08 - AVR 9 - Audition rog. Matthew MO

Leicestershire Constabulary - 09.04.2008  - EXTRAITS

Il y a eu des problèmes techniques au cours de l'entretien qui se sont traduits par l'absence d'enregistrement.  

This interview is at the request of the Portuguese Police and they will be monitoring this interview partly, sometimes they will be, sometimes they won't be. Durée : 63'

4078 You have been given a letter from us outlining the objectives for this interview, but please ask at any time if there is anything you want clarifying.

Your time and co-operation is obviously appreciated, but I would just ask you to be patient with me as, no doubt, we will be covering things that you have been over time and time again.

I am going to ask you to concentrate as much as you can and try to recall what you heard, saw and did around the third of May two thousand and seven. 

Let me know if you need to take a break. 

And I intend to ask fairly open questions and then, as I said earlier, things that haven’t been covered in that process, we will go back and ask more closed questions.

So I can tick the boxes that we need to tick today".

Did that make sense?"

-- 'Yeah'.

4078 "Before we go on to the holiday, can you just give me some background in relation to how you know the MCs in the first place?"

-- "Yeah, erm, primarily the connection is through, erm, Russell and Jane, erm, Russell was Rachael and mine Best Man and we've been good friends since we went to University together in Leicester and originally he went out with a girl in my year called Ann S and then when I was looking for accommodation Ann mentioned that he had a space in his house, so there was two girls, Russell, Paul and myself and we made up the house and we sort of shared the rental at a house there and we've sort of been friends ever since and then, as I say, he was Best Man for Rachael and I when we got married in nineteen ninety-nine, erm, and we stayed in contact pretty much since. We've been on hol... well we'll probably come onto holiday and stuff later. But through Russell I know David, who was also at Leicester Medical School, and Fiona W, who is also, erm, Fiona P as she is now, erm, it was also at Leicester Medical School and they were two years behind me, so they graduated in ninety-four and I graduated in ninety-two, they know Gerry and Kate or they knew them on a much sort of more friendly level than, than I did. Erm, so I knew Gerry because we worked together in, I think, two thousand and two, erm, when we were at the Leicester General Hospital, so we knew each other on the, erm, on call rota, so we’d be together at sort of medical meetings, erm, but we didn’t sort of socialise more than sort of a quick chat at that point in time. And then we really got to know them when David and Fiona got married in two thousand and three, when we went, when they got, they were married in Italy and we, erm, there was a big group of people that went out, erm, all the group that were out in Portugal were there as well, and we shared an apartment with Gerry and Kate and Madeleine, she was about sort of four months old then, four months, it was around about September so she'd be about four or five months old then, and there were other people within the apartment, there was Stuart and Tara and, I think that was it, I think there was six adults and the children, and so we spent sort of a long weekend there for the wedding and so we got to know them a little bit at that point. But then we didn't really have any other contact (que le mariage des WP), apart from, hearing about them through David and Fiona and Russell and Jane, from them. And then the holiday came about because, erm, independently we'd been on sort of various holidays and we'd sort of often talked about them, you know, sort of being friends and we then went on a joint holiday to Greece the year before with David and Fiona, Russell and Jane, erm, but not with the MCs, we'd been to Greece, erm, and sort of spent a week on the beach there and then sort of thought about booking a holiday the next year and then Dave and Fiona, I think they'd already been on holiday with Gerry and Kate on another occasion, they wanted to involve them in the group and we ended up going for a Mark Warner complex in Portugal. Erm, that was, erm, we'd been to, as I say, some of us had been to MW, erm, various MW resorts before, we'd been to the Greek one in Lemnos, erm, originally before Grace was born, it was just a last minute deal and it was great, it was all inclusive, we all like sport, erm, and sunshine and, erm, it was sort of all inclusive and it was just a very, erm, sort of relaxing sort of place to go, so we went out there and we were quite keen to do that again because everybody in the group is pretty sporty, erm, and if you have a lot of people together you can share sort of the child care arrangements and its also very relaxing for everybody.
Because when we went to Greece it was like the fastest holiday I'd ever been on because there was only about an hour when they were asleep at lunch each day and a couple of hours in the evening where you were actually sort off child care duties, so the week went by in about sort of six hours, it was all sort of, it was very quick. And so we, we went, we talked about whether we'd go back to MW, I think, and David and Fiona had looked at various resorts and, erm, chose the Portugal one because it fitted better with time. Erm, in terms of, I mean, originally we were booked, we got the, we actually (inaudible) got the week off that they, that sort of fitted, but we were originally going to go to the Lake District with Rachaels parents but we ended up going, saying that, yes, we'd move that and change that for another week and go out. Erm, and various emails, everybody got sort of tied down to doing it and we booked and then went out'.

4078 'In relation to Gerry and Kate then, just to clarify what you have said. You met them at David and Fionas wedding''
-- 'Yeah'.

4078 'In two thousand and three in Italy. And you stayed, you shared an apartment with them then. Have you met them socially between then and now very often''
-- 'No, no, we, erm, I know that some of the other groups would, but I think mainly because we were no longer Leicester based, because we left Leicester in two thousand and, end of two thousand and three beginning of two thousand and four, because I got a job down in Kingston because I came to the end of my training, and so we moved out, erm, from there. But in between the times that we were still at Leicester, two thousand and three would have been the wedding, so the end of two thousand and three, because I started at Kingston in February two thousand and four and we didnt sort of socialise, I dont think we met them at all after the wedding, before, erm, before we left to go down to London. But I know Russ and Jane and Dave and Fiona would have been to sort of the birthday parties, erm, but more because they were Leicester based really. And we weren't, hadn't become sort of that close from that small visit in Italy'.

4078 So the first time you had seen them or had anything to do with them really again was this holiday last May?"

-- 'Yeah, I mean, we knew about them because Fiona, Dave and Fiona were sort of close friends with them and I think Fiona and Kate trained at some point (inaudible) training or knew each other in that way, so we'd hear about them, but it was, erm, Gerry and Kate and then Dave and Fi at this end and then Russ and Jane sort of sort of thing, it was like that'.

4078 'Okay. And the holiday that you had booked starting the twenty-eighth of April''

-- 'Yeah'.

4078 'Saturday I think that was'.

-- 'Yeah'.

4078 'Do you remember where you flew from''

-- 'Erm, we flew from Gatwick. We certainly flew from, Russell and Jane came down with us, erm, and the rest of the group went from, erm, from Leicester, from East Midlands, erm, simply because they didn't want to come down or get up very early, because MW flights are always particularly early, so they'd need to come down and stay overnight and then drive down sort of very early in the morning, so Russell and Jane came to us and then we went down to, erm, to Gatwick from, from, erm, from our house. And there was a bit of a problem with the, with the transport, because we'd booked a taxi and we'd said 'Look, we've got three children, four adults and loads of baggage for a week, it's got to be big enough' and he turned up in sort of like a standard and said 'It's all fine', we needed two child seats and a booster seat, and he turned up in sort of like a standard size taxi and then tried to get us into two and we're going, 'Oh no, we can't do that', so we booked into a sort of a valet parking thing, we'd used before at Gatwick, we drove down there and parked in that, it was all a bit of a sort of a rush at the end but got through'.

4078 'Last minute stress, which you dont need with little children, I am sure'.

-- 'Yeah'.

4078 'I know from speaking to Jane yesterday that you and Jane and Russell arrived slightly earlier than the rest of the group, with flight times''

-- 'We arrived earlier, yeah'.

4078 'So if you can tell me what you remember from when you arrived at the resort''

-- 'Erm, I mean, we'd sort of came in by (inaudible) and we arrived, we got on the bus, we were allocated rooms on the bus, that's a question that's been asked before, so we had the, you know, the choice about where we were going to stay, we'd had the keys with our names on it, erm, we pulled outside the entrance to the Tapas Bar in the bus and MARK WARNER staff sort of met us and took the luggage and helped us get it up to the room, erm, we must have arrived around lunchtime because there was an issue about where are we going to eat, are we going to get food, and I think on that first day we popped down to the Supermarket, there was a Supermarket just down the street, as you may be aware, to just sort of get snacks and things, because I think the Tapas Bar doesn't open, wasn't open on that transfer day, so we'd have probably sort of sorted food out and I think we were then unpacking in the rooms when, erm, the rest of the guys arrived and they came in by taxi so they actually pulled into the car park at the back, I remember going out to sort of meet them and say hello to them'.

4078 'Okay. Bear in mind, obviously I have seen maps and plans, but my mind just doesn't retain that kind of information particularly well, it is a failing on my part, that I am going to ask you if you can describe things in detail'.

-- 'Sure'.

4078 'So that I can picture it in my mind as we are going through, because then it makes it easier for me to understand the logistics of what you are saying as well'.

-- 'Yeah'.

4078 'Just grab my water. Feel free to help yourself to drinks and things if you need to. I say drinks, there is only water available, just tell me if you want something else'.

-- 'Yeah, that's fine'.

4078 'Right. So you have arrived at the resort, you have been allocated an apartment''

-- 'Yeah'.

4078 'And presumably you have gone and settled into your apartment''

-- 'Yeah'.

4078 'Can you describe to me where your apartment was''

-- 'Yeah, erm, so there's the, the apartment block, erm, are at one side to the, erm, let's think how best to describe it, it's all based around a T-junction essentially. So, erm, the apartment blocks, erm, runs along parallel to this bit and you go down the T-junction which goes down a hill about, oh, the distance now in memory must be, erm, sort of thirty yards, thirty or forty yards, and there's an entrance through a sort of a walled enclosure into the Tapas and sort of pool area and within that there's sort of like sun loungers, there's a big sort of kidney shaped pool and a smaller children's pool at the far end of the, erm, far end of the complex and you've got the Tapas Restaurant which runs closer to the, on the far side of the pool from the apartment block and behind that there is a cr'he, where we dropped Grace off to, coming back out of there you come, pool behind you, you come out the door, left, up the hill to the T-junction and you turn left just to get round the, the walls that sort of enclosed the, erm, well it's just little walls, which would enclose the back of the apartment block where we accessed the apartments from and you'd walk across a small car park, erm, into, to access the apartments there'.

4078 'Right'.

-- 'Erm, you go under the sort of, the way that the stairwell goes and the way that the balconies go, you actually walk, I think you walk under, there's sort of like a roof made by the above apartments and things to get to our doorway and so there were, sorry, stop me if I'.

4078 'Sorry, no, just before I forget to ask. The car park that you mentioned''

-- 'Yeah'.

4078 'Does that divide the apartments and the road, is the car park between''

-- 'Yeah, so you've got a road and then you've got a car park, erm, and then the apartment block and there's sort of two blocks of apartments, we were all in one, but if you walked to the far end of the car park there'd be a sort of little wall and I think there was a little access, you can either swing your legs over a wall to get into it but then there was another car park for another apartment block. Erm, so you came through the car park, the apartment block's in front of us and then there were four apartments, ours was five 'B', which was pretty much straight ahead of you just angling off to the left, there was an empty apartment five 'C' and then there was five 'D' where Russell and Jane were, so we were practically, sort of doors opening, not quite see each other but just about and then to get to Gerry and Kate's apartment, who were five 'A', you turn left along a sort of a small wall that separate, that went parallel to the side of the building, but only went to there, to their entrance and then it was sort of dead ended and you go round the corner there to get into their apartment'.

4078 'Okay. So if you were walking let's say from the Tapas Bar towards your apartment''

Reply 'Yeah'.

4078 'You wouldn't pass by, directly pass outside Gerry and Kate's apartment''

-- 'No, because of this, you'd have the wall coming out, which would make it the bedrooms, yeah, which made it the bedroom wall, so you walk past that, you wouldn't actually go through that. There are other ways to get into the apartments, the patio doors, which I will talk about in a second, because dividing, erm, you've got the apartment block, so you've got the road, you've got the, erm, the car park going that way and you've got the apartments where we were and it's a multi-storey, because I haven't mentioned Dave and Fi who were five 'H', I think five 'H''.

4078 'Yeah, I think that sounds about right'.

-- 'And you'd go up the stairs to them, they were the only people on the next floor up, and that's because they had, no, but that's just where their apartment was, they weren't next to us, I think it was to give them a two bedroom place, enough bedrooms for the children, they had a bigger apartment as well, I think to get Di in there as well. Erm, so you've got the apart, you've got the road, you've got the car park, you've got the apartments and then if walk through the apartments you've got patio doors that overlook the Tapas Restaurant and the pool area, but they are separated from that by a small sort of garden, which is just about the width of this room and then there's a a small metal gate that you go out onto a a passageway which runs between the walls that make up your back garden and the wall circling the Tapas and the swimming pool complex, so you could walk through those gates, turn left to get back onto the road and go down the hill to turn back into the Tapas".

So I felt completely icky all the day Sunday, so I think to try and avoid infecting anybody else, I didn't do much outside the apartment and certainly in the evening I didn't go for dinner with everybody else".

Contredit Russell qui dit être allé faire une ronde chez les MO ce soir-là.

the whole point of going to MARK WARNER, apart from, the the sport and things, is this issue of child care, which of course has changed for us completely now, but when you go to (inaudible) or you go to the other ones, they tend to be a compound, I mean, they're not sealed from people from the outside, but they're self-enclosed, there's a warden at the gate house, but you can walk in and out pretty freely, and they do a baby listening service, so they have a number of the Nannies who are on rota who will sit at the bottom of the, Lemnos was like lots of little cottages, not cottages, little flats, apartments going up on two hillsides, and so they would walk round, , round and went past all the, apartments and have a listen at the door to see whether anybody was crying or upset and at the start of the evening, as you went past, you'd give them your room number and where you were going to be and then if they heard anybody crying you'd then be taken back up the, , they'd find you in the restaurant and you'd go up to the door and see what was going on. And that was the thing that we were looking for when we booked the MARK WARNER because, it kind of seems funny when you look at it from this perspective, but at the time, it was just about having a safe environment where, the kids, because all the time and all through this, the thing you ever worry about is, if I leave them alone and they're, you think that they're safe because they're all locked, you're not really thinking that anything horrible would happen, you think, what happens if they wake up and they're crying and you're not there and, they're going to be upset and you think, well, if they've got this then it's going to be ten minutes at the most, and it's going to be awful and you'll feel bad about it if it happens, And it was one of the things that made us think, maybe we shouldn't go, because when we were trying to book, it said it's a village, it's not enclosed, it's apartments throughout the village and, there isn't a baby listening service and we can't guarantee that you'll be together, because I think there were three centres, there's one up by the Millennium, there's one Ocean Club and then there was the one near the main entrance, and so we were concerned that if one member of the group, we were all going, oh perhaps we'll be the Billy no mates, the really unpopular ones will get stuck at the Millennium and, we won't be able to, we won't be able to go out and visit our friends because we're not going to leave, we're not going to leave to, to go and see them and we won't be able to share child care and so it would be fairly difficult and it was a big issue because they couldn't guarantee, they couldn't allocate the rooms, for us and they said it'll have to wait until you get in the resort, but in the end it was quite quiet and so they could stick us really close together. I can't remember why I started talking about that?"

4078 'So you were just going to cover the arrangements that had been put in place for checking on the children''
-- 'Right.  And so the Tapas seemed to fit because, because you didn't feel far away from the room, it felt so quiet and very safe and it was sort of a minutes walk, if that, you know, the actual distance seemed quite, you know, you were falsely reassured, but obviously at this point you could see the back of your apartment, not hugely clearly, but you can see the apartment block,  you could see if the light came on, for instance, or you felt that you'd be able to see if the light came on and, because we were going what we thought was every ten or fifteen minutes, basically between courses, then you could go. And rather than go and find another restaurant where not everybody would be able to go because somebody would need to be babysitting

Drôle que personne ne se souvienne qu’il y avait des babysitters payantes.

"So it (laisser les enfants à la crèche de nuit) actually seemed a worse choice than just being close but not actually in the room (inaudible)". !!!!

it was only the last night that we

MO, pas RO

certainly we checked our own and it was only the last night that we offered to check for Gerry and Kate. It just, we are sort of fairly similar, our sort of views on sort of child care and that it was important, we're sort of from the same background, we have sort of similar issues about sort of child rearing, which is why we sort of get on and there was nothing obvious that anybody would do anything particularly different. I mean, Russell and Jane sort of, erm, are sort of fairly relaxed and easy going, erm, and Dave and Fi are sort of a bit disorganised and a bit late and Gerry and Kate are much more organised and we sort of fit sort of between that end of between, between that end of the scale and Russell and Jane. So it was all sort of, it was just sort of natural, we didn't decide,

Les Paynes avaient un intercommunicateur...

certainly for Russell and Jane I'd be happy to check for their children because they know me and if, they had been awake and I went in they wouldn't be particularly, shocked or surprised or not know who I was, but Gerry and Kate and their children I didn't know them so well, so I wouldn't and certainly at the beginning of the week have offered to check their children or assumed that that would be okay, it was only at the end of the week

5 jours et même pas le père d’un copain

when we seemed to know each other better and our routines and everybody seemed to be doing the same thing that it seemed to be a nice thing to do to offer to save them a trip".

Rachael was ill on the Wednesday night and so the Wednesday night was the only time that I stayed out any later than that. normally the meal would finish around ten and we'd tootle off back. So it was, and we'd already (inaudible), so it was like an hour and a half of time that we were away, maybe two hours".

Ce n'est pas que disent les serveurs, MO rêve.

Wednesday I remember I went running with Kate at lunchtime, she's quite a good runner, and we went out on the road all the way up to the main junc... , the main road where you access Praia da Luz from and then back".

I think it'd be about three or four miles, maybe each way".

I don't like it (run) , but I quite like it on holiday when it's a bit warmer and it's not so bad on your joints and I quite like running on the beach, because it feels quite Bay Watch and it's kind of Californian". I quite enjoy it every now and again, but, if it's unusual and you're exploring a bit".

The awful thing was that Madeleine always used to say 'Oh come on be a monster, be a monster, chase me', it was all, fun, the children running round and then they'd all jump on Dave or jump on Gerry, it was great, they loved it, running around".

4078 'As you got to know Gerry and Kate how did you find them''
-- 'Yeah, they're, erm, I mean, they're very similar sort of people. I mean, they were absolute, they absolutely loved their kids and there's no question to any of us that they had anything to do with this. Erm, they were appropriate, friendly, they had the same, I mean we're all medics, so you've got that in common anyway. Erm, but, yeah, I mean, you see them on the cameras on TV and they're all sort of, they are all sort of very, very sort of focussed, very, you know, sort of (inaudible) but they know what they want and they can explain it, they are articulate. I mean, he's a, sort of an academic sort of medic, so, you know, it's sort of a competitive field where you compete for grants and staff and all that sort of thing, so you need to know what you're doing, you need to be sort of fairly on the ball and that's just how he is, I mean, it's just, if he's got a project, he's sort of very focussed and sort of fairly, fairly driven. Erm, but, absolutely, sort of great parents. I mean, most of my memory from Italy is of sort of, you know, I think, I think Madeleine may have had quite a bit of attention when she was younger. She was mostly in and out of sort of the apartment, didn't see much of her there. I saw more of Gerry when we were playing sort of football and things. But, yeah, you know, just a normal. I mean, he'd done quite a lot of sports, erm, on a Wednesday night particularly and when we went to the bar after we spent a lot of time talking about sort of, you know, could it have been slightly different could I have been a professional footballer, you know, this is how, I enjoyed it and how far I got and we talked about sort of what I'd done and there was quite a lot in common, erm, in common with that. Erm, Kate sort of initially was much sort of quieter but when you sort of talked to her she's, erm, sort of just friendly and sort of warm and just a normal person'.

4078 'And how would you describe Madeleine''
-- 'Erm, yeah, sweet, lovely, you know, sort of very sort of outgoing and, erm, you know, enthusiastic, bounds of energy, sort of memories of her as they're running round the bits when we sort of chased her, when we chased her, it was always 'I want more. I want more. Be a monster. Be a monster' and running round,

4078 'Sad memories for you all, or mixed memories probably, I should imagine, bitter sweet''

-- 'Yeah, erm'.

4078 'And you said the Wednesday you stayed later and you went for a drink after the meal at the Tapas''

-- 'Yeah, we might have had one, erm, so about sort of half an hour or so later that we went back. But the reason, now we mention it, but I think that was on the Thursday, when we went to the table, I didn't sit next to Gerry, because we had this conversation, he said, you know, he'd bored the pants off me yesterday when we were talking about his sports (inaudible)'.

4078 'Right'.

-- 'I don't know why I brought that up, I don't know, it seemed to be sort of part of my thought'.

4078 'On the subject of drinking and how much you had to drink in the evenings, has obviously been mentioned in the past, so I will ask the question'.

-- 'Yeah, somebody said fourteen bottles, I think, oh, tut'.

4078 'Blimey'.

-- 'I know and that was each'.

4078 'So how much did you really have to drink, obviously it is going to be different each night, but, you know, roughly''

-- 'I think we had, I think we had between four and six bottles at the most on the table open but not emptied, so I think we started with either one of each, sort of a white and a red, or two of each, and then may have had an extra one during the course, but not, not drunk, you know, maybe two or three sort of glasses. Erm, it is difficult because, you know, it's holiday and the sort of the bottles are there and I don't particularly, I have to be in the sort of right sort of mood to drink and, you know, it sort of can be a bit cold and it wasn't always sort of conducive to having, erm, having lots'.

4078 'To what extent, did you feel like you had been drinking then''

-- 'No, not at all'.

4078 'Were there any evenings where you felt, oh I feel like I've had a lot''

-- 'No'.

4078 'So you always felt relatively sober''

-- 'Yeah'.

4078 'Is there anything that you can think of, worthy of mention, up until the Wednesday night, from what you have already said then, you didn't check on Gerry and Kate's children?"

-- No.

4078 "Had you been into their apartment before"?

-- I don't think so. during the day, if somebody was in the apartment, we'd go back through the patio doors, but at night we didn't, we always locked it and went round the back.

what was the door like?" brown and wood like. There was a lock, it , one of those you turn twice with the key. And I think, and I think a round, or was it like a lever handle, I can't remember what the handle was like, I think you had to turn it to go in and so it would snip, you couldn't really shut it with the lock on, but I think if you didn't lock it up here you could then just open it and shut it, I think you had to actually lock it to, it wasn't like a Yale thing that, stops you opening it again, I think".

The shutters, we didn't open all week, because there's kind of no point. I mean, we went in that bedroom for G**** to sleep during that day, it needed to be dark and kept it at an even temperature, I know the, one of the things I said in my statement, when we talk about the Thursday, was where the two windows were only the one, and I thought the two were on this bedroom rather than this one and so, I said, you go through, but there's actually two more, apparently two on those, they showed me a photograph of that. So that's something I know that I got mistaken by, I thought there were two on next door, because I don't think I'd ever noticed it because I think because we'd never pulled up the shutters, they were always down, we just didn't interfere with those".

Quelle confusion : incompréhensible. Bizarre qu'aucun d'entre eux ne pense à aérer. Comme ils n'ont jamais ouvert les volers, il ne s'était aperçu qu'il y avait deux fenêtres dans sa chambre et comme il avait vu dans le corridor qu'il y avait trois fenêtres en enfilade , il a cru que deux des fenêtres appartenaient aux MC.

4078 'Okay. And you say Grace was in this first bedroom on the left here''
-- 'Yeah, there's only one bedroom in ours, so we all slept together, so it was us and Grace was there. Erm, there's just like a bathroom and toilet, the bath goes along there. Erm, and there's sort of like a living area with, erm, there was a TV I think on the table there, a side table, a couch and a couch there'.

4078 "Did you hear between the apartments?"

--"You could hear from the bathrooms, you'd be able to hear, you'd be able to hear talking and, particularly at bath time. They'd go slightly earlier than G**** just because, I mean, I'm a bit disorganised about getting G****, to bed, so they'd already be in bed slightly earlier, but you'd often hear them in the bathroom. G**** used to cry for that first thing (nappies) in the morning and I think they'd heard her in the morning. But you'd often hear them talking in the evening".

"Rachael was , became unwell the Tuesday evening, and she stayed in the apartment, yeah".

C'était le mercredi soir.

 The reason I am specific about that is because there is a statement from somebody who says they hear children crying and I think it is the Tuesday evening, 

Il a raison, Mrs Fenn a entendu des pleurs d'enfant le mardi soir.

 I will stand corrected if I am wrong, it was either the Tuesday or the Wednesday".

PAUSE

4078 'And you know that you are able to do that if you want to. But we have, well you have decided, and I am in agreement with that, that you are going to do this without looking at your statement first''

-- 'Yeah, I mean, I think the Thursday is the day we've thought about the most and that certain bits of it I don't remember particularly well but the important bits I think I do and I think there are bits that, erm, that from my previous statement, I don't think there is anything different in there but, erm, I do think and I'm happy with the statement first'.

4078 "You might be surprised but this isn't a test".

4078 "This is just to recall".

-- "I know it feels like an exam of course but..."

4078 "Oh sorry, well I will try not to make it feel like an exam".

-- "No, it's a test of memory".

4078 "Yeah, it is a test of memory obviously".

4078 "But we will move through it and we will do it as we have done the rest of it, if you can tell me as much as you can remember and then we will go through the finer details later on?"

-- Thursday I think since I've thought about it and it's much clearer. I can't remember where we had lunch that day, Rachael went to play tennis with Jane, I’m fairly sure about that. And then I went down to the beach with Russell and we actually went sailing for part of the afternoon, part of the boat's strapping fell off and I fell off and he didn't really know how to sail but managed to bring the boat round and I was like a mile from shore thinking I'm going to have to swim all the way back or he's going to run me down with the boat, but he actually did really well and actually managed to pick me up on the back of the boat. by the time we'd got back in the, the rest of the families were down on the beach,And so we put the boat away, got changed and came over to them, we had, actually had tea with the kids down at the restaurant Paradiso. there was a men's social tennis that night, but because we'd actually been off enjoying ourselves and sailing, it got quite late and it was past six before the girls said, well they've moved this forward for us and we're not turning up to the social tennis so you guys should go. So we finished and set off, probably about twenty past six, I went back to the apartment, got the tennis gear and back to the courts area, and the other guys went to get their stuff. I think Dave said that he'd been to the apartment, but I don't know that for definite, that's just something I think has come out, I didn't know anything about that. the social had already started. And Gerry was down playing on a court, I think there was only three of them, I think the tennis coach, the blonde haired bloke, And so we waited and watched for a little while, so we didn't get on court until, phew, sometime closer to seven, we were hoping that Gerry would actually stay and make up the four, there was one court that was full of four and then there was a three over he, but he, went back to, to help with, Kate and the kids and didn't stay to play with us I think the coach stayed and played to make up the four initially, didn't stay the whole time.

you could see the light on in the Payne apartment, so I decided that I'd go back and short of chivvy them along, because I felt a bit bad that, there's just us in this restaurant, I felt a bit bad that we said we'd be there at half eight But as I was leaving the Tapas area, and their light going off and about at that top corner before you turn left to get round the back, it seemed a bit silly not to go ahead and just check on G****, even though we'd only been down there about fifteen minutes, I just listened outside her shutters, and went along to the MC shutter and had a listen out there, not because I'd been asked to, there's three shutters

Les deux siens et le shutter MC ?

they're all at the same level, I would have noticed if one was up and the rest were down, it would have looked odd".

Reply "It's getting dusk, by that time, but not completely dark,

4078 "How close would you have got to the shutter?"

-- About a foot away,

4078 How long would you have listened for outside that particular window?"Five or ten seconds".

-- You have to go down steps from the car park to the apartment complex, the wall must be, I can't remember exactly, but it must be a good five foot".

unless you were specifically looking down the road, you probably wouldn't see

"I think the moon was out later on so, I had the impression that the moon was out later on, it may have been more clear".

my impression is that there was, the street lights were very orangey, I think there was one at the top corner and maybe one about halfway up on the right as you came up from the Tapas Restaurant and possibly one on that, on that back bit behind the car park, someway further along".

-- "So, back to the table,

Oublié de mentionner la fenêtre de JT

Gerry got up to check on his kids, I'd come back and said I didn't hear any noise when I listened outside your room, so I thought it was a little bit odd that not kind of a wounded pride that he didn't trust me, but I just thought, oh, I've just checked you don't really need to check and go back, I thought that. I know that Jane went up because E had not been well that morning

Was that the first time that you had taken it upon yourself to check on somebody else's child?"

I'd not done it before, it was only because, I was there and I was, and it may not have happened if I'd actually gone in and checked on G**** through the room, it was only like four steps further.

Mais les autres fois il n’allait pas écouter.

I wouldn't normally impose that check on somebody else unless they'd, unless they'd suggested it.

KMC ne l’a pas suggéré, c’est lui qui a proposé une demi-heure plus tard.

I remember Gerry specifically going because I thought, well I've just checked (inaudible) But I don't particularly remember Jane doing that, but I might have done at the time, it's just it's now faded because it didn't seem important”.

Oui, mais ce qui est arrivé après aurait dû fixer cela dans la mémoire.

closer to twenty past, twenty-five past nine, sometime round there before we did the next check".

Kate stood up and I said do you want me to go and check on your kids, and she said yes. I offered at that point just because we had been together all week and we had similar routines and it just kind of seemed like a nice thing to do that would save her a journey back up and, it may or it may not have been different. But, I said that and she said yeah fine and she said that the patio door was open and go in through there. And there was me and Russell as well, so, , it seemed, at the time, a very reasonable thing to do, even though it was the first time that we'd certainly done it. Also, having somebody else there with me, it felt more, more natural and normal. So we went out and we debated about whether we'd go in first or go in later, but Russell wanted to get back because E*** had been a little bit unsettled and so we went back first and he went in and I went in to check , so he was staying back with E. So I went back and did the check on five 'A', on Madeleine and the kids, and went back through the patio entrance, so through the gate, through the patio doors, there was, it was light enough to see through the apartment and the door was just halfway open, so it seemed slightly unusual that it should be so wide open, it seemed odd to have that door open, JT and ROB have light and they prefer that, but we've never done that with G****, so it seemed a little bit odd.  unusual par rapport à quelle norme ? The cots were in the middle of the room with a gap of about maybe a foot between the two, we were just satisfying ourselves that nobody was upset and awake and crying, we didn't expect that if I checked each three beds somebody, it just wasn’t something that you thought about, you just thought, is somebody, upset, do they want their mum or something, you can say, somebody might have vomited but nobody was awake, I didn't step over the threshold, I didn't see Madeleine and I can't see the shutters because the curtains were shut they weren't blowing about but there was a light behind us in the room and for some reason I thought, I got the impression of light coming through the doorway from behind me, which is why I said that I thought perhaps the moon was out, there was no slats of light coming through the back that particularly caught my eye.

The room was lighter than I expected but I definitely didn't see the shutters up, the curtains were definitely not disturbed.

It's something I've thought about over and over again, surely that just seemed odd and so it was worth you looking round and going a bit further, and I can't explain why I didn't do it.

They seemed to have come from the same parenting school that we did, and so, it seemed a little bit more unusual that it should be, the door should be open so much and the light, because they were always, the kids were always really confident and they were the least misbehaved, well not misbehaved, they were the least upset when they dropped them off at Nursery, at crèche, it was all really good and it was all , they were very good at, if they did something wrong, they said no and explaining it properly and why, why it was naughty to do that thing, it was all very appropriate and almost by the book, and it seemed a bit sort of casual to sort of like leave the door open, but then they had sort of an older daughter, so you know, and older children might get, you know, nightmares, so it seemed as though there might be a reasonable explanation, but although I thought it was odd at the time, I didn't say, do you normally leave your door "One or two minutes maybe. I remember looking along their bookshelf as I walked through to see if there was anything that I could take to read for the next couple of days, there was like a little round table and then, a small lamp". There was like a little side light, a reading light that was on".

4078 So you didn't cross the threshold?"

-- No.

4078 And you say the cots were in the middle of the room?" What angles were they at?"

-- You could definitely see, see the sides, so they're either along, I think because of the angle that you approach it, I think they were just, in the line with the long axis of the room, but there was a gap between the two and the sides are mesh".

4078 So you saw the sides. Do you remember which way the children were facing in the cots?"

-- "No, it was just, you could just see the shape and bits of breathing".

4078 You didn't touch the door?"

-- "No".

over forty-five degrees".

slightly over half open?"

bed which is where Madeleine was supposed to be, and you could just catch about six or eight inches of the outside corner, just the end of the bed

you could see the chest moving". 

Ils sont à plat-ventre...

Mais il ne distingue pas de quel jumeau il s’agit.

I couldn't tell what particular pattern, but I just remember green and yellow with that.

Lilas.

4078 Have you been into that room again since that moment?"

-- I don't think so, it was then always cordoned off. I mean, Gerry and Kate were told to get their things out of there

I talked in an interview about whether I thought Madeleine was gone at that point, and I said, well I thought she was, but then I knew that Jane had seen this, had earlier seen this person and she described pyjamas before she knew what Madeleine actually was wearing, so when that came out then it seemed fairly likely that things had already been done, which I think is partly why it's been easier for me to deal with the 'what ifs' than it is for her, because it seemed like Madeleine had already gone at that point, but at the beginning, when I didn't know, that was awful, when Kate came back and said, she's gone, and they were going, did you see her, and I had to say, well, no, I just made sure everything was alright and that was, that was awful, that moment".

I didn't smell anything,

this door would have been locked

On n’en sait rien.

and that's the shortest way anyway

ROB was eating it when the next checks went, which were about half an hour later".

the reason I think thirty minutes is because I don't know whether this is memory now or whether it's since we've been talking about it, Gerry said or Kate said, it's about thirty minutes since the last check, we ought to go, so that's why I think it's thirty minutes, 

Qu'est-ce qu'il attendait pour aller faire sa propre ronde ?

Kate went and, and then came running back saying, she's gone, Gerry Madeleine's gone, and she was borderline hysterical, then everybody I think left the table, I mean, I just remember being behind Dave, Russell I think a bit behind I'm almost a hundred percent sure we didn't go to the apartment, so Gerry and Kate and maybe Dave, I'm not sure, but went to the bottom of the steps and they went in, and as soon as they said, she's gone and everything, all hell broke loose, we went round to check firstly on G**** to make sure she was okay

Donc ils soupçonnent un enlèvement déjà !

and we dropped Rachael up there, telling her that she wasn't to move, Jane came out of the apartment, did she come out of the apartment at that point or was it later in the evening, I can't remember, but I remember seeing them, most of the time and then for the rest of the evening they were stood, at the doorways to the apartments, we went back round, and everybody was just running around like headless chickens, so I remember saying, we need a plan, I mean, I don't know why I said that but I think I'd just read too many novels, because everybody just seemed to just run, there was no organisation, and it was obviously important that we, we did something constructive rather than just running around looking in the hedgerows if, what we, because we all went through this, is she really gone, surely she must have just wandered off and we’re just going to find her and she's going to be there, but, she's like a four year old child and, she, I mean, all the doors were shut, she wasn't really going to run off and then Jane said, the shutters up, and, we scarpered and Dave and Russell were just running off shouting, so Fiona, I think, asked me to go and phone the Police, so I actually went down the route to where she would have gone for Nursery drop off, to the main reception essentially, looking for her at that time and I asked the reception to phone the Police, and that must have been about five past, it's difficult to know what time it was at that time, but maybe about ten past ten, five past ten, ten past ten".

it was surreal when you got there, I said, you've got to phone the Police, a child's been taken, and they went, oh no, she's probably just woken up and he thought she's probably wandered off or something like that and you thought maybe you're right, can you please, it was , it was kind of, it was sort a weird kind of lack of urgency, he'd ring, but you had to stand there and say, ring now, ring now, so I don't know if they rang at that point, maybe about ten past ten maybe. , then we went back up to, or I went, because I was on my own, I went back up to the apartment and it was just obvious that she wasn't in the apartment, I volunteered to go up to the Millennium Restaurant because it was just one of the routes that I thought she might have taken, although I couldn't say why I thought she would because we'd only been there once on that night before and maybe she'd been for the restaurant,

Effectivement si elle cherche ses parents elle va là où elle est allée dîner avec eux.

so we'd only been at the initial welcoming,

at some point we were back and forth to the, to the reception as well. And I think what the reception probably did was ring the MARK WARNER people and say, there's somebody that's saying there's a child missing, because by that time there were lots of MARK WARNER people around, and they were very good, they, they obviously, got there and that might have been the impetus that got them to ring the Police,

I understand that there is some discrepancy about when we thought we'd called the Police and when the Police were actually called

this would have been about thirty minutes or so later, back to reception, and at that point, Gerry had come down as well,

ten past eleven when the GNR Police arrived and there was two of them in a Police car. they arrived just about five minutes after Gerry and I had been there. And one of the cleaning ladies I think came to translate, I think this is Sylvia or Sylvie, I'm not sure, but she was there helping

after that we did more headless running around,

on one of the return visits, I did go into the apartment, just as far perhaps as the, as the kitchen, and I could see them sat on the sofa, but they were in with the Police and there was nothing we could do or say, so we came back out, and that's the only time I went back into the apartment".

"When did you first become aware of what Jane had seen, can you remember?"

I don't know whether it was that night or the next day,

"How often have you been in contact with them since?"

but we'd speak to them, I mean, initially it was every few days and then every week and now it's about every two to three weeks".

we had took trainers and , the kit and the tennis racquets".

"It's available from the hire, I mean, definitely, I'm not sure if Gerry and Kate, I think everybody else didn't take tennis kit and hired it

you were conscious that there was no organisation. Did you take it upon yourself to start organising?"

No, there was that initial inertia of, are we sure she's really gone, are you sure she's not there and she's hiding in the bathroom or something, we need to have a plan, but everybody had already run,

I would have stood by the desk (de l’OC) and said, no, you must ring now, I didn't stand over the desk and say, do it. 

We know James Landale who does BBC News Twenty-Four, personally, and his wife, and we did ring them. I mean, I think we were asked not, people suggesting that it wouldn't be a good idea to the Press, but, and they may be right, but, as a group, we thought that you need some exposure on this because if you need to get it out there. And that was as much a criticism, it wasn't a criticism of the Portuguese Police, it was just that it felt like the right thing to do and it just seemed like a good idea at the time, to try and get some exposure. And I think we rang up James or his wife, Kath Landale, and asked, how we, how you could do that and they gave us a number. I think then there was phone contact between Rachael and the desk, saying, do you want to go forward with this, because we mentioned it but didn't authorise anybody to go, because we hadn't spoken to the Police yet, we didn't know what they wanted to do, and how they'd feel about it, so we held it back, but I think there were people within the group and it got out pretty quickly".

There has been a kind of a timeline that was drawn up between the group?"

"I can't confidently say who did it or when it was drawn up, but what can you tell me about that?"

"I think, the timeline has been , we all thought it was a good idea, Gerry and Kate were there, with the Police trying to sort things out and we were , the rest of the group were trying to make sense of it and do what we thought we could to help, so the timeline, we said, if we write down everything then while our memory's fresh we actually took it into the first interview

Il confond avec le timeline imprimé, apporté pour la deuxième audition.

and said, look, we've done this and they said, no, you can't read from that. And, of course, you can understand now why it didn't seem like a good idea, but at the time it just seemed like a sensible thing to do to try and get all our recall of everything that we'd done down as fast as possible. I don't know whether there was anything done on the night, but the next day or two, certainly in the first two days, we got together to go through it. But it was mostly us not Gerry and Kate, I think they, they might have contributed to it later".

And we got a computer I think to write it down so we could hand it over".

Donc il parle bien de la seconde ligne de temps.

La suite manque. Problèmes techniques, pas de données enregistrées.