As the fourth anniversary of
Madeleine McCann's disappearance
approaches - and coincides with a new book written by her mother,
Kate
-
Olga Craig returns to
Praia da Luz
to see how the Portuguese resort has put the
incident behind it
It is
the spiritual sanctuary to which
Kate and Gerry McCann return time and
time again with each passing year. Usually their visits are in private,
occasionally with close relatives. But it is here, in the tiny,
white-washed 17th-century church of Our
Lady of Light, overlooking the sea in
Praia da Luz on the Algarve, where the couple feel closest to Madeleine,
their cherished oldest child, who next month will have been missing for
four years. Here is where Kate, especially, in the words of parish
priest
Father Haynes
Hubbard, her Portuguese pastor and confidant, “comes back to
cling to the hope that their daughter will come home”.
The
church has always been where the McCanns and their supporters have
gathered, particularly during those dark days following May 3 2007 when
Madeleine, then just days short of her
fourth birthday,
vanished from the family’s holiday
apartment in the seaside village. It has been here they have
found succour and strength. Here that they still hope one day to return
to give thanks and salvation for the safe return of their child, who
will turn eight next month.
Yet
today, as another agonising anniversary looms for the McCanns, there is,
surely, something missing? While the congregation prays daily for
Madeleine, the photographs of the little girl, forever frozen in time as
the chubby-cheeked, gap-toothed toddler she was when she vanished, are
nowhere to be seen. Once, they adorned the walls and pews. “Find
Madeleine” posters, replaced when they faded, were pinned near the altar
and yellow and green ribbons, symbols of the campaign launched to search
for her, adorned the porch. Now there are none.
“There
are pictures of Madeleine in the church,” Fr Hubbard says hesitantly.
“But you can’t see them, they are hidden. They are not on display.
People were hurt and scarred by everything that was said and done and it
has frightened them off. Many are now cautious to openly display their
hope.”
He is
wary; uncomfortable, perhaps. He chooses his words with care. For while
he – and many in his congregation – continue to pray in hope rather than
in despair, the sad truth is that Madeleine McCann has become an
awkward, painful and, perhaps unpalatably, at times taboo topic in Praia
da Luz. Tragically, though perhaps understandably, the overwhelming
atmosphere here is of a community uncomfortable with its connection to a
lost little girl. Some have simply airbrushed her from memory while
others, who at the time were highly vocal in the “Find Maddy” campaign,
now distance themselves.
A few,
one suspects,
feel guilty that the locals did not handle the disappearance in a more
organised – and less hysterical – manner. As Inez Lopes, editor of the
local newspaper, Algarve Resident, points out: “People want to
move on, not be forever attached to or identified with Madeleine. Of
course we still feel for the McCanns but we want to be associated with a
happier place. Frankly, it was an isolated incident that could have
happened anywhere in the world. Right now Portugal is in the grip of a
financial crisis. In Praia da Luz the feeling is that it has hurt our
local economy. Tourism was affected by it, businesses closed. I don’t
think the local business community can be blamed for wanting to return
to being nothing more than a holidaymakers’ haven.”
Many of
the principal characters in the case – which saw the McCanns by turn
being comforted and protected by the Portuguese and expatriate
communities alike as grieving parents; then vilified and shunned when
they were, wrongly, accused of being involved in the disappearance –
have moved on. Others want to banish all reminders of Madeleine’s
existence and some openly display anger that this once prosperous
tourist town is now synonymous with the abduction and possible murder of
a child. Just a month ago, fresh posters were either torn down or had
paint splattered over them within 24 hours. Reluctantly the McCanns have
accepted that their campaign reminders are no longer welcomed by many
locals.
And
while no one would deny that the McCanns have borne the brunt of the
anguish and opprobrium, they are not alone in that suffering. Within
weeks of Madeleine’s disappearance
Robert Murat,
a British expatriate who had made Praia da Luz his home, was under investigation. The villa he
shared with his elderly mother Jenny was searched by police and
sniffer dogs
and its grounds dug up. Mr Murat was questioned repeatedly by
police and became the public scapegoat for the international outrage over
Madeleine’s abduction. He was vilified in print, spat at in the streets
and besieged in his home. In time, he too was exonerated. The scars of
his public savaging, however, remain. These days he is rarely seen in
public in Praia da Luz. He has since married his long-term girlfriend
Michaela (she, too, was wrongly accused of involvement) who eight months
ago gave birth to their son, Benjamin.
“No one
wanted to know how I felt, or what I was going through at the time,” he
says with an understandable trace of bitterness. “From my perspective, I
have a new life with my wife and baby son.”
None the
less, Mr Murat and his family have found it difficult to return to
anonymity. “It’s still talked about here. All the time. But everyone is
more cautious, less willing to take events at face value,” says Tuck
Price, a close friend of Mr Murat and his staunchest supporter when he
was wrongly accused. “Madeleine’s disappearance is an uncomfortable
reminder that perhaps we had all become too complacent. Just last week I
had my four-year-old nephew and his 12-year-old sister staying. And yes,
I was more vigilant. I kept a closer eye on them than maybe I would have
before Madeleine disappeared.’’
Mr
Murat’s aunt and uncle, Sally and Ralph Everleigh, were also hounded
during the spell he was under suspicion. Though they were never accused
of any involvement they were harassed and cold-shouldered: for nothing
more than being deemed guilty by association. “It was a horrendous
time,” Mrs Everleigh recalls. “Our house was bugged, our phones tapped.
Of course the McCanns have suffered a tragedy that they will never be
able to come to terms with. How could they? But the stress of the whole
situation made my husband ill. We suffered in our own way.” Little
wonder, then, that each year, as the May 3 anniversary approaches, the
couple leave their home and spend a few weeks in Gibraltar to escape the
attention.
There
are many in the tourism trade, too, whose businesses have been affected
by what Ms Lopes describes as the “double whammy of the recession and
the Maddy effect”. Several shops are boarded up and closed, and the
resort seems a little more shabby, a little more down-at-heel.
Restaurant owners mutter or grimace dismissively when asked how they
have been affected. “Badly,” is the morose, monosyllabic response of one
café owner. “We don’t want to talk about it,” say most. “We want the
holidaymakers back.” It hasn’t helped, naturally, that Portugal’s
weather is currently unseasonably poor. Last week, Praia da Luz was
lashed with torrential rain, its few tourists forced to huddle in cafés
clad in sou’westers and gumboots.
Mrs Ruth
McCann (no relation) who owned the 5a apartment that was rented to the
McCanns through the
Ocean Club
complex from where Madeleine
was snatched, has tried for two years to sell. Though she dropped the
price to £255,000 (£50,000 less than similar properties sell for) she
didn’t have a single inquiry. The flat has lain unoccupied since the
McCanns left it to return to their
Leicestershire home in Rothely in
September 2007. And it shows. The varnish on its front door has become
faded and stripped by the sun; its garden is overgrown and the hedge, in
contrast to those adjacent, is unkempt and bedraggled. “I keep asking
the Ocean people to cut it,” says Ian Fenn who inherited the apartment
above from his mother, Pamela, who died last month.
Mr Fenn,
who lives in England, visits the flat monthly and has witnessed its
transformation from white-washed holiday home to a ghoulish, run-down
tourist attraction. “There are always tourists who stand outside and get
their friends to take their photograph outside 5a,” he says wearily.
“They find some ghastly attraction in being pictured at the spot when a
little girl was abducted.
Gerry McCann
did come up to apologise
to my mother for all the unwanted
attention
– which was incredibly kind
as he has endured a grief and pain that no parent should ever have to
withstand.”
There
have been subtle changes, too, in the Ocean complex. On the night their
daughter was snatched, the McCanns and
seven other British couples in their
party, dined in the complex, leaving all their children – in adjacent
apartments – alone. They did not lock the doors, fearing the children
would be trapped should a fire break out. Neither did they pay for a
baby-sitting service, saying they didn’t want to leave their children
with strangers. Instead, in a decision that will forever haunt the
couple, they opted to take turns checking on all the sleeping children
at half-hourly intervals. Today, the dining area has been turned into a
pizzeria and is no longer open in the evenings. And though the McCanns
have received world-wide sympathy, they know that those fateful
decisions will always be questioned.
In the
complex several British families, hoping to escape what they believed
would be brisk Easter weather at home, were holidaying in the Ocean
complex last week. Mike and Liz Atwood from Birmingham and their three
children – Toby, 12, Lucy, nine, and four-year-old Tom – were among the
few who braved the pool during the brief spells when the monsoon-like
rains ceased. The family has holidayed in Praia da Luz many times and
though Madeleine’s disappearance disturbed them, they have opted to
return each year.
“But, of
course, we are more vigilant,” Mrs Atwood admits. “This is a friendly,
family-orientated resort and the Portuguese are well-known for how
lovingly they treat children. But we just don’t let the kids out of our
sight. We wouldn’t dream of going out for dinner and leaving them alone.
I don’t mean to be critical of the McCanns. All parents can empathise
with how grief-stricken they are. How bitterly they regret those
decisions. They are paying a dear and heavy price and no one would wish
it upon them. It has certainly made us be more attentive.”
On Praia
da Luz’s beach, too, parents keep a keen eye on their children. Between
heavy showers, as some played in the sand clad in stout boots and
raincoats, their mothers shivered on the sea front watching them. “I
don’t even want to sit in the café where it’s warm,” one said. “I would
rather get wet and cold and know they are safe.”
Among
the local Portuguese community too there have been many whose lives have
changed immeasurably since Madeleine's disappearance. None more so,
perhaps, than Gonçalo Amaral, who initially headed the botched and
woefully inadequate police investigation. Since being dropped from the
case, he has become a thorn in the McCanns’ side. While Kate awaits the
launch of her own
book
on May 12 (Madeleine’s birthday) in which she tells the story from her
perspective, and the proceeds from which will hopefully boost the vastly
depleted Find Madeleine campaign, she and husband Gerry face a renewed
legal
battle with
Amaral. They had already clashed over
his sensationalised and dubious account of events, cryptically entitled
The
Truth of The Lie in which he attempted to justify his
decision to brand the couple as suspects, which the McCanns called
“mistaken” and aired his highly speculative theory that Madeleine died
in apartment 5a. When he was barred from publishing it, he set about
writing another which is also timed to launch near Madeleine’s birthday.
This
weekend, while he refused to comment on his book, his wife Sonia
defended his decision to publish a second. “Gonçalo has worked hard on
this book,” she said. “He has spent days and nights assessing the
evidence. In it he will say his investigation was cut short and he will
explain what he would have done if he had been allowed to continue.” The
timing of the publication, she insisted, was “coincidental. We are not
trying to cash in on the anniversary”.
None the
less, the timing will be hurtful for the McCanns who had hoped their
court battles had dissuaded him from further comment. “It’s just one
more painful thing they must face,” says one relative. “Quite why he
wants to hound them when it has been proved definitively that they are
completely innocent, no one knows.”
This
weekend, while the congregation of Our Lady of Light held traditional
Easter services, doubtless many said silent prayers for Madeleine,
although she was not mentioned by name. Many will leave the village for
the anniversary, others intend to make an appearance at the vigil in the
church on May 3. In their home town of Rothely, Kate and Gerry will be
steeling themselves to attend their fourth service that marks yet
another year without a trace of Madeleine.
Both
vigils will be emotion-filled. Prayers will be said, fervent hopes for a
happy outcome – which, with the passing of time, becomes ever less
likely – voiced. In Praia da Luz, however, quietly and behind the
scenes, one man will spend the day remembering Madeleine in a more
practical way.
David Edgar, the Ulster-born ex-police
officer whose Alpha Group Investigations has taken over the search, will
hope that the anniversary – and publication of Kate’s book – will jog a
long-forgotten memory.
That
finally there will be a resolution to what has become an enduring
mystery: the whereabouts of Madeleine McCann. |
