They wrote the timelines down before they forgot them - and immediately handed them to the police - who said that was what they needed. If they were colluding they would have done that in private - and not handed the evidence of their 'collusion' straight to the police on a plate. That makes no sense.
Madeleine's book
Madeleine's parents ripped off both covers, the front and the back, from a book belonging to Madeleine, in order to write on the inside the timing for each person. Russell O'Brien was involved with the drawing up of the timing. The book was seized by the GNR on the night of the disappearance. These covers would be attached to the case file, as elements of the investigation, on September 7th 2007, although seized during the night of 3rd to 4th May. Here are the terms on which the seizure document was based.
Terms of seizure:
At this time, it is considered of interest to the investigation to attach to the present deed, two covers of a child's book, on the inside covers of which is a schedule for supervision, hand-written by one of the McCann couple's group of friends and participant in this deed by name of Russell O'Brien.
Extract from Russell O'Brien's rogatory interview:
'But anyway Dave Payne said to, errm... there were two members of the PJ had arrived, there was a guy I remember being almost shaved bald head, quite dark complexion, and a second one who we kind of nicknamed 'baby face', who did our fingerprinting about a week later, errm... and those two were there and Dave was... was saying, you know, 'Shouldn't we', you know, 'Why are we sitting here, shouldn't you be on the radio, shouldn't there be more people here, shouldn't there be...', you know, 'this should be on the radio, it should be on the television' and, errm... I recall 'baby face', or his colleague, saying 'No media', and, you know... and that was full-stop and then turning round to me writing the timeline and saying 'That's what we want', fair enough. Errm... huh, and that's really it.
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id261.html