Madeleine (32 page)

‘It’s called
arguido
.’

As if we’d never heard the word.

I dropped my head in my hands in utter disbelief. I began to shake and cry. I shouted at Ricardo, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this? I can’t believe what’s going on! This is ridiculous. It’s despicable.’ I shook my head over and over again. ‘This can’t be happening. This just
cannot
be true!’

What kind of country was this? And while the PJ were going down this track, leading the media and public to believe we were responsible for our daughter’s disappearance,
who
was
looking
for
Madeleine?

I remember crying out in despair, ‘What will our parents think? How will they cope with this? What are you trying to do? Destroy our family completely?’ These were of course rhetorical questions, but they would subsequently be thrown back at me as some kind of proof of a guilty conscience. My remark about our parents in particular was perceived as strange and suspicious. To me it was a completely understandable reaction. We love our parents and were greatly concerned about their health and emotional state. They had lost their granddaughter. They had seen their own son and daughter in extreme pain and distress and every aspect of our characters ripped to shreds in the newspapers. They’d been through so much already, and now this.

Trisha and Eileen were staying with us for what was intended to be our final week in Luz. Hearing the commotion from the next room, where they were playing with Sean and Amelie, they came running in demanding to know what was happening. Within seconds there were more tears and more shouts of dismay and disbelief. Once again things were going from bad to worse. Much worse.

Ricardo left, looking every inch the sheepish messenger boy he was. We were left with our minds whirling. My immediate worry was Amelie and Sean. If this farce continued in the same vein, and we ended up being formally accused of doing something to Madeleine, people were going to start calling for the twins to be taken away from us. I could feel the panic building up inside me. Between sobs I blurted out my fears to Trisha and Eileen.

It’s hard to describe their response, but if you picture two lionesses whose young are under threat for their lives it will give you the general idea. Remembering it now actually brings a little smile to my face. Hell hath no fury like two women from Glasgow.

‘That
won’t
happen! We won’t allow it to happen! Nobody will get near them. They wouldn’t stand a chance. Don’t even think like that, Kate!’ they growled, their eyes flashing with conviction. But I was still worried.

Our plans for the evening went out of the window. We cancelled an interview we were scheduled to give
Paris Match
and dinner with Clement Freud. Gerry rang DCS Bob Small, who was astounded by this latest development. He promised to make some phone calls. Bob was finally able to get hold of Luís Neves, who was reportedly out of the country. Luís claimed not to know anything about it.

We made several more frantic phone calls ourselves – including one to Alan Pike, to let him know that we were now entering fantasy land. After dinner with the family, Gerry and I got Sean and Amelie ready for bed together. We would do whatever it took to protect our precious family and make it whole again.

Sean was so gentle as I was lying with them tonight. He gave me two kisses on the lips and put his arms around me while Amelie was chat, chat chatting!

At 9.50pm, I rang Clement. ‘Come on round,’ he said. ‘It’ll be nice to see you. But you’ll have to forgive my night-time attire.’

We found Clement watching a cookery programme, dressed, as promised, in his nightshirt. It was so ordinary and comforting, a bit like going to see your grandad after a horrible day at school. He gave me one of his looks and a giant glass of brandy, and managed to get a smile out of me with his greeting: ‘So, Kate, which of the devout Catholic, alcoholic, depressed, nymphomaniac parts is correct?’

His response to our catalogue of horrors was merely to raise an eyebrow. Clement had this way of making everything seem a little less terrible. When he heard about the dogs, he remarked laconically, ‘So what are they going to do? Put them on the stand? One bark for yes, two for no?’ He was right, of course; it
was
ridiculous.

A couple of hours later, fortified by our brandies (it was my first-ever taste of the stuff), some useful snippets of advice and several amusing anecdotes, we left our friend feeling quite a bit better than we had when we’d arrived. The shock of that day, and of what we were now facing, on top of the trauma of Madeleine’s absence, never left us for a second, but it was interludes like this that gave us just enough strength to carry on.

By the next morning photographers were appearing sporadically outside our villa. There were press hanging around outside the church and film crews prepared to chase us through the streets either on foot or in the car. It was irritating and wearying. Occasionally Justine would ask us to ‘give’ something to the photographers to appease them (‘They’re under a lot of pressure too’) and we ended up reluctantly allowing them to snap us going into the church and sitting on the rocks. We could hardly have stopped them anyway, short of refusing to leave the villa, but we were not happy about it. This was all about us, not Madeleine, which was precisely what we’d been striving to avoid for two months or more.

Later we were invited to Susan and Haynes Hubbard’s house. It was as relaxing and enjoyable an afternoon as was possible right then. Sean and Amelie splashed about in the paddling pool, built train tracks and played ‘babies’ with dolls. Susan prepared a delicious meal, initiating the twins into the delights of king prawns, which they’ve loved ever since (thanks, Susan!), and the children, including our two, made the pudding: a banana split for everyone. Boy, were Sean and Amelie proud of themselves.

Susan and Haynes were, and remain, such a great source of strength. Sometimes you wonder whether particular people are brought into your life at a particular time for a reason. It certainly seemed to me that the Hubbards were a gift from God. This afternoon was so ordinary, but that’s precisely why it was so valuable to us. We longed for our life to be ordinary again. In the meantime, these fleeting intervals of normality, precious time among friends with Sean and Amelie, were the closest we could get to it. Perhaps they always would be.

These days are so painful and everything is tinged. How long can we go on living like this? There are days when I just want to ‘fast forward’ all of our lives so that they’ll be over, with no more pain, and we’ll all be together again.

Wednesday 5 September. Our ‘interviews’ with the PJ had been put back by a day because our lawyer, Carlos, was in court and unable to be present. Instead we filled the day with emails, phone calls and packing. We met up with Justine to discuss what steps needed to be taken to ensure that our return to Britain would be as quiet as possible. When Gerry and I went out for a run later we saw Justine again, hurriedly approaching us from the top of the hill. The
Evening Standard
’s front-page headline tonight, she informed us, was to be ‘RESULTS BACK: ARRESTS IMMINENT’. That would certainly set the cat among the pigeons on the eve of our ‘interrogation’. I might sound flippant now, but at the time this was no joke, believe me. Since the police had not deigned to inform us, we had no idea whether the results of the forensic tests in the UK really were back, let alone what, if anything, they revealed.

Gerry and I talked at some length about the PJ’s strategy, or our perception of it: namely, to put us under such extreme pressure, with the help of leaks to their contacts in the media, that if we were guilty (or even if we weren’t) we’d crack. And the pressure on us was indeed immense. We were both used to working under high stress – with critically ill patients, for example – but this was different. This was a situation over which we had no control whatsoever.

We still harboured a faint hope that in the end the PJ would not declare us
arguidos
. Maybe our readiness to stay in Portugal to address any questions that remained would have thwarted their attempts to cast us in a bad light in the court of public opinion? Maybe the interview on 8 August, when they’d clearly tried to get me to confess, had been their best shot at getting us to crack and, since that hadn’t worked, they would now change tack? There again, they hadn’t eased up on the pressure, and fresh lies were appearing in the media every day. As I say, it was a faint hope.

I got myself ready for the following day – clothes out, shower, hair wash, even a DIY leg wax. It sounds daft now but I knew that it would help if I felt confident and good about myself. And how exactly are you supposed to prepare for being interrogated in a foreign language about the abduction of your child? All I could do was to tell the police the truth – again – and hope that was what they were actually interested in.

Dear God, first and foremost please bless and protect dear Madeleine. Please help to return her to us as soon as you can. Give us as a family the strength to get through this ordeal. Thank you.

The Algarvian wind was wild and menacing overnight, howling eerily, sweeping around the walls of the villa and battering the shutters backwards and forwards. Not surprisingly, it was a restless and unsettling night and we were all awake at four in the morning. Gerry and I got up at 8am to find a posse of Portuguese journalists and cameramen camped outside our villa. You’d have thought we’d have been used to this by now, but we never got used to it. And today, especially, we felt hounded and trapped.

I was due at the police station in Portimão at 2pm. We followed our regular morning routine, taking Sean and Amelie to Toddler Club via the Ocean Club’s twenty-four-hour reception. Then we walked down to Nossa Senhora da Luz for half an hour of private prayer, with the press pack still in pursuit. At least once we were in the church and had closed the doors, calm descended instantly and we were able to concentrate on what we were there for. We prayed fervently for Madeleine, for strength and for justice.

We stayed on for the Anglican service at 9.30am, led as usual by Haynes. He and the rest of the worshippers present that morning wrapped us in kindness and support. We thanked them and urged them not to lose sight of what was important – Madeleine – and to keep her in their thoughts and prayers.

Gerry phoned my mum to explain what was happening, and what was likely to happen, including the probability that we would be made
arguidos
. Of course, she was extremely upset. I know how helpless our parents must have felt at home and how it must have compounded their fears and their frustration.

Strangely, I was feeling OK. I think by now I’d switched on to autopilot and an inner strength and calmness I hadn’t expected to find had begun to take over. My instinct to protect my child was more powerful than my fear and I could see very clearly what needed to be done. Even thinking about it several years later, that sensation returns. My recollections of that day are almost clinical. And I suppose the situation was so extreme, so nonsensical, that my brain struggled to register it as real. I had somehow floated out of my body and was watching events unfold as though they were happening to somebody else.

At 1.15pm Gerry drove me to the police station in Portimão. Trish came along for moral support. There were hordes of people outside the police station. As well as the ever-present journalists, photographers and film crews there was, perhaps more disconcertingly, a crowd of local onlookers. Justine, in a vivid blue dress, was trying, with some difficulty, to keep them all under control. Gerry gave me a kiss and a whispered ‘Love you’ and I headed for the door with Trisha at my side. Immediately my path was blocked by jostling bodies and camera lenses. Unless they wanted a mother on a mission colliding with them, they would have to move, and sure enough, they all frantically shuffled backwards as I reached them, standing on each other’s toes, tripping over one another and falling down. I just kept walking.

Carlos Pinto de Abreu and his assistant, Sofia, were waiting for me inside. Carlos told me he’d already had a long discussion with Luís Neves. It wasn’t looking good, he said. Not an encouraging start.

At 2.30pm, half an hour after the interview had been due to begin, Ricardo Paiva appeared, handed me a list of interpreters and instructed me to pick one. Not only was it exasperating that this hadn’t been sorted out in advance, it also seemed pointless to ask me to make the choice. What difference did it make? I didn’t know any of them. I opted for the first name on the list. If nothing else, she was local to Portimão and I didn’t want to have to wait hours for one of the others to arrive from Lisbon or wherever.

Accompanied by Carlos, Sofia and the interpreter – who turned out to be a lady in her sixties or thereabouts, originally from Mozambique – I finally went in for my interview at 2.55pm. There were three PJ officers in the room. João Carlos and Ricardo Paiva were joined by Paulo Ferreira, a man I’d never met before. João Carlos asked most of the questions, all of which I answered in as much detail as I could. He started with the Tuesday night of our holiday week, moving on to the Wednesday and then the terrible Thursday. At one point early on, something was read out from my initial statement, given on 4 May. It wasn’t quite accurate and I explained to the officer that the original meaning seemed to have been lost slightly in translation.