A reminder of David Smith’s investigative acumen
‘Gerry had knocked up at the start of the 4.30pm tennis-drills session, but had decided not to exacerbate an injury to his Achilles tendon, so had dropped out and waited around by the courts until the children came back from the kids’ clubs at 5pm for tea. That had been one of the most enjoyable times of the holiday, all the children together for tea, then the adults playing with them afterwards.
Gerry was in his apartment at 7pm’
From Gerry’s May 4th statement.
‘ The deponent and KATE returned to the OCEAN CLUB by the short-cut and at the secondary reception they asked the lady employee if there was a vacant tennis court they could reserve. They were told there was a vacancy between 14H30 to 15H30. As it was already 15h00, they began to play immediately. At 15H30, the tennis instructor arrived, who instructed each of them until 16H30.’
And from Smith
‘Matt went down to the 24-hour reception at the bottom of the hill to raise the alarm. The call to the police went in at 10.15. They arrived 55 minutes later. It is widely believed among the Portuguese media, and perhaps the police too, even now, that the McCanns called Sky News before they called the police. For the record, Sky News picked up the story from GMTV breakfast television, at around 7.30am the following day.’
Where did Smith get 10.15 from ? We know that the police weren’t called until 10.40 and Sky were contacted by email at about 2am.
Smith seems to have accepted what Gerry told him having done little or no research of his own