According to KM the dog handler was given MM's pink princess blanket and some items of clothing. The GNR officer refers to a Turkish towel. I think they are referring to the same thing. The sort of comfort blankets children had around 2007 tended to be made of what I refer to as velour (and no I don't have a velour trackie). It seems the princess blanky and Cuddle cat had not been interfered with by any abductor so why would you expect the s&r dog to be scenting any abductor?
The s&r dogs track on skin rafts which shed at the rate of 40,000 per minute. The skin rafts would be all over the place: ground, trapping in nooks and crannies etc and MM's scent would be all over the blanky.
I think the route and car was as the dogs detected. The car park was most probably used by those shopping at Baptisa too. Any abductor only had to exit the alleyway and cross the other side of the road and even if the McCanns were walking along the other side they would have no reason to suspect MM was in his/her arms in the same way JT didn't think anything about 'Tannerman' until after the event. Abductor may even have covered MM with a blanket.
As Ian Horrocks said in his report the abductor was both controlled and controlling.
Baptista has a fairly large car park to its front (west) side. To the rear, (5A side) it has a smaller car park, but with ample spaces for custom. Particularly the volume of custom in early May.
