Madeleine (17 page)

We had been given a key to the church so that we could go there and pray whenever we wished. We cherished these little oases of relative peace and solitude. One night early in the week – I think it was that Tuesday evening – while we were praying privately at Nossa Senhora da Luz, Gerry had an extraordinary spiritual experience. He suddenly became aware of a long tunnel with light at the far end of it. He felt himself enter the tunnel and, as he went deeper and deeper inside, it became wider and wider and brighter and brighter. He had never known anything like this before and he immediately interpreted it as a sign urging us to do absolutely everything within our power to find Madeleine ourselves. From that moment he was convinced that we did not have to sit back passively, issuing statements and waiting for others to bring her home. We needed to take the initiative. Straight away he shared this revelation with me and tried to explain what it meant to him. We had to start right now to mobilize all the resources available to us.

His ‘vision’ – I don’t know what else to call it – in that beautiful little church had a huge impact on Gerry. It was this experience that laid the foundations of our organized campaign to find our daughter.

From the minute he got up the next morning, Gerry was on a mission. Among the first people he spoke to was the ambassador, John Buck. The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, also happened to call him. He pleaded with them both to try to improve the way the investigation and the search were being handled. We needed it to be far better than this, he told them. They knew that, too, I’m sure. Many friends and colleagues also heard from Gerry that day, asking them to think hard.
What
could help us to find Madeleine?
Who
could help? ‘Think about your contacts, then think about the contacts of your contacts. Can they help?’

Gerry’s mobile phone appeared to be permanently attached to his ear the whole day long. I can remember even feeling slightly irritated that he was able to function in this way and to be so busy. Why was his pain for Madeleine not crippling him, as mine was me? He was simply responding to the challenge he’d set himself the evening before to leave no stone unturned – a phrase that became a rallying cry after he used it in a statement to the press at the end of that week. I will for ever be immensely proud of him and thankful for his determination, effort and sheer hard work so early on, when we were both still raw and reeling. Although the ultimate goal of all this work hasn’t so far been achieved, there is no doubt that we (and Madeleine) would have been in a much worse place without it, and who knows what it might yet yield?

There were so many people, our family and friends in particular, who desperately wanted to help. Gerry’s call to arms spurred them into action and gradually they began to pursue their own avenues. The very next evening Gerry’s sister Phil sent a chain email round the world asking every recipient to help find our little girl. It came with a downloadable poster featuring a photograph of Madeleine, the one of her holding the tennis balls, taken two days before she vanished. This led the following day to the first conversation, between Phil, a teacher, and Calum Macrae, a former pupil of hers and an IT whizzkid, about establishing a website for Madeleine. Jon Corner had opened up the file transfer protocol he’d set up on 4 May to circulate Madeleine’s image to family, friends and other supporters. No, I didn’t know what one of those was, either: basically, it provided access via a password to a repository for photographs and other material, allowing people to share their resources. Helpers could post their material on a dedicated server via the FTP and use that supplied by others to create flyers, posters and so on. The press already had the password, which gave them access to pictures and video footage.

Already there were people and organizations coming forward with offers of a reward for information leading to Madeleine’s safe return. We heard that a colleague of mine in general practice had, amazingly, pledged £100,000. A good friend in Liverpool, a police officer, warned us that we would need a great deal more than this to tempt anybody connected with the crime to give Madeleine up. It seemed a huge sum of money to us but, being a policeman, he was more used to dealing with criminals than we were.

Alex Woolfall told us that the
News of the World
, spearheading a group of other benefactors – including Bill Kenwright, the theatre impresario and chairman of Everton FC, businessmen Sir Richard Branson and Sir Philip Green and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling – was prepared to put up a reward ‘package’ totalling £1.5 million. It would involve companies such as British Airways and Vodafone helping with publicity and awareness initiatives. They needed to know by the following day whether we would like them to proceed. This may sound like a no-brainer, but we had to be careful. We hadn’t a clue how such rewards worked. Would the police be involved? Who would coordinate any ransom negotiations? How would we actually get hold of all this money if necessary? And, most importantly, what were the potential pitfalls? Surely it could lead to fraudulent claims that might waste valuable time and resources. We had no idea, either, what implications this might have for Madeleine’s safety.

Under pressure to make a decision, we solicited advice from various quarters, which confirmed that this kind of thing could indeed be a bit of a double-edged sword. We felt that, on balance, the pros outweighed the cons, thanked all the participants and accepted the offer, as much because we did not want to turn down any corporate help as anything else. With the £100,000 from my GP colleague and a staggering £1 million added by Stephen Winyard – the owner of Stobo Castle spa in the Scottish Highlands and a man who had so far never even met us – the rewards promised now totalled £2.6 million.

I went with Nicky to an Anglican service at Nossa Senhora da Luz, which the Catholic and Anglican communities shared for their services and celebrations. I remember that there was a film crew inside the church. How this came to be allowed I have no idea – I have always considered a church to be a sanctuary, a function that is especially important in times of personal difficulty – but everyone was trying their best to do the right thing and I’m sure it was with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, I wasn’t holding up too well and having to put up with a giant camera lens pointing at me even here added greatly to my agitation. Around the first anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance, I saw some footage of me coming out of the church after that service and I barely recognized myself. Nic was practically having to carry me – and she’s only five foot three!

By contrast, in the following weeks and months I would be subjected to cruel comments describing me as ‘cold’ and ‘poker-faced’. Had these critics not seen the television pictures? Or is it that people have short and selective memories? It is true that as I grew a little stronger I was better able to control my grief in public. I was also terrified to show my emotions after the warnings I’d been given that this might influence Madeleine’s abductor. So if I seemed ‘poker-faced’, is it any wonder? But that was beside the point, really. Who were these people to dictate how the mother of a missing child should appear? Judging others and expressing those opinions is part of human nature, it seems, but it’s astounding how some individuals feel entitled to do so, and with such vitriol, from a position of total ignorance.

*

A week had now passed since Madeleine’s abduction. Later that day, Thursday 10 May, the Portuguese police held a press conference, at which they released a photograph of a pair of the same Marks and Spencer pyjamas Madeleine had been wearing and confirmed that they were winding down the ground search.

Meanwhile, Gerry and I, along with a couple of our friends, were called back to the police station in Portimão. The police were much friendlier on this occasion and the junior officers, at least, gave the impression that by this time they were working very hard. Gerry was taken in to be interviewed while I remained downstairs. I made use of the long wait I anticipated by sitting down with a notebook, pen and my camera, containing dated photographs of the holiday, and trying to write a detailed account of everything that had happened the week before.

The interview system we’d encountered on our previous visit – questions asked in Portuguese and verbally translated into English; answers given in English, translated into Portuguese and typed up by the interviewing officer – was exhausting for everyone. At the end of the interview the statement prepared by the officer would be printed out in Portuguese, verbally translated, on the spot, into English, and then signed by the interviewee. It was obvious that at every stage of the process the scope for mistakes in translation and misunderstandings was considerable.

I sat in the waiting area for eight hours before I was told that it was now too late for me to be interviewed and I should go home and come back the next day. Gerry was there for thirteen hours. When he finally returned to the apartment he related how Matt had been almost hysterical during his interview. Gerry had heard him shouting and crying. Apparently, it had been put to Matt that he’d handed Madeleine out through the window to a third party. It was like something out of
Life on Mars
.

Alan Pike was concerned about my wellbeing and asked for my rescheduled interview to be postponed for a few days. The PJ couldn’t have considered it all that important: it was 6 September before I was interviewed again.

One of the offers of help we’d received came from a paralegal based in Leicester, via a colleague of Gerry’s. He worked for a firm specializing in family law, the International Family Law Group (IFLG). It was difficult to know what this company could do but we decided it would be worth meeting them to discuss the possibilities. So on the afternoon of Friday 11 May, the paralegal, accompanied by a barrister, flew out to Portugal. We’d warned them to keep their arrival at our apartment low-key, so as not to attract any unwanted attention from the media lying in wait outside. In they came, dressed in bow ties and braces – the barrister was even wearing a panama hat. I heaved a sigh. They might as well have had great big arrows pointing at their heads reading ‘lawyer’. Not to worry: it was their presence and input that were important.

As well as this initial meeting we had two further sessions with the lawyers over the course of that weekend to explore how they might be able to assist us. There had already been some speculation in the press, based on those erroneous reports that when Madeleine was taken we were dining ‘hundreds of metres away’, that we could face prosecution for negligence. After examining the proximity of the Tapas restaurant to apartment 5A, the barrister first of all assured us that our behaviour could not be deemed negligent and was indeed ‘well within the bounds of reasonable parenting’. This had hardly been our biggest concern, but it was reassuring to hear, all the same. The lawyers then talked to us about applying for an order to make Madeleine a ward of court.

Wardship status gives the courts certain statutory powers to act on a child’s behalf in any legal disputes and to bypass some of the data-protection laws that deal with access to information (hotel guest records, for example, and airline passenger lists), when knowledge of this information is considered to be in the interests of the child in question. Such an order could be useful in acquiring records not otherwise available to us that might be relevant in our case. We decided to proceed with an application, which was granted in due course.

We also discussed the offers of help that were now pouring in, including many financial pledges. Gerry and I were at a loss to know how to handle these. One of Gerry’s colleagues, for example, had called to say that the staff in his department wanted to make a donation to assist with the search for Madeleine but didn’t know how or where to deposit it. IFLG told us that we needed to set up a ‘fighting fund’. They would devise the objectives of the fund and instruct a leading charity law firm, Bates Wells and Braithwaite (BWB), to draw up articles of association.

At the last two meetings the barrister and legal assistant were joined by a consultant called Hugh, whose profession was not at first explained (‘Just call me Hugh,’ he said enigmatically). It transpired that he was a former intelligence officer, now a kidnap negotiator and counsellor. We were told that an anonymous (but evidently very generous) donor had set aside a considerable sum of money for us to put towards the cost of hiring a private-investigation company if we wished. Hugh had been brought in by a firm called Control Risks, which was primed to help. This company is an independent specialist risk consultancy with offices and investigators on five continents and their main line of work is corporate security. It was a big gesture, we were immensely grateful and it was good to know this option was available to us.

The first session Hugh attended, which took place at night, had something of a James Bond atmosphere to it, and not in a good way. I felt as if I’d entered a whole new world, and it was an extremely mysterious and frightening one. Perhaps the worst bit was a remark Hugh made about the reward that was on offer. He told us dispassionately that such an inducement would have ‘put a price on Madeleine’s head’. I was very upset. The thought of anything we had done jeopardizing Madeleine’s life was too much to bear.

By the Sunday evening, we found ourselves giving our statements again, this time to a couple of detectives from Control Risks. We were concerned that parts of the statements we had made to the Portuguese police, especially on that first day, might have been lost in translation. We also felt that these accounts were not sufficiently thorough and wanted to have every detail we could remember registered properly. Unfortunately, in our haste to pass the new statements on to the PJ, we made the mistake of assuming that the transcripts would be correct and discovered only many months later that these, too, contained inaccuracies. And they had been given and recorded in English! A word of advice, in case you are ever unlucky enough to find yourself involved in a criminal investigation in
any
country: always make sure that you read your statement, in your own language, after you’ve provided it.