Madeleine (27 page)

Gerry responded with a phone call and Sir Clement invited the seven of us there at that time – Gerry and myself with Sean and Amelie, plus Trisha, Sandy and Justine – to lunch the following day. He would be heading back to the UK a few hours later. Sir Clement was eighty-three by then, but his intellect was still razor-sharp (he was appearing on the demanding Radio 4 panel game
Just a
Minute
right up to his death in 2009). I’m usually very intimidated by people with brains the size of planets, but Clement was incredibly warm, funny and instantly likeable. His opening words were ‘Can I interest you in a strawberry vodka?’ It was midday.

I hesitated for a split second, rapidly trying to work out if he was joking. His expression, as always, was deadpan. Not wanting to appear unsociable, I responded, ‘Er, OK then. That would be nice.’ Of course, Clement’s remark about cooking decent meals was tongue-in-cheek: among his other accomplishments, he had trained as a chef and was for many years a food writer and restaurant critic. I can confirm that the lunch he prepared for us that day was bloody marvellous: watercress and egg salad followed by a chicken and mushroom risotto – the best risotto we’ve ever tasted before or since. Clement cheered us up with his lugubrious wit, and would continue to do so by email after his return to England.

There was another invitation a few days later, from the detective Ricardo Paiva and his wife, to dinner at their apartment in Lagoa Norte. We were pleased to accept. It was reassuring to have a close and amicable relationship with someone who was officially involved in our daughter’s case, even if it wasn’t perhaps the done thing to be socializing with one of the investigation team. It made us feel that Ricardo and his wife genuinely cared about us and, more importantly, about Madeleine. Sean and Amelie were very excited to meet their little boy – especially as he had lots of excitingly unfamiliar toys to share with them. Two other couples, neighbours of Ricardo’s, also joined us.

As far as such a thing was possible in my cold new world, it was a good evening, though I found it hard to allow myself to really relax and enjoy it. Ricardo made us a great martini and his wife had prepared a fantastic meal. She and their friends spoke only a little English, but it was an improvement on our Portuguese.

Meanwhile, on 2 July, we had moved out of the Ocean Club and into a rented villa, the cheapest we could find that suited our requirements (Gerry was now on unpaid leave), in Parque Luz, about ten minutes’ walk away. Apartment 4G was no longer available, and I think this perhaps prompted Mark Warner to try to ease us out. They had been good to us, but we had been with them for over two months by then and I can see that our presence must have been unsettling for their other guests. Like everyone – except for us, sadly – they had to move on. Sean and Amelie were still welcome at Toddler Club (and Mark Warner carried on allowing us to use their pool, too).

The move made sense for us as well. At the villa we had more privacy. We also rented a small flat at the Ocean Club for Justine. She had ended up doing a different job from the one she’d signed up for – media liaison in addition to campaign management – and was having to spend more time in Portugal than either we or she had anticipated. Trish and Sandy came with us, sleeping on a fold-down bed in the bedroom we were using as our office or, when other people came to stay, taking themselves off to Justine’s apartment.

On Thursday 11 July, Fiona, Rachael and Russell were back in Portugal. The PJ wanted to ‘clarify’ their statements, evidently in relation to their sightings of Robert Murat, by holding an
acareação
, a ‘confrontational interview’, between the witnesses and the
arguido
.

This legal procedure involves bringing interviewees together effectively to argue the toss about the inconsistencies in their accounts, in front of an arbitrator, with a view to reaching a consensus. Russ, Rachael and Fiona had to sit in a semicircle with Murat and his lawyer, Francisco Pagarete – so close together, Russell recounted later, that his knee was virtually touching Murat’s. They waited for a while because the police said Sílvia Batista would be joining them. For some reason she never did.

I’m sure this interviewing technique must have been incredibly uncomfortable and stressful for everyone. The statements given by Russell, Rachael and Fiona were read out in turn, in Portuguese, by the questioning officer, Paulo Ferreira, and then translated by an interpreter. Guilhermino Encarnação was also present. They were asked to confirm that their respective accounts were correct, which they all did. During the reading of each statement, they told us, Murat leaned forward, staring intensely at the person who had given it. His statement was then read out in Portuguese, which made it difficult for Fiona, Rachael or Russ to dispute it in any detail, and he was asked some questions, again in Portuguese. Many of these he was advised not to answer by Pagarete (as was his right as an
arguido
), and on one occasion he and his lawyer left the room altogether for a private conversation. The only responses given by Murat comprehensible to our friends were that he hadn’t been outside our apartment on 3 May and that the three of them were lying. When we saw them afterwards they were noticeably incensed by Murat’s manner during the
acareação
.

The next day Gerry left for London to attend the National Police Bravery Awards. We had been invited there by the
Sun
, who sponsored the event and wanted to give us a special award. We didn’t feel comfortable with that. We hadn’t performed some brave deed, we had merely responded to the disaster that had befallen us as any parent would. They told us that was fine: we didn’t have to accept any tribute. All they wanted to do was support us. If we thought it would help, one or both of us could come along, whatever felt right. I was reluctant to leave the twins any more than was necessary so we decided that Gerry would go, and just say a few words to express our thanks to the police. He was pretty emotional, especially after a clip from the ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ film was shown, and so were quite a few of the police, apparently. They gave him a standing ovation. While he was in London he took the opportunity on the Friday to visit the CEOP headquarters, and spent a few hours there learning more about their work.

That weekend, the children and I flew out to the UK and were joined by Gerry in Yorkshire. Michael and Anne-Marie had asked us to stand as godparents to their children. Katie and Patrick had never been baptized as babies, and I think the decision to do this now had perhaps been precipitated by what had happened to us. It had concentrated everyone’s minds on how fragile life is, how it can be wrecked in an instant.

Naturally, we badly wanted to be at the baptism. I had not set foot in the UK since Madeleine’s abduction and although for me this was an emotional journey, it was not the same as ‘going home’. The press, however, were bound to see it that way, and we were worried they would turn up in force and spoil this family occasion. So, with the cooperation of the authorities in both countries, we kept it under the radar, and, thanks to the police, for once we managed to stay one step ahead of our media shadows, much to their annoyance when they eventually found out. Instead the church was patrolled by police – Skipton, Michael declared, had never seen so many – a rather more reassuring and less intrusive presence.

We flew back to Portugal early on the morning of Sunday 15 July – the day Danie Krugel, his team and his ‘matter orientation system’ arrived in Praia da Luz. He gave us some fairly vague information about the procedure and reaffirmed his machine’s 80 per cent success rate. He wouldn’t let us see any of the equipment because of the necessity to ‘protect his trade secrets’ while he awaited a patent.

No idea
at all
how it works. Seems ridiculous, but then no more than some of the psychic stuff we’ve already acted on and given time to.

We have got
nothing
to lose and have said that we will ‘leave no stone unturned’...

In spite of the cynical tone of my diary entry, we were actually both quite excited about the prospect of Danie’s work, though I think this was probably due more to the fact that
something
was happening which might take the investigation forward than to absolute faith in his methods. It might come to nothing, we knew that, but anything was better than the sense of stagnation we felt was beginning to seep in.

We still had plenty to do, whether it was coming up with campaign ideas to complement the investigation or trying to reply to the thousands of letters and emails we continued to receive. And emerging from those gruelling early weeks, we were able to devote more time to Sean and Amelie. We’d been so destroyed, so consumed by our pain and fear, that we felt our role as their parents had been compromised. We had all been robbed of so much, including the twins. Not only had they had their big sister snatched from them but we had been absent, physically and psychologically.

In mid-July I found Amelie standing in our room, looking at a photo of Madeleine in a frame by my bedside. ‘I miss my sister,’ she said, quite clearly. ‘Where has my sister gone?’ I was caught completely unawares. I realized I’d underestimated both her grasp of the situation and the scope of her vocabulary.

Maternal guilt often weighed heavily on my shoulders. The twins needed our love. They needed
us
. The capacity to love is limitless, I was often told, but I was so engulfed by Madeleine that I worried I might not have enough love left over for Sean and Amelie. Something else to beat myself up about. And not only did they need us, we needed them. Their love and laughter was the best medicine we could have asked for and we’ll be eternally grateful for that, and for them.

Wednesday 18 July. The start of a downward spiral for me. When I look back on our meeting with Neves and Encarnação that day I recognize it as a turning point: the beginning of what was to blow up into a whole new nightmare.

On the plus side, it could be said that we covered a lot of ground. But it was all incredibly deflating and some of it was downright stomach-churning. Once again the police shared details about Murat; once again they bemoaned the absence of hard evidence. My frustration with their lack of progress, combined with what they were actually telling us about him, whipped up a storm of fury in me that was completely out of character. It seems to me now as if for several months I was possessed by some demonic alien that infiltrated my thoughts and filled me with anger and hatred. I needed a face on which to pin all this rage, someone to blame. And although, as I now know, the PJ had no case against Murat, they handed him to me on a plate. Since they had insinuated throughout that he might be the person responsible for the unimaginable fear and pain suffered by our little girl, is it any wonder I felt as I did?

The meeting ended with a final body blow. Danie Krugel, on whom we had, irrationally, hung so much hope, had produced a report for the PJ based on his findings. His machine had recorded a ‘static signal’ from an area around the beach, close to or on the Rocha Negra cliff. Although this included villas, apartments and other buildings, the implication of the ‘static signal’ was that Madeleine was most likely to be dead and buried there.

I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. Each piece of bad news, regardless of how real or plausible it was, invariably plunged me into despair. There would be endless tears, out-of-control hysteria and feverish sessions of prayer. And there would be several visits to ‘my rocks’ – a quiet part of the beach away from the promenade. As swimmers and sunbathers preferred the sandy stretches, this area, where the rocks reached down to the water, was usually deserted, and afforded me some shelter and privacy. I still go back there on my visits to Praia da Luz to be on my own. Here I would simply sob to a friend on the phone for hours on end, sometimes without articulating a single word. Today was one of those days. I could feel myself sinking lower and lower into a black and lonely place. What I didn’t anticipate this time was just how long it would take me to climb out of it again.

There was one piece of good news. We heard that the UK’s National Policing Improvements Agency, in conjunction with the Portuguese police, were to conduct a new ground search. We’d been trying to establish the exact scope of previous searches, and pressing for another one, for ages. Finally, on 20 July, the NPIA received a request from the PJ for search advisory assistance. Progress! In recent weeks the PJ had seemed more receptive to the ideas of the UK police, especially since the arrival of José de Freitas, a SOCA officer from England. As José, whose parents were from Madeira, was fluent in Portuguese, he had been able to forge a rather better working relationship with the local police than had been achieved previously, and the PJ seemed to have become more willing to share information.

Before the new search a comprehensive geological survey, from air, land and sea, would be carried out. We found out only later (much later) that the UK team had been instructed by the PJ to proceed on the basis that Madeleine had been killed and her body dumped. They would be using GPR (ground-penetrating radar) for detecting ground disturbance, devices for penetrating walls and specialist dogs. The police files reveal that the NPIA were willing to assist with searches based on other suppositions but this had to be at the PJ’s request. Evidently there was no such request. No other theories were to be considered at this point, it seems.

This search, the second or maybe even the third over the same terrain, would encompass the land identified by Danie Krugel (it would later be extended to include both Robert Murat’s villa and apartment 5A at the Ocean Club). Although we didn’t, in our rational moments, set much store by his results, we were keen for this area to be checked just to make sure. And such a search didn’t necessarily mean turning up a body; it could reveal vital clues. By now we were more than familiar with cases where evidence had been missed the first time round and discovered on further searches (in one instance the UK police had told us about, a wallet sitting in a bush). At this stage, I was also still giving some credence to the information we were receiving from psychics, some of whom were suggesting that we should scour nearby territory again. Whatever everyone else’s reasons, we needed to be sure that everything had been done as meticulously and extensively as possible.