Madeleine (14 page)

Still in the dark as to what was being done to help find our daughter – if anything was being done to find her – Gerry and I prayed together and eventually drifted into a brief and fitful sleep.

7

AFTERMATH

At the police station that first afternoon, Guilhermino Encarnação had briefly mentioned three potential explanations for Madeleine’s disappearance: a burglary that had ‘changed direction’, abduction and the possibility that she had wandered off by herself.

In the coming months we would learn that burglaries were rife on that stretch of the Algarve coast (in Praia da Luz, burglars were ‘like mice’, according to one resident), and although it is difficult to imagine how a burglary could escalate into an abduction, we now know that this is not unheard of.

However, I have always found the third suggestion insulting to our intelligence, frankly. Obviously, the police are obliged to consider all possible scenarios but there was no doubt in our minds that Madeleine had not left that apartment of her own accord. For a start there was Jane’s sighting of what was, in all likelihood, Madeleine being carried off. Even if you set that aside, there was no way a three-year-old would have been able to raise the shutters and open the window in the children’s room. To give any credence whatsoever to the idea that Madeleine could have walked out on her own you would have to accept that she had gone out the back way, pulling aside the sitting-room curtains and drawing them again, then opening the patio door, the child-safety gate at the top of the stairs on the veranda and the little gate to the road – and carefully
closing
all
three behind her
. What three-year-old do you know who would do that? And we knew our Madeleine. She simply would not wander off like this.

This theory was not only insulting, it was, much more importantly, frighteningly damaging to the chances of finding Madeleine quickly. If the police were wasting precious time pursuing it they were not going to be looking in the right places, or taking the appropriate type of action. In the first few days we gained the impression that this was exactly what was happening. Certainly their initial searches were all geared to looking for a stray child who had become lost in or around Luz. We would later hear from the British police that it took until 10am on Friday, almost twelve hours after the alarm was raised, for roadblocks and checks to be put in place. And it would be five more days before Interpol circulated a ‘yellow notice’ (global alert) to each of its member countries.

We subsequently learned that less than fifty minutes after Jane’s sighting – when I had still to discover that Madeleine was missing – a family of nine from Ireland had also seen a man carrying a child, this time on Rua da Escola Primária, a few minutes’ walk from apartment 5A, heading towards Rua 25 de Abril. Their description was remarkably similar to Jane’s. The man was in his mid thirties, 1.75 to 1.8 metres tall and of slim to normal build. These witnesses, too, said this person didn’t look like a tourist. They couldn’t quite put their finger on why, but again they felt it might have been because of what he was wearing. They also mentioned cream or beige trousers. The child, a little girl of about four with medium-blonde hair, was lying with her head towards the man’s left shoulder. She was wearing light-coloured pyjamas, had nothing on her feet and there was no blanket over her. Although, like Jane, this family had taken this man and child for father and daughter, they commented that the man did not look comfortable carrying the child, as if he wasn’t used to it.

*

Saturday 5 May was the day we should have been going home, as many other Mark Warner guests were doing. The police would just allow all these people to leave the country without delaying any departures to interview potential witnesses – or even, perhaps, potential suspects. Our own friends remained at the Ocean Club. They took it as read that they ought to stay around to be available to the police, but in any case, I’m sure they wouldn’t have dreamed of flying back to the UK without us in these awful circumstances.

Gerry and I awoke at four o’clock that morning, having slept for barely a couple of hours, still feeling wretched and utterly abandoned by the PJ in Portimão. Both verging on hysteria, we were incapable of comforting each other. It was clear we were struggling to keep our heads above water.

Having been so late back from the police station the previous evening, we’d decided to wait until morning to meet the trauma psychologist, Alan Pike. But by this point we realized that we needed help urgently. Just before 5am Gerry rang Craig Mayhew, the Mark Warner overseas manager, and asked if Alan would be able to come and see us. He was at the door of our apartment by 6am.

Alan is a clinical partner at the Centre for Crisis Psychology, pioneers in psychological trauma aftercare following disasters at home and abroad. They have worked with the families and survivors of the Bradford fire, the sinking of the
Herald of Free
Enterprise
, the World Trade Center terrorist attacks and the 2004 tsunami, to name just a few. Alan himself, we would learn, had been involved in the aftermath of, among other horrors, coach crashes in Gran Canaria, Cuba and South Africa, three hurricanes and the terrorist bombing at Sharm el Sheikh two years earlier.

Alan must be used to seeing people in states of profound distress, and he certainly found two in apartment 4G at the Ocean Club. By this stage I was beginning to feel that there just wasn’t any way up. He started by asking us about our home, our family and our normal lives. He told us we seemed like model parents. I cannot overstate how much such kind reassurance meant to us at that moment. We were both feeling so desperately guilty. Whatever we had or had not done right, we were Madeleine’s parents and in our own eyes we had failed to keep her safe. We struggled to bear that sense of guilt and we always will.

Alan got us talking, encouraging us to try to think rationally about what we were saying, and we talked a lot, for several hours. We faced our biggest fear: that Madeleine had been taken by a paedophile and killed. This was the only scenario occupying our minds just then. Alan pointed out to us that these thoughts could be no more than speculation. We didn’t
know
what had happened. We needed to avoid focusing on the negative and channel everything into looking forwards. ‘Madeleine might walk through that door at any minute,’ he said. ‘You need to be ready for that.’ He discussed with us the importance of taking control of things, little by little, starting with tiny actions as simple as making ourselves a cup of tea. The effect our conversation with Alan had on us that morning was truly amazing. To say it helped would be a gross understatement. Any scepticism we might have had before about how a psychologist could possibly benefit us personally has long gone. Alan was, and remains, a saviour.

My mum, dad and Auntie Norah were all staying in our apartment with us. Once they were awake and on the go, following Alan’s advice about making tea for ourselves was easier said than done as Auntie Norah had the kettle on endlessly. Poor Norah, she didn’t know what else to do but supply tea for everybody. The Mark Warner staff opened up the Toddler Club – it was usually closed on a Saturday, ‘changeover day’ – so that Sean and Amelie and our friends’ children could be looked after and entertained. That was a huge help, not only in keeping their daily routine on an even keel but also from a practical point of view: it turned out to be a bewilderingly busy day for Gerry and me and, given our fragility, we were far from being in the best state to take care of them.

Neither Amelie nor Sean had yet mentioned Madeleine, or at least, not that we had heard. It was a relief in many ways as I’m really not sure how we could or would have handled any questions at that point. With their friends around them and their grandparents there, perhaps they didn’t have much of a chance to fully register her absence. There were few blessings to be counted in these terrible circumstances but perhaps one was the fact that they were too young to be properly aware of what was happening. I think it was the next day before Sean first asked me, ‘Where’s Madeleine, Mummy?’

Oh, God, oh, God . . . I answered him as calmly as I could, and my reply soon became our stock response to this question. ‘We don’t know, honey. She’s missing but we’re all looking for her.’ In some ways explaining the situation to the children in these simple terms may have helped us, too: Madeleine is missing and we just have to find her. Put like that, it feels achievable.

The twins would continue to go to Toddler Club in the mornings (and on the odd afternoon, too, in those early days). While we wanted to keep life as ‘normal’ as possible for them we were well aware, of course, that it wasn’t normal, and neither could it be. Gerry and I saw much less of them than would normally have been the case. When we did, we tried to make it up to them by giving them proper quality time with lots of cuddles. For a while we were in too much of a mess to cook their meals or even to bath them. Every minute of every day would be eaten up by anxiety about Madeleine and our efforts to find her. Fortunately, Sean and Amelie were always surrounded by close family and friends they’d known all their lives who loved them dearly.

Now there was a visible police presence in and around Praia da Luz, even if it seemed to consist largely of GNR officers marshalling the media. Later we were aware of searches being undertaken – I have a memory of television images of police on horseback riding across the rugged Portuguese countryside.

All the same, we were reassured to see some UK police that day in the shape of three family liaison officers (FLOs) from the Leicestershire force, which had also officially logged Madeleine as missing. They came to introduce themselves and to outline their dual role: supporting us and our family and acting as a conduit for the flow of information between us and the PJ. After the trouble we’d had getting anyone in the PJ to talk to us, that was a relief, although the FLOs would soon find themselves almost as frustrated as we were in this regard.

The police and judiciary in the country where a crime has been committed have primacy in any investigation. If interviews need to be conducted or lines of inquiry followed in another country, they request such help under mutual legal assistance treaties and protocols, and results are sent back to them. The Portuguese police were apparently reluctant early on to accept any help beyond this from their counterparts in the UK. However, in addition to the Leicestershire FLOs, they did permit forensic psychologists from CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and an analyst from the National Policing Improvements Agency to come to Praia da Luz the following week. Even that may have been unprecedented: we understood this was the first time the Portuguese authorities had ever allowed any foreign force into the country to assist in an investigation. In such a situation, an element of pride is bound to come into play, and the relationship always seemed quite tricky. It never amounted to an effective pooling of information, ideas or intelligence.

It appeared that the British officers were told very little about what was going on and that their role was essentially confined to making suggestions or volunteering resources. The local police, not used to disclosing the details of an investigation, were clearly wary of answering all the questions they were being asked. According to what we would hear a few weeks down the line, the Leicestershire officers were told in no uncertain terms that if the PJ declined any ideas they proposed or refused offers of additional expertise they must accept this. If they didn’t, they would be excluded from the investigation completely.

Still, we were very grateful for their involvement, which would substantially improve communications. In the coming weeks we would meet DCS Bob Small, who we found straight-talking and honest. A lot of hard work went on at home as well, where DS Stuart Prior, the senior investigating officer, was kind enough to show our relatives round the incident room – and Gerry, too, later on.

As more TV and press turned up in Luz, Alex Woolfall gave us helpful pointers on handling the media. We came to rely on Alex as our de facto media liaison officer. It was he who guided us early on, giving us simple advice that has stood us in good stead since. He told us to ask ourselves the following two questions before giving anything to anyone in the press: what was our objective, and how was it going to help? We’ve always tried to remember those basic principles in all our interactions with the media. Alex explained the rather Pavlovian responses of the media pack. If we began to give daily statements, for example, they would expect one at the same time every day. Sometimes, he said, all they needed was to be fed something to keep them happy, and if that was the case, this might be our only objective in speaking to them.

We learned very quickly that we had to take the utmost care with anything we said in public. Not only was it likely that the abductor would be listening, but we had to make sure there was no suggestion of criticism of the PJ, while at the same time, as the days passed, maintaining the pressure on them to keep investigating.

We had so many meetings that day, and in the days to follow, with people who were trying to help us that it is hard to remember what was suggested, advised or discussed when. Neither Gerry nor I was functioning remotely properly. We were just surviving somehow, swept along by all this activity.

At lunchtime, over by the Tapas area, Gerry saw a crowd of departing guests waiting with their suitcases for the coach to take them to the airport. Among them was a guy with whom he had played tennis several times that week, accompanied by his wife and child. They still had another week of their holiday to go but had decided to return home because, as he explained to Gerry, it was just ‘too painful’ for them to stay any longer. Gerry felt sick. It was at this moment that it dawned on him just how many people would be leaving the resort that day without being interviewed. It would run into the hundreds. How much potentially valuable information was going to be lost for ever as a result?