Authors: Kate McCann
I was determined not to be beaten by this, not simply to capitulate and accept it as just one of the unfortunate side-effects of this tragedy. Gerry and I talked about it a little, but mostly I analysed the problem privately in my head. I also discussed it with Alan Pike, who assured me that, like my ability to relax or enjoy a meal, it would gradually return and that I shouldn’t fret about it too much. But I did. I even considered seeking specialist help. Deep down, though, I knew there were only two solutions: bringing Madeleine back or conquering my mental block. Since the first was not within my control, it was up to me to try to train my mind and my thought processes. So that is what I applied myself to doing.
In the small hours, any sleep we got was still often interrupted by the children. I welcomed their soothing presence. It didn’t always make for the most comfortable night, however. Sometimes, by the time dawn came, it took me a moment to figure out who was where.
Seany arrived in the early hours of the morning and positioned himself towards the middle of our bed, with me and Gerry then squeezed together on one side. Amelie appeared several hours later by which time Sean had gone back to his own bed, although he did return later. I knew we should have got a Superking!
Another morning I awoke to find myself sandwiched between Sean and Amelie with Gerry lying across the bottom of the bed. Cosy.
Every time I found one or both of the children in our bed in the morning, I’d feel an immediate pang of pain and guilt. For a few weeks around the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, Madeleine had gone through a phase of coming through to our room before morning. We’d generally been very disciplined about taking her straight back to her own bed. I’d helped her make a reward chart, still pinned on the kitchen wall today, on which we’d stuck a star for every night she stayed tucked up. When she’d earned enough stars she’d be allowed a special treat. (The PJ had seemed strangely interested in this chart when questioning me. Regardless of my explanation that it was about rewarding good behaviour, they’d insisted on referring to it as a ‘punishment chart’.) How I longed now to be able to lift up the duvet and feel Madeleine climbing in next to me. She’d never have to go back to her room again.
On the whole my faith remained strong, aside from the occasional wobble of despair. I went to church to talk privately to God, and amid the hours of toil in the study I’d make brief forays upstairs to say a novena to this saint or that saint.
Dear God. Please help us to find Madeleine. Please let the person(s) who has her stay calm. Please let them be treating her well. Please give them a way out. Please strengthen my faith and trust in you. Stay with us Lord. Amen.
On 25 September, we heard that a little blonde girl resembling Madeleine had been spotted with a group of Moroccan peasants. We received a photograph, taken by a Spanish tourist, in which the child was being carried on a woman’s back. Although she did look like Madeleine, our first reaction was that she appeared to be too young. The picture was too grainy for us to be absolutely sure. Her hair was also parted on the wrong side of her head. But she did seem to stand out as possibly not belonging to this group. She was so fair and they were dark-haired and dark-skinned.
Needless to say, a contingent of the press pack had already jumped on planes to Morocco to try to track down ‘Madeleine’. In the meantime, CEOP were using special IT techniques to improve the resolution of the photograph, and then facial-recognition software to try to establish whether or not the child could be Madeleine. Brian Kennedy called us later that evening to ask if we would like him to fly out to Morocco to find out for certain. We weren’t sure if this was either necessary or wise, but at the same time, of course, we were desperate to know. So off Brian went in his plane to northern Morocco.
Once again, we tried to remain calm and detached. With our rational heads on, we were fairly sure this wasn’t Madeleine, so it was pointless getting our hopes up. But it wasn’t a high-quality photograph . . . And what if she hadn’t grown that much because she hadn’t had enough to eat, or for some other environmental reason? Her parting could easily have been changed. Couldn’t it?
The following day we learned that the little girl was not Madeleine. In spite of her fair colouring, she was the daughter of the woman carrying her in the picture. It didn’t seem to matter how good we thought we were at keeping our emotions in check, news like this always brought us crashing down.
On 2 October, the national director of the Polícia Judiciária, Alípio Ribeiro, removed from our case a detective named Gonçalo Amaral, the coordinator of the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. Until then I’d barely heard of Sr Amaral. In the five months he held this job I never met him. Gerry did only once, very briefly. The reason for his removal, it was said, was that he had made controversial remarks about the involvement of the British authorities in the investigation. By the following summer, we would be hearing a lot more from the mystifying Sr Amaral.
Early that month Ribeiro also made a statement commenting on the continuing headlines in the press. He said that many were speculative or contained false information, adding that the police were still considering several other scenarios, not just the theory that Madeleine had been killed. Four months later, Ribeiro would remark in an interview that the PJ’s decision to make us
arguidos
had been ‘too hasty’.
Finally, we thought, someone in authority was showing common sense and decency. But it seems these sentiments were not shared by everyone in Portugal. By May 2008, Sr Ribeiro was no longer in his post.
19
ACTION ON THREE FRONTS
By October, with the battle to clear our names under way, we were able to concentrate properly on our top priority: finding Madeleine. Since the very beginning, various friends had proposed hiring private investigators. So far, beyond following up the odd piece of information outside Portugal, we had not gone down this road. Apart from the legal complications and the potential for interference with the official investigation, we had been reassured that, after a shaky start, the police were doing everything that could be done. Although we had been devastated by the slow response in the first twenty-four hours, and by the initial lack of communication with the police, once the investigation had got going, with the involvement of the British authorities and the cooperation of the UK police, our confidence in it had grown. The media attention also kept up the pressure on the authorities in both countries to do more.
Until the summer, we had believed that our best hope of Madeleine being found lay with the police. We needed to believe that. However, as the months rolled by, our faith in them had rapidly declined, hitting rock-bottom in August. Once we were declared
arguidos
, it became frighteningly clear to us that they were no longer looking for Madeleine. What they were looking for now, it seemed, was a conviction. Feeling more desperate for Madeleine now than at any time since that first night, we had no option but to launch our own investigation. But if it wasn’t for all the help we have been given by Brian Kennedy, I’m not sure how, or even if, any search would have resumed. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
We knew nothing about private investigators. As I’ve said, my only concept of private eyes came from freewheeling-detective-cracks-the-case-again shows on the telly, and I imagine the same went for most of the friends who’d suggested them. We pictured a smart, intuitive lone operator, scornful of authority, who somehow always manages to see what everyone else has missed and never fails to get his man.
Of course, the real world is very different. Not that I’m saying real-life private detectives are not smart and intuitive, but most of those we’ve come across operate within companies, ranging from large international firms to smaller ‘in-house’ teams, and most of their work is not quite as simple as it appears on the TV. A lot of it is conducted on behalf of corporate businesses rather than individuals, and probably involves more time on the phone or at the computer than jumping around tailing suspicious characters or physically searching for clues. Private investigators are constrained by many limitations. Unlike the police, they have no authority to question anyone who does not wish to speak to them, they are not legally allowed to search property without the owner’s consent and they do not generally have the same access as the police to resources like criminal records or car registration databases.
Venturing into unfamiliar territory of any sort is never easy, and exploring the field of private investigation has been a total minefield for us. We were approached by many firms and individuals in several countries, all claiming to have the relevant expertise. Where do you start? How do you choose? Who do you trust?
Over the course of four years, we’ve employed several different investigation teams of various sizes and structures. While each of these teams has been working on the case we have continued to review our progress and explore new strategies and options. When we have taken on a new firm or person it is not necessarily because we have been dissatisfied with the work of the existing or previous team. It is simply that lines of inquiry can hit a brick wall, and it is difficult for investigators to maintain the same level of motivation over a long period if results are not forthcoming. Different people have different ideas and often someone with something extra to bring to the search will come along. When it seems the investigation has stalled or needs a fresh impetus, we have responded by changing or adding to the team to keep the search moving forward. It must be said, though, that the time and energy it takes to brief a new team is immense. Just bringing them up to speed is an exhausting and emotional process.
Our first investigators, the Spanish company Método 3, began working for us in October. With private investigations technically illegal in Portugal, we felt the closest we could get would be a firm from somewhere on the Iberian Peninsula, which would have the advantage of familiarity with local systems, culture and geography and the best network of contacts in the region. M3 also had links to the Spanish police, who, in turn, had good connections with the Portuguese police.
We assembled all the source material we could for the investigators, passing on my detailed chronology of events and the research we were compiling, making endless lists of potential witnesses – some of whom we knew the police had interviewed, many more we suspected they had not – and reported sightings of little girls who could have been Madeleine. As a result of the huge publicity the case had been given, the police and press had been overwhelmed by such reports from the outset. Sometimes ‘Madeleine’ has been seen in different countries, thousands of miles apart, on the same day. These tip-offs needed to be sifted and any credible information followed up.
We have no doubt that M3 made significant strides, but unfortunately, in mid-December, one of their senior investigators gave an overly optimistic interview to the media. He implied that the team were close to finding Madeleine and declared that he hoped she would be home by Christmas. Gerry and I did not pay much heed to these bullish assertions. While we believed they’d been made in an attempt to cast the search in a positive light, we knew that such public declarations would not be helpful. Credibility is so important. That glitch apart, M3 worked very hard for us and, just for the record, their fees were very low: most of the money they were paid was for verified expenses. Although we went on to employ new teams, we maintain good relations with M3 today. We had the sense that they genuinely cared about Madeleine’s fate, something that, sadly, we have found we cannot take for granted.
We had one particularly bad experience with a man named Kevin Halligen (or Richard, as we knew him). Halligen was the CEO of a private-investigation firm called Oakley International which was hired by Madeleine’s Fund for six months from the end of March 2008. Oakley’s proposal and overall strategy were streets ahead of all the others we’d considered and the company came highly recommended. As the sums of money involved were pretty hefty, we agreed that our contract with them would be split into three phases with a break clause at the end of each phase. This gave us an opportunity to terminate the contract at any of these points if we wished to do so without incurring financial penalties. An independent consultant was also employed by the fund to liaise with Oakley and oversee the work they were doing.
The first and second phases of the contract ran fairly smoothly. Oakley had put in place systems to gather, collate, prioritize and follow up the information coming in as a result of appeals Gerry and I made around the first anniversary of Madeleine’s abduction. There is little doubt that at that stage progress was being made.
During the third phase, however, we began to have concerns. Feedback appeared to be less forthcoming and contact with certain members of the Oakley team dropped off. At first we couldn’t be sure whether this was a manifestation of the inevitable waning motivation I’ve mentioned or of a more troubling problem. Rumours about Halligen prompted us to make inquiries before we decided whether or not we should extend our contract with Oakley. To cut a long story short, we chose not to do so. The termination of the contract, in September 2008, was quite acrimonious, and unfortunately, that was not the end of it.
Several months later, one of the investigators subcontracted by Oakley contacted us to demand payment for his services. We had already settled Oakley’s bill for this work months before, but apparently the company had not paid him. He was not the only one. Over time several more unpaid subcontractors came to light. We were upset that, although a lot of hard work had been done on Madeleine’s behalf, it seemed money provided by her fund might not ever have reached the people who had earned it.