12 - Jan/Mar - Dr M. Roberts 7a

@mccannfiles.com

 

Paul Bond - Flight of the Muse

Washed Up? 

A Tense Situation 
Rumours 
Influence 
Inferences and Deductions 
Bad Day at Black Rock 
Above the Law 
A Line in the Sand 
Clear as Crystal 
Another Story 
Epilogue 
A Picture of Innocence 

Washed Up? - 05.01.2012

Cleanliness is next to godliness, they say. What with a 'hands on' papal greeting and countless other blessings along the way, Kate McCann should be about as close to God already as any mortal might expect to get. But if the proverb should be at all reliable, her actions in Praia da Luz, five years ago now, ought to guarantee her a seat at High Table. The various instances of showering and child bathing though are not nearly so interesting as the one occasion on which she chose to wash a pyjama top belonging to her daughter Madeleine.

The context is brief and familiar. On 3 May, during breakfast, 'she noticed a stain, supposedly of tea, on Madeleine's pyjama top, which she washed a little later that same morning. She hung it out to dry on a small stand, and it was dry by the afternoon. Madeleine sometimes drank tea; nevertheless the stain did not appear during breakfast, maybe it happened another day, as Madeleine did not have tea the previous night and the stain was dry.' (KM witness statement, 6.9.07). Première apparition de la tache d'origine inconnue sur le haut du pyjama.

This little cameo, despite not having made it to the top of the rostrum in time for the McCanns' first statements to police on May 4, was nevertheless worthy of mention the second time around. And the third, as it is given an equally meritorious mention in 'Madeleine,' Kate's book of remembrance:

'I didn't think of it at the time but the day Madeleine disappeared I noticed what I thought was a tea stain on her Disney pyjama top,' she says. 'I washed it without thinking but looking back, the children hadn't drunk any tea that day and I can't remember her mentioning that she'd spilt anything.'

The obvious discrepancy in these accounts has been pointed out previously (see article: Accounts of the Truth, McCannfiles 8 May 2011). Kate's retrospective use of the pluperfect tense in her book places the washing at the end of the day rather than the beginning. On the one hand therefore we have spontaneous garment washing shortly after breakfast; on the other, it would have occurred nearer tea-time.

The second performance naturally leads one to re-examine the first, when Kate, after having noticed the offensive stain, 'washed it a little later that same morning' so that 'it was dry by the afternoon.'

The parameters bear re-iterating:

Breakfast 8.00 - 8.30 a.m. Pyjamas washed a little later (not somewhat, or much, later). Pyjamas dry by the afternoon (not mid-afternoon or late afternoon).

Now watch closely as we skip through a heavily redacted version of Kate McCann's statement of 6 September, 2007:

On the 3rd of May .... They washed the children and had breakfast at the apartment between 08:00 and 08:30 a.m .... During breakfast .... She noticed a stain .... on Madeleine's pyjama top, which she washed a little later that same morning. She hung it out to dry on a small stand .... it was dry by the afternoon .... Madeleine did not have tea the previous night and the stain was dry.

'After breakfast they .... left the apartment.

'After leaving the apartment they left the twins at the crèche .... she supposes that Gerry took Madeleine to the crèche.

'Once the children were delivered, they went to the tennis courts .... Kate's group lesson was at 9:15 .... When her lesson ended at 10:15, she went to the recreation area next to the swimming pool to talk to Russell until Gerry's lesson was over. Afterwards .... they went back together to the apartment until close to 12:15 when she went to Madeleine's crèche to pick her up, together with Fiona Payne.

'... they went to the apartment for lunch .... This would be around 12:35/12:40 .... Lunch lasted around 20 minutes. After finishing lunch they stayed for a while at the apartment, then they went to the recreation area .... They remained at this area for about an hour, maybe more, then they left the twins at the crèche next to the Tapas and both of them took Madeleine to the other crèche.

'After leaving Madeleine at around 2:50 p.m., they both had, once more, a tennis lesson.

'She doesn't remember if they were already wearing appropriate clothes or if they went to the apartment to change.

'The lesson ended an hour later, at around 4:30 p.m. Gerry continued playing tennis .... while she went for a jog .... for around half an hour .... She cannot confirm whether she went to the apartment between the tennis game and the jog.

'When she finished jogging, at around 5:20/5:30 p.m., she went to the Tapas area. Gerry was there, as well as the twins and Madeleine .... Her parents were required to sign the register when the meal was over, at around 5.30 p.m .... Madeleine .... asked Kate to carry her back to the apartment.

'They arrived at the apartment at around 5:40 p.m .... At the apartment they both bathed the children.

'After the children's bath .... she put pyjamas and nappies on the twins, and gave them each a glass of milk and biscuits.'

First things first. Kate McCann was due on the tennis court at 9.15. Once breakfast was concluded they still had to dress the children (all three of them), before leaving the apartment ('On the 3rd of May .... They washed the children and had breakfast') in time to take the infants to their creche before the tennis lesson(s) began. They did not return to the apartment until Gerry's tennis lesson had concluded (11.15) and left it again at 12.15, giving Kate about half-an-hour in all during which to wash Madeleine's pyjama top, three hours and more (a little later?) after she first noticed the stain.

But now it's around noon, by which time the pyjama top was said already to have been dry.

Perhaps Kate meant that it was dry by mid-afternoon or later. That's as maybe. But how can she possibly have known what time the clothing was dry since, having remained in the apartment for a twenty minute lunch (12.40 - 13.00) and 'a while' thereafter, she spent an hour or so at the recreation area before proceeding to the creche(s) once more with the children, then onto more tennis, jogging etc., with no confirmation of any visit to the apartment in the meantime, until they all returned at 5.40 p.m.?

So, unless Kate exploited her 'window of opportunity' between 11.30 and 12.00 in order to wash Madeleine's pyjama top (which could not possibly have been 'dry by the afternoon'), she could not have washed it until the evening (according to her own verification of events). And whilst this interpretation would sit more conveniently with her later description of proceedings (in 'Madeleine') it must, at the same time, suggest that Madeleine was put to bed in wet pyjamas! ('They arrived at the apartment at around 5:40 p.m .... At the apartment they both bathed the children. After the children's bath .... she put pyjamas and nappies on the twins, and gave them each a glass of milk and biscuits.').

Perhaps that accounts for Kate's earlier apparent reluctance to describe exactly how they dressed Madeleine for bed after her bath.

A liquid post-script

'It is believed the entire Portuguese case rests on DNA evidence from body fluids which allegedly suggests that Madeleine's corpse was carried in the boot of the McCanns' hired Renault Scenic. (The Daily Mirror,19.9.2007)

'But the McCanns say the fluids probably came from Madeleine's unwashed pyjamas and sandals which were carried in the boot when the family was moving apartments.'

(These are the very fluids Kate McCann told the Leveson Inquiry did not exist).

A Tense Situation – 20.01.2012

Time is of the essence. It is so important to each of us in our daily lives that, in the course of mankind's cultural history, every effort has been made to quantify it - pictorially, mechanically, electronically; even relatively.

What did the McCanns do with their precious time in the immediate aftermath of Madeleine's disappearance, first announced on Thursday night, 3 May 2007? Kate McCann has told us (parentheses mine).

Friday 4: Virtually the entire day was spent at PJ headquarters in Portimao. They travelled there with police at 10.00 a.m. (p.88) returning to Praia da Luz 'some time after 8.30 p.m.' (p.92).

Saturday 5: 'Alan Pike (trauma psychologist)... was at the door of our apartment by 6.00 a.m... we talked... for several hours... it turned out to be a bewilderingly busy day for Gerry and me...' (p.99-101). 'Three family liaison officers (FLOs) from Leicestershire force... came to introduce themselves.' (p.102). 'We had so many meetings that day...' (p.103). 'Neither Gerry nor I was functioning remotely properly... At lunchtime, over by the Tapas area, Gerry saw a crowd of departing guests... With a new batch of incoming holidaymakers, more of our relatives appeared.' (p.104) 'I remember slumping on one of the dining chairs in the apartment (4G)... I also felt a compulsion to run up to the top of the Rocha Negra... the sun set on another day and there was still no news.' (p.105).

Sunday 6: '...despite my fragility I was determined to go to Mass... We all, family and friends, went to mass at the local church.' (p.106). That first Sunday saw two further arrivals in Luz: my childhood friends Michelle and Nicky. Both wanted to be with me... Alan (Pike) planted in our minds the idea of reducing the size of our support group... Listening to Alan it all seemed so obvious... after giving the matter some thought' (p.109)... 'we ended up getting down to the nitty-gritty... that Sunday evening.' (p.110).

Monday 7: British expatriates living permanently in Praia da Luz organized a search of the area. The volunteers were joined by most of our family and friends... while Gerry and I were tied up with Andy Bowes and Alex Woolfall... When lunchtime came, Gerry and I were in the middle of another meeting... we had to go to the Toddler Club ourselves... Once we were left with our leaner support group, we allocated general roles... It had been suggested that I should record a televised appeal aimed at Madeleine's abductor, and this is what we had been discussing that morning with Andy and Alex... (p.111) Andy Bowes had proposed delivering part of my appeal in Portuguese, which I did. Gerry sat beside me...' (p.112). 'I was hugely relieved when it was over... Around teatime, Father Ze turned up...' (p.113). 'We were seeing the Leicestershire FLOs every day. That Monday evening... we lost it with the liaison officers.' (p.113-4).

Tuesday 8: '...we said an emotional goodbye to the family and friends who were leaving us... Later I went down to sit on the beach for a while with Fiona... We talked and cried and held on to each other... As we were walking up from the beach at about 5pm, I had a call from Cherie Blair...'

Well that about takes care of the McCann itinerary during the first five days immediately following Madeleine's reported disappearance.

I should apologize at this point for what next may seem to some like an overly complex version of an old trick, where, after being invited to count the passengers boarding and leaving a bus en route, the unsuspecting listener is suddenly invited to answer the question: 'How many bus-stops were there?' Because now I should like to ask when, in the course of all the activity Kate McCann has dutifully outlined for us, did she personally find the time for sight-seeing; in particular her visit to Lagos Marina, which she has previously described to D.C. 975 Markley of Leicestershire Constabulary? It was he who wrote, on a spare sheet of LC paper headed 'LEICESTERSHIRE CONSTABULARY Continuation WITNESS STATEMENT,' the following:

INFORMATION FROM THE FAMILY

spoke to Kate McCann on Tuesday 8th of May 07. She told me that a friend of her Aunt & Uncle from Leicester had a friend that had a strong vision that Madeleine was on a boat with a man in the Marina in Lagos.

This person arrived in Portugal and has spoke to Kate. They have visited the Marina and identified the boat as "SHEARWATER". They saw a man on the boat but this was not the same man that she had in her vision.

This is very important to Kate. I spoke to Glen Pounder if he could make some enqs with regards to the boat.

He has done this and the boat is registered to a Canadian National called Bruce Cook. Glen has told me that George Reyes at the police stn is now dealing with the matter with regards to doing PNC checks etc.

I spoke with Kate today and she has given me photographs of the boat. She has also given me a photograph of a man who had been on the boat. This is not the man that the woman had in her vision.

This matter is very important to her and she is very pleased that we are making enqs into the matter.

Once the enqs have been completed can we please let her know the result.

Thanks

This correspondence, concerning information provided by Kate McCann don't forget, has to be read very carefully. Although the page is undated, 'I spoke to Kate McCann on Tuesday 8th of May 07' is clearly a reference to a past action. Furthermore, the conversation to which it refers describes past activity itself, placing the vision, certainly, at a time prior to Tuesday 8 May (some time between May 4th and May 8th, no doubt). But what about that person's arrival in Portugal and their visit to the Marina?

DC Markley, writing whenever, does not say 'This person has since arrived in Portugal and spoken to Kate,' i.e. placing these actions at a time after his and Kate's 8 May conversation, although they may be misconstrued as having occurred later. Rather, these activities are referred to much as might be the subject matter in continuation of that very first conversation. DC Markley goes on to explain that he has 'spoke with Kate today' (i.e. the day of the memo) and that his colleague, Glen Pounder, had by that time already completed certain enquiries regarding a particular yacht. Completion (not commencement) at the time of writing necessarily implies that these enquiries must have been stimulated by an earlier Markley/McCann conversation.

Hence, by Tuesday 8 May, Kate McCann is in a position to inform DC Markley of a specific vessel moored at Lagos Marina. The visit which identified it must already have taken place, as DC Markley makes no reference whatsoever to any exchange of information in the interim, i.e. in-between the 'conversation' that occurred on Tuesday 8 May and the tete-a-tete meeting on the day he wrote his memo, when Kate 'gave him photographs of the boat.'

Ah yes, but it was Kate's anonymous informant who visited the Marina alone, took the photographs and passed them onto Kate ('This person arrived in Portugal and has spoke to Kate. They have visited the Marina'), 'They' in this instance being an impersonal reference to the individual in question.

Oh no it is not.

The subsequent sentence reads: 'They saw a man on the boat but this was not the same man that she had in her vision.'

The change of pronoun clearly distinguishes between the visionary (she) and her companion(s), 'They' being the third person plural.

Thus Kate McCann took advantage of a gap in her busy schedule to visit Lagos Marina, some time between 4 and 8 May; an event directly associated with a matter of considerable importance to her (DC Markley points this out twice); so important in fact that she fails to describe it in her book at all, whilst what she does mention specifically precludes its having happened, in that period of time at any rate. The nearest she comes to the subject is this: "There were a couple of 'visionary' experiences in particular I took very seriously. One of them had come through prayer which, at the time, gave it even greater credibility in my eyes. I begged the police to look into these." She does not elaborate further.

Kate McCann of course knows 'what happened.' She was there. Her book, 'Madeleine' is an account of the truth. How ironic then that the Leveson enquiry should vilify representatives of the UK press for implicitly trusting the presumed source of much of their information, in the form of the Portuguese police, when a serving UK Detective Constable has apparently made the very same mistake in trusting information provided to him by the missing child's own parent. If what Kate tells us in her book is true, then what she told DC Markley on 8 May, 2007, whether by telephone, e-mail or carrier pigeon, cannot be.

But we're not done yet.

On an indeterminate date, Kate McCann personally handed DC Markley a set of photographs taken during a visit to Lagos Marina; a visit that took place before 8 May. Kate's 'friend' may have had the vision, but did she take the photographs? In light of Kate McCann's self-confessed photophobia, she could well have done.

During an interview published on 27 May, 2007, Kate told Olga Craig (Sunday Telegraph): "I haven't been able to use the camera since I took that last photograph of her." ('her' being Madeleine). James Murray (Sunday Express, 9.8.09) interprets the situation a little differently however: "Kate went to Lagos Marina, a few miles along the coast from Praia da Luz where her daughter vanished on May 3, 2007, and photographed the boat and the man on board."

It's anybody's guess perhaps, but if Kate McCann is herself a reliable source of information, then identification of this photographer, an anonymous friend of an anonymous friend, is long overdue. Someone who has a 'vision' over the weekend (she couldn't have had a premonition before Madeleine was taken, surely?) flies out to Portugal immediately, then makes straight for Lagos Marina to photograph the vessels moored there, must have had an extraordinarily strong sense of purpose. Otherwise we are left with evidentially valid (if not exactly solid) statements by Kate McCann, which appear to suggest that this maritime photography was accomplished during her own free time, before 4 May even. Make no mistake, when it comes to anticipation Kate McCann has already demonstrated some 'previous form' in that regard:

"From the moment Madeleine had gone, I'd turned instinctively to God and to Mary, feeling a deep need to pray, and to get as many other people as possible to pray, too. I believed it would make a difference. Although in the early days I struggled to comprehend what had happened to Madeleine, and to us, I've never believed it was God's fault, or that He 'allowed' it to happen. I was just confused that He had apparently not heeded the prayer I'd offered every night for my family: 'Thank you God for bringing Gerry, Madeleine, Sean and Amelie into my life. Please keep them all safe, healthy and happy. Amen.' Please keep them all safe. It must be said that when I'd prayed for their safety I'd been thinking: please don't let them fall off something and bang their heads, or please don't let them be involved in a car accident. I'd never considered anything as horrific as my child being stolen. But I had kind of assumed my prayer would cover every eventuality." (p.106).

As an adjunct to the present discussion, it is interesting, albeit for unwelcome reasons, that Kate McCann should consider a child's being involved in a car accident and suffering trauma at least, serious, possibly fatal injury at worst, nothing like as horrific as she herself suffering the consequences of theft.

But back to the matter in hand - Kate's sense of timing.

The entire ritual quoted above is prefaced by the phrase, 'From the moment Madeleine had gone,' giving the impression that the tendency to enhanced spirituality, and the prayers that went with it, was consequent upon the events of 3 May, i.e. the 'abduction.' But Kate had clearly been genuflecting nightly long before. As she says, 'I was just confused that He had apparently not heeded the prayer I'd offered every night for my family.' (God had not been listening even before 3 May, never mind afterwards). Included in Kate's prayer was the exhortation to 'keep them all safe' which, as Kate goes on to explain, embraced various categories of danger, as she'd actually been thinking: 'please don't let them fall off something and bang their heads, or please don't let them be involved in a car accident,' although she'd never considered anything as horrific as her child being stolen.

God stands exonerated therefore. Since 'abduction' per se was not itemised among the supplications, He cannot be blamed for overlooking it. The omission was Kate's entirely. So if God did not heed her prayer it must have been another detail of Kate's appeal he ignored. And these were? Well nothing like as generally relevant to well protected pre-school infants as 'keep them from head-lice, chicken-pox, cuts, bruises, respiratory problems etc.' or, with their developing independence, the myriad other misfortunes that might attend them. No, none of that. Gerry, Madeleine, Sean and Amelie were religiously insured against car accidents and falling off things. Madeleine was not driving when she was taken. So what risk, exactly, did God's agency not cover?

Rumours – 24.01.2012

"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." (Kate McCann in 'Madeleine,' pp. 205-6).

The McCanns have begun litigation against Tony Bennett for alleged defamation concerning, among a variety of other things, an earlier undertaking "not to repeat allegations that the Claimants are guilty of, or are to be suspected of...lying about what happened..."

At issue, in this specific instance, is not whether the McCanns have been unerringly truthful, but that Tony Bennett be prevented from alleging the contrary himself, or repeating such allegations by others, in any way shape or form. I.e., he may think what he likes provided he does not voice his own or others' opinion. 'A still tongue keeps a wise head,' so the proverb has it, although that particular stratagem didn't quite work for Sir Thomas More.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, by Erving Goffman, was a groundbreaking book on the subject of social interaction. Here, in the context of 'reputation management,' we have a clear example of how society functions on the basis of pretences, albeit false ones.

The McCanns have lied. Kate McCann has admitted as much in her very own book, as she goes on to say, talking about the passage of information to the media, "As it happened, Gerry had a mild stomach upset which we used as an excuse to postpone the trip." (to Huelva).

The sales figures for Kate's book, 'Madeleine,' if they are to be believed, suggest that the book's overall circulation probably rivals the number of individuals who might have read any or all of Tony Bennett's apparently repeated allegations 'that the Claimants are guilty of, or are to be suspected of...lying about what happened...,' the global reach of the Internet notwithstanding.

So we have this altogether bizarre paradox in which, for the sake of 'keeping up appearances,' what people do or say, whether alone or in company, is not quite so important as how many other people know about it (the presentation of self, if you will).

But that in itself is not the paradox. The real, and quite extraordinary contradiction in this instance is that Tony Bennett's apparent act of defamation consists of his having broadcast 'allegations' of lying to a wider public; allegations which carry a kernel of truth given Kate McCann's own published admission, to a wider public, that they, the McCanns, were prepared to lie - and did so, however 'badly' they may have felt about it afterwards. Remorse is relative in any case, as 'Madeleine' itself harbours various inconsistencies, and Kate McCann has continued to offer 'accounts of the truth' since.

It would be inappropriate, on several levels, to 'allege' anything at this point but, following upon Kate McCann's unequivocal declaration ('We'd never lied about anything – not to the police, not to the media, not to anyone else.') one has to wonder quite how to describe the ever expanding catalogue of 'errors in recall' on the McCanns' part, and whether such a euphemism is itself legally acceptable. Or whether the preferred option (much preferred no doubt) would be to silence discussion completely.

To friends and family members

'The shutters were 'jemmied open'/'smashed.' (They were not even tampered with).

There was a 'system' in place as regards 'checking the children'

For example, Jeremy Wilkins' third (Rogatory) statement to British Police (08.04.08): 'I assumed that Gerry was off to dine with the group in the Tapas bar, but I cannot precisely say this came from him or if I figured this out from our previous conversations regarding the checking system for the children.'

(The witness testimony of Mrs Pamela Fenn and responses during Rogatory interview of Fiona Payne and Matthew Oldfield indicate that there was no 'system' in place at all).

To the police in Portugal

(Thursday). When her lesson ended at 10:15, she went to the recreation area next to the swimming pool to talk to Russell until Gerry's lesson was over. Afterwards... they went back together to the apartment

The more recently published 'account of the truth' reads:

"I returned to our apartment before Gerry had finished his tennis lesson and washed and hung out Madeleine's pyjama top on the veranda." ('Madeleine,' p.64).

To the general public

(Tuesday) "We dropped the kids off at their clubs for the last hour and a half, meeting up with them as usual for tea." ('Madeleine,' p.59).

(Creche records archived among the case files show all the children signed in at 2.30 p.m., the younger twins signed out again at 5.20 p.m., nearly three hours later).

"Friday 4 May. Our first day without Madeleine. As soon as it was light Gerry and I resumed our search. We went up and down roads we'd never seen before..." ('Madeleine,' p.83).

(Kate McCann can be clearly heard, during an early filmed interview with the BBC's Jane Hill, explaining away the fact that the McCanns themselves did not physically search for their daughter).

"Since July 2008 there has been no police force anywhere actively investigating what has happened to Madeleine." (p.364).

(Leicestershire Police have stated in writing (June, 2011) that they view the investigation as 'on-going.').

"...they commented that the man didn't look comfortable carrying the child, as if he wasn't used to it." ('Madeleine,' p.98)

('They' made no such comment. One Smith family member alone described the child as being 'in an uncomfortable position;' uncomfortable for the child, that is).

Under Oath (to Lord Justice Leveson)

'There were no body fluids.'

(This statement refers specifically to media reports of biological material retrieved from the McCanns' hire car (for which hypothetical explanations are advanced on p.264 of 'Madeleine') and virtually denies the existence of a forensic report concerning an analysis of 'body fluids' conducted by the FSS in Birmingham, which is again on record and discussed, at some length, on p.331 of 'Madeleine,' by Kate McCann).

Influence – 28.01.2012

Gerry McCann's televised meeting with Jeremy Paxman features several quizzical moments on the part of the interviewee, but one in particular stands out:

JP (on the subject of media attention in Portugal): "Do you think, to some degree, you reaped a whirlwind?"

GM (after an initial verbal fumble): "We had very clear objectives, what we wanted, and any parents would take the opportunity of trying to get information into the investigation, that might help find their daughter, and that's what our clear objectives were..."

Even an uninformed listener is likely to have wondered why Gerry McCann should have found such a straightforward question apparently stressful, his answer being peppered with speech errors initially. If they took the time to think about it, they might also have wondered how this statement answered the question, since 'getting information into the investigation' and airing it before the media are not at all the same pursuit. To simplify the issue however, we may classify this semantic confusion straightforwardly as resulting from the stress hitherto observed. The real cause of curiosity resides in the first clause, which concerns the taking of a very particular opportunity.

The Paxman interview was included as part of a BBC Newsnight programme broadcast early in March 2009, and covered the unprecedented media activity surrounding the McCanns in the wake of Madeleine's disappearance; activity which Gerry 'fully expected to die down' after the parents' European 'trips.' These junkets, to Germany, Holland and Morocco, occupied Kate and Gerry and McCann until mid-June, travelling to locations 'where we felt there might be information relevant.' (relevant to what exactly is not made clear). After which time the parents remained in Portugal where, emotionally unprepared to leave, they felt closer to their missing daughter.

So much for context. Now let us return to the issue engendered by that one all-too-meaningful clause.

As vague as Gerry makes it sound, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that the 'information' the McCanns toured Europe in search of was relevant to the quest for their missing daughter and would, should it have materialised, have been introduced into the investigation. What class of useful information might this have been? Much as the McCanns and others would have sought at the outset most likely, e.g., sightings, of the 'where,' 'when,' 'how' and 'with whom' variety; perhaps even the odd remark overheard in conversation, such as take place on the boardwalks of the Barcelona marina.

But the significance of the media in all of this can be discounted. Whereas they formed the topic of the Paxman discussion, they were nothing like appropriate agents for 'getting information into the investigation.' That role belonged to the family liaison officers from Leicestershire Constabulary and the PJ. 'Getting information into the investigation' should not have involved the media at all, however concerned the informant(s) may have been. In the McCanns' case the media, having invited themselves to Praia da Luz, albeit at the McCanns' instigation, were there, in principle, to comment upon the investigation, not to influence it. We all know of course that certain of its representatives exceeded their remit in that respect, and it is a moot point as to whether that might have been an intended outcome, but the media were essentially present as observers, not agents provocateurs.

Leaving the headlines, both good and bad, aside, let us consider one very obvious aspect of this much discussed 'information.' Come mid-June, i.e., four weeks or so after Madeleine had been 'taken,' there was not very much of it. And what of those sightings which had already come to the attention of the Portuguese authorities without the benefit of McCann intervention at all? What importance did the parents attach to any of those? None whatsoever. And that puts a whole new slant on the idea of there being 'very clear objectives' as regards 'getting information into the investigation.' If sightings were of no apparent interest from the outset, why travel around Europe in an attempt to encourage them? Widening a search is one thing, spreading confusion quite another. And all the while Madeleine stands to be seen by everyone from Turks to the Tuareg (Germany has long hosted a substantial population of Gastarbeiter), hope springs eternal.

'Sightings' seem not to have represented the class of information the McCanns themselves were concerned to 'get into the investigation,' in which case it will have been information of a different sort they were desirous of introducing. And suddenly we have an altogether inappropriate state of affairs. Because even those of us whose culinary skills extend no further than the micro-wave cooker understand that whatever ingredients a chef adds to his or her recipe will directly affect the outcome. Yeast will make the dough rise. If you want banana bread you add bananas. What you put into the mix will influence the result.

Having had every opportunity during interview to inform the PJ of as much relevant detail as they possibly could, the McCanns should have largely met their 'clear objective.' Obviously they did not meet it entirely, since they went jetting off looking for further information, of a type they had previously disregarded. Objective not totally fulfilled therefore. But in the absence of information worth passing on to investigators, 'taking the opportunity of trying to get information into the investigation' would necessarily require initiative.

It fell to Kate (who couldn't bear to use her camera after taking the 'last photo') to get information into the investigation, and via the proper channels of police liaison, thereby giving the attendant matter of mysticism an air of respectability. And it came to pass that the PJ diligently investigated the ownership and movements (not) of the yacht 'Shearwater.' Just as they had diligently held a press conference to announce inclusion in their 'missing persons' bulletin of an official photograph, of pyjamas identical to those being worn by Madeleine at the time of her disappearance.

Interfering with a police investigation is a crime in the U.K. and, I dare say, in Portugal also.

Inferences and Deductions – 04.02.2012

"The book is full of inferences and deductions," said Isabel Duarte, two years ago, of former lead detective Goncalo Amaral's book, The Truth of The Lie. And for that stunning inference a deduction will inevitably have been made from the Find Madeleine Fund. (Love me, love my invoice).

Like a football match staged on a land-fill site, there are so many obstacles in the McCann case (that of the missing child, not the satellite legal productions of the McCanns), a simple intuition or two about the best route to goal could prove just as effective as any in-depth knowledge of waste categories. Participants are always likely to fall over debris left by others in any event.

An associate member of the McCann legal team at the same Lisbon Court hearing, speaking on the McCanns' behalf, made it perfectly clear that they were in no way responsible for obstructing the path to justice. As Sky TV's Jon di Paolo reported at the time (12 Jan, 2010):

12:24: The McCanns' lawyer makes the point that 'evidence' usually sightings – has suggested Madeleine is still alive.

12:25: He says that the McCanns are not responsible for generating any of this 'evidence' that their daughter is not dead.

As previously observed (see article, 'Just Like That,' McCannFiles, 22 March 2011), according to the advocate concerned, evidence suggesting Madeleine is still alive usually took the form of sightings, implying that on occasion it might take some other form. Whatever form this 'evidence' took however, the McCanns were not responsible for generating any of it (an inference followed by a deduction wouldn't you say, Ms Duarte?). Curiously this defence of the McCanns appears to have been in rebuttal of an accusation that had not even been made.

'Generating' evidence in the manner alluded to by the McCanns' lawyer would constitute interference with a police investigation, surely? Which is no doubt why said lawyer pre-emptively denied the unannounced allegation. But while he 'majored' on sightings far and near (those reported by David Payne and Jane Tanner fall into this very category), he overlooked those of a more spiritual variety.

Kate McCann generated photographs of a boat, on board which Madeleine was supposed, by a clairvoyant friend, to have been sequestered following her abduction (i.e., she was alive and not dead).

While Kate McCann has not personally laid claim to the pre-cognitive 'sighting,' she was reportedly present at the marina when the photographs were taken and has never denied taking them herself.

The photographs constitute evidence in support of a 'sighting,' albeit a phenomenal one; evidence that Madeleine was not dead, and generated by Kate McCann; evidence which proved, on further investigation, to be worthless. The 'vision' was of a boat that didn't sail anywhere throughout April or May 2007!

The statement: 'The McCanns are not responsible for generating any...'evidence' that their daughter is not dead.' is therefore false. It was made by a legal advocate speaking on behalf of the McCanns in open court during proceedings in January, 2010. Professionally highly dubious, it is on a level par with Kate McCann's own perjury before the more recent Leveson Inquiry ('There were no body fluids.').

But just as one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, supporters of the McCanns, be they vigilantes or 'hired guns,' would most likely champion the view expressed by Gerry McCann, to Jeremy Paxman, that they merely wanted...to get information into the investigation, that might help find their daughter.

All well and good if the child existed to be found. And if not?

In the final analysis, whether these initiatives were born of an earnest desire to locate a missing child or an ulterior motive of some kind, serves only to colour an inescapable fact: That the McCanns, contrary to an unambiguous statement made on their behalf by a legal representative in open court, generated evidence their daughter was not dead.

And in the complete absence of even a 'grain of proper evidence' that Madeleine McCann was the victim of a stranger abduction, one has to question the true purpose of such evidence generation.

Bad Day at Black Rock – 07.02.2012

La porte mouvante

Parental duty

"Yeah, I mean, I was saying this earlier, that at no point, other than that night, did I go stick my head in. That was the only time, because the door was like that. I mean, I knew how I'd left it." (Gerry McCann, in 'Madeleine Was Here.')

"Part of the reason we ended up coming through the back was the noise coming through the front door. We didn't want to disturb them." (Gerry McCann to Matthew Oldfield, in 'Madeleine Was Here.')

"...on the whole, people checked their own children. Erm, and, again, on the actual night Madeleine was taken, that was, was very much different, I think, to, to previous nights, in that, there was probably more cross checking that night." (Fiona Payne - Rogatory Interview).

"...on the first few nights it all seemed, erm, fairly well spaced... Erm, whereas, again, that differed on the Thursday night, in that, it seemed more, erm, out of, people were more out of synch." (Fiona Payne - Rogatory Interview).

4078: "Was that the first time that you had taken it upon yourself to check on somebody else's child?"

Matthew Oldfield: "Yeah, I'd not done it before, (Rogatory Interview)

Precautions

"I know there was a conversation about, oh we've started nipping in that way rather than going the long way round. Erm, so, I suppose, at that point, that's when they, because you couldn't lock the French doors from outside, that's when they weren't locking it." (Fiona Payne - Rogatory Interview).

"No, as I say, it came up at that, that conversation, which I think was on the, on the, on the Thursday night, about, erm, you know, whether I would feel happy leaving, leaving a door unlocked, but that was the only time I'd heard Kate sort of almost saying, question whether they should do it or not." (Fiona Payne - Rogatory Interview).

Photography

"I haven't been able to use the camera since I took that last photograph of her." (Kate McCann to Olga Craig, writing for the Sunday Telegraph of 27 May, 2007. The photograph in question is said to have been taken mid-afternoon on 3 May).

All these 'first time of asking' decisions taken, before Madeleine, on the Thursday.

Not since the sinking of the Titanic have so many coincidences formed the prelude to a catastrophe. Even the elements conspired. Gerry McCann left the door to the children's bedroom in a 'slam shuttable' position. He must have done, because that's what the door did on Kate's arrival into the apartment at 10.00 p.m. that Thursday night apparently. Matthew Oldfield, who, like Kate, was oblivious to the cold night air entering through the open bedroom window, was frightened to touch it. It was perhaps a blessing in disguise therefore that the door waited fully three-quarters of an hour before closing in Kate's very presence, otherwise she might just have turned around there and then and Madeleine's absence would not have been noticed until breakfast the following morning. As Kate herself has said:

"I just stood, actually and I thought, oh, all quiet, and to be honest, I might have been tempted to turn round then, but I just noticed that the door, the bedroom door where the three children were sleeping, was open much further than we'd left it." ('Madeleine was here').

Was Rocha Negra ever mentioned in the holiday brochure?

Above the Law – 26.02.2012

La reconstitution avortée

No one is above the Law. Except perhaps for what's-his-name upstairs, and a few consultants of one complexion or another.

Hence we have perjury, interfering with an investigation, and the obstruction of justice (so far). All perpetrated in the name of innocence.

The McCann affair, whatever its eventual outcome, will no doubt provide Law faculties worldwide with study material for years to come, for however tight one's research net, some piece of plankton is always likely to escape attention. How many of us remember, for instance, the episode where a recruitment consultant was 'consulted' with a view to recruiting a handful of her close associates to help out with a modest charade in Portugal?

On April 17, 2008, Stuart Prior of Leicestershire Constabulary, sent a rather 'pally' e-mail to Rachael and Matthew Oldfield c/o Rachael Oldfield. The message closed thus:

'I trust that these answers will assist you and the others in reaching a decision as to whether you intend to participate in the proposed re-enactment.

'If you wish to discuss this further then please do not hesitate in getting in touch with myself.'

The author signed off as 'Stu'

Almost a week later (23 April) Ms Oldfield responded on behalf of herself, her husband (to whom she copied her text) and, one imagines, several of her erstwhile holiday companions.

Her self-righteous message is bracketed by the opening:

'We remain unconvinced that this reconstruction is necessary.'

And closing:

'We just need to be properly convinced of the reasons for doing a re-enactment.'

In between is a catalogue of unbridled arrogance, setting out the terms under which they would consider participating in the re-enactment requested by the Portuguese authorities.

Since when on God's green earth does a recruitment consultant, having manifestly failed to recruit the necessary personnel in this instance, have the right to dictate conditions of attendance at a police reconstruction?

Can you imagine the 'revenue' standing for an epistle, in lieu of a cheque, stating that the author needed to be properly convinced of the reasons for paying their taxes? Mind you, a letter to H.M. Treasury suggesting they 'claw back' as much as possible of the £3.5 m. 'McCann Review' subsidy recently allocated to the Metropolitan Police might not go amiss.

That two individuals can have been allowed to cause mayhem on the international stage and instigate expenditure of truly epic proportions, all in the name of a child whom they both acknowledge to be dead, simply beggars belief.

What's that? Whenever did either of the McCanns admit or suggest that Madeleine is dead?

They have each done so on separate occasions during broadcast media interviews, so what sounds like an admission is exactly that, and not an apparent error attributable to over zealous reporting or an editorial 'angle.'

First, Kate McCann (to Sara Antunes de Oliveira, SIC, 9 March, 2010):

"We're not going to sit here and lie and be totally naïve and say she's one hundred per cent alive."

Well, less than 100% alive equals 'dead' (as a light is either 'on' or 'off'). Furthermore, according to Kate, they would be lying if they claimed Madeleine was 100% alive. The truth therefore can only be that Madeleine is less than 100% alive, i.e., that she is 100% dead. Interestingly Kate McCann does not talk of 'speculating Madeleine is alive,' as one might if the child's fate were to be undetermined, but lying about her being so, which reflects a categorical knowledge on Kate's part.

And now Gerry McCann (to Nicky Campbell, Radio Five Live Breakfast, 1 May, 2008):

"We have contact with the Foreign Office, errm... from predominantly a consular basis. We do put requests in, that we do want to get as much information as possible and, I think, what we've asked, and will ask repeatedly, is: 'what evidence does anyone have to suggest that Madeleine is dead?' because we know of no evidence to suggest otherwise and we would like a public acknowledgement of that."

Couldn't be much clearer could it? The McCanns know of no evidence to suggest Madeleine is anything other than dead. Yet should any member of the public acknowledge said fact, as the McCanns would have them do, they run the risk of being invited to defend themselves against a charge of defamation.

A little knowledge…

...is a dangerous thing, is it not? How many times has Gerry McCann made the statement, 'Kate and I strongly believe Madeleine was alive when she was taken?' Quite several, in one variant or another. But on one particular occasion he glibly added, 'obviously we don't know what happened to her afterwards.' Obviously. So any knowledge they might have had concerning Madeleine's state of health can only pertain to a time before she was 'taken,' ostensibly between 9.00 and 10.00 p.m. on the night of Thursday 3 May, 2007.

For Kate McCann to resist any temptation to claim that her daughter is 100% alive and, in so doing 'lying' about it, she has to 'know' that such a claim would not be truthful. Yet that knowledge cannot have come from any evidence as to Madeleine's whereabouts or well-being since she was reported missing. There isn't any. And we have already been informed that the McCanns obviously don't know what has happened to Madeleine since the magic hour. On what basis therefore does Kate presume to know that Madeleine is less than 100% alive? Her knowledge can only derive from Madeleine's status prior to being 'taken,' not afterwards.

In sum, the McCanns have given us two 'key pieces of information:' That Madeleine is dead (not 100% alive - there is no evidence to suggest otherwise) and that she is known by Kate to have been less than 100% alive (i.e. dead) prior to the time when Kate raised the alarm (Kate would not lie about something she cannot have ascertained later).

Never mind elephants in the room, someone's having a giraffe! One that has already cost any number of people their livelihoods and continues to soak up tax-payers and others' cash like an unsupervised siphon, while various agents of justice, one Lord Leveson among them, continue to cow-tow to a pair of self-proclaimed martyrs.

A Line in the Sand – 19.03.2012 
Si MMC n'a pas été enlevée, elle est morte
When, according to legend, Colonel William B. Travis invited comrades to step across a line he had just scored in the San Antonio dirt, he was offering them a stark choice: Exit the Alamo ahead of the impending battle, or stay and face certain death - an unenviable decision for anyone to have to make. The sad and inexplicable disappearance of Madeleine McCann is not something to be either trivialised or dramatised, but the story, as we understand it, incorporates an equally decisive moment - the moment when, it is said, she was 'taken.'
The McCanns' declared belief that their daughter Madeleine was alive until 'that minute,' after which time they 'obviously didn't know what happened to her,' places Madeleine's fate squarely in the hands of whomever is deemed to have taken her - at that minute. But, as previously discussed (see articles: 'There’s nothing to say she's not out there alive,' 2009; Consequences, 2011 ), the McCanns have a great deal riding on the wager that Madeleine was abducted. For wherever there is an effort at expansion, be it of a physical body or conceptual position, the repercussions following a collapse are just as extensive. An empire, a galactic star or Enron - it makes no difference. The same principle applies and it is one from which the McCanns are not exempt.
All the while the roulette wheel is spinning and the ball in play, 'abduction' is a candidate explanation for Madeleine's disappearance. But should someone grab the spokes and the ball settle in 'zero' then matters would take a very different turn. If Madeleine McCann was not abducted, then she is unquestionably dead. People do not just disappear off the face of the earth. And if Madeleine met her death inside apartment 5A, then her parents must know that is what happened. How could they not? But the question is not quite the straightforward one of 'alive or dead,' depending on which side of the window one places a potentially fatal event. It is altogether deeper than that. If Madeleine McCann was not abducted then the repercussions would be grave indeed.
Like Hercules keeping the world aloft on behalf of Atlas, an entire apparatus of socio-legal machinery has, for five years, propped up the abduction hypothesis; a hypothesis for which there is not 'a grain of proper evidence' (to quote Messrs. Carter-Ruck), making it 'meaningless' in the McCanns' very own terms. A child's bare feet being carried in one direction, followed, three quarters of an hour later, by a little girl, wearing the wrong pyjamas, being carried in the opposite direction, are altogether insufficient as indices of a single child abduction. The 'thesis' has nothing else to commend it.
The situation appears disconcertingly unresolved; dangerously so for the McCanns all the while the possibility exists that, somewhere in the case files, there might be evidence which links them directly to their daughter's disappearance. Of course they and their lawyers would contend otherwise, but the issue, as we know, remains open.
The hypothesis that Madeleine was abducted is no more valid than the hypothesis that she was not. And that, hypothetically speaking, does more than open a window. It opens a whole can of worms. Madeleine McCann's 'non-abduction' would invalidate completely the statements of the McCanns and their holiday associates, since, as Gerry McCann has previously explained, all of their depositions, without exception, are bound by an 'abduction' context:
"Clearly at the time we felt what we were doing was quite responsible. If we were going to be down and further away or round the corner we would never have left the kids, and with hindsight... everything with hindsight is all taken in the context of your child being abducted." (BBC Panorama - The Mystery of Madeleine McCann, 19.11.07).
Hence a 'non-abduction' hypothesis would require us to dispense entirely with seemingly evidential statements, and go where the impartial evidence alone leads. No more stories of dining out; no more checking on the children; no more milk and biscuits at tea-time, and neither tears nor stains washed away in the morning. When viewed in this light, the Portuguese authorities' insistence that a reconstruction alone would offer the McCanns the opportunity of exoneration they claim is theirs by right, is much easier to understand. The McCanns, however, have dug themselves an even deeper pit in the interim, since some things, even in hindsight, cannot be 'taken in the context of your child being abducted,' Kate McCann's extraordinary statement as to 'circumstances,' for one:
"I know that what happened is not due to the fact of us leaving the children asleep. I know it happened under other circumstances." (Daily Mail, 17.9.07).
This tells us quite clearly that something happened at a time when the children were awake and/or one parent at least was present. Kate does not mention Madeleine's being 'taken.' Indeed, the concept of a nocturnal abduction in the parents' absence is totally inconsistent with this more 'knowledgeable' observation.
For his part, Gerry McCann has contributed the following:
"So. An' if she died when we were in the apartment or fell injured, why would we... why would we cover that up?" (Interviewed for Seven on Sunday (Australia), 2011).
Compounding the two perspectives one might justifiably re-iterate Gerry's very own question: If either parent was present in the apartment when 'it happened,' why should they cover it up? But we are entertaining the hypothesis of non-abduction, don't forget. If there was no abduction, then the parents, knowing what happened, have failed to reveal what they know. Instead, therefore, of subscribing to an interpretation along the lines of, 'We did not cover up an accident. Why should we?' if faced with the actuality of a cover up, one would inevitably have to explore the question of 'why?'
We have already moved, hypothetically it must be said, backwards in time from a nocturnal abduction to a diurnal event of some kind; an accident earlier that Thursday, perhaps? Yet Kate McCann, writing in her book, 'Madeleine,' with even greater clarity of exposition than when discussing the 'circumstances,' takes us back further still:
"Wednesday, 2 May 2007. Our last completely happy day. Our last, to date, as a family of five."
The abduction hypothesis sees Madeleine removed from apartment 5A on Thursday night, in which case that very day, May 3, would have been the McCanns' 'last, to date, as a family of five.' Even accepting that Kate seems to have had a problem with dates elsewhere in the book, there can be no doubting her accuracy in this instance. 'Wednesday, 2 May 2007' she says, clearly and completely, Thursday 3 May no doubt etched indelibly in her memory. If the McCanns were no longer a family of five on the Thursday, then something pretty serious must have happened beforehand. Tellingly, she had earlier stated (to Oprah):
"You know I look back and think oh why can't we just rewind the clock and it takes you back to really happy memories you know, things that you really enjoyed and it's just a reminder really of what isn't here anymore."
Perhaps 'what isn't here anymore' went missing between Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 May, 2007? That would account for the sudden reduction in family size alright.
All of this of course hinges on a hypothesis of non-abduction; a hypothesis which cannot be confirmed simply on the basis that abduction remains unproven. In that sense Gerry McCann's repeated reference to the impotence of a negative outcome is correct, and the McCanns appear to be on eternally solid ground. Unless or until the abduction hypothesis is disproved. The very possibility of that happening would give anyone in the McCanns' position cause for concern, since a logical proof of the kind envisaged need only be accomplished once to be conclusive. Small wonder then that attendance at a reconstruction, which might determine once and for all whether an abduction was even feasible, has never been high on the McCann agenda.

Clear as Crystal – 19.03.2012

Police training, no less than that of a criminologist or any other variety of crime analyst, willdoubtless point up the significance of the early stages in any felony, when mistakes on the part of the guilty party are most likely. It's a characteristic of crime that has fuelled many a plot of Agatha Christie's and features heavily in the Hitchcock classic, 'Dial M for Murder.' Even Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge is undone in the end by an error of judgement early on in the story. No matter how much time has elapsed, or how many embellishments have been added to the account of Madeleine McCann's disappearance, the solution to the puzzle most probably resides somewhere near the beginning of events as they are known to have unfolded.

Criminals are not necessarily unintelligent. They are human, however, and subject to error like anyone else. Kate McCann, in her book 'Madeleine' confirms just how smart she considers the anonymous abductor of her daughter to have been:

"It wasn't until a year later, when I was combing through the Portuguese police files, that I discovered that the note requesting our block booking was written in a staff message book, which sat on a desk at the pool reception for most of the day. This book was by definition accessible to all staff and, albeit unintentionally, probably to guests and visitors, too. To my horror, I saw that, no doubt in all innocence and simply to explain why she was bending the rules a bit, the receptionist had added the reason for our request: we wanted to eat close to our apartments as we were leaving our young children alone there and checking on them intermittently."

If not a speaker of Portuguese, he will have done remarkably well to have garnered the significance of this dining schedule, written in Portuguese, from a glance inside a staff notebook.

Persistent references over time to Paedophiles and 'rings' thereof implies that the suspect was felt to have had some 'previous,' and not to be confused with opportunists. Indeed they had been studying the McCanns' every movement apparently. According to Kate McCann, 'They'd been watching us for several days, I'm sure.' Anyone capable of adopting a methodical approach such as this is unlikely then to go on and do something absolutely dumb subsequently.

In just the same way that cardiologists are trained to recognise symptoms of cardiac disorder, so investigative police, whatever their nationality, know and understand the hallmarks of a crime. It's what they do. Just as the bed-ridden patient is not called upon to interpret the trace of the oscilloscope to which he or she is attached, police judgement in matters of criminal investigation should be respected. They can tell, for instance, if they are looking for a 'seasoned pro' following a burglary, or a rank amateur, simply from the way in which a set of drawers has been rifled (the practised burglar will waste no time, 'working' a chest of drawers from the bottom up, not top down).

So then, we have a shrewd suspect with a reasonable I.Q. But even intelligence has its limitations. No amount of studying the McCann family at play would have told him which of two bedrooms the children occupied. Smashing his way in via the wrong window would not be the smart thing to do. And since the shutters were always down he could not have known, unless he had been invited in previously, who slept where exactly.

(Kate McCann (6 Sept., 2007): "The window to Madeleine's bedroom remained closed, but she doesn't know if it was locked, shutters and curtains drawn, and that was how it remained since the first day, night and day. She never opened it. If somebody saw the window shutters in Madeleine's room open, it was not the deponent who opened them, and she never saw them open." ).

Is it possible that manipulation of the window was the culprit's first and biggest mistake? Kate and Gerry McCann both confirmed on 4 May that Kate had discovered it disturbed the previous night:

"At 10pm, his wife Kate went to check on the children. She went into the apartment through the door using her key and saw right away that the children's bedroom door was completely open, the window was also open, the shutters raised and the curtains drawn open. The side door that opens into the living room, which as said earlier, was never locked, was closed." (Gerry McCann).

"At around 10pm, the witness came to check on the children. She went into the apartment by the side door, which was closed, but unlocked, as already said, and immediately noticed that the door to her children's bedroom was completely open, the window was also open, the shutters raised and the curtains open, while she was certain of having closed them all as she always did." (Kate McCann).

It seems so obvious. Until, that is, one gives more careful thought to the practice of abduction in this instance and the simple logistics of breaking and entering.

Kate McCann again, in 'Madeleine:'

"For a long while we would assume that the abductor had entered and exited through the window of the children's bedroom, but it is equally possible that he used the patio doors or even had a key to the front door. Perhaps he'd either come in or gone out via the window, not both; perhaps he hadn't been through it at all, but had opened it to prepare an emergency escape route if needed, or merely to throw investigators off the scent. He could have been in and out of the apartment more than once between our visits."

No one but an idiot would struggle to get in through a window only to struggle out the same way. The suspect was no fool and would have left by a door. The bedroom window was either a haphazard option or chosen because it lay on the elevation furthest from where the parents were dining. Then again so did the front door. Clarence Mitchell's remark, 'he got out of the window fairly easily,' said with all the certitude of an established fact, was a lie. Anyone attempting to climb through that window, in either direction, with or without the impediment of a child in his arms, would have had difficulty in doing so, as the police quickly established. It is also appropriate that we deal here with a few of Kate McCann's 'suppositions.'

'He could have been in and out of the apartment more than once between our visits.'

He could have made himself a cup of tea, sat and watched football on the television.

Such wild speculation flies in the face of common sense. How many 'visits' does it take to abduct a child? There was not the time in-between Gerry's 9.05 check and Jane Tanner's 'sighting' minutes later for an abductor to have made several trips to the premises. Given the window as integral to the undertaking, Gerry would have noticed this himself had it been opened earlier. By 10 May, Gerry McCann was 'fully convinced that the abduction took place during the period of time between his check at 21h05 and Matthew's visit at 21H30.' Except that in his earlier (4 May) statement to police this interval of time was punctuated mid-way by the activities of Jane Tanner:

"It is stressed that when one of the members of the group, Jane, went to her apartment to see her children, at around 9.10/9.15 pm, from behind and at a distance of about 50 metres, on the road next to the club, she saw a person carrying a child in pyjamas. Jane will be better able to clarify this situation."

So, one visit - a 'smash and grab.' But without the 'smashing' as it turned out.

'For a long while we would assume that the abductor had entered and exited through the window of the children's bedroom.'

'For a long while,' after the police had established to their satisfaction that no-one had passed through the window at all, seems to reflect a certain stubbornness on the McCanns' part. And yet, 'it is equally possible that he used the patio doors or even had a key to the front door.' Rather more likely, all things considered. But if there's an easy access way in, why contemplate a problematic way out?

'Perhaps he'd either come in or gone out via the window, not both; perhaps he hadn't been through it at all, but had opened it to prepare an emergency escape route if needed, or merely to throw investigators off the scent.'

It is at this point that involvement of the window becomes even more paradoxical. Although 'Elvis' is supposed to have left the building after Gerry McCann, he must have been present inside before him, otherwise he would surely have been noticed approaching the patio, with evil intent, by either Gerry or Jez Wilkins standing opposite the gate outside. There is no other way of accommodating Jane Tanner's 9.15 sighting of him. But if our man had some nefarious purpose in mind for the window then, being something of a forward thinker, he would have carried that purpose in with him just as assuredly as he carried Madeleine out. This means that he could either (a) open the window etc. on first entering the apartment, then pick Madeleine up from her bed, or (b) lift Madeleine up, then draw back the curtains, open the window and raise the shutters with Madeleine in his arms all the while.

It doesn't take much thinking about. But once the window was opened it would have been as obvious to Gerry as it was to Kate. More so in fact, as Gerry stood over his children while they were asleep. Kate's attention was only drawn to the room by the slamming door. If 'Elvis' had prepared an emergency escape route, it would have been done first, not last, and Gerry would have seen it, as the two are supposed to have been in the apartment at the same time, i.e., the window would already have been opened.

For the moment, however, let us play devil's advocate and rescind Kate's attribution of intelligence to the supposed felon, who simply refuses to take the easy route. He waits for Gerry to leave 5A, then springs into action, quickly opening the window, curtains and shutters (audibly to anyone outside) before snatching Madeleine up and marching out through the door (with her body back to front, according to Jane Tanner's description); not forgetting that he tidied Maddie's bed before leaving.

And he opened the window because? Gerry had left, 'Elvis' remained undiscovered, the emergency had passed and intruders do not waste time leaving 'red-herrings.'

But the window served some purpose, surely?

According to Kate McCann ('Madeleine'), Matthew Oldfield was accused by Portuguese investigators of having passed Madeleine out through the window in question. Without drawing Oldfield unnecessarily into the debate, Madeleine's passage through the window in this way is the only rational explanation for the fact that her head and her feet had changed ends by the time she was seen by Jane Tanner. Let us therefore consider what might have happened next.

'Elvis' (who is indoors) hands Madeleine to an accomplice, who, punctual to a fault, is waiting outside the window. He (the accomplice) then marches off, stage left, across the road ahead of Jane Tanner. 'Elvis' himself now leaves the building through the front door, not the patio (he, like Jane Tanner, goes unnoticed by McCann and Wilkins standing outside) and bolts like Richard Branson in the opposite direction, having gently closed the door behind him. Jane Tanner did not hear a door slam as she approached her own apartment. Nor did she see anyone sprinting down the road ahead of her as she turned the corner, although why the person actually carrying the child should merely amble away is a mystery in itself.

There being no sighting of 'Elvis' fleeing empty-handed means that there was no hand-over either, no accomplice, and no reason for the window to have been opened after all. Yet Kate and Gerry McCann each affirmed (4 May) that that is how it was discovered on the night Madeleine is said to have been 'taken:'

'The window was also open, the shutters raised and the curtains open.' Additionally, Kate herself was 'certain of having closed them all as she always did.'

Let us go back to 'square one' for just a moment. The abductor having entered via the patio, has it in mind, at least, for Madeleine to exit via the window, which he opens for the purpose - fully, having drawn back the curtains - fully, and raised the shutters - fully. No self-respecting criminal is going to make a crime more difficult to accomplish by leaving obstacles in his own path. Now, as we cruise along exploring the hypothetical relevance of an open window to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, we might consider whether a sail is more likely to billow before a following wind or a lateral one, and whether a curtain bunched to the side of an open window will go 'whoosh' in a gentle breeze. Of course it's more likely to happen if the curtains are in the closed position as Kate describes in the opening scenes of the McCanns' very own documentary, 'Madeleine Was Here:'

"...as I went back in, the curtains of the bedroom which were drawn,... were closed,... whoosh... It was like a gust of wind, kinda, just blew them open."

If the curtains were in his way at all then 'Elvis' did not pass either Madeleine's body or his own through the window, which he would not have opened simply to let the air in. Nor would he have bothered to reset the curtains afterwards, just as he didn't close the window or lower the shutter, apparently.

Despite the presence of her fingerprints alone, Kate McCann is adamant that she did not open the window. Which leaves a Portuguese speaking visitor to the Ocean Club, who checked on a staff notebook earlier in the week, paid several visits to 5A, then checked to see that the McCanns were actually at the Tapas restaurant on the Thursday night (wouldn't you?) before arranging the scenery at their apartment that night.

As for who actually 'abducted' Madeleine McCann, and when... Well, that's another story.

Another Story – 25.03.2012

A primary objective for both believers and non-believers in Madeleine McCann's abduction has long been one of establishing that someone (or no-one) broke into 5A on Thursday night, 3 May, 2007. The evidence however, coupled with various statements to police, is sufficient for us to conclude that no-one actually left the apartment around the time of the Tanner sighting. Whoever crossed the road in front of Jane Tanner, if indeed anyone did so, they had not just emerged from 5A. Furthermore, if no-one of an abduction persuasion left the apartment at any time before 10.00 p.m. that evening, it can only have been because they were not inside it in the first place!

A contingency explanation might be that Madeleine was 'taken' after Matthew Oldfield's 9.30 p.m. 'check,' not before. Hence the Smith sighting nearer 9.50. But whoever it was that members of the Smith family actually saw being carried, it could not have been Madeleine McCann in her Eeyore pyjamas. The child seen by Aiofe Smith was said to have been wearing a long-sleeved top. If one is prepared to accept that Jane Tanner can discern the colour of a garment from some distance away, in the dark, when she cannot even see the item in question, then it is even more reasonable to accept the accuracy of Aiofe Smith's close-up description.

As previously discussed (Crystal Clear: McCannFiles, 19 March), Jane Tanner's sighting of only one individual means that there was no accomplice. The window becomes completely irrelevant therefore. No-one climbed through it in either direction. No-one exited via the patio at the time of the Tanner sighting (Gerry McCann or Jez Wilkins would have seen them) and, in any case, 'the abductor' was spotted further up the road. That leaves 'Elvis' with just the front door at his disposal.

Since the Tanner-approved artist's impression confirms the 'abductor' was not wearing gloves (that topic was visited long ago), he might well have left his fingerprints on the door handles, both inside and outside, when opening and closing it. The door opened inwards and could not have been 'kicked shut' from outside. It was not reported open.

Although no fingerprints were actually recovered from the front door to the apartment, one or two additional details remain to be accounted for.

The front door was recessed. If the intruder were left-handed, he would have struggled to open the latch had he been carrying a prostrate, sleeping child, who might easily have awoken when her feet and legs inevitably came into contact with a solid vertical surface. If he were right-handed he would have struggled to pull the door closed without risking contact with the child's head; both of these possibilities being governed by the position of the child's body on removal from her bed, where her head would have been to the right. Of course the 'abductor' could have overcome this small problem to some degree by operating the door with the opposite hand on one or other occasion.

But the smarter solution, surely (and the culprit has been recognised, by Kate McCann at least, as smart), would have been to carry the child vertically, as described by the Smith family, freeing either hand at a stroke. This small matter of orientation alone confirms that Jane Tanner's 'suspect' did not set off to cross the road from apartment 5A.

Since the child was not passed through an open window, any re-positioning would have been entirely (and literally) in the hands of the one person who had entered the apartment and picked Madeleine up directly from her bed. Notwithstanding the problems associated with opening and closing the front door thereafter, whichever way round Madeleine may have been facing, one has only to ask the simple question of why anyone should alter the position of something they are carrying? The equally simple answer is: To make their grasp of the object more secure and/or more comfortable.

No 'abductor,' in the circumstances envisaged, would transfer his burden to a less comfortable position. Had Madeleine been picked up in a 'fireman's carry' initially, her remaining in that position would have enabled her captor to open and close the exit door straightforwardly. And from the door to the head of the road, where the pair were apparently seen, is a distance of just a few steps - hardly far enough for the porter, a decently proportioned individual by all accounts, to want to re-think his carrying style.

In any event the 'abduction' was accomplished with little or no time to spare. One has therefore to picture the perpetrator seizing Maddie in his arms from where she lay, her head to the right, then making his way out, albeit awkwardly, through the front door. A 'change of ends' in the interim would not have made escape any easier. Nor would a similar manoeuvre, once outside, have resulted in a more comfortable position. Since such a switch would not have been advantageous by any measure, it would not have been made. Madeleine would have been carried out directly, her body in exactly the same position throughout. Which renders Jane Tanner's sighting of her impossibly back-to-front.

Thus it is that Jane Tanner's insistent account of a child, clad in pink, being carried through the streets of Praia da Luz, actually negates the possibility of its having been Madeleine, since the physical circumstances of her holiday accommodation mitigate against, rather than support, Tanner's claims. The child, if she saw one at all, could not have been Madeleine McCann. But she saw no-one else. And if no-one is known to have left 5A, carrying a child, at any time between 9.00 and 10.00 p.m., it is because there was no-one inside to have done so. Apart, that is, from Gerry McCann at 9.05 and Matthew Oldfield at 9.30.

It's a lock-out

There is yet another important aspect to the fugitive's dilemma. The front door, the only exit he could conceivably have availed himself of that night, was locked. And he did not have a key. Let us allow Messrs. McCann, Oldfield, O'Brien and Payne to explain the situation more fully:

First, Gerry McCann:

'Thus, at 9.05 pm, the deponent entered the club, using his key, the door being locked.

At 10pm, his wife Kate went to check on the children. She went into the apartment through the door using her key.' (Statement to Police, 4 May, 2007).

'... he fully confirms the statements made previously at this police department on 4 May 2007, being available to provide any further clarifications.' (Statement to Police, 10 May).

Hence Gerry first states that he unlocked the front door with his key (he didn't simply 'open' it) then later confirms his statement. He goes on (10 May, italics/parentheses mine):

(Re Sunday): 'They left the house (for the Tapas bar) through the main door, that he was sure he locked, and the back door was also closed and locked.'

'On this day (Wednesday), the deponent and KATE had already left the back door closed, but not locked, to allow entrance by their group colleagues to check on the children. He clarifies that the main door was always closed but not necessarily locked with the key.'

(The last, it should be noted, is a general observation, not specific to Wednesday).

'Back to Thursday, after breakfast, about 09h00, KATE and the children left by the back door, the deponent having left by the front door, which he locked with the key, having also closed and locked the back door from the inside.'

So far the account has been consistent throughout. When recalling specific instances of departure, Gerry McCann affirms that he locked the front door using his key, an observation of some significance as it turns out and one to which we shall inevitably return. But then he has a dramatic change of heart:

'Despite what he said in his previous statements, he states now and with certainty, that he left with KATE through the back door which he consequently closed but did not lock, given that that is only possible from the inside. Concerning the front door, although he is certain that it was closed, it is unlikely that it was locked, because they left through the back door.'

This aspect of his 10 May statement is questionable on two counts. The first is the certainty with which McCann seeks to override his earlier testimony. Memories do not improve over time, they deteriorate (that's been tested scientifically, Sandra). Hence Gerry McCann's immediate recollections will have been more accurate than those he decided to advance a week later. The second doubtful observation is that concerning the front door ('although he is certain that it was closed, it is unlikely that it was locked, because they left through the back door.').

The doors to apartment 5A were logically and physically independent of each other. They did not operate in tandem. Hence it makes no sense to claim that 'it is unlikely that it (the front door) was locked, because they left through the back door.' Even if the statement is taken to be an imprecise reference to the McCanns' behaviour rather than the doors' function, it still fails to convince.

The McCanns claim to have adopted a policy of patio door access for their own convenience, not to jeopardize security unduly ('Part of the reason we ended up coming through the back was the noise coming through the front door. We didn't want to disturb them.' - Gerry McCann in 'Madeleine Was Here'). The fact is, they say they could see the patio, even if only just, from where they claim to have been dining. They could not see the front entrance at all. Under these circumstances it is inconceivable that a professional couple would adopt the attitude of, 'We're leaving the back door open, so we might as well leave the front door unlocked too.' Notice also that Gerry's observation concerning the degree of front-door security does not flatly contradict his earlier statements in that regard. He merely says it is 'unlikely' the door was locked. Not a categorical statement of fact at all.

It is important to understand the significance of 'locking' the main entrance doors to the Ocean Club apartments. As others of the Tapas fraternity will go on to explain, the mechanisms were not of the Yale variety, although Kate McCann (6 September), knowingly or otherwise, gives the impression that a Yale type lock was in place:

'They left through the balcony door, which they left closed but not locked. Main door was closed but not locked. She thinks it could be opened from the inside but not from the outside.'

Matthew Oldfield, on the other hand, appears to have been rather more observant:

4078 "Okay. Did you leave by the patio door?"

Reply "Yeah, back the same way, because this door would have been locked and that's the shortest way anyway of coming through there, so I would have gone back out the same door."

What Oldfield tells us here is that, supposing the front door to have been locked, he would not have been able to unlock it and exit that way had he wanted to. Never mind shortening the distance of his journey, he would have been unable to unlock the door, despite being on the inside.

Further into his rogatory interview, Oldfield has more to say about locking doors, his own patio for example, and helpfully concludes with:

4078 "So at night times you'd always have that door locked when you'd exit?"

Reply "The patio door would be locked and you'd go out through the..."

4078 "Gone through the other..."

Reply "Main door and lock that one."

4078 "Which then you locked behind you."

Reply "Yeah."

4078 "After you went."

Reply "You had to lock it because it would open on the, it wouldn't shut through like a Yale lock it would close just on a, on a handle that opened it."

The front door locks, it appears, did not operate on the commonly understood Yale principle therefore.

In the course of his skirting the issue as far as the McCanns' practices were concerned, Russell O'Brien, in his rogatory interview, makes the function of their respective front door locks absolutely clear:

"On Sunday I recall I checked Kate and Gerry's apartment as well as Rachael and Matt's. I had taken Matt's keys and I believe that their (Rachael and Matt's) door was deadlocked the same as ours and that I would have needed to turn the key two times.

"I needed Matt's key to check on their room and I had it, but I didn't need Kate and Gerry's key because they went through the patio door', erm, we went through the patio door to cross in and look into the children's bedroom. So, at the time, I have to say, I didn't really think that, you know, about the differences in how, in how we were, the security in the, in the rooms was, but, erm, I definitely did not go in through Gerry's and Kate's main, you know, double locked door or anything, I'm sure I went through the patio."

And now the focal point:

"We were conscious that, that, erm, if you, you only do one lock on the main door then it can be opened from the inside but if you double lock it then, then, then you need the key to get in or out.”

It is noticeable, on reading this episode of his rogatory interview in full, that Russell O'Brien is panicked somewhat by the possibility of the interviewing officer's interpreting his observations of other peoples' careful security measures as applying to the McCanns also. He is at pains, on several occasions, to re-iterate that he did not avail himself of their door key in order to enter 5A at any time, as they were behaving differently to everyone else in leaving their patio door unlocked. Thus is he, O'Brien, supporting the McCanns' contention that they left their patio door unsecured, whilst at the same time avoiding any specific reference to the status of their front door. The following is typical:

"...on one of the visits at least, erm, I went back to five 'D' and checked on our children, but I also went to five, erm, 'D' on Matt's and I, I'm pretty sure that I needed Matt's key to do that, so I think they were doing the same as us. But when, for Kate and Gerry, I just went in through the patio steps and, and just across to the room."

O'Brien's filibustering aside, what we can very reasonably conclude from all of this is that if the front door to 5A were double locked, then a key would have been necessary if one wished to get in or out. Importantly, three 'witnesses' (McCann, O'Brien and Oldfield), albeit not truly independent, all alluded separately to the locked door at the front of 5A, one of them being the occupant himself who, as we know, later modified his account. O'Brien in particular refers to the McCanns' 'double locked door.' How would he have known (why should he have assumed even) that was the case, given his claims not to have used it? And why should anyone be particularly 'conscious' that 'if you, you only do one lock on the main door then it can be opened from the inside'? Surely the focus of concern should be with intruders breaking in, not occupants getting out!

For his part, Oldfield, without explicitly stating that the McCanns' front door had been 'double locked,' nonetheless intimated that he could not have opened it from the inside. This despite the McCanns supposedly having left their apartment that night via the very same patio door through which he claimed to have entered. Oldfield says he eventually left via the patio door himself 'because this door (the front door) would have been locked.' With a key, obviously, and from the inside no doubt.

Oldfield's enterprising 9.30 visit to 5A holds further clues. Many question whether he even set foot inside the McCanns' apartment that night. Ironically, in this instance, it might have been better for them had he not done so, but peered through the patio doors from outside instead. That way he need not have known, or assumed, anything about either door - front or back. Once inside however, he, like the abductor, has to get out and, again like the abductor, would have done the obvious thing, i.e., exit the way he came in (which leads directly to where he intended to go next) without a further thought, for the front door in particular. Not only does he give it further thought. He cites it as the primary reason for leaving via the patio door, despite not even being asked about it! The question was, 'Did you leave by the patio door?' not, 'Why did you leave by the patio door?'

One should not overlook the fact that Oldfield's explanation for his actions is retrospective. His rogatory statements were made well after the event, by which time he will long have known that the McCanns had left 5A via their patio on the night in question. And yet, even in hindsight, he still sees fit to proffer the explanation, 'because this door would have been locked,' in the knowledge (?) that the McCanns, atypically, did not exit through this door themselves and might therefore have merely closed it without locking it, as Kate McCann had contended eighteen months earlier.

Since Oldfield has consistently asserted that he entered 5A on that fateful occasion, his statements concerning the interior, including the doors, shift logically from supposition and toward reliability. From outside he can only assume certain things. Once inside his actions are governed more by knowledge than assumption (unless of course we're talking about safeguarding children. There again, he was outside the room). Be that as it may, his justification, 'because this door would have been locked,' given in hindsight, warrants additional consideration.

If the statement is interpreted as having been expressed in a tense the classical grammarian would describe as 'future perfect in the past,' then it simply reflects the timing of a situation or event, not its degree of certainty. In that case 'The door would have been locked' is a statement of fact with regard to a past moment in time, not a conditional suggestive of doubt. The continuation (understood) might be, for example: The door would have been locked by the time I arrived.

If, on the other hand, the statement is construed as a conditional one, it must obey two constraints (in this case): It must still make sense if appropriately expanded. But what it tells us must also conform to what else we know. Does it succeed on both counts? Let's examine a few more hypothetical possibilities:

1. The door would have been locked as usual.

2. The door would have been locked on that occasion.

3. The door would have been locked by Gerry.

4. The door would have been locked had the McCanns left the apartment that way themselves.

All make sense, but only the last actually introduces an element of doubt. It is also the interpretation which best fits the circumstances as we have been given to understand them. Nevertheless, although the situation described, as well as Oldfield's concomitant action, is in the past, the statement describing it is made in the present (accepting, of course, that Oldfield's 'present' was April, 2008). We know, as Oldfield knew, that the McCanns had not left the apartment that way, making the statement under consideration (version 4 above) superficially pointless. We are obliged then to turn our attention to Oldfield's thoughts at the time of the action, not when he made his statement. And these too are suddenly portrayed as vaguely absurd.

Following a quick 'recce' (or hasty abduction) the protagonist would instinctively go out the way they came in, or otherwise take the line of least resistance. For Oldfield the patio gave onto the path leading directly to the Tapas bar, as he himself pointed out. The front door did not. The obvious answer to the question 'Did you leave by the patio door?' therefore is something akin to 'Obviously.' As simple as that. The front door has no role to play in proceedings, and certainly should not feature as the primary motivation for leaving via the back entrance.

What this points to is Oldfield's knowing, at the time he made his statement, that the front door was locked - at the time of the incident, i.e. 9.30 p.m. on May 3, 2007. In which case it will have barred the passage of an aspiring abductor fifteen minutes earlier.

At last we may properly understand why Gerry McCann, having introduced the open patio door into the equation, thought it expedient to add that it was 'unlikely' that the front door had been locked. Because he had previously, and consistently, distinguished between 'closing' and 'locking' the front door and first described locking and unlocking this door with his key (not closing and opening, or closing and unlocking); implying that a key would afterwards have been required to open it - from either side. As an anonymous commentator speaking unofficially for the McCanns has observed: "The front door has two locks - one which is self-locking. When they are referring to 'locking' the door, they are referring to locking the deadbolt with the key as opposed to the springbolt (latchbolt) which was self-locking." Exactly.

No worries though. From the catalogue of possibilities offered up by Kate McCann in 'Madeleine,' they need only select the 'duplicate key' option. Here it is again:

"For a long while we would assume that the abductor had entered and exited through the window of the children's bedroom, but it is equally possible that he used the patio doors or even had a key to the front door."

Nope.

As David Payne explains in his rogatory interview:

"...essentially you needed the key you know, to use, if I remember to gain access into the, err into the apartment, and you know generally it was difficult because there was, you know we'd ask about more than one key, there was the only one key to the apartment."

So unless we're looking at some particularly disgruntled member of the OC staff who, one supposes, might have had a master key, and despite a lengthy holiday season ahead decided that it simply had to be Madeleine McCann on 3 May, 2007, what we're faced with is an abductor who enters 5A much like an insect enters a pitcher plant. He comes in through the unlocked patio doors and then - fails to emerge. He is not seen to exit via the patio. He does not exit via the window. He cannot exit via the front door. And yet Jane Tanner is convinced she saw the newly hatched 'abductor' carrying Madeleine, back-to-front.

Through the looking glass

Co-incidentally, we have evidence, in the form of an 'off the record' statement by Gerry McCann, that he was aware (or had been made aware) of this conundrum. During a recent interview for Portuguese television, Goncalo Amaral revealed the following:

"There is a report from Control Risks, the first private detective agency which was brought to the case [by the McCanns] in the very first days, where they state, after speaking with Gerald McCann and other witnesses in that group [Tapas 9], that the key that Mr Gerald McCann alleges to have used had in fact been left in the kitchen, on the kitchen's counter. Right away, the lies started." (Interview on SIC, 17 February 2012).

Why, one might ask, is such a crucial observation absent from Gerry McCann's own statement to police on both 4 and 10 May?

Reporters David Brown and Patrick Foster, informed readers later that year:

'Mr McCann first contacted private investigation companies less than three weeks after his daughter was reported missing on May 3.' (The Times, September 24, 2007).

Less than three weeks in this instance is more than two weeks, or Brown and Foster would have written 'less than a fortnight.' The relevant data gathering by Control Risks Group was therefore carried out after Gerry McCann had made his statements to police, when, unsure of what exactly to reveal about the status of the front door to the apartment, he opted for the non-committal 'likelihood' of its having been unlocked on the Thursday night and 'not necessarily' locked on other occasions, despite every itemised departure being accompanied by the rigorous locking of both doors, front and back. And locking the front door, don’t forget, meant a key would be required if one wished to go through it afterwards, in whichever direction.

It does rather look as though someone 'wised up' to the implications of conscientious adult behaviour on this occasion and subsequently left a key at someone else's disposal; or would like others to believe they did. An earlier discussion (Reinforcements: McCannFiles, 10 April, 2011) examined how and why elements are introduced into a story to compensate for a weakness of some kind. Since the two are inter-related (the element and the weakness) consideration of the one should help identify the other. If the front door key left in the kitchen was an accommodation to circumstance, then the front door will have been the weakness.

But the story of Madeleine McCann's 'abduction' is not Alice in Wonderland. Nor is Gerry McCann Scotland's answer to Lewis Carroll.

An intruder unfamiliar with the Ocean Club apartments, who is in a hurry to enter one such, and just as eager to depart, will have their 'eyes on the prize.' Even if they enter through a window they will seek to exit through the nearest available door. So, having had to await the disappearance of the Lone Ranger, 'Elvis' (who, we should remind ourselves, is anything but 'tonto') snatches Madeleine up and makes for the front door. Finding it locked, what does he do? Well, if he came in through the window his attention would immediately turn to the patio door which, as he would quickly discover, he could open. Had he come in that way he would of course have known that already and not even have considered leaving via the front door, unless it were in some way advantageous so to do. Anyway, out he goes. Except he didn't. Why not?

He could not possibly have known there were people standing in the street opposite the gate to the steps until he was outside the door. So what if there were? He could not have known either that one of them was the tenant of 5A, whom he had neither seen nor heard speak during the brief time they were in the apartment together. Maybe he just didn't feel like taking a chance on being seen. But what choice did he have? How was he to know the two conversationalists were blind to passers by? He had no choice it seems. Unless he realised that the key on the kitchen counter - the one with the 'Use Me!' label attached - was his means of escape.

The abductor had entered an apartment in darkness, looking for a child, not a key. He had crossed the main floor with his attention directed towards the bedrooms, not the kitchen (had he come in through the window he could not yet have noticed the kitchen even). Suddenly he hears someone else slide open the patio door ('Not another one after this little girl!' he thought) then hid from view somehow. After he'd heard the toilet flush and the patio door slide shut, he reasoned that the 'coast was clear' and carried his prize anxiously to the front door, when the kitchen counter would have been out of view, or the patio door, if that is how he came in. But then the kitchen counter would still not have been in his line of sight. It would only have been so on first entering, or if he had gone out through the patio door, turned round and come back in again! (the 'I must avoid those witnesses' decision). So now, if he has not already done so, he tries the front door.

Whether or not Elvis's attempts at escape are front-then-rear or rear-then-front, he's in a tight spot and needs to leave in a hurry. The minutes are ticking by. Tarzan is standing outside and Jane's just leaving (or left) the restaurant. Thinks he: 'Surely whoever's staying here will have left a key to the front door lying around somewhere.' Don't they all? (He hadn't previously met Messrs. O'Brien, Oldfield or Payne) But where? Oh! What's that I can almost see among the clutter on the kitchen counter? (from just inside the patio door, in the dark, Madeleine cradled in his arms (see forensic photographs of 5A interior). Or, if standing at the locked front door, 'Damn! I'll have to go out through that bedroom window after all! Mustn't forget to close the curtains behind me!' It looks like it might be a key. I wonder if it fits the front door? Let's take a closer look. If I can pick it up without this child's body skittling everything else on the shelf and waking her up, I might just make it out in time for the next 'check on the children,' due any second now.'

In the real world, being unconstrained by the timing of Jane Tanner's anticipated 'sighting,' the criminal waits quietly out of sight at the top of the patio steps, until McCann and Wilkins wander off - and so does he - carrying Madeleine. And a change of pyjamas.

The situation is cut-and-dried. If Madeleine McCann's so-called abductor did not leave 5A in time to be spotted by Jane Tanner at 9.15 p.m., then he could not have been seen by her. He might perhaps have left later (via the patio) in time to be seen by the Smiths, but only with a different child, or Madeleine in a change of clothes, and having successfully hidden himself from Matthew Oldfield's view in the meantime (Not difficult. He had only to sit silently on Madeleine's bed. But he would not have known that!).

In any event Gerry McCann was 'fully convinced that the abduction took place during the period of time between his check at 21h05 and Matthew's visit at 21h30.' Notwithstanding which, he and the abductor were in each other's company, apparently, just before 9.10 p.m. Why would the culprit wait twenty minutes or more before leaving the scene? They wouldn't. And even if they did, is it not highly improbable that two significant sightings, the only two in fact, should have been of innocent parties, whilst the individual actually carrying Madeleine through the streets of Praia da Luz went unnoticed?

No mysterious unforeseen abductor can have emerged from 5A between 9.00 and 10.00 that night. The only people to do so were those that actually entered the apartment.

It has been pointed out before now (A Line in The Sand: McCannFiles, 19 March) that the one thing neither the McCanns nor their legal representatives would be able to fend off would be a proof, evidential or logical, that their daughter Madeleine could not have been abducted during the one hour in which they suppose it to have happened. Such a conclusion would lead, inevitably, to a chain of postulates: 'Not abducted' between 9.00 and 10.00 p.m. would mean 'not abducted at all,' since she was reported alive at 9.05 and her parents were present in the apartment after 10.00. 'Not abducted' would mean Madeleine is dead and her parents are aware that that is so. Parental awareness of Madeleine's true fate would reveal subsequent, unremitting emphasis on abduction to have been a ploy. An effort to conceal Madeleine's death, having been publicly acknowledged by the parents as unnecessary in the event of an accident, would mean that, rather than accidental, something deliberate may have occurred to bring about fatality.

For its own sake Society owes it to victims past, and as an endeavour to safeguard those who might become victims, to demonstrate that the avoidable death of a child is unacceptable, much less that those responsible should go on to profit from it with their continued liberty or, worse yet, financially. Whether inspired by the McCanns or not, a spate of recent 'abductions' is evidence of a disturbing trend in peoples' perception of what they might get away with. It cannot be allowed to continue. Otherwise we are as good as signing the death warrants of 'at risk' children everywhere.

The door handle/lock on apartment 5A PJ Files

Processo 09 Volume IXa, page 2318

Click image to enlarge

From: Processo 09 Volume IXa, Page 2318

Finally, there also proceeded the detailed analysis of the door and of the windows of the target apartment there not being detected the existence of any clues/traces of break-in/forced entry on them.

Photos 38 to 40: Detail of the lock of the door of the apartment front entrance where the non-existence of break-in/forced entry was verified.

Instructively, the Control Risks observation on behalf of Gerry McCann, that a key had been left on the kitchen counter, does not address the inevitable question of where exactly this same key was found subsequently, after the abductor had perhaps made use of it. Was it discovered in the door, for instance? It was fortunate for the McCanns that the intruder did not take it with him. That could really have spoiled their holiday, since there was only the one. The point is, if it hadn't moved from the kitchen counter, then it would not have been employed by an abductor desperate to exit the apartment (unless, perhaps, 'Please return to kitchen counter.' was written on the reverse of the 'Use me!' label intended for Alice). This shortcoming probably explains why the story came and went like Halley's comet. Gerry McCann no doubt felt it safer not to include it in any further statements he might make to the police; in September, say. So he didn't.

Epilogue – 26.03.2012

Have you heard the one about the man intercepted at the airport, just prior to boarding, with a bomb in his luggage? When asked to explain himself he says calmly, 'the odds of there being a bomb on board the plane are 100,000 to one. The odds that there are two bombs are double that.'

Unfortunately a double indemnity does not necessarily make a situation twice as safe.

In the course of their most recent public outing (on Swedish T.V. this time), the McCanns, not asking for money (cough!) but, like students sitting their 'mocks,' and with script nicely rehearsed, repeated their by now well practised answers, which included Kate's "Yeah, absolutely, there's no way a young child could have got out."

This is clearly an agreed position, as Clarence Mitchell, representing both parents, has previously suggested:

"Kate and Gerry know Mad... know their daughter well enough to know she didn't wander out of the apartment, as has often been speculated."

Gerry McCann has said exactly the same thing, using exactly the same pivotal phrase ('no way'):

"there's no way she... she could have got out on her own."

'No way' is the contemporary equivalent of 'impossible' (not 'unlikely,' 'with difficulty,' or any other imprecise term). It is absolute.

Over a year ago now the question of Madeleine's impediment was discussed (see article: Just Listen, McCannFiles, 5 Feb., 2011). It turns out not to have been the open patio door per se. That being so, we can offer the McCanns 'double indemnity' and, hypothetically lock that door for them without changing the situation. There is still 'no way' Madeleine could have got out on her own.

Why not? What was there to stop her turning left instead of right and leaving through the unlocked front door, as opposed to the supposedly unlocked patio door, even if the latter had been locked? Nothing in principle, as the considered thoughts of Russell O’Brien confirm:

"We were conscious that, that, erm, if you, you only do one lock on the main door then it can be opened from the inside."

In practice however, leaving through a locked door without the key would have been impossible. There is 'no way' Madeleine McCann could have left 5A spontaneously under such circumstances. So, supposing that she was perfectly well, as the McCanns have insisted all along, then the only true obstacle to her freedom was the locked front door, not the open patio. And that of course means, as has most recently been argued, that the abductor was stuck inside also.

A Picture of Innocence – 29.03.2012

As any half awake reader of 'Madeleine' will have discovered, the McCanns appear to have an answer for everything. Even though there may be questions yet to be put for which they might struggle to offer a convincing response, there is one in particular that they have already demonstrated they cannot answer. They could not answer it when it was put to them in 2007. And they still cannot answer it five years later. It surely does not require a clinical psychologist to point out that there is something seriously wrong when a parent deprived of his or her child cannot adequately recall that child's last moments with them.

When interviewed in 2007 for Spanish broadcaster Antena 3, the McCanns were asked:

"Allow me to take you both back to the 3rd May. What's the last thing you remember about Madeleine?"

KM: "Just a happy little girl. A beautiful, happy little girl"

(Not: 'She was sleeping beautifully' or 'was sound asleep').

GM: "Just think of all the times... the nice times that we've had with her in our house, and in her playing, in the playroom with her... with her... the twins."

The father could not even place Madeleine in Portugal. Instead he describes happy times at home in Leicester.

Fast forward now to 2012 and a very recent interview for Swedish Television:

Fredrik Skavlan: "Errm... If we could start by going back, errm... to... to May, errr... 3rd 2007. What's your strongest memories of Madeleine from that day?”

Gerry McCann: "I think the strongest memory I have is of really, the photograph that was the last photograph we have of her and, errr... you know, we'd had a lovely holiday. Madeleine was having a great time and just after lunch we went over to the pool area and, errr... she was sitting there paddling in the pool and I was sitting next to her and she turned round and she's just beaming. And then the... the last time I saw her, which was probably minutes before she was taken, when she was lying asleep, and it's terrible how... I've said this a few times but I had one of those poignant moments as a parent where... I went into her room, and the door was open, and I... I just paused for a second and I looked, and she was sound asleep, and I thought how beautiful she was. The twins were asleep in the... in their cots and I thought how lucky we were. And within, you know, minutes that was shattered!"

However intriguing one might find Gerry McCann's reference to his reverie being 'shattered,' or the verbatim repetition of his 'proud father moment' anecdote, the more revealing aspect of his response to the interviewer's question is the opener; the description, ostensibly, of his strongest memory of Madeleine from that day, which turns out not to be a particularly vivid memory of Madeleine at all, but the description of a photograph in which both Gerry McCann and his daughter Madeleine appear. As Gerry says:

"I think the strongest memory I have is of really, the photograph."

The 'last photograph we have of her' gives nothing away as regards the date it was taken but that is not the crux of the matter.

When Gerry speaks of his strongest memory being of a photograph he means exactly that. He does not describe his memory of accompanying two children by the pool and being photographed at the time. Oh no. He describes the photograph, from the onlooker's point of view:

"...just after lunch we went over to the pool area and, errr... she was sitting there paddling in the pool and I was sitting next to her and she turned round and she's just beaming."

Look at the photograph in question. Gerry is staring directly at the camera from behind a pair of sunglasses. Madeleine, a sun hat shielding her face, has turned away to her left with a broad smile. But from their relative positions at the time the shutter was pressed, Gerry would not have been able to tell whether Madeleine was beaming, frowning or crying. 'She's just beaming' is a description of what Madeleine looks like to anyone viewing the photograph. It is not a personal recollection of Gerry McCann's, the father who, despite attempts at convincing the PJ that his memory actually improved with time, has, five years on, a stronger memory of a photograph (its details, by virtue of the photograph's very existence, do not need to be remembered) than he does of a later interaction with Madeleine; an interaction which, in keeping with well-documented 'recency effects' in memory (last item(s) in a series best recalled), should constitute the stronger recollection, being nearer in time and, by definition, the last experience of its kind.

Amnesia apart, there are two reasons in particular why anyone should be unable to recollect the fundamental detail of a significant personal interaction: They have either forgotten all about it (it was not that significant after all), or the memory was not established in the first instance, i.e., what was supposed to have happened did not.

The McCanns have been propped up by two classes of supporter over the years: The enthusiastic subalterns with their own political and/or professional agendas, and the cohorts of the gullible. Head of the Portuguese Lawyers Order Dr. António Marinho e Pinto, a witness for the McCann couple in the forthcoming libel action against Dr. Gonçalo Amaral, the first co-ordinator of the investigation to Maddie's disappearance, belongs in the former category, as illustrated by a recent statement of his on Portuguese Television:

"I am highly critical of the options taken by the Judiciary Police officers, namely of Dr. Gonçalo Amaral [MeP seems oblivious to Paulo Rebelo's role as coordinator of the 'second part' of the investigation that lead directly to the archival]. I believe that it is absurd to attribute... first of all to conclude that the child died, secondly to attribute that death to the parents. I believe that an English couple that is holidaying in the Algarve did not come here to murder their daughter. And if indeed she died, due to an accident, the first thing they would do, obviously, wouldn't be to hide the cadaver, it would be to try to save her, to take her to a hospital. A couple that sees their daughter in that situation, in that situation..."

Dr. António Marinho e Pinto (and anyone else sharing his belief in the seemingly absurd) is cordially invited to read/re-read as appropriate, 'There's Nothing to Say She’s Not Out There Alive' (McCannFiles, 27 June, 2009). Anyone capable of playing the game 'noughts and crosses' should be able to interpret a matrix of four possibilities. If they cannot do that then they have no right to opine as 'experts' in front of a T.V. camera. Assuming they can recognise four discrete conditions, then what is it about the following pairing the likes of Dr. António Marinho e Pinto currently fail to understand?

If Madeleine McCann is not 'out there alive' then she is dead.

Abduction is the only route to being 'out there alive,' all other possibilities having been dismissed by the parents. Hence 'out there alive' equates to 'abducted.' So if Madeleine McCann was not abducted then, as surely as night follows day, she is dead - and then some. The statements by Jane Tanner and Aoife Smith tell us, in effect, that Madeleine McCann cannot have been abducted, unless she was tossed in the air like a pancake just before being witnessed (sighted, call it what you will) by Tanner, or else changed out of her Eeyore pyjamas 'on the hoof' before being spotted by the Smiths.

The abduction story more than verges on the ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It most certainly does not deserve to be called a 'thesis.'

As for the second of Dr. António Marinho e Pinto’s 'beliefs,' it too has already been addressed ('A Line in The Sand:' McCannFiles, 19 March). So it's 'back to the drawing board' for April then...?