblivious to everything around me; nothing whatsoever mattered except Madeleine. We talked and cried and held on to each other. It was like a horror movie that refused to end. But this was my life now, until Madeleine was found.

As we were walking up from the beach at about 5pm, I had a call from Cherie Blair, in her final days as wife of the prime minister (her husband Tony would announce his resignation two days later and leave office the following month). She was kind and helpful. She told me it was amazing but encouraging that Madeleine was still the first topic on the news every night. This was only five days after the abduction: as it turned out, our poor daughter would continue to headline the bulletins for some time to come. Cherie also warned me, ‘Whatever happens, your life will never be the same again.’ She mentioned that a friend of hers, Catherine Meyer, was the founder of PACT – Parents and Abducted Children Together – and said she would get in touch with her on my behalf. Doubtless I asked Cherie if there was anything the British government could offer the Portuguese in the way of resources to assist or expedite the search for Madeleine. It wasn’t my intention to make her feel uncomfortable by asking this, and I’m sure I didn’t. We were just so desperate I couldn’t let the opportunity go by.