I think it was planned
Probably light (torch or lighter) signals might have been used to signal the all clear, etc.
If using the Block 6 balcony over looking the side of 5A. then it would idealy need a group of three, altho it could have been done by two.
1. Watcher/director/ driver
2. Lifter (someone with some medical knowledge and also preferably had to be someone known to Madeleine)
3. Main adductor (standing outside 5A) watchig for signals from no1 across the road and also passing things (drugs etc) thru the window and directing / encouraging the lifter.
He also had the key and opened and closed the front door using only the ley, so no fingerprints.
We used to call him Bundleman but we seem to call him Tannerman now.
The lifter passed Madeleine to him then scarpered, possibly back to the staff quarters.
He expected to be picked up with Madeleine in his arms from Block 5 car park entrance, but as the car was late and he he was impatient and frightened, he walked to meet the car at Jane Tanner corner.
In the meantime the watcher/ driver had taken fright at seeing Gerry and Jez talking then Jane Tanner witnessing the abduction, so he turned tail and scarpered, driving off in the opposite directioin (south).
By this time, he had been on the little car parking area opposite the Tapas reception and he would have had to pass Gerry and Jez to pick up Madeleine and the abductor..
This little car park can, I believe, be accessed directly via the (balcony) building and the rear garden. No need for the driver to walk thru public places, so effectively hidden in plain sight
A perfect set up. Nothing to go wrong .... but it did !
Only a theory, but it works
I'd suggest Occam's razor, Sadie.
Let me point out I am strictly on topic ('cos I can feel Eleanor's breath on my neck even as I type.)
Strange statements. Reconcile Luis Duarte and Vitor Dos Santos.
Senhor Duarte says he did all the checking in of clients, and assigning clients to apartments. But he remembers he did not handle the McCann booking. Plus he has an alibi, as he was in Madeira when Madeleine disappeared.
Senhor Dos Santos says he handled the McCann booking. He remembers the need for the Tapas 9 to be together, which is definitely in the Mark Warner files. He recalls the reason was that they had young children. "
and a ground floor apartment was requested enabling easy access for the families with small children."
In the OC records I have seen and the MW records I have seen, there is no note of a request for a ground floor apartment, merely a request that the 4 families should be close together.
Working at a snail's pace on SIL, I have gradually concluded that this booking, and this information, probably turned up in Luz on the MW system and the OC system around mid-March 2007. This, of course, is around 6 weeks before Madeleine arrived.
The folks in OC 24 hour reception had access to this info. It does not mean they dunnit. It merely means that the info was there so they could have dunnit.
Senhor Dos Santos may well have remembered a phone call from bookers MW saying ground floor please. Mind you, someone stuck the Payne's one floor up.
Just one more strange statement, Eleanor.
