Authors: Kate McCann
We, like Robert Murat, would remain
arguidos
until or unless somebody was charged or the case was closed. Although a new penal code imposed an eight-month deadline on inquiries, the police or the prosecutor could apply for extensions as they felt necessary. It meant we could be facing this frenzied speculation for a long time to come.
Over the next few weeks our days would be filled with phone calls, emails and meetings, interspersed with hours holed up in the study in front of computer screens, researching and gathering information. We worked sixteen-hour days and frequently fell into bed at 2am. We rarely left the house, except for meetings and the occasional trip to the park with the children, or to squeeze in a short, head-clearing run or spirit-boosting visit to the local church. Potty-training Sean and Amelie was probably the nearest we got to a break. There were many difficult decisions to be made that compounded our pain and worry. Any action we chose to take had to be looked at from every angle. Would people understand why we were doing it and support it, or would it be presented negatively in the media and bring us even more detractors?
The issues we needed to deal with most urgently were protecting our children and ensuring the safety of our family, preparing our defence with our lawyers and trying to stop lies being published in the press.
One of the first things we did was to ring our GP. We wanted to make contact with the social services to pre-empt any interest they might be obliged to take in us. In the light of the headlines and our
arguido
status, we realized there would be pressure on the authorities to assess the welfare of the twins. It all seemed so crazy and unfair, but we had to confront it head on. Our doctor came round that Monday morning and we talked things through with him.
Wild stories were appearing in the papers about my ‘fragile’ mental state, my ‘inability to cope’ with my ‘hyperactive’ children, eating disorders and sedatives. All complete bullshit, yet not once had our GP been contacted for any information about us. The police had not sought access to our medical notes and nobody had ever asked him if we were well and healthy, what kind of people we were, whether he’d ever had any concerns about us or our parenting skills or if we were on any medication.
Three days later we had a meeting with a social services manager and a local child-protection officer. They went through various formalities with us and, while they took care to keep everything on a totally professional footing, I could tell they felt uncomfortable about having to subject us to this sort of scrutiny. But we’d resigned ourselves to it. We’d expected it, accepted it and we had nothing to hide.
The local police also visited us within the first twenty-four hours, primarily to advise us on security. Our home was fitted with sensor alarms. If anyone broke in, these would alert the police station, rather than go off in the house, enabling officers to be at our door within minutes. We were also given personal alarms to carry with us at all times. My dad and a friend secured another two feet of trellis to the fence surrounding our garden, providing a twelvefoot barrier against potential intruders, including the photographers who were already snooping at the back. Blinds were quickly put up at all of our windows for a modicum of privacy. A week or so later, Control Risks sent a technical expert to check our phone lines and rooms for any bugging devices. If we had wondered back in May whether we’d entered a whole new world, we were now certain we had.
The press settled themselves outside our house for a couple of days before agreeing to retreat to the end of the cul-de-sac. There they were to remain, in varying numbers, for three months. Somewhere there must be a whole library of exciting photographs of me driving in and out of our road. I can only imagine how annoying the media presence was for our neighbours, but they put up with it stoically and showed us nothing but kindness and support.
Once again our family, friends and neighbours came to our rescue, shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing, opening mail, entertaining the children and providing a shoulder to cry on and many a hug. As they had been in Portugal, Sean and Amelie were blissfully untroubled by this semi-organized disorder and I thanked my lucky stars for that. They played inside and outside, upstairs and downstairs, leaving a trail of toys and laughter in their wake. But the frustrating necessity to shore up our defences not only distracted us from the search for Madeleine, it also robbed us of time with the twins.
We tried to set aside periods of the day to take them for a swim or watch a DVD with them, but these weren’t nearly as frequent as we’d have liked. Perhaps not surprisingly, they were both a little unsettled at night for a while, often padding through to our bedroom in the small hours. We didn’t put up much resistance to their efforts to clamber into our bed. It was nice to have them with us, even if it had to be at ridiculous o’clock.
On Tuesday 11 September we had an 8am conference call with Michael Caplan, Angus McBride and Justine. It was decided that Justine and Angus would visit the editors of the main tabloid newspapers and Angus would explain to them that there was absolutely no evidence to support our involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
Angus and Justine’s action seemed to make next to no difference and tales of blood and dogs, provided by the usual unnamed ‘sources close to the investigation’, continued to appear, augmented by talk of supposed ‘clumps of hair’. There were erroneous reports of a ‘100 per cent match’ between samples taken from the vehicle and Madeleine’s DNA. Even if this had been true (which it turned out it wasn’t), it was perfectly feasible that Madeleine’s DNA could have been in the car for entirely innocent reasons, on clothes, toys and other items that belonged to her.
Since there was no match, the most likely explanation for the presence of particular DNA sequences in the car – and certainly a far more rational one than a dead body having been there three weeks after her disappearance – was that the DNA was mine, Gerry’s, Sean’s or Amelie’s. Since Madeleine inherited her DNA from Gerry and me (as have the twins) she possesses strands common to us all. But I guess that didn’t make for quite so good a story.
Yet judging by the continuing flood of touching and encouraging letters, flowers and gifts, many of the general public, in the UK and Ireland, at least, saw through the lies and speculation. I cannot overemphasize how important this show of solidarity was to us. It was a source of strength and hope and it helped us to keep going through the toughest of times.
Having no knowledge at this point of what had or had not been found by the forensic tests commissioned by the PJ, we wanted to conduct our own, independent examination. Michael and Angus suggested that we arrange for a full forensic screen to be performed on the Renault Scenic hire car, which had been left with a friend in Praia da Luz.
Later that Tuesday Angus flew out to Lisbon for a meeting with Carlos Pinto de Abreu to try to clarify our legal position in Portugal. Meanwhile, Bob Small paid us a call. We were pleased to see him: he is one of the good guys. While he always remained completely professional, we knew that he cared about us, about Madeleine and about justice. You’d have thought you could expect this of all police officers and people in authority, but our experience had taught us otherwise. Compassionate though Bob was, he was still unable to answer many of our questions (‘Constrained by my position . . .’), which was upsetting and exasperating.
Very frustrating. You wonder, if the shit really hits the fan (as if it hadn’t already!) who will actually put their necks out and stand up for us?
I embarked on a detailed chronological account of all our movements from 3 May to 7 September, when we were declared
arguidos
. I had kept a record of a lot of this information in my journals, but there were still gaps in the first three weeks, before I started to keep my diary. I phoned all the friends and family who had come out to Praia da Luz during this period, as well as everyone with whom we had been in close contact at home, and asked them to go over everything they recalled, too, to corroborate my own memories, pinpoint dates and times and fill in any blanks. I also contacted Foreign Office officials and consular staff to confirm details of all our meetings with them. It was imperative that my report was as thorough and complete as possible.
I worked on this almost solidly for the next three weeks. Gerry has always scoffed at my perfectionist tendencies and attention to detail, but he was scoffing no longer! My journals were so comprehensive, covering everything down to the most insignificant and boring incidents you can imagine, that by the time I had finished I was able to account for what we did and where we were at virtually any given time over the whole four months. I would have put Sherlock Holmes out of a job, if I say so myself.
Although I was satisfied with what I’d achieved, it was a travesty I’d had to produce it at all. Since 4 May, practically every step we’d taken outside our Mark Warner apartment or the villa had been followed on television by the entire world. How could we possibly have secretly hidden our daughter’s body, in such a safe place that it hadn’t been discovered, and then removed it (if our hiding place was that good, I wonder why would we have bothered), transported it in our Renault Scenic (which we hadn’t hired until 27 May) and buried her elsewhere – all without our media stalkers ever noticing a thing? It simply wasn’t feasible.
Yet this was what was being insinuated. It was hard to understand how anyone could take this theory seriously. The secrecy surrounding the case can’t have helped. Perhaps people thought the PJ had a stack of other more damning evidence they weren’t yet revealing. They hadn’t.
No wonder by the time I went to bed at night I often felt close to exploding with exasperation.
Gerry’s had a few tough days and was upset earlier on today. He seems very stressed although it’s not surprising . . . Who’d have thought our lives would have ended up like this? What have we done to deserve all this? Immoral, inhumane, a total injustice. I don’t know how the Portuguese police can sleep at night.
Madeleine, nobody here, especially me and Daddy, is going to stop looking for you. We will do EVERYTHING to find you, sweetheart. May God, Mary and the Angels protect you until that time. Love you. Miss you. xxxxx
By this time Gerry was deep into his next task: researching the validity of responses produced by blood and cadaver dogs. Along the way he spoke to several experts, and in the coming weeks we would learn a lot about the subject. This is what one US lawyer had to say about the objectivity and success rate of this procedure:
The most critical question relating to the use of the dog alerts as evidence is how likely is the dog’s alert to be correct. In this regard, the only testing of these handler and dog teams recorded an abysmal performance. Here ‘the basis’ for the possible past presence of human remains is that there is a 20 or 40 per cent chance that a dog’s ‘alert’ was correct. In other words, with respect to residual odour, the dog-handler teams performed significantly worse than if the handlers had simply flipped a coin to speculate as to the presence of residual odour at each location.
State of Wisconsin v. Zapata, 2006 CF 1996 – defendant supplemental memorandum
These tests, it should be noted, were performed within twelve hours of body parts being removed from the testing area. Just imagine much how worse the results would be after three months.
Almost all erroneous alerts originate not from the dog but from the handler’s misinterpretation of the dog’s signals. A false alert can result from the handler’s conscious or unconscious signals given by them to lead a dog where the handler suspects evidence to be located. We are mindful that less than scrupulously neutral procedures which create at least the possibility of unconscious ‘cueing’ may well jeopardize the reliability of dog sniffs.
United States v. Trayer, 898 F. 2d 805.809 (CADC 1990)
On Wednesday 12 September, Gerry was contacted by Edward Smethurst, a commercial lawyer. He represented a businessman called Brian Kennedy (not to be confused with my uncle Brian Kennedy), a successful entrepreneur who owned various companies, including Everest Windows and Sale Sharks Rugby Club. Brian, he told Gerry, had, like many people, been following the unfolding drama of Madeleine’s disappearance since 3 May. Now, seeing things going from bad to worse, he had decided he could no longer stand idly by and watch. He wanted to step in and help us financially and in any other way he could. A meeting with Edward and Brian was arranged for that Friday at the Kingsley Napley offices in London.
On Friday morning, Angus McBride kindly drove to Rothley to pick us up and take us down to London. Brian Kennedy and Edward Smethurst joined us in a meeting room shortly before midday. Brian was much younger than I was expecting, very relaxed and personable. He told us a little about himself. Originally from Edinburgh and married with five children, he was wealthy, obviously, but a self-made man: he had started out as a window cleaner. Then he asked me to give him an account of what had happened on the evening of 3 May. I talked for a couple of minutes before he stopped me. ‘OK, that’s enough. I’ve always believed you. I just wanted to hear it from you. That’s fine.’
We discussed the immediate problems facing us: our
arguido
status, the need for legal assistance, the media coverage and the public-relations difficulties associated with that. Brian’s contributions were full of passion and sincerity and what he said next will stay with me for ever. ‘OK. First of all we need to deal with all this stuff and get it out of the way. Then we need to concentrate on the most important thing: finding your daughter.’ I wanted to cry. Well, actually, I did cry. Here was somebody, at long last, who could see through all this rubbish and the damage it was doing. Here was somebody who wasn’t turning his back on us because it was the easiest or ‘safest’ thing to do. And most importantly, here was somebody who was able and willing to help us find Madeleine. We had a chance. Madeleine had a chance. I resisted the urge to run around the table and throw my arms around him. Instead I stammered out my gratitude. ‘Thank you, Brian, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.’ My heart was doing mini leaps for the first time in months.