Ben (34 page)

The thing is, I wouldn’t change places with them for one second. I couldn’t believe it when the Portuguese police came out and accused them of playing some part in Madeleine’s disappearance. It’s hard to know what to accept in the press sometimes, but it seemed clear that Kate and Gerry were being named as suspects.
The worst I had to put up with was the whispering on the island and the innuendo. I can’t imagine how it must feel to have that accusation levelled at you officially, by the very people meant to be hunting for your child. My brother Stephen can identify with it – and I would say that carrying that weight has destroyed him. Simon had also had to endure press speculation for a while in the weeks after Ben went missing. Only he knows how it affected him afterwards. For the sake of Kate and Gerry’s other children, I pray they recover.

The worst part about the parents being identified as suspects is them knowing that for every minute the police spend putting together a case against them, the trail of the real culprit is getting colder.
That
I can empathise with. British police follow multiple leads. I got the feeling the Portuguese preferred a one-at-a-time approach, like the Kos squad. It’s like they work down a list, ticking avenues off one at a time. The idea of pursuing several at once seems alien to them. Kate and Gerry could put up with anything if it meant helping Madeleine be found. Knowing they were holding up the investigation by being accused must have crucified them.

Even worse than the police charges against them, in my opinion, the McCanns have also had to endure a public backlash. As the circumstances of Madeleine’s disappearance became common knowledge, a lot of people questioned how the children could have been left alone while the parents dined in another part of the resort. Some people thought it was normal to do that, and to trust the hotel complex’s night-time security set-up, on top of the parents nipping back regularly to check for sounds of crying. All I know is that that couple will have to live with that knowledge for the rest of their lives – long after Madeleine is found.

The twenty-four-hour news, the internet forums, Facebook and Myspace pages – these were all unthinkable in 1991. Coverage of Madeleine’s disappearance saturated the news in the UK and beyond for weeks and months. Even today, she’s not far from the media’s thoughts. For all I know, Ben in 2007 would have earned the same attention. But there was something else I noticed during the search for Madeleine, something I had been told could never happen.

British police were in Portugal.

Let me say again: I believe that anything that speeds up the return of Madeleine McCann to her distraught family should be done. I do not and will never begrudge them anything. But where were the British officers searching for Ben? If not in 1991 then in 2007? He was still missing. I was still campaigning and fighting and begging the authorities to agree to send UK men and women over to Greece. Yet I was told it was impossible. I was told we needed to respect the local agencies and let them do their work. The Foreign Office, the Home Office and even Number 10 all said the same thing. But here were British police officers present in Praia da Luz. They weren’t there to top up their tans, so what were they doing there that they couldn’t do in Kos?

I was angry. Not that the McCanns had managed to achieve this, only that I had been denied. Wasn’t my child worth the same international effort? Were my letters to the prime minister on incorrect paper or not in the right handwriting? Someone had to tell me why the search for my son seemed to be less important than the hunt for this poor young girl.

Sixteen years. Sixteen years I had been hammering on the door of Number 10 Downing Street, the Foreign Office and Buckingham
Palace. Sixteen years of beseeching the British government to intervene in the international police operation to find Ben. We were wading through treacle in Greece. Their red tape was like rope around our limbs. Time over there, it seemed, meant nothing.

‘Why are they ignoring
us
?’ I was shouting at the television and I didn’t care. Watching those boys in blue run around the Algarve was like having a politician whisper in my ear, ‘You’re not good enough.’ It was as though they were saying I –
Ben
– didn’t matter to them. Again, perhaps it was the media spotlight that prompted the sudden co-operation. Then again, perhaps not. It didn’t matter. I’d been fighting for so long that one more battle would not break me. Clearly the excuses I had been given meant nothing. I needed to pull myself together and start fighting again. Harder this time, and empowered by the knowledge that I was right – and that they knew it.

Letters, phone calls, media interviews, public support. These were my weapons, my tools. If not for justice, then at least for equality. It was soul-destroying knowing that others had achieved what I so craved. But it had to remain my target, not my grudge.

The year 2007 passed into 2008, 2008 into 2009. Then in 2010, I heard that I was getting somewhere. The doors I’d knocked on a hundred times were beginning to creak. Finally, in 2011, they started to open.

I have to take some of the blame for it not happening earlier. Perhaps I was too aggressive in my demands. I’d asked – too bluntly maybe? – for English police to take over Ben’s investigation. Maybe if I’d asked for less, suggested co-operation between the two national forces, that would have been more agreeable. After all, that is what I was assured had happened in Portugal.

It doesn’t matter now. All I care about is that in 2011, South Yorkshire Police finally reached agreement with the force in Kos. After twenty years of begging, the British police were officially joining the hunt.

Ben’s disappearance was going to be investigated as a ‘cold case’ – and South Yorkshire Police were
invited
to assist. That was the key word. They weren’t going to take over or run things, at least not on paper. In reality, after ten minutes in the company of Chief Superintendent Matt Fenwick and his cold-case team of Ian Harding, Simon Carter and three others, I knew where the impetus would be coming from. Forget the hi-tech equipment and money at their disposal, these men and women had something I’d never experienced in two decades: they cared passionately about finding Ben.

Not everyone saw the sudden British involvement as a positive. When I participated in a Greek television programme, I was asked why it had taken so long for British officers to reach Greek soil. The implication was that I had been abandoned by my own government for twenty years.

I said, ‘Because the British police needed permission to come here.’

The interviewer rolled her eyes. ‘Well, who in Britain needed to give permission?’

‘No one,’ I said. ‘It had to come from the Greek authorities.’

That was an awkward moment on live TV.

‘Why haven’t they given permission?’ she asked, suddenly enraged on my behalf.

‘I don’t know! Ask them! This is what I’ve been begging your government to do for twenty years.’

The interviewer was gobsmacked. Like so many of her countrymen, she thought the delay had been our police not wanting to be involved. Once she knew the problem lay at a Greek door, she promised no stone would be left unturned in exposing this.

The international PR battle was slowly swinging my way. With Matt and his team on my side, I thought the days of fighting bureaucracy would be over as well. I was wrong.

In early 2011, Ian Harding asked me if Ben had had the Guthrie test when he was born.

‘He might have done – what is it?’

‘It’s where doctors take a blood sample from a prick in the heel.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He definitely had that. I remember him screaming the place down.’

I could see that, despite his training, Ian was excited by the news.

‘Do you remember the hospital?’

‘Of course. The Pilgrim maternity ward in Boston. Why?’

‘Because if they did the test, there’s a chance they will still have the sample. And if they have the sample, that means they have Ben’s DNA.’

It was only a small step but as far as I was concerned, it proved how seriously South Yorkshire Police were taking Ben’s case. Unfortunately, Pilgrim Hospital seemed to have studied the same red tape manual as Interpol.

‘Do you have Ben Needham’s Guthrie sample still on file?’ Ian’s request was simple enough.

‘Yes,’ came the reply.

‘Great, can we have it?’

‘No problem. But as Mr Needham is over eighteen years old, we’ll need his consent.’

‘If I could get his consent I wouldn’t need the sample!’

That drove Ian insane for months. Every time he thought he had got somewhere, there was another legal hoop to jump through, and of course it all took valuable time. I was used to waiting. South Yorkshire Police weren’t. They had an investigation to get their teeth into.

It didn’t matter what Ian and his colleagues said or did, the answer from Pilgrim’s lawyers remained the same: no consent, no sample. It eventually took a High Court judge in London to rule on the issue. If, he decreed, Simon and I were to give our written consent, then Pilgrim could release Ben’s DNA with legal impunity. Obviously we did that in a flash (although considering Simon’s name isn’t on Ben’s birth certificate, I’m still not clear why his permission was needed).

It was an exhausting and expensive waste of everyone’s time just to reach the starting line, but we got there. Finally, Matt Fenwick and his team could start their investigation.

Their first step was to get Ben’s details logged on the British DNA database. Now every force in the land could access it, should they discover anything to compare it to. Most western countries also have a database but – stupidly, in my opinion – each one has to request and ‘accept’ every new entry. You’d think Ian would be able to press a button and have Ben’s DNA show up on DNA lists all around the world. In fact, as I write, it’s been accepted only by America, Australia, Turkey and Spain. Everywhere else it’s being
held up by the dreaded red tape. Greece, surprise surprise, is yet to have a database. But they’re getting there.

South Yorkshire Police have been thorough and professional – all I ever asked for. Apart from requesting updated copies of all files from Greece, they also asked if we, as a family, would consider undergoing ‘regression’ therapy to see if we could recall details of the day Ben disappeared that might be hidden in our minds. Stephen, obviously, had reservations after his experience with a hypnotist before. But this was different and, watching me, Mum, Dad and Danny all undergo the same process calmed him.

With a clearer picture of the events of July 1991, Matt Fenwick was able to draw up a plan of progress. The first stage was to go through all original paperwork with a fine-toothed comb. Then he would make his move.

I’m so sad that it took another child being snatched for Ben’s case to be brought back into the spotlight, but I’m grateful for the results. Without the global attention on Madeleine McCann, it’s extremely likely I would not have been granted my wish of British police involvement in the search for Ben. The downside for me, personally, has been the constant questioning about Madeleine. I have nothing to do with her case. It’s unfair to keep questioning me as though I’m an expert. I’m not an authority; I’m just another mum.

Having said that, my knowledge of the child-trafficking industry in southern Europe has given me one or two insights. For example, based on everything I’ve learned about illegal adoption in Greece, I find it unusual that the abductor took Madeleine and not her twin siblings. If you trade in children, it makes sense
to steal them as young as possible. Those babies could, theoretically, be raised without ever questioning their past. Madeleine was nearly four years old. She would remember things. She would prove a more challenging target.

Which is why, to my mind, it points to a case of opportunism rather than planning. Leighanna used to wake up all the time when she was three and four. Sometimes she’d go to the bathroom then back to bed. Other times she’d come and find me to tuck her back in. I think Madeleine probably did the same. She wakes up – maybe she’s had a nightmare, maybe she’s hot or thirsty – and she tries to find her parents. She looks in the bathroom, she looks in their bedroom and she looks in the lounge. There’s one door she hasn’t tried so she turns the handle and finds herself outside the ground floor villa. She’s half-asleep, she’s three years old and she has no sense of direction and no fear. The only thing she’s interested in is finding her family.

And that’s when I think she must have been taken.

God knows what theories people have about Ben’s disappearance. Unless it helps find him, I don’t want to know. So when I was approached by an intermediary to meet Kate McCann, I was extremely reluctant.
Why would she want to meet me? I can’t help her. If anything, looking at what I’ve gone through could make her feel worse.
Still, victims of other crimes have support groups. Perhaps it would help us emotionally to share our pain.

Then I received a letter from Kate suggesting a meeting so I said yes – providing it was a completely private encounter. I was happy to speak to her, mother-to-mother. For once, I did not want to be surrounded by cameras and Dictaphones and the full media circus.