Madeleine (21 page)

In the early weeks, I gave my fullest attention to all information passed on to us, including reports from every psychic, medium, dowser, diviner, visionary and dreamer, you name it, though I’d never in my life before had dealings with mystics of any description.

There were a couple of ‘visionary’ experiences in particular I took very seriously. One of them had come through prayer which, at the time, gave it even greater credibility in my eyes. I begged the police to look into these. They were very sceptical, to put it mildly. By now any police officer reading this will no doubt be smiling ruefully or shaking his or her head – whatever many psychics, mediums, dowsers, diviners, visionaries and dreamers tell you about helping the police with investigations, most officers won’t have anything to do with them.

For several months we invested some time and even resources in following up reports from some of the thousands of psychics who have contacted us; time and resources that would, with hindsight, have been better used in more orthodox investigative work. Much of the information we received, and still receive, is extremely vague. Describing a white house near a dirt track is not helpful. There are millions of white houses in the world and millions of dirt tracks.

A few years down the line, my experience has turned me from open-minded ingénue into confirmed sceptic. Sometimes a very resentful sceptic. Well, they can’t all be right, can they? Madeleine can’t be in a thousand different locations. Even after Gerry and I decided enough was enough, family and friends have felt obliged to pursue information that has found its way to them, occasionally travelling overseas at their own expense,
just
in case
.

Just in case. This is at the core of what I find most upsetting about the visions of the psychics et al. In our desperation to find Madeleine we are extremely vulnerable, and in our position it is very difficult to ignore any information. Even though Gerry and I are scientists by inclination and profession, we still get reeled in. In some letters, a shifting of responsibility, laced with emotional blackmail, comes into play. ‘Well, it’s up to you now,’ psychics might write. ‘I’ve done my bit,’ thus discharging what they feel is their duty to Madeleine. Some have gone a step further and added, ‘I suppose it depends how much you want to find your daughter.’

Having said all this, I don’t mean to sound critical of or ungrateful to the majority of psychics who, I’m sure, pass on their reports with the best of motives. But as is the case in any group of people, there are some who perhaps do so in order to feel important or involved and others, of course, who are simply looking for publicity. What I am trying to emphasize is the emotional pressure all this information can have on the recipient. Almost invariably it isn’t helpful; sometimes it saps our time and energy and leaves us feeling wretched. And that, in turn, can hamper our search for Madeleine. So over the years I have learned how to deal with it. If it doesn’t have close to 100 per cent credibility, it goes into the lowest-priority action pile. We need to protect ourselves, too.

Tuesday, 22 May 2007. Fiona, Dave and the girls left Praia da Luz at 6.30am. It was hard for me and probably even harder for them. I know how badly they wanted to be there for us, helping in whatever way they could to try to make our existence a tiny bit easier. But they had jobs to go back to, and they needed to restore some normality to their lives. It was some time before the magnitude of the chasm that divided us from our holiday group became fully apparent to me. While Fiona, who was closest to me and has remained such a wonderful support, was probably the most deeply affected, like the others, she
had
to move on, whereas we would always remain in limbo until Madeleine was found, or until we learned the truth about what had happened to her. It wasn’t that I ever envied our friends their contentment: it was simply a harsh fact that while they would increasingly be able, to a degree, to set this terrible event apart and carry on with their daily lives, we couldn’t.

For us, there was no question of leaving Luz. Wherever Madeleine was now, this was the last place we had seen her, held her, talked to her, and it would have been tantamount to leaving her there. When we went home, we vowed, it would be as our family of five.

At lunchtime, Gerry arrived back in Praia da Luz with Clarence. My first impressions of Clarence were good. He was very friendly and knowledgeable, and, most importantly, he seemed genuinely concerned about Madeleine: it was clear that to him this was not just about a challenging secondment. He and Gerry had chatted non-stop during the two-and-a-half-hour flight to Faro. When Gerry had told Clarence about Jane Tanner’s sighting he was astounded that this still hadn’t been made public. We decided we would really push the PJ to release this critical piece of information in the hope of identifying this man and child.

My cousin Anne-Marie also joined us today. It was great to have her there. She is intelligent and practical but fun and easygoing with it. As a child I’d spent every summer holiday with Anne and her brothers on the Isle of Man, and we’ve always been very close. She and Michael were incredible, coming and going in relays, with their spells in Portugal sometimes overlapping so that they were both with us at the same time.

Many people, especially the local Portuguese, had suggested we would benefit from visiting the shrine at Fátima, a notable place of worship for Roman Catholics that draws over 6 million pilgrims a year. Although I was aware of the shrine, and of the Marian apparitions to three shepherd children there in 1917, I didn’t know a great deal about it. The more I learned, the keener I became to make the trip.

We’d arranged to go to Fátima the following day – our twentieth day without Madeleine – so part of Tuesday afternoon was spent preparing for that. In the evening, Gerry’s sister Phil flew in from Glasgow. It was so good to see her. From the first hours after Madeleine’s disappearance, Phil had been our linchpin at home, coordinating family, friends, other helpers and the media and campaigning tirelessly. We all had dinner together. I was struck that night by how united the two sides of our family had become in such a short space of time. They seemed to be merging into one, and what an amazingly strong and loving alliance it was. It was hard to consider myself lucky – it still is – but without doubt all of us, Gerry, myself, Madeleine, Sean and Amelie, are blessed to be part of such a family.

Wednesday 23 May was Clarence’s first full day in Portugal as our media liaison and spokesperson, and it was going to be one on which his assistance would be essential. He’ll kill me for mentioning this, but he managed to oversleep. To be fair, it was a particularly early start as we had the 250-mile journey to Fátima ahead of us. When our car and driver arrived, a knock on the door summoned a somewhat dishevelled and bleary-eyed Clarence. ‘Oh, right, oops!’ he said. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’ And he was as good as his word. In no time at all he was on parade and in firefighting mode, which, I have to say, he does impressively well. Clarence is a force of nature. He is always organizing something, always on the phone to somebody. When he disembarked from a plane after the shortest of flights and switched on his phones he’d find fifty texts and fifty missed calls or voicemails.

My desire to go to Fátima had been increasing steadily over the preceding few days. As we neared our destination, I was filled with nervous anticipation and a peculiar excitement. Seconds before we arrived Gerry received a phone call from Gordon Brown. After their conversation Gerry relayed his message of support and encouragement to me, commenting on the marked empathy and sincerity in Mr Brown’s voice.

At the shrine the media presence was as heavy and intense as we had known it so far. Yet somehow, on this day and in this place, I was able to ignore the huge camera lenses barely a couple of centimetres from my face as if they were not there at all. I was equally oblivious to the swarms of other pilgrims. I only remember feeling ‘drawn in’ and captivated by the beauty of the shrine.

Walking through the central plaza, a potent sense of calm and hope descended on me. The vast, open space triggered a feeling of freedom and a strange but pleasant temporary weightlessness. The bells in the basilica began to ring out ‘Immaculate Mary’. Almost instantly a tight knot developed in my stomach, my heart began to race and I started to cry. I could see Michelle and me standing in our classroom, aged six or seven, singing all the verses of ‘Immaculate Mary’. I thought of Michelle and of the long and nourishing friendship we shared. I ached for Madeleine to have a best friend like Michelle. I ached for her to be given that opportunity. Please God, let it be so.

During the couple of hours we spent at the shrine, we were able to attend one of the Masses being celebrated and were also allowed some time to pray privately in one of the small chapels. Before leaving, we lit five candles outside the Chapel of Apparitions, one for each member of our family. I kissed Madeleine’s candle and prayed with all my heart that Our Lady of Fátima would keep her arms safely around our daughter.

As we made our way back to our car, many well-wishers, most of them Portuguese, embraced us and squeezed our hands tightly. The sincerity of their desire for us to be reunited with Madeleine was unquestionable. We received various gifts we still treasure, including a child’s set of wooden rosary beads, which remains around Cuddle Cat’s neck to this day. The strength and encouragement we drew from this incredible demonstration of solidarity and compassion was immense.

That night I wrote a few words in my journal summing up our visit to Fátima. Not a bad place to begin. From this point on I began to make regular entries at night, or in odd moments during the day.

It was with our spirits renewed, then, that we attended our first informal meeting with the Portuguese police. In response to our pleas, they had at long last agreed to see us at the British Consulate. To say that we were grateful to be given this ‘special treatment’ (as it would be described by the Portuguese media) is a huge understatement. It was 24 May: three whole weeks since Madeleine had been taken. And to our huge relief, the next day the PJ finally released Jane’s description of the man who had in all probability carried Madeleine away.

The officers we met on that occasion, and would continue to meet regularly, were the two men ultimately in charge of the investigation. Guilhermino Encarnação, chief of the Algarve PJ, based in Faro, we had encountered at the police station in Portimão on the day after Madeleine’s abduction. The other was Luís Neves, head of the DCCB (Direcção Central de Combate ao Banditismo) in Lisbon. The DCCB, the equivalent of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, dealt with gang crime. Neither man spoke English, so an interpreter was always present, usually Angela Morado, the British proconsul.

Encarnação was sixty years of age at the time. He was quiet and certainly the less forthcoming of the two. He appeared to be what you might call ‘old school’ (indeed, we learned later that he had joined the PJ in 1973, a year before the dictatorship was overthrown). It took us a while to warm to him. Although we did feel that our rapport with him improved slightly in the course of subsequent meetings, it’s probably fair to say that neither Gerry nor I ever felt entirely comfortable with him.

Luís Neves was a totally different character. He was our age and had a son who was the same age or maybe just a little older than Madeleine. He seemed intelligent, personable and strong, open to suggestions and new ideas. My initial impressions of him were all positive. I wrote in my diary that night:

A good fella; on the ball; humanitarian, sensitive.

We felt relaxed with Neves and he and Gerry seemed to get on well. He was quite tactile and would greet us warmly, often patting Gerry on the back or giving him a brotherly hug or a little punch on the arm. As Gerry churned out suggestions and strategies, he would joke about how my husband would make a great detective.

We also became quite friendly with Ricardo Paiva, one of the detectives based at Portimão. Because he spoke good English he was drafted in as the police liaison officer for Gerry and me, and as a result we spent a fair amount of time with him. He came to our apartment at the Ocean Club on several occasions. My apologies for the mugs of instant coffee we were always handing him became a bit of a standing joke. I’m sure the Portuguese hate what the British call coffee. Ricardo was probably in his early thirties, and married with a son the same age as Sean and Amelie. Both Gerry and I thought he seemed a decent enough guy, quiet but pleasant.

I don’t think I was naive in believing that we built up a good and friendly relationship with these officers over the coming months, although subsequent events have certainly made me question this judgement. We would have eight of these informal meetings, one approximately every seven to ten days, and the crumbs Encarnação and Neves gave us were meat and drink to me. They made me feel that at least something was happening, even if I cannot be sure now just how much of what we were told was true. I longed for the meeting dates to come round. They gave me something to look forward to and somehow brought me a tiny bit closer to Madeleine. But while they were better than nothing, they never repaid my hopes of them.

Luís and Guilhermino usually volunteered little but would respond quite candidly to direct questions. We were often surprised at the detail they were prepared to share with us. In fact, the British police once suggested that we might be better off putting any questions or requests directly to the PJ, as we seemed to have more influence with them than they did.