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Original Source:
MAIL: 08 SEPTEMBER 2007 |
By
ANNE ATKINS
Last updated at 23:46pm on 8th September 2007 |
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"You do realise, don't you," my husband Shaun said to me, "that
they're looking for the body?" There was a slight pause. "And we are
the Number One suspects."
For me, the latest developments in Praia de Luz bring back dreadful memories of
when our daughter went missing ten years ago.
Our ordeal did not last for nearly so long, nor was she at nearly so tender an
age as Madeleine.
But we, too, had to see our private agony turned into a public search; to stand
back and watch the police do their job.
And to know that if they were to do it properly, they had to think the
unthinkable - that we might have murdered (and hidden) our own child.
So I can begin to imagine the dreadful strain Mrs McCann must be going through.
First, there is the shock of realising the police think your child may not just
be lost.
When on the Sunday lunchtime I rang them to report her missing - we thought she
had been staying with friends - I apologised for being a fussy mother.
They were round in ten minutes to scour her room and within the hour there were
heat-seeking helicopters looking for the body.
We managed to keep relatively calm until it was dark. Then the forensic team
came around with the alsatians to search every inch of our large London vicarage. They
examined the swimming pool and had the dogs sniff round the church.
That was when Shaun, whose father had been a policeman, told me what they were
looking for, and why.
After a couple of hours, they departed, almost without a word, leaving a
silent, burly PC to spend the night. We needed his quiet, friendly presence
because by then, we had given up all hope.
If the police thought our daughter was murdered, then she was dead, for sure.
The following morning dozens of photographers crowded into our sitting room. I
was trying to pull myself together to face them.
I can detect in Kate McCann the determination to present a brave front to the
cameras, not to let them see her howling in agony as her husband holds her in
his arms.
But the latest twist from Portugal
has also brought home, dramatically, how lucky we were to have British police
looking for our daughter.
Not only were they compassionate, but they were consummate professionals.
Of course it was frightening to realise they accepted the possibility we had
killed her, but we knew this had to investigated immediately. Then they could
get on with the business of finding her.
Of course, they continued as professional as ever. When they got leads they
didn't tell us immediately, so as not to raise our hopes.
And when they found her, alive and safe near a cemetery in Hammersmith, just
two miles away, they quietly ensured our daughter was not coming home to a
problem.
Then they melted away. We sensed how thrilled they were. But they never, ever,
let their personal feelings interfere with their job.
They had well practised procedures and they followed them. And that was how
they found her.
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