La déclaration du directeur régional de la PJ (tout en bas) est surprenante, compte tenu de la certitude d'enlèvement qu'il afficha devant la presse début mai, mais à cette date la PJ a reçu les recommandations de Lee Rainbow quant à la poursuite de l'enquête (la piste des parents doit être suivie autant que celle de l'enlèvement).
Madeleine
Case - A Pact of Silence - 30.06.2007
SOL - Felicia Cabrita and Margarida Davim
traduit par Astro
Madeleine's
parents and the friends with whom they spent their holidays in PDL
are suspects in the inquiry. There are contradictory versions about
the night of the kidnapping, and an assumed pact of silence in the
group.
The
beginning of June is flowing in a strange way in the Algarve. A
chilly wind and overhead clouds help to fill the auditorium of Lagos,
where a solidarity concert is being held for the missing English
girl. It's been a month since Madeleine McCann vanished without a
trace.
A
few kilometres from Lagos, in the Ocean Club resort at Praia da Luz,
the faint illumination further densifies the climate. At the
reception, which leads to the Tapas restaurant, there is nobody.
Getting inside is easy.
A
Portuguese waiter, but with a British 'behaviour', strikes the first
blow on the journalist's plan: "We only serve dinner to the
club's clients". "What about a drink?". He says yes.
It's
9.30 p.m. If we were to believe the several members of the McCann's
holiday group, and after several mismatching versions, at this time
Madeleine was being carried out of her apartment by a dark-haired
man, who would be around 35 years old.
From
the same table where the group of nine had dinner on that evening,
one tries, in vain, to observe the apartment's front - a ground floor
apartment that faces the restaurant. A linoleum screen on the side of
Tapas and the corridor of bushes that follows the limits of the
apartment's back yards prevents any vigilance to that level.
The
image of Madeleine - big blue, questioning eyes and an innocent
smile, fixed on the photographic films - is always present. It
doesn't leave the conversations of whom passes by. One remembers the
words that the mother, Kate Healy, is supposed to have said to a
friend (and that the husband, Gerry McCann, did not know): "I
had a bad premonition about my children, when I found out the Ocean
Club had no baby listening service".
The
choice of Algarve as a holiday destination would come to change their
lives. Everything was arranged with three other couples, with whom
they used to travel. Some of them had recently been to Greece, with
their children, and the Mark Warner agency, the same that prepared
their trip to the Algarve, had done their itinerary for the islands.
According to their reports, the hotel where they stayed had a baby
listening service - a service that is assured by four or five members
of staff who would control the children while the adults dined, by
listening through doors and windows to confirm that everything inside
was quiet.
At
the Tapas bar, from bartenders to staff from the Kid Club, criticism
is whispered: "We have a creche where they left their children
for most part of the day, where they could be until 11.30 p.m.
without spending another Euro. They could also have used our
baby-sitters, who stay with the children in their rooms until 1 p.m.
In this case, they would have to pay an extra fee, but these people
looked like they could afford it", an employee comments,
concluding that "this was a very strange group, that never
stayed with their children".
The
children's routine
The
story of Madeleine looks like a tangled ball of wool. In the last
days of April, Kate and Gerry, both 39 and doctors, arrive with their
friends in Praia da Luz. The weather is not very good, but the group
makes the best of it. The children seem to exist outside of the
adults' world. In the morning, Kate would take Madeleine, almost 4,
and the 2-year old twins, to the Kids Club. The other couples in the
group did the same. While the little ones entertained themselves with
collages and paintings, the group divided itself between tennis and
jogging until lunchtime. In the creche, the girl's picture is taken:
"She was shy and had some difficulty in adapting to the group.
She always stayed close to the English children she already knew".
It
is at lunchtime that the families socialize a bit. After a short nap,
the children go back to the Kids Club, while the parents use the
activities that the club offers. They only get to meet again in the
late afternoon, when the children's dinner is served. Before 8 p.m.,
Madeleine and her siblings, who seem to function like a clock, are
already asleep. Half an hour later, the group of friends meets at
Tapas. The staff remember that they only leave at midnight: "They
were very lively and drank a bit too much. I didn't even realise they
had children, because I never saw them around".
Mathew
Oldfield, one of the elements of the group, is back in England. He
reacts with surprise upon the contact of Sol, but he does not avoid
the conversation: "We drank. We were on holiday. So what?".
And
thus the days followed one upon another, at the Ocean Club. The
holiday week is almost over and the group's spirit does not change.
Nobody had noticed until then, how the children were kept at a
distance.
The
most reliable way to undrestand what happened on May 3, when
Madeleine disappeared, is to analyse the various versions that
emerged.
It
would have been 10 p.m. when Kate decided to check the children at
the apartment. This is the only moment in the story that gathers
consensus. Madeleine had vanished from her bedroom and the twins were
sleeping like nothing had happened. The mother was back at the
restaurant in one leap. She was disoriented.
PJ
called two hours later
In
seconds, the resort is in turmoil. The group's four men and the
club's employees check every corner. They seem to be oblivious of the
essential: to call the authorities. GNR is the first to arrive at the
scene, but the news only reach Policia Judiciaria (PJ) more than two
hours later. The first explanations arise. Where were the parents
when the child disappeared? Gerry explains that, inspired in the
scheme that some of the friends had used on their holidays in Greece,
the nine members of the group took turns in checking on the children
with some regularity.
This
is the beginning of a story that will change in many chapters. Gerry
starts by saying that he first left the table to check on the
children around 9.05 p.m. When he entered the apartment the children
were fine, he just noticed that the door to their bedroom was
partially open. He looked at the window, which was closed, just as
the shutters, and relaxed.
Ten
minutes later, his friend Jane Tanner, who went around the
apartments, crossed ways with a dark-haired man who was walking in
the opposite direction, carrying a child. She didn't make any
connections either.
A
few minutes later, Mathew Oldfield enters the room, sees the McCann
children fast asleep, and notices nothing out of the ordinary. It is
at 10 p.m. that Maddie's mother discovers her daughter has
disappeared. The window was wide open and the shutters were up.
To
the GNR, who were in the area with sniffer dogs to search for the
child, this is a highly unlikely scenario. One of the military
assures: "This is an extremely silent area, where there are
practically no passing cars. That shutter was very difficult to lift
from the outside, and would have made a lot of noise. It would have
been a lot easier to use the door, but there were no signs of a
break-in".
This
was just one of the reasons why the group became suspicious in the
eyes of the investigators. Russell O'Brien, Jane Tanner's husband, is
already back in England, but he knows he could be summoned back to
Portugal for a deposition anytime. Over the phone with Sol, he tries
to keep his British phlegm: "It is normal that we are suspects,
and the DNA test is a consequence thereof. We were the closest people
involved".
The
conversation always comes back to the same issue: the night of the
disappearance. The account of that last dinner has disparate versions
among the group's members. Some swear that someone left the table
every half hour to check on the kids; other reduce that time to half
of it. Some say control is made window by window; others say the
adults entered each other's apartments.
One
of the employees that was on duty that evening does not remember a
lot of movement: "I only remember a tall, grey-haired man
getting up once from the table". It was Russell, who, two days
earlier, also had attended dinner.
An
aerobic instructor from the resort entertains the dinner guests at
Tapas with a `Quiz'. At 9.30 p.m. the game ends, and Gerry invites
her to their table, where she stays for half an hour. During that
time, as she later confided to friends, nobody left the table, but
one of the chairs was vacant. Najova Chekaya refuses to talk to Sol.
And Russell, when the questions start to surround him, loses his
sympathy: "I have nothing further to tell you. I am not going to
dishonor the promise I assumed with Kate and Gerry. They want to
control all information that is disclosed".
Gerry
changes his version several times, but he maintains that the door to
his children's room was open. Matt revokes his first statement: when
he entered Madeleine's room, the door was open and there was more
light, as if the shutters had been raised. Here starts to develop the
theory that there was already someone inside the apartment. Which
reinforces Jane Tanner's version (that she saw a man carrying a
child).
Only
Jane saw the man carrying a child
But
there is a witness whose deposition contradicts this theory. Jeremy
Wilkins - a TV producer who had met Maddie's father during their
holidays and used to play tennis with him - was walking his eight
months old son at that time. He met Gerry, who went out through the
apartment's back door after having checked on the children, and the
two men exchanged a brief conversation. At that time, if one is to
believe the first accounts, Jane would have left Tapas in the
direction of the apartment's main entrance, and would have crossed
paths with both of them. "It was a very narrow road and I think
it would have been almost impossible to walk by without me taking
notice", Jeremy says, pointing out the fact that he saw no man
carrying a child, as Jane states.
But
Jane continues to guarantee that, at the top of the street, she saw a
man with a child in his arms.
Although
the area is scarcely lit, and the situation did not make her
suspicious at the time, she describes the beige trousers, the dark
thick jacket and the black classic-style shoes in a detailed way.
Once again, Jeremy disagrees: "If that happened, I would have
likely seen it".
On
the next day, the media circus was fully installed. The first reports
are on Sky News first thing in the morning, even before portuguese
press takes hold of the story. Journalists and locals dispute the
information. Robert Murat, the son of an English mother and a
Portuguese father, with little luck in business, does not waste the
opportunity. He moves from failed businessman into the role of a
translator for the press and the police. Some British journalists,
after sucking him to the bones, start suspecting his availability.
The
Murat contradiction
Contrarily
to the GNR elements and the Ocean Club's staff, who participated in
the searches on the night before and assure they did not see Murat
around, Gerry and some of his friends guarantee that he was there.
And thus he becomes an arguido.
Gerry
and Kate's friends, who are interrogated tightly by the PJ over
almost a month, refuse to clarify this contradiction, when asked by
Sol. "We have a pact. This is our matter only. It is nobody
else's business", says David Payne, another element with the
group. Minutes after we tried to contact Kate, Gerry, in a fury,
calls the Sol journalist: "What do you think you are doing? Do
you think you're better than the Portuguese police? I'm going to
forward your contact to PJ and you will have to explain yourselves".
PJ
says 'everybody is a suspect'
The
director of the Policia Judiciaria in Faro, Guilhermino da
Encarnacao, confirmed with Sol that "we do not discard the
possibility of having the family and friends as suspects". This
is always done "without neglecting other clues. Everybody who
was at the resort at the time are suspects".
