She hasn't finished with Ricardo Paiva yet.
At 4.30pm Ricardo arrived with a female colleague and the forms Gerry needed to complete. After his colleague left with the paperwork, Ricardo asked if we had any queries he could answer. ‘Do you have any information for us?’ I inquired.
He clarified with us the date of our planned departure back to the UK and told us that the PJ wanted to ‘interrogate’ me on Wednesday and Gerry on Thursday. We’d waited almost four weeks for these interviews and it was obvious they had been hastily arranged once Bob Small notified the PJ that we would be leaving the country. Otherwise, why now? As far as we knew, they didn’t have the forensic results back yet.
We should bring our lawyer with us to the police station, Ricardo went on. Gerry smelled a rat. The law has changed now, but back then witnesses were not normally entitled to legal representation. ‘Isn’t it unusual for witnesses to be questioned with their lawyer present?’ he asked. It was like pulling teeth, but these were teeth that would have been falling out very soon anyway. We were not going to be questioned as witnesses, Ricardo finally admitted. ‘So what will our status be, then?’ Gerry pressed him.
‘It’s called arguido.’
As if we’d never heard the word.
I dropped my head in my hands in utter disbelief. I began to shake and cry. I shouted at Ricardo, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this? I can’t believe what’s going on! This is ridiculous. It’s despicable.’ I shook my head over and over again. ‘This can’t be happening. This just cannotbe true!’
What kind of country was this? And while the PJ were going down this track, leading the media and public to believe we were responsible for our daughter’s disappearance, who was looking for Madeleine?
I remember crying out in despair, ‘What will our parents think? How will they cope with this? What are you trying to do? Destroy our family completely?’ These were of course rhetorical questions, but they would subsequently be thrown back at me as some kind of proof of a guilty conscience. My remark about our parents in particular was perceived as strange and suspicious. To me it was a completely understandable reaction. We love our parents and were greatly concerned about their health and emotional state. They had lost their granddaughter. They had seen their own son and daughter in extreme pain and distress and every aspect of our characters ripped to shreds in the newspapers. They’d been through so much already, and now this.
Trisha and Eileen were staying with us for what was intended to be our final week in Luz. Hearing the commotion from the next room, where they were playing with Sean and Amelie, they came running in demanding to know what was happening. Within seconds there were more tears and more shouts of dismay and disbelief. Once again things were going from bad to worse. Much worse.
Ricardo left, looking every inch the sheepish messenger boy he was. (Madeleine)
