Earlier this week,
Kate McCann
signed off the final
chapter of her
book
about her lost daughter,
Madeleine.
It is now with the
publishers, and a rush is on to have the book edited, printed and on
sale by the planned publication date of May 12, which will be
Madeleine’s eighth birthday.
The book, simply entitled Madeleine, gives Kate’s account, in her own
words, of her daughter’s disappearance during a family holiday in
Praia da Luz,
Portugal, in May 2007, and the dramatic events that followed.
Four years after Madeleine’s disappearance, there is, sadly, still no
prospect of an epilogue to the book anytime soon, answering that
heart-rending mystery: Where is Maddie?
|
Anguish: Gerry and Kate McCann make an appeal
for the safe return of their daughter, Madeleine |
As the years have passed, the answer to that question seems more elusive
than ever.
The trail seemed to go stone-cold long ago, and all new leads appear to
be red herring after red herring.
Kate and
Gerry McCann
are desperate to reignite the search for their
daughter, but where do they start?
With Kate’s book, it would seem. Close friends say the McCanns are
pinning all their hopes on Kate’s story prompting someone, somewhere, to
come forward with new information.
The aim of the book is two-fold: to put Madeleine’s disappearance back
in the spotlight, and to raise
funds
so that the McCanns’ team of
private investigators can continue their work in trying to find her.
|
Still missing: It is now almost four years
since Maddie was abducted. Her family fear the case has gone
cold |
Reliving those first terrifying days after Madeleine vanished, and
charting the dramatic events in the months that followed when even Kate
and Gerry became
suspects in their daughter’s disappearance, has been an
intensely painful experience for Kate.
The tortured look that has been etched on the 42-year-old doctor’s face
since Madeleine’s disappearance is still in evidence, and friends say
she looks tired, thin and drawn.
Kate began writing the book five months ago on the computer in her study
at the family home in Rothley, Leicestershire.
A family
friend
describes how she would write through the day, while the couple’s
six-year-old twins,
Sean and Amelie,
were at school, and
then return to her study to write late into the evening after the
children had gone to bed.
‘Nothing is more important to us than finding
our little girl. Our hope is that the book may prompt those
who have relevant information (knowingly or not) to come
forward and share it with our team. |
She turned down the offer of a ghost writer because she wanted the book
to be in her own words.
Pouring intense emotion into the book has given Kate a sense of focus,
as well as renewed hope that Madeleine will be found.
Meeting publishing deadlines has also given Kate a feeling that she is
doing something both positive and purposeful in her struggle to discover
what has happened to her hazel-eyed daughter.
The McCanns hope sales of the book will raise more than £1million for
Madeleine’s fund. The book’s launch will be accompanied by several
television interviews.
‘Nothing is more important to us than finding our little girl,’ Kate
writes on the Find Madeleine website.
‘Our hope is that the book may prompt those who have relevant
information (knowingly or not) to come forward and share it with our
team.’
The publication of this book will propel the family back onto the
world’s front pages and, as Kate herself remarks, they embark on this
latest chapter in the Maddie story with very heavy hearts.
The McCanns’ fateful decision to leave Madeleine alone in a Portuguese
holiday
apartment
with their then two-year-old twins, while they dined with friends at a
nearby tapas bar, was one of the most controversial stories of the
decade.
|
Criticised: Goncalo Amaral, the Policia
Judiciaria inspector who led the investigation into Maddie's
disappearence |
There were even lingering suspicions, however unfair given that the
allegations made against the couple have never been substantiated and
the McCanns have been totally exonerated, that they had somehow been
involved in their daughter’s disappearance.
But in the months that followed, the Portuguese policeman heading the
investigation,
Goncalo Amaral,
became suspicious that
the McCanns were somehow involved in their daughter’s disappearance.
There were claims of inconsistencies in the couple’s account of what
they did on the night in question, and criticism that Kate didn’t seem
‘emotional’ enough in the wake of what had happened.
Once subjective suspicion and groundless rumour were stripped away,
however, Amaral’s ‘case’ against the McCanns was based almost entirely
on the evidence of two
springer spaniels.
When the police dogs barked after being let loose in the apartment from
which Madeleine had gone missing, Amaral saw it as apparent confirmation
that they had detected blood and ‘the scent of death’ at the apartment.
Amaral became convinced that Madeleine had died accidentally in the
apartment, and that her parents had then staged an elaborate cover-up.
The couple were formally declared ‘arguidos’ — meaning suspects — in
September 2007, four months after Madeleine’s disappearance. That
‘arguido’ status was lifted a year later.
But false suspicions about the McCanns had been stirred, and sadly
opprobrium amongst some lingers to this day.
For these reasons, the launch of the book will be low-key. Kate will not
be doing any signings because she has serious fears about being
subjected to verbal abuse, or even physical attack.
|
The first of many: The McCanns give a
statement to the media in Portugal in the days immediately
after Maddie was abducted |
‘Kate doesn’t want to give anyone the opportunity to have a go at her
during any promotional tour,’ a friend told the Mail. ‘Just writing the
book has been emotional enough.’
As an example of the deep unpleasantness the McCanns have to deal with,
you have to go no further than an organisation called
The Madeleine
Foundation,
which has a website demanding answers from the McCanns to
some 163 questions concerning the case.
The group, which comprises 28 members but claims it has thousands of
supporters who have looked at the website, has already written to the
McCanns’ publishers, Transworld, requesting answers to its 163 questions
and is planning to step up its campaign to coincide with the publication
of the book.
Around the time Kate McCann was finishing her book this week, the
organisation was taking delivery of 10,000 leaflets entitled ‘What
happened to Madeleine McCann: 50 facts about the case that the British
media are not telling you.’
It now plans to distribute them to homes and shops across the country.
The leaflet is divided into four sections: 1) Major contradictions in
the statements of the McCanns and their friends. 2) The highly trained
police dogs who detected the scent of a corpse. 3) Strange things the
McCanns have said and done. 4) How the McCanns wasted public money on
useless private detectives.
|
Crime scene: The bedroom from where Maddie
was snatched |
In 2009, 30,000 similar leaflets were distributed around the country —
including Kate and Gerry’s home town — before the McCanns' lawyers,
Carter-Ruck,
obtained a High Court undertaking from the group’s secretary, retired
solicitor Tony Bennett, to halt the leafleting.
He also agreed to stop sales of a book he had written, entitled What
Really Happened To Madeleine McCann: 60 Reasons To Suggest She Was Not
Abducted.
‘Many people subscribe to the view, to one degree or another, that we
are not being told the whole truth,’ says Mr Bennett, seemingly
oblivious to the pain he is causing the couple.
Just as cruel as The
Madeleine Foundation
are a number of internet sites
established with the sole purpose, it would seem, of smearing the
couple. Online comments from the public on such sites are often
poisonous in the extreme — vitriol likely to intensify after the book
goes on sale.
The McCanns have taken successful legal action to prevent the
publication in Britain of
Amaral’s book
about the case, The Truth
Of The Lie, in which he repeats his hypothesis that the McCanns were
involved, but key extracts of the book are available online, fuelling
the McCanns’ torment still further.
It has, of course, been impossible for Kate and Gerry to lead a normal
life after all they have been through.
For the first few years after Madeleine disappeared, Kate was a virtual
recluse. She gave up her part-time position as a GP at a practice in
Melton Mowbray, closeting herself away in the family’s smart new-build
home in a quiet cul-de-sac.
|
Feeling the strain: From the moment her
daughter went missing, Kate McCann has been under constant
pressure |
She felt too depressed and anguished to venture far, and found it hard
to deal with the stares she would get when she was out and about.
Over the past year or so, however, she has begun to circulate more
often. Each morning, she prepares breakfast for the twins before seeing
them off to their Roman Catholic primary school.
The school still holds a place for Madeleine, who was enrolled to become
a pupil there in September 2007. Such details are a heart-breaking
reminder of the little girl the McCanns have lost.
Once the twins are at school, Kate goes for a long run around the
country lanes close by. At weekends, she is often seen out and about
with the twins in the village, taking them to swimming and dancing
lessons at a local leisure centre.
She also sets aside time twice a day to sit quietly in Madeleine’s
bedroom, which friends say brings her comfort and solace. The twins
sometimes play in the room, but it is off-limits to visitors.
Gerry,
41, works long hours as a heart specialist at a teaching hospital in
Leicester, often cycling to work and back.
Most Sundays, the family walk together to Mass at their local Roman
Catholic
church,
where prayers continue to be said for Madeleine’s safe return to her
family.
Kate and Gerry do not socialise much these days, but remain close to
their friends,
David
and Fiona Payne,
who were part of the group dubbed the ‘Tapas
Nine’ after they dined together on the night Madeleine vanished.
Friends say that Kate and Gerry remain close, although the agony of
losing Madeleine has inevitably placed strains upon them.
In the past year, Kate has made a couple of trips alone back to Praia da
Luz, staying with the local Anglican priest,
Haynes Hubbard, and his wife, Susan,
who have become close friends. Kate feels closer to her daughter there.
She and Gerry have been bitterly frustrated by the lack of progress made
by
private
detectives.
One particularly inept Spanish outfit, Metodo 3, promised to have
Madeleine home by Christmas. That was the Christmas of 2007.
Another detective, Kevin Halligen, is alleged to have conned the McCanns
out of £300,000 and is currently fighting extradition to the U.S. on
other fraud claims.
But the McCanns are said to be happy with their current team, led by
former British police detectives Dave Edgar and Arthur Cowley.
Various individuals continue to emerge, claiming to know Madeleine’s
whereabouts. In February, Marcellino Italiano, an Angolan-born nightclub
bouncer, claimed she had been snatched by an Algarve-based paedophile
ring which smuggled her into America.
To the McCanns’ intense frustration, the Madeleine police files have
been officially abandoned.
The couple are calling for the case to be reopened, and have launched an
online petition in support of that call, which they are asking
supporters to sign. When they have 50,000 signatures on it, they will
take their case to the Home Secretary.
For now, however, they are hoping Kate’s book will succeed where every
other attempt to find Madeleine has not, prompting someone finally to
come forward with the crucial piece of information that will unlock the
mystery. |