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QUOTES FROM
THE BOOK "MADELEINE" BY KATE MCCANN |
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Page 01: The reason for writing
this is simple to give an account of the
truth. It has always been my intention to
set down a complete record |
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Page 02:
Yet publishing the truth is fraught with
risks for our family. It lays us open to
more criticism for a start. |
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Page 03: The sacrifice of our
privacy has been another concern. Given the
choice, we would prefer to sink back into
anonymity
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Page 04: What tipped the
balance in our decision is the continuing
need to fund the search for Madeleine. |
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Page 56:
[Tapas
Booking]
It wasn’t until a year later, when I was
combing through the Portuguese police files,
that I discovered that the note requesting
our block booking was written in a staff
message book, which sat on a desk at the
pool reception for most of the day. This
book was by definition accessible to all
staff and, albeit unintentionally, probably
to guests and visitors, too. To my horror, I
saw that, no doubt in all innocence and
simply to explain why she was bending the
rules a bit, the receptionist had added the
reason for our request: we wanted to eat
close to our apartments as we were leaving
our young children alone there and checking
on them intermittently.
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Page 57: [On Tuesday 1 May]
During Gerry’s tennis lesson, Madeleine and
Ella came to the adjoining court with their
Mini Club for a mini-tennis session. Jane
and I stayed to watch them. It chokes me
remembering how my heart soared with pride
in Madeleine that morning. She was so happy
and obviously enjoying herself. Standing
there listening intently to Cat’s
instructions, she looked so gorgeous in her
little T-shirt and shorts, pink hat, ankle
socks and new holiday sandals that I ran
back to our apartment for my camera to
record the occasion. One of my photographs
is known around the world now: a smiling
Madeleine clutching armfuls of tennis balls.
At the end of their session, the children
had been asked to run around the court and
pick up as many balls as they could.
Madeleine had done really well and was very
pleased with herself. Gerry loves that
picture. |
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Page 75: [Mrs
Fenn] Then a lady appeared on a balcony – I’m
fairly certain this was about 11pm, before the police
arrived – and, in a plummy voice, inquired, ‘Can someone
tell me what all the noise is about?’ I explained as clearly
as I was able, given the state I was in, that my little girl
had been stolen from her bed, to which she casually
responded, ‘Oh, I see,’ almost as if she’d just been told
that a can of beans had fallen off a kitchen shelf. I
remember feeling both shocked and angry at this woefully
inadequate and apparently unconcerned reaction. I recollect
that in our outrage, Fiona and I shouted back something
rather short and to the point. |
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Page 105:
I also felt a compulsion to run up to the
top of the Rocha Negra. Somehow, inflicting
physical pain on myself seemed to be the
only possible way of escaping my internal
pain. The other truly awful manifestation of
what I was feeling was a macabre slideshow
of vivid pictures in my brain that taunted
me relentlessly. I was crying out that
I could see Madeleine lying, cold and
mottled, on a big grey stone slab.
Looking back, seeing me like this must have
been terrible for my friends and relatives,
and particularly my parents, but I couldn’t
help myself. And all this needed to come
out. I dread to think what it might have
done to me if it hadn’t. |
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Page 129:
I asked Gerry apprehensively if he’d had any
really horrible thoughts or visions of
Madeleine. He nodded. Haltingly, I
told him about the awful pictures that
scrolled through my head of her body, her
perfect little genitals torn apart.
Although I knew I had to share this burden,
just raising the subject out loud to someone
else, even Gerry, was excruciating.
Admitting the existence of these images
somehow confirmed them as a real
possibility, and with that confirmation came
renewed waves of fear. |
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Page 226:
When I heard that
my mum had got wind of the Tal e Qual story
and the rumours it had prompted, I phoned
her. She was so distraught she could hardly
get a word out. I texted DCS Bob Small,
saying how disappointed I was that the
police were claiming Madeleine was dead,
without any evidence, and how unsupported we
had felt recently.
As our main liaison with the
British police, Bob was not privy to the
investigation details. This was for our
protection, he told us, as sharing knowledge
we would otherwise not have had could
potentially compromise us. In the light of
the volume of information being released
into the public domain by police sources via
the media, this seems farcical now. It did
emerge, however, that Bob had concerns of
his own. He explained that the British
police regarded the use of sniffer dogs as
intelligence rather than evidence, and he
was perplexed at the apparent fixation of
the PJ on the idea that Madeleine had died
in the apartment.
He told Gerry he thought they’d get a shock
when the forensic results came back.
The next day Gerry rang Ken
Jones, head of ACPO, the Association of
Chief Police Officers. He, too, was
beginning to despair of the investigation
and the way it was being handled. It was
good to know we weren’t alone, and that we
weren’t going totally mad, but why wouldn’t
anyone speak out about this? Many people in
top positions were saying the right things
to us privately but it seemed nobody could –
or would – do anything about it. If someone
had stood up and said, ‘Stop! This is all
wrong!’ things could have been very
different. |
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Page 250:
[
Ricardo Paiva] Each time a dog gave
a signal, Ricardo would pause the video and inform me that blood had
been found in this site and that the DNA from the sample matched
Madeleine’s. He would stare at me intently and ask me to explain this.These were the only times I didn’t respond with a ‘No comment.’ Instead I
said I couldn’t explain it, but neither could he. I remember feeling
such disdain for Ricardo at this point. What was he doing? I thought.
Just following orders? Under my breath,
I found myself whispering,‘Fucking tosser, fucking tosser.’ This quiet chant somehow kept me strong, kept
me in control. This man did notdeserve my respect.
‘Fucking tosser . . .’ |
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Page 273:On
the night Madeleine was taken, you may
remember, Gerry and I had been very
concerned that Sean and Amelie had hardly
moved in their cots, let alone woken up,
despite the commotion in the apartment.
Since Madeleine was snatched apparently
without making a sound, we had always
suspected that all three children
might have been sedated by the abductor.
We mentioned this to the police that
night and several more times in the
following weeks, but no testing of urine,
blood or hair, which could have revealed the
presence of drugs, had ever been done. |
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Page 275:After
Madeleine was taken from us, my sexual
desire plummeted to zero.
Our sex life is not something I would
normally be inclined to share and yet it is
such an integral part of most marriages that
it doesn’t feel right not to acknowledge
this. I’m sure other couples who have been
through traumatic experiences will have
suffered similarly and perhaps it will
reassure them to know that they are not
alone. To those fortunate enough not to have
encountered such heartache, I hope it gives
an insight into just how deep the wounds go.
Apart from our general state of shock and
distress, and the fact that I couldn’t
concentrate on anything but Madeleine, there
were two continuing reasons for this, I
believe. The first was my inability to
permit myself any pleasure, whether
it was reading a |
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Page 276:book
or making love with my husband. The
second stemmed from the revulsion stirred up
by my fear that Madeleine had suffered the
worst fate we could imagine: falling into
the hands of a paedophile. When she was
first stolen, paedophiles were all we could
think about, and it made us sick, ate away
at us.
The idea of
a monster like this touching my daughter,
stroking her, defiling her perfect little
body,
just killed me, over and over again. It
didn’t make any difference that this might
not be the explanation for Madeleine’s
abduction (and, please God, it isn’t); the
fact that it was a possibility was enough to
prevent me from shutting it out of my mind.
Tortured as I was by these nauseating
images, it’s probably not surprising that
even the thought of sex repulsed me.
I would lie in bed, hating the person who
had done this to us; the person who had
taken away our little girl and terrified
her; the person who had caused these
additional problems for me and the man I
loved. I hated him. I wanted to kill him. I
wanted to inflict the maximum pain possible
on him for heaping all this misery on my
family. I was angry and bitter and I wanted
it all to go away. I wanted my old life
back.
I worried about Gerry and me. I worried that
if I couldn’t get our sex life back on track
our whole relationship would break down.
I know there is more to a relationship than
sex, but it is still an important element.
It was vital that we stayed together and
stayed strong for our family. Gerry was
incredibly understanding and supportive. He
never made me feel guilty, he never pushed
me and he never got sulky. In fact,
sometimes he would apologize to me .
Invariably, he would put a big, reassuring
arm around me and tell me that he loved me
and not to worry. |
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Page 290: [cr-letter] We have taken action
against one or two websites, but it had proved
almost impossible to get stuff removed from some of
them, particularly those hosted in the USA.
Friends flag up some of the worst offenders
for us, but in the end it comes down
to picking your battles. |
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Page 321:
We were
pleasantly surprised by the prosecutor’s
conclusions and by how emphatic he was about
the lack of any evidence to suggest either
that Madeleine was dead or that we were
involved in her disappearance. For several
months we’d been concerned that if the case
was closed, it might be closed in a
way that left a dark cloud of suspicion
hanging over us, so this came as a big
relief. Initially, though, I was a
little sceptical as to how much use the PJ’s
files were likely to be to us, bearing in
mind that latterly, at least, the principal
focus of their inquiry seemed to have been
Gerry and me. |
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Page 341:
Amaral’s
appeal was heard in December in Lisbon, over
five days that ended up being spread over
three consecutive months. Gerry and I felt
it was important, essential even, for us to
attend to represent Madeleine. She needed
somebody there for her. She was the victim
in this, not Gonçalo Amaral. I also
needed to see the whites of Sr Amaral’s
eyes. We flew out to Portugal on 10
December.
Not sure how I feel about
seeing Mr Amaral – for the first time ever,
I hasten to add! I know I’m not scared but
that man has caused us so much upset and
anger because of how he has treated my
beautiful Madeleine and the search to find
her. He deserves
to be miserable and feel fear. |
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