Madeleine (28 page)

Day eighty came and went, and still no Madeleine. Eighty days was significant for me because that was how long the Belgian schoolgirl Sabine Dardenne had been kept captive by the evil rapist and murderer Marc Dutroux before being found and freed. I clung on to ‘happy’ endings like these but, needless to say, as the deadlines in my head passed I’d be knocked for six again. That same day, 22 July, the
Sunday Express
ran the headline: ‘MADDY’S PARENTS TO FACE INQUIRY’. For ‘neglect’, according to the newspaper. By now we were no strangers to this line of attack, but it was still incredibly hurtful as it blamed us, indirectly, for Madeleine’s abduction. We were not hurt so much by what people might or might not think of us but by the painful reminder that, however unwittingly, we’d given this predator an opportunity. We had not been there for Madeleine. And, as I’ve said before and will say again, our guilt over that is a heavy cross we will bear for the rest of our lives. As for the abductor, he must have been smiling smugly to himself and thinking, Keep blaming the parents. Just leave me out of it, hidden and anonymous, to carry on doing what I do – stealing children.

Had everyone forgotten about this man? Whoever he was, he was still out there.

14

WARNING SIRENS

If 18 July was the date I now identify as a turning point, the following Monday, 23 July, was the day when the warning sirens should have started to sound.

Gerry, accompanied by Justine, had flown out to Washington, DC, primarily to visit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia, a trip he’d been keen to make since establishing contact with the centre’s CEO, Ernie Allen. Some other useful meetings and television interviews – including one for
America’s
Most Wanted
, hosted since 1988 by the campaigner for missing and abducted children John Walsh – had been arranged around it. He was also able to meet the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, who undertook to offer US assistance, including the expertise of the FBI, to the Portuguese authorities.

That evening I phoned Ricardo Paiva to ask for his help with a couple of letters I needed to have translated. He sounded strange, distant; certainly not his usual self. He mentioned the forthcoming ground search, adding that Encarnação wanted to talk to us before it began. I distinctly remember him saying, ‘Our investigation will be changing direction.’ Danie Krugel’s report had given them a bit of a jolt, he told me.

I was surprised. Surely the police couldn’t be placing too much faith in the findings of an unknown and untested magic machine? I began to worry that perhaps they had some more solid lead that supported Danie’s theory. I hoped to God I was wrong.

The next day Bill Henderson rang to say that the PJ had deferred both the search and our regular ‘updating’ meeting with them until the following week. Both pieces of news depressed me. Why did everything seem to take so
long
? With hindsight it is clear to me something was going on in Portimão I would never at that time have anticipated.

In the evening, Ricardo and José de Freitas came over to our villa. Ricardo didn’t say very much. José explained a little about the planning that was going into the search and talked about Danie Krugel’s role and ‘agenda’. He mentioned that the police had discussed Krugel with a professor in Belfast, who had described his machine as ‘pseudo-science-fiction’. I’m assuming José meant the British police, who had, I imagine, relayed this assessment to the Portuguese. I’m not sure, however, whether the PJ had fully taken it on board. Logic, it seems, often flies out of the window when you’re under pressure and desperate for a result. Any result.

At bedtime one evening while Gerry was in the States, Amelie said to me in a small voice, ‘Daddy at work. Mummy not going to work. Mummy not going anywhere. Mummy stay here.’ There was a gulp from Mummy. Remembering now the uncertainty, unpredictability and chaos of our lives then, all the people coming and going, some of whom we knew and some of whom we didn’t, brings home to me just how unsettling and frightening this whole experience might have been for Sean and Amelie, in spite of their resilience.

Gerry flew back to Portugal that Thursday. On Sunday 29 July, after twelve long weeks with us, Trisha and Sandy returned home to Scotland. They had been absolute towers of strength and we had relied on them for so much that it was hard not to feel somehow stripped of a protective layer and impossible not to cry (even for Gerry, whom Trish dubbed ‘Tiny Tears’ after an emotional goodbye!). They had put their own lives on hold for us for three whole months and their practical and emotional support was even more remarkable considering that they were dealing throughout with their own anguish at the loss of their niece and goddaughter.

On Monday we had what would turn out to be our last regular meeting with Neves and Encarnação, in every sense of the word. They talked to us about the search, which was due to start in two days’ time, and, yet again, about Robert Murat. The following evening Ricardo was supposed to be calling at the villa to speak to us. At 10pm he phoned to say he couldn’t make it but would see us the next day. He didn’t.

Apart from finding little things like this slightly puzzling or exasperating, I hadn’t sensed any profound change in the behaviour of the PJ, or in the direction their investigation was taking. Our attention was focused on the search, and on campaign plans we were making with Jon Corner, who was coming over to Praia da Luz to lend a hand. My mum, dad, Auntie Janet and Uncle Brian had also flown in for a visit. By 2 August, however, those sirens were wailing so loudly I cannot understand how I missed them. And yet I did.

That morning Gerry and I, along with Jon and a colleague, were preparing to drive to Huelva in Spain to put up posters of Madeleine. Jon was intending to do some filming and several of the British journalists were going to join us there, on the give-and-take principle: it would give them a story centred on Madeleine, rather than on us, and this in turn would publicize our efforts. As I was dropping Sean and Amelie off at Toddler Club, I had a phone call from Gerry. The police wanted to come over at 10am. Something to do with forensics, they’d said. Great timing. And forensics? What was that all about?

We’d never lied about anything – not to the police, not to the media, not to anyone else. But now we found ourselves in one of those tricky situations where we just didn’t seem to have a choice. As it happened, Gerry had a mild stomach upset which we used as an excuse to postpone the trip. We didn’t feel good about this at all, but even if the judicial secrecy law had not prevented us from giving the main reason, can you imagine what would have happened if we’d announced to the journalists heading for Huelva that the police were coming to do some forensic work in our villa? We were not to know our excuse would prove to be no more than a temporary holding measure. If we had, we wouldn’t have bothered trying to keep the scurrilous headlines at bay.

My mum, dad, Brian and Janet set off for the town to get out of the way before the police arrived. Ten o’clock came and went, as did lunchtime, then the afternoon. It was 5pm when they eventually showed up. They told us they wanted to shoot some video footage of our clothes and possessions. The forensics people would then take these away and return them the following day. They offered no explanation as to why they were doing this. Gerry and I just assumed it was on the suggestion of the British team, who had no doubt pointed out that it should have been done much earlier. We could kind of see the point: after all, the abductor could have brushed against some of our belongings and left traces of his DNA. Even at this late stage, it might be possible for some vital information to be retrieved. We were even quite pleased this was happening, that something was happening which might help find Madeleine.

Left with only the clothes we were wearing, we were all asked to leave the villa. It was early evening and we had to find somewhere to go with two tired and hungry toddlers in tow. When we were allowed back, we found four detectives in the house: José de Freitas, João Carlos, Ricardo Paiva and a woman called Carla. They went through the list of what had been removed. I was not only confused, I was devastated: as well as all of our clothes, they had taken my Bible (my friend Bridget’s Bible, to be precise), Cuddle Cat and my diaries. Why had they taken my diaries? Obviously not for any forensic purpose: the abductor couldn’t have been in contact with them because they hadn’t existed until halfway through May. And the Bible had been lent to me by Bridget’s husband Paddy a week after Madeleine’s abduction. My journals were private and full of personal thoughts and messages to Madeleine. I felt violated.

All I remember is José saying that ‘an anomaly’ had appeared in the investigation. His tone suggested that we shouldn’t worry, it was just something that needed to be ironed out. Whether this is what he intended to imply, or just my interpretation, I cannot say. When you are innocent, it doesn’t occur to you that you could be considered in any other light. Whatever the case, difficult as it is to believe, I
still
didn’t smell a rat.

We finally made it to Huelva the following morning, so all was not lost on that front – even if we did discover when we arrived that it was a public holiday. It didn’t matter: the local people were so kind and obliging and we came back feeling that it had been a very productive trip.

The police returned our belongings to us later that day, thrown into big black bin bags,

. . . creased to hell. All a bit of a hassle. I hope it’s worth it.

Worth it? Dear God, Kate.

We spent much of the weekend planning for the hundredth day since Madeleine’s abduction, a milestone that would be reached on 11 August. A hundred seems such a small number now, the milestone distant and diminutive, but back then it felt like a lifetime. And that was to us: I couldn’t bear to think how long it would feel to Madeleine. In addition to holding a church service for our daughter, in which we wanted to involve the local community, we were eager to do something for all missing children. With the help of Google and NCMEC, we were preparing to launch a Don’t You Forget About Me channel on YouTube. We also had quite a few media interviews lined up.

Meanwhile, the NPIA ground search continued. By Saturday it had reached Robert Murat’s house. As Gerry and I left Justine’s flat that afternoon, we noticed a mass of vehicles parked around Casa Liliana. It wasn’t long before the place was swamped by journalists, photographers and satellite vans. We were not aware that the next day apartment 5A would be re-examined, though we did see some activity there when we drove past on the Sunday. If we had known, we’d have welcomed the news. The chances of anything being found there three months after the event seemed remote – apart from anything else, the apartment had been let again several times since Madeleine’s disappearance – but it was another stone that should not remain unturned.

It was on Monday 6 August that the atmosphere changed. At the PJ’s request, Gerry went off to meet them at a café in Portimão. They didn’t need me, they said, so I stayed in the villa and busied myself looking after the children and doing some work. Gerry returned minus the car. While he’d been in the café, the police had impounded it for forensic testing and brought him back to Praia da Luz themselves. Again we assumed, at least initially, that this was a procedural measure recommended to the PJ by the British experts. Madeleine had been missing for over three weeks when we’d hired the car, but perhaps it still needed to be ruled out of the investigation.

That lunchtime, having collected the twins from Toddler Club, I was pushing them out of the Tapas reception entrance in the double buggy when we were suddenly ambushed by a horde of journalists and TV cameras. I felt completely exposed. I was confused, too: we hadn’t been bothered too much by the press for a good few weeks and there had been a tacit agreement that Sean and Amelie would not be photographed. Something had changed. Cameras were clicking, Portuguese voices were firing questions at me and the mood was suddenly hostile. Ocean Club staff helped us back inside and away from mêlée. I realized I was shaking.

It emerged that there had been stories in some of the Portuguese papers that morning suggesting that Gerry was somehow involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. Sniffer dogs had discovered traces of Madeleine’s blood in apartment 5A, it was claimed. It was insinuated that she had died there and her body had been dumped in the sea.

The following day the press reported that a sample of ‘blood’ had been sent to the UK to see whether a DNA profile could be extracted from it. Understandably, we were surprised and concerned. We had seen no blood that night; neither, as far as we knew, had any been found by the police or the forensics team from Lisbon. Even if it was blood (and this was never proven), it could have come from any number of people who’d been in the apartment before or since Madeleine’s abduction. It could even have come from the abductor. Just supposing it was Madeleine’s: maybe she tripped over? Had a slight nosebleed? To infer from this that she was dead would be a preposterous leap. Yet it seemed it was this development – or to be precise, the interpretation put on it either by the Portuguese press or by whoever leaked it – that was responsible for the media hysteria in Praia da Luz.

We were given no information at all about what was going on but we were determined not to be derailed by the madness around us. We’d intended to take Sean and Amelie to Toddler Club the next morning as usual until Justine called to warn us of a media frenzy at the Ocean Club. We’d also discovered half a dozen photographers lurking outside our villa. We left as planned for the Belavista Hotel in Luz, where I was scheduled to be interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s
Woman’s
Hour
via satellite radio. It produced the only light moment of the day: my cringe-worthy response when Jenni Murray asked me how Gerry and I managed to keep each other going. I embarked on a spiel about how we both had different strengths and weaknesses and elaborated by reeling off my husband’s many talents and skills. Of course Jenni then wanted to know what mine were (this was
Woman’s
Hour
, after all). My mind went completely blank. ‘Um . . . well . . . er . . . I do the cooking,’ I managed eventually. Boy, do I know how to sell myself. One thing’s for sure, whatever talents I may have, interview technique isn’t one of them.