Madeleine (25 page)

In the event, our journey was absolutely fine. I remember feeling reassured about the stringency of Morocco’s immigration procedures when I was required at the airport to fill in a form stating the reason for my visit, among other things. In truth it didn’t mean a lot, and their security system might be lousy for all I know. I think I just needed to latch on to any positives I could find.

Miss Biddy Brett-Rooks, the consul general for Casablanca, was there to meet us when we landed. She looked and sounded exactly as I’d imagined from her name: very sweet and
very
English. We went first to a hotel where we had arranged to meet an ITN crew from the UK. They wanted to show us an interview they’d recorded with a Norwegian lady called Mari Olli.

We’d heard about Mari Olli only two days earlier. On 9 May, she’d seen a little girl who looked like Madeleine at a petrol station on the outskirts of Marrakesh. While her husband filled up the tank, Mari had gone into the garage shop to buy some water. She’d noticed a man there hanging around with a blonde child of around four, who looked pale and tired. Mari heard her ask the man in English, ‘Can we see Mummy soon?’ to which he replied, ‘Soon.’ It wasn’t until Mari and her husband were back at their home on the Costa del Sol the next evening that they learned of Madeleine’s abduction.

In ITN’s interview, Mari stated that as soon as she saw Madeleine’s photograph, she recognized her as the girl she’d seen in Marrakesh and rang the Spanish police straight away. Gerry and I watched the footage with heavy hearts. Not only was it upsetting, it was also deeply concerning. From what we could infer, this lead simply hadn’t been adequately followed up. Indeed, a month later, Mari still hadn’t been formally interviewed. It was intolerable. This was our daughter’s life they were dealing with, not a stolen car radio.

It was pretty late by the time we arrived at the ambassador’s residence, where we would be spending the night. In the morning, at a meeting with the consular staff, we heard from a British Metropolitan Police attaché, a counter-terrorism liaison and cooperation officer, that Morocco was a police state with excellent networks and intelligence-gathering systems. If Madeleine was here, she was sure to be found. It was something we’d be told several times during our visit.

We talked to the president of the Ligue Marocaine pour la Protection de l’Enfance, the Moroccan equivalent of the NSPCC, and visited Touche Pas à Mon Enfant, an NGO based on the upper floor of a very dark, tenement-like building. Once again we were astounded and moved by the volume of work being done on Madeleine’s behalf and by the kindness and advice offered by these lovely people.

That day several senior and powerful figures spent time with us, including the minister of the interior, Mr Benmoussa, and the director general of the police, Charki Draiss. The police attaché had told us earlier that for these meetings to take place, permission must have been granted by the King himself. Both Mr Benmoussa and Mr Draiss reiterated the message of the day: ‘We will help you. If Madeleine’s here, we will find her.’

En route to our visit to the Observatoire Nationale des Droits de l’Enfant, a Palace-sponsored child-welfare watchdog, a crowd of kids suddenly came into view. There must have been over a hundred of them, and they were all holding up posters bearing Madeleine’s face with the words ‘All Moroccan Children Are With You, Madeleine’ above it and ‘Madeleine: Back Home’ underneath. Beaming, they chanted in unison: ‘Madeleine! Madeleine! Madeleine!’ This welcome was as unexpected as it was overwhelming, and we couldn’t help but smile. In fact, I couldn’t stop myself smiling and on this occasion, my tears were all happy ones. It was impossible not to be touched by their enthusiasm and their unspoiled beauty and innocence. If ever a reminder were needed of how special and important children are in this world, one second in the company of our new little friends would provide it.

From the Observatoire Nationale des Droits de l’Enfant, we learned that the heart of each Moroccan community is not the town hall or police station but the health centre. Accordingly, a new computer network system linking all the health centres in Morocco – including, crucially, those in rural areas – had been designed and was ready to be launched from their headquarters. A special webpage about Madeleine had also been created to coincide with our visit to Rabat. Gerry and I were completely blown away to be invited to press the ‘go live’ button, activating not only Morocco’s new network but with it the ‘Madeleine page’, thereby alerting all the health centres across the country to her disappearance and our need to find her.

A good day (if any can be without Madeleine). A positive and reassuring visit. In some ways we hope that Madeleine is here. I long for that day when I’ll have my beautiful Madeleine back in my arms xx

On our final morning, the lady who’d been interpreting for us arranged for us to meet the minister of Islamic affairs, who happened to be her father-in-law. I was keen to talk to an Islamic religious leader to seek the support and prayers of the Muslim community. The minister was an academic, senior cleric and an adviser to the King, and he seemed kind, genuine and receptive. We explained that we lived in Leicester, a multicultural city where many people of different faiths had been praying for Madeleine, and told him how important this was to us. I asked if he would urge the Muslim people here to pray for her, too, and for all missing children. He promised us that he would, adding that he was certain we would be reunited with our daughter.

Before leaving Morocco, we had a call from the British police attaché. He told us that by the time the CCTV pictures had been requested from the garage in Marrakesh where Mari Olli was convinced she’d seen Madeleine, all footage from before 14 May had been erased. Apparently, the local police had visited the garage soon after Mari’s call and reported that there was no CCTV. However, they had looked only on the forecourt, failing to notice the camera in the shop. When the images were finally retrieved several days later, it was too late.

This was soul-destroying news. If this little girl was Madeleine, she could have been back with us by now. If she wasn’t, we would at least have been able to eliminate this sighting from the investigation and put an end to our own hopes that it might lead somewhere. As it is, we still don’t know whether that little girl was our daughter, and we may never know.

I was grateful to find there was a jet available to return us to Portugal. At Lisbon airport, Gerry and I said our goodbyes to Clarence. He was going home to his family and the Media Monitoring Unit. He’d done a fantastic job over the previous three weeks (with everything we’d packed in, it felt like much longer than that), and what was important to us was that we knew Clarence cared deeply about getting Madeleine back and would continue to help us in any way he could. We couldn’t have anticipated he’d be rejoining us as soon as he did, and we never thought for a minute that, four years down the line, he’d still be fighting Madeleine’s corner alongside us.

In the meantime, we would be welcoming Justine McGuinness, who would be arriving as coordinator of the Find Madeleine campaign on 22 June: Madeleine’s fiftieth day away from us.

Back in Praia da Luz, we were regaled with tales of twinny exploits from Auntie Anne and Uncle Michael, including the ‘Let’s paint the bedroom with Sudocrem’ saga. It was good to know they’d had fun!

Our trips to these key cities had been hard going, but we were satisfied that they had boosted our campaign. Looking back on them now, however, we can’t help but wonder whether many of the powerful figures we encountered were merely handing out platitudes. With the eyes of the world upon us, and anyone associated with us, their agreement to meet Gerry and me was perhaps designed more to forestall potential criticism from the international press than to benefit Madeleine. But we learned a great deal of lasting value from the NGOs and I have no doubt that their representatives, committed as they were to the plight of missing children, were genuinely motivated to help. And at the very least we had spread the word across Europe and north Africa, and that could, and still can, only improve our chances of finding Madeleine.

Keen to find out what progress, if any, there had been in the PJ investigation, two days later we were back in Portimão with Guilhermino Encarnação and Luís Neves. While we were there Neves took a phone call and suddenly became very animated. He was clearly worried and angry. The Dutch newspaper
De Telegraaf,
he told us, had revealed in an article that they’d received a letter from someone claiming to be Madeleine’s abductor. The letter alleged that her body was buried in Odiáxere, about ten miles from Luz.

There had been plenty of crank calls and letters from all over Europe. The reason why this claim had been singled out by the newspaper as a story (not that there ever has to be a reason, or so it seems) was that the letter was apparently very similar to one received the year before regarding the location of the bodies of two young girls abducted in Belgium. They had been found later the same day, albeit fifteen kilometres away from the location given.

A hundred or so reporters had now gone up to Odiáxere to look for Madeleine’s body. I might sound quite matter-of-fact about this now, but at the time I was beside myself, of course. It felt as if cold, hard reality was hitting me with a sickening thud. I remember leaving the room and locking myself in the toilet. It was probably the tiniest cubicle I’ve ever seen, which only intensified my suffocating fear. I pulled out my mobile phone and began to text six devout family members and friends (quietly, in my head, I thought of them as my ‘prayer group’): ‘Please pray for Madeleine.’ I returned to the meeting room. Somebody texted back: ‘Of course. Everything OK?’ The lack of a response was probably enough of an answer.

Gerry was far more rational about this incident than I was, although I’m sure deep down he was just as scared and not as certain as he seemed. ‘Kate, where is the credibility?’ he tried to reassure me. ‘This information has come from a newspaper acting irresponsibly!’

He was proved right, thankfully. The PJ were in contact with the Dutch journalists to compare the two letters, which were found to be quite different, and searches of the area later that day turned up nothing. Interestingly, two search-and-rescue soldiers who’d come out to Praia da Luz to lend a hand in May, completely of their own accord, phoned Sandy that evening. They assured him they’d scoured the area in question then and were confident there was nothing terrible to be found there. We’d met these guys the previous month and they were good, decent blokes. They won’t know how much relief and comfort their call brought me that night.

All relationships have their ups and downs and our dealings with the PJ, though generally amiable enough, were no exception. On the evening of 17 June, the Portuguese police were quoted on Sky News as having stated that the crime scene at apartment 5A had been contaminated by us and our friends, and that as a consequence vital evidence had been lost. I was livid. First of all it was unfair: the preservation of the crime scene was the responsibility of the police and should have been overseen by an experienced officer. Second, it was inaccurate. The forensic department clearly stated (as would be confirmed in the PJ files released the following year) that significant contamination had resulted from police dogs being allowed into the room before they conducted their examination. Third, it was incredibly insensitive, implying as it did that we had destroyed evidence that could have helped to find our daughter. And that, especially, hurt badly.

The following morning, Gerry rang several people – Ricardo Paiva, British Consul Bill Henderson, Ambassador John Buck and DCS Bob Small – seeking some kind of explanation and redress for these comments from the PJ.

We were told that their spokesman, a chief inspector called Olegário de Sousa, was embarrassed and apologetic. A couple of days later he came along with Guilhermino Encarnação to our regular meeting, where he appeared suitably chastened and admitted that he’d fallen into a ‘media trap’. We knew as well as anyone that it takes a while to become media savvy if you’re not used to dealing with the press, and Sousa certainly wasn’t. Media liaison was not a role that existed in the Portuguese police in normal circumstances, and he had been nominated as the PJ spokesperson for the case largely, I think, because he spoke good English.

Given the restrictions of the judicial secrecy law, the police usually had little reason to engage with the press, or not officially, at any rate. The unprecedented efforts of the PJ to accommodate the demands of the international media were perhaps partly responsible for the grumbling in the Portuguese press that we were being given ‘special treatment’.

Alex Woolfall had advised us early on not to speak to any reporters who approached us directly. Since everyone wanted to speak to us it would only have resulted in us talking to the press constantly, saying the same things over and over again, and there was nothing to be gained from that. The British media, used to statements, briefings and press conferences, were familiar with working in this way, but it undoubtedly caused some consternation among their Portuguese counterparts, who operated on a much more informal basis. Over the summer, we also began to realize that elements within the Portuguese police routinely flouted their own law, and indeed maintained extremely close relationships with selected journalists.

At our next meeting with Neves and Encarnação, on 28 June, we tentatively raised the possibility of bringing in Danie Krugel, a South African ex-police officer who claimed to have combined DNA and satellite tracking technology to develop a device that could be used to locate missing persons.