They said I killed herKate McCann Published: 15 May 2011
We had a call from one of the girls at the children’s nursery school. “Guess what,” she said. “Madeleine’s here! She’s been here for a couple of days. She’s fine.” We rushed to the nursery immediately. And, sure enough, there was our Madeleine. She looked beautiful, just as I remembered her. I ran over to her, my face split by the widest smile, the tears running down my cheeks, and just held her and held her and held her.
Although I was dreaming, I could feel her. It was as if parts of my body that had been hibernating for four months suddenly began to stir. I could sense the cold, dark days lifting as I luxuriated in warmth and light. And Madeleine was holding me, her little arms wrapped tightly round me, and it felt so good. I could smell her. I could feel her with every one of my senses as I soaked up this heavenly moment. My Madeleine. I wanted to stay like this for ever.
And then I woke up. Ice began to course through my body, driving out every endorphin and remnant of warmth. I didn’t understand. What was happening? How could this be? I could still feel her! A heavy boot connected with my stomach and the ache in my chest was worse than I’d ever known it. I was struggling for breath, almost as if I were being strangled. Please, God, don’t let her go! Stay with me, Madeleine. Please stay with me. Don’t go — stay with Mummy. Please, sweetheart, hold on. I love you so much.
I started to cry. The crying built into seismic sobs. I thought I was going to die. I’d been with her. And then she was gone. Again.
That night, September 1, 2007, was the first time I had dreamt about Madeleine in the four months since she had vanished from our holiday apartment in the Algarve. It was far more painful than anything that had occurred in real life since the night she was taken.
Yet real life itself had become like some kind of endurance course run by sadists. The newspapers in both Portugal and the UK churned out endless damning pieces that were at best speculative and mostly complete fabrications.
We were living in a luxury penthouse with a swimming pool! We drank 14 bottles of wine on the night that Madeleine was abducted! A syringe containing a tranquilliser had been found in our apartment on the night! It was all so offensive and unjust.
Within days we would even be fearing the prospect of jail. How had our campaign to find Madeleine led to this nightmare?
I think it was on the Tuesday evening, May 8, five days after Madeleine’s abduction, that Gerry had an extraordinary spiritual experience.
While we were praying privately at Nossa Senhora da Luz — we had been given a key to the church so that we could go there whenever we wished — 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 inside, it became wider 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.
His “vision” — I don’t know what else to call it — had a huge impact on Gerry. It laid the foundations of our organised campaign to find our daughter.
One of the offers of help that came in during those first few weeks was from Danie Krugel, a former South African police officer, who claimed to have combined DNA and satellite tracking technology to develop a device that could be used to locate missing persons. At the time we were in too much turmoil to pay attention to anything so esoteric, but a friend of Danie arrived in Praia da Luz in late May and virtually pleaded with me to take up his offer.
Desperation does strange things to people. We’re scientists and we don’t believe in hocus-pocus or crackpot inventions. How on earth can a machine use a single hair to locate somebody anywhere in the world? It makes no sense to us now and it didn’t then. But we wanted so badly to find Madeleine that we didn’t need to know how it worked.
Danie was prepared to bring his machine over from South Africa to find Madeleine for us. In late June we raised this tentatively with the men in charge of the police investigation — Luis Neves, head of the DCCB, the Portuguese equivalent of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, and Guilhermino Encarnacão, the director of the Algarve Policia Judiciaria (PJ). They seemed surprisingly amenable.
The story temporarily took a different turn when a Portuguese newspaper published what was probably the first article openly to cast doubt on our version of events. It raised suspicions about our characters and about our potential involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
It was apparent that, with coverage of our campaign having reached saturation point, the press was exploring different angles. No longer was it about finding our lovely missing daughter: it was becoming the Kate and Gerry show.
We signalled to the media that we would be withdrawing from the spotlight and running the campaign more quietly. Yet the papers still seemed to require a daily photograph of us, and the continued presence of the photographers encouraged the journalists to stay to write pieces to accompany the photographs, even though there was nothing much to be written.
This was no doubt the background to a lot of the ludicrous tales that now appeared. The lack of new fuel for the machine also meant that a lot of the knocking pieces in the Portuguese press were promoted to the front pages in the UK.
There were also pleasant surprises, however, such as this letter:
Dear McCanns,
I have a house in P da L, been ashamed of the intrusion to your lives by our media ... and if you would care to come to lunch/dinner at any time before Wednesday next, do ring and let me know.
I cook decent meals.
Sincerely, Clement Freud
I’m embarrassed to admit that Gerry and I thought it was a hoax; more embarrassing still, while we were vaguely aware of Sir Clement, we had to have our memories refreshed before we could place him exactly. He wore so many hats — humorist, MP, chef, gourmet, gambler, press columnist, advertiser of dog food, radio and TV personality.
Sir Clement invited us to lunch the following day. He was 83 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, okay, then. That would be nice.”
The lunch he prepared for us was bloody marvellous: watercress and egg salad followed by a chicken and mushroom risotto. He cheered us up with his lugubrious wit.
There was another invitation a few days later from one of the detectives, Ricardo Paiva, and his wife, to dinner at their apartment. It made us feel that they genuinely cared about us and, more important, about Madeleine.
In mid-July, Danie Krugel and his “matter orientation system” arrived in Praia da Luz. It might come to nothing — we knew that — but anything was better than the sense of stagnation we felt was beginning to seep into the investigation.
Three days later there was a body blow. Danie reported to the police that his machine had recorded a “static signal” from an area around the beach, the implication being 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.
MONDAY, July 23, was when the warning sirens should have started to sound. On the phone Ricardo Paiva sounded strange, distant. Danie’s report had given them a bit of a jolt, he told me. Just over a week later the police wanted to come over to the villa we were renting to shoot some video footage of our clothes and possessions. They said the forensics people would take these away and return them the following day.
I was devastated at what they took: all of our clothes, my Bible (my friend Bridget’s Bible, to be precise), Madeleine’s Cuddle Cat and my diaries. Why my diaries? Obviously not for any forensic purpose. My journals were full of personal thoughts and messages to Madeleine. I felt violated.
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