Another inexplicable aspect of the McCann version of events is this. Jane Tanner claims she saw a man carrying a sleeping child at 9.15pm. At the time she did not consider this to be suspicious because Gerry had just checked on Madeleine and everything seemed to be fine.
Okay - so far so good. That is credible.
At 10pm Kate enters the apartment and finds Madeleine missing. She runs out of the apartment to raise the alarm.
Okay - odd, but let's believe everything up to this point.
This is when it gets curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say.
According to Kate in her book, the Mark Warner missing child alert is not activated until 10.30pm That strikes me as a long time, given that Kate claims to 'know' that a stranger has abducted her child. Why wait half an hour to alert hotel reception. That's ages.
Odder still, is Jane Tanners behaviour. You would reasonably expect, given what she had seen at 9.15pm, that once Kate raised the alarm and claimed that a stranger had stolen Madeleine from her bed, Jane Tanner would immediately put two and two together and call the police. ...... factually incorrect thus removed .......
But what DID Jane Tanner do? Helpfully, as always, Kate explains on page 76 of her book: 'When I'd discovered that Madeleine was missing she (Jane) had beeen in her apartment three doors along. Hearing the commotion, she had come out and discovered what was going on. '
Okay. So now what?!
This is the moment of truth, right? Still within the critical hour or so after a child has gone missing. Those first few hours are vital, we are told.
Well: 'Taking Fiona to one side, she told her how, after leaving the restaurant.....and having passed Gerry....she had seen this man......Obviously at the time she had thought little of it: as far as any of us knew, Madeleine was asleep in her bed, and, having just seen Gerry, Jane was well aware that he had been in our apartment only a few minutes before........As soon as she heard about Madeleine's disappearance, everything fell into place and she felt sick.'
Okay - so Jane Tanner has seen the man who she thinks abducted Madeleine.
According to Kate in her book: 'She (Jane) immediately reported this sighting to the police.'
But according to the PJ files, the first call logged at GNR in Lagos was at 22.50. The GNR then arrived between 12 and 15 minutes later.
Why did it take 50 minutes for Jane Tanner to alert the police, given that 'she felt sick' over what she had seen. In other words, the inference being that she had seen Madeleine being abducted.
According to Kate's book the alarm was raised at 10pm but if you look at the PJ files witnesses give different times for when they heard the alarm being raised - as early as 9.20pm - the Chef, 21.30 - 21.40 - the Property Manager. At 21.45 a waiter reports seeing no-one at the table as they had all left in a panic. Many other witnesses report the alarm being raised at between 9.30pm and 9.40pm.
So what is going on here? Are all those witnesses wrong about the time that the alarm was raised? Or has Kate chosen to adjust the timings, to allow a bit of extra time before the police were called and to allow for the extra '10pm 'check'.
In any event, even if you ignore this glaring discrepancy (which is glaring - just look at the PJ files, there are loads of witnesses reporting what they saw and heard that evening) it is recorded that the first call logged at GMR Lagos is 22.50pm.
If we are to believe the witnesses who said they heard a commotion and news of a missing child at times between 9.20pm and 9.40pm, that places an even longer gap between the alarm being raised and a call to the police station being logged. A gap of well over an hour.
But whatever the precise time that the alarm was raised, there is no record of a call to the police from the McCanns or their friends at 10pm, Which is what you would expect given the apparent importance of Jane Tanner's sighting.
Instead, on page 73 of Kate's book we learn that: 'Just after 10.10pm, Gerry asked Matt to run to the Ocean Club's 24-hour reception to get staff to call the police.' She then states on the next page that: 'AT 10.35 the police had still not arrived.'
That's because the McCanns or their friends didn't call them. Why didn't Fiona immediately alert the police herself? What about Mrs Fenn? she offered to lend Gerry her phone to call police but he said it had already been done. What nonchalance!!He hadn't even bothered to call police himself and he couldn't even be bothered to call on a neighbour's phone.
What does that tell you?
From this point onwards everything is everyone else's fault - especially the police - they are too late, too inefficient, too Portuguese and, worst of all, they don't take the McCann's story seriously.
So we can deduce from this that the Portuguese police were probably quite bright - a lot brighter than some people.
And the McCanns and their friends are seemingly believing that Madeleine's mystery abductor has spirited her far away from the resort: 'Aware that we were only an hour and a quarter's drive from southern Spain, and beyond that lay the borderless continent of Europe - not to mention the short hop across the Strait of Gibraltar to north Africa - David was saying: 'We need roadblocks set up. The borders to Spain, Morocco and Algiers need to be alerted.'
Notice how soon the McCanns and their friends are moving Madeleine away from the Ocean Club and towards some unknown destination which could be - practically anywhere in the world.
And, of course, the world is a big place and finding a child in the world is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. It could take years and years. Year's of fund money. Years of selling newspapers. Years of 'mystery sightings'. Not to mention a shed-load of tax-payers money.
Funny old world, eh?
