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Anyway so she ran off and, erm, I don’t, I don’t remember her coming back, but as time went on, I think the kids were getting a little bit hungry, so we drifted back up the beach to the, the Paradiso Restaurant, I think it’s called, erm, and got some chairs there, ordered some, some food for the children, because they’d missed, they’d missed high tea. I have missed something out, something out here, of course, is that, erm, around the five o’clock mark, erm, I had to pelt up to Ocean Club to get El out before the Nannies would have taken them up to high tea back at the Tapas. So I went up there, collected E and brought her back to the beach. You’ve already asked me whether I saw Madeleine there, I have to say, hand on heart, you know, a year later, I don’t remember whether Madeleine was there or not, but the routine would have been that none of us would have needed to pick, to pick them up, so I, I presume she was, but can no longer absolutely place her there when I picked E**a up. So we came back to the beach and, you know, as it was getting, you know, we headed off with E**a, after a short play, up to the Paradiso Restaurant, they played on the frames in front of there while the food was being ordered and had food, all fairly uneventful. Erm, around, around the six o’clock mark we were, we were having such a good time down there we were, we were half tempted to, for the men not to go back to what was planned up at the Tapas, erm, namely a sort of men’s social tennis round, you know, which I think was due to start at six. And I think as it got around six we thought it’s not really fair, you know, three of us not going there, there might not be enough players, you know, there wasn’t a full resort, so me, Matt and Dave, erm, left everybody else down at the beach and headed back up to the, to the, erm, the apartments, well to the Tapas anyway. And I think, from the best of my recollection, I think me and Matt went straight to the, the courts, Dave went off to his apartment and I believe, erm, to Gerry and Kate’s apartment as well. Erm, we then went down to the tennis, erm, it had already started because we were a little late, erm, and, erm, there was Gerry, Dan and a number of other male guests, maybe just sort of another three, two or three people, whose name I may have known at the time but no longer do, I certainly didn’t know them terribly well. And we started off playing doubles on both, both of the two courts, erm, sometimes changing, changing players”.
01.01.51 1578 “So there is Gerry, Dan, yourself and Matt?”
Reply “And Dave and a couple of other guests”.
1578 “You said Dave went to the apartment?”
Reply “Well he did, but only briefly and then, well he went, he went back there and then, and then joined us, so fairly rapidly there was the full kind of compliment of, erm, of, the male adults within the group were playing tennis. And, erm, we played for, you know, a fair amount of time, I mean, in total, we were out there probably an hour and a half nearly, erm, you know, something between an hour and an hour and a half. Erm, and at some point during that period, erm, all the, the people came back up from the beach, so the kids were up at the, I can remember them being up at the, erm, the netting looking down at the sunken courts. Erm, I say, they may have come down onto the court briefly and, erm, well it’s the point we weren’t playing anything like competitive tennis anyway. Erm, and at some stage Jane, I think, well the kids had had a fairly long day, it had been quite hot, erm, and all that week they were usually absolutely exhausted at the end of the day and ready for bed, erm, and Jane took our children back. I think Matt took, erm, G***e took, sorry, Rachael took G***e. And I think Gerry actually left the court because he had been playing for longer than us, I think he went back a little earlier than me, Matt and Dave. Erm, and Dan, the tennis coach, had also left before we did, I think he’d been playing all day and it was quite a hot day so he’d had enough. Erm, and the reason I mention that is that normally if you went, if they were still there when you finished, you could put all the b*lls and the rackets away in the pavilion, erm, within the grounds, erm, but we had to take all of the rackets and b*lls back with us, so, you know, it was relatively late. And I’m not entirely sure what time I got back to, to the room, but, you know, well eventually, me, Matt and Dave all came back. And it was probably the latest that we’d got back and Jane and the kids had been in there for some time. Erm, I’d say it was probably coming up to, you know, not, not far shy of eight o’clock itself. Erm, and I would have probably had a quick shower, helped with the, erm, you know, with the stories and getting ready for bedtime. I know, I know our kids were pretty tired that, that evening, they’d been playing on the beach and had a really, a really busy. But we were running a bit close to our half eight, erm, booking, so the kids were in bed, but they hadn’t been in for long. So I think shortly after half eight, erm, maybe sort of twenty-five to or twenty to, Jane went down and I certainly can recall saying ‘Well you know what I like’, you know, we’d ordered, it was a very limited menu, we’d discussed what we liked each night, and I said, you know, ‘Just order the me the’, ‘Order the X, Y and Z and I’ll be down when I’m happy that the kids are definitely asleep’. And I didn’t stay much longer, to be honest, they were, they were all fast asleep and there wasn’t a noise out of them at all. So I headed down, you know, about quarter to or so, erm, to the Tapas, exiting through the main door on the car park, erm, and double locking it there, the patio was shut and everything down and didn’t see anything particularly remote on the way down, erm, and just arrived as normal. The mood entirely normal at the table and I, on my arrival, the only people who weren’t there, erm, as we discussed, would have been the adults in five ‘H’, so Dave, Fi and Dianne, who were pretty routinely the last ones there, as, erm, you know, all week. Erm, we kind of sat and, and, and talked, waiting for them. And I can distinctly remember, from the position I was sitting, I was looking towards the apartment block and, erm, you, you could see the lights on in their, in their rooms, inside, and occasionally see people walking about. So there were lots of jokes about the fact that they were still, still not there and probably if we didn’t get a move on they weren’t going to serve us. So Matt, erm, around nine o’clock, give or take a few minutes, but around that sort of time, he got up and said ‘I’ll go and drag them out’ and I believe also had a listen outside of all of the rooms as well. In any case, as he was walking back, he actually met them on the way down. And so by the time they had sat down and Matt had come back from a brief listen at the windows of the bedrooms, we were all there. Erm, I don’t know whether we’d ordered individually, I doubt we did, I think we probably put the order in altogether. Erm, so we’d have ordered. Erm, obviously we create, we sat down and created a timeline so I’m aware that the next person who got up was, was Gerry, not from a really clear recollection of him getting up necessarily, but, nonetheless, Gerry was away from the table for, erm, for five or ten minutes. And during the time that he was away, erm, you know, we decided, me and Jane, that we’d do, we’d do a check on our room. So Jane actually got up, erm, and went over and did a check, erm, and then came back. And I don’t remember her saying anything about Gerry talking or, or, or, or any problems in the room or having seen anyone, I think she just, she just did the check and returned. Erm, and, erm, I presume at some point, although I can’t picture it, you know, Gerry himself coming back. We had, we had the starters. And I think the next clear thing in my mind is actually that, erm, by the time the starters arrived, we’d eaten them and everything else, I thought it was probably about, you know, it was time we did a check and I also needed the toilet so rather than just go to the toilet, which was almost up to the portal, I got up and Matt, erm, said ‘Oh I’ll come and do a check as well’. So me and Matt walked back to the, to the, erm, to the flats, erm, this would have been about, about kind of twenty-five past nine, I suppose. Erm, and as we, you know, it will probably come back to, but as you asked me the other day, I didn’t certainly notice anything particularly strange or different, I didn’t see any cars parked or anyone standing around or loitering. I don’t think we, we walked around the side of the building and I don’t recall making any particular look at the front of the building to notice any changes in the, in the shutters. But we probably wouldn’t have bothered, you know, ‘a’ low suspicion anyway and ‘b’ we were going to go to each of the flats and just have a listen, so I don’t think we made any visual check of it first. Got to my flat five ‘D’, erm, and as we, you know, got sort of quite close I could hear E**e murmuring, so she was, she was obviously awake. So I went into five ‘D’, erm, I actually went to the toilet first. Erm, and then Matt broke off at this point and he went over to his flat five ‘B’. And I was just, just in the process really, after having a wee, of checking, erm, of checking E**e and had, you know, had established that she’d, erm, that she’d been, that she’d actually been sick in the cot. Erm, I, you know, Matt returned, so this was only really a matter of a couple of minutes or so later, and, you know, he asked if everything was alright and I said, you know, ‘Well E**e’s obviously awake and I think she’s been sick’. So he offered to help and stay if I needed it and I said ‘No, you go back, just let Jane know that E**e’s awake and she’s been sick and’, you know, ‘and whether she’d come back after she’s finished her dinner’. Erm, so Matt then went away and, to the best of my knowledge, he then went round the back of the building and did a check of Kate and Gerry’s room via the patio door, before returning to the table. Erm, within the flat, erm, you know, I got E**e out and she had some sick on her, on her, on her clothes and on her face, so I actually turned on the sort of shower taps and I got her out of her, erm, out of her kind of nightie that she was in, gave her a quick wash, erm, and then, at some stage, either then or later on, I also stripped the, stripped the cot, I think I must have done it at the time because I think that actually had more sick on it than anything and I just rinsed that off in the bath. And then they went into the, erm, fully functioning, easily to operate by men, washing machine, that, erm, that MARK WARNER had, had, erm, provided, that was in the flat anyway. Erm, and then I just sat really with E**e down near the patio door, erm, she was, you know, she was awake but otherwise, otherwise fairly happy, and just read a book, read a book to her I think. Erm, and then Jane, you know, a number of minutes later, I mean, I would have thought his was probably around, round about the sort of twenty to mark, sort of ten minutes later from when I arrived, had come back having sort of eaten her main course. We were in the flat together for a little while and I would imagine at this point probably put the washing on and, erm, you know, and then Jane, Jane said, you know, ‘They’ve made your main course, why don’t you go back down and get it’. I’m not entirely sure which way out I went, I mean, ordinarily we would have always have gone out through the front door and deadlocked it. Erm, I mean, you asked the other day whether I did go that way, I have to say there’s, there was nothing stopping me nipping out the quicker patio way and Jane was shutting the door, but I don’t recall which way I went back, but I certainly didn’t see anything untoward on the way back either, although, by this point, obviously, it was pretty, it was, it was dark. Erm, I arrived back at the table, erm, everyone, there was, there was some hilarity in the fact that Jane had been dispatched, erm, to relieve me in the apartment, erm, and I kind of, erm, quickly picked up that that was what the, what the, the joke had been. There was, there was some dialogue with the waiters, erm, of a humorous nature as well. And I think my food was actually still there at the minute, but as I was starting to eat that, I mean, one came over and said ‘Oh no, don’t’, you know, ‘it’ll have gone a bit cold’, you know, ‘we’ll do you a fresh one’. So I then waited for a period of time, you know, sort of five or ten minutes while they quickly, you know, it was sort of thin steak so I’d imagine quickly grilled or fried, erm, fried up a meal of that. Erm, mood, identical, you know, a very good humoured night, I think it was probably the, out of all the days of the week it was the one where, I think, where everyone was really, you know, really had had a, you know, enjoyed the day, the weather had been great. Erm, you asked the other day whether I specifically recall Kate getting up to leave, erm, I can’t picture her, her going, but obviously at some point she, she was the, the only person I think to, to go back to the room sort of after my return to the, the table, I think. Erm, the, and the only real point of reference that we can, that I can remember now is that, is that somebody did ask what time it was at some point, probably while Kate was away, and Rachael, erm, sort of said that it was around the ten o’clock mark, so I think, you know, although we have to be a little bit, you know, there’s a bit of, erm, a bit of a guesstimate going on, on sort of the other times, there as certainly a time check that was announced, you know, around the ten o’clock mark. Erm, my food had arrived, well my food had arrived I think by this point. And, and then Kate, erm, erm, returned, erm, obviously Jane wasn’t there but the rest of us were still there, and she came through and, you know, into the portal, I didn’t see her arrive, but the first thing really we recall then is, erm, is, is Kate shouting across from the, from the reception area and perhaps she didn’t come particularly close, I don’t recall. Erm, and as we discussed the, on the initial recording, erm, if I’m honest, I don’t recall her absolute words, only really the meaning that, erm, you know, that, that Madeleine, that Madeleine had gone. Erm, and so, you know, at this point, you know, she, we all just got up and, erm, erm, and, and left with the exception of Dianne who, who I think stayed, who stayed at the chair. We then got up to the foot of the, of the apartment and, erm, you know, clearly, you know, a state of, you know, growing, growing panic. Erm, some people went directly into the flat initially, erm, included, including Gerry and, and Kate, others just stayed at the, at the, at the gate, erm, on the road leading down beside the apartment. Erm, and you know it was, it was absolute, you know, bedlam, there was panic and, you know, I’m not, the, the order of how things were decided and what, and what we did is, is just a complete blur at this point, but, you know, nonetheless, I think people came back out and then, you know, she’s, she’s certainly not there. And I recall, certainly me, erm, erm, Dave, Matt and I think initially at least Gerry, just said ‘Look, let’s just’, erm, ‘let’s just split up and find’, erm, you know, ‘see if we can find her, see if she’s just wandered out’. So everyone did a little bit of a search just in the, in the immediate area and I went along the passageway which was in front of the patio, the patio entrances of, of the apartments, erm, round, all the way along that initially, I think, and unbeknown to me at this point, because we hadn’t really used this entrance a great deal, certainly not walked to the other end of it, it was actually a dead-end, so I then had a look in the, in the front gardens of, of the apartments on the ground floor that you could see, searched a little bit just in between the two apartments and obviously this was a fairly brief search and rapidly doubled back and, erm, you know, the, other people had just came back from the immediate vicinity as well and it was established obviously that no-one had, had found her. I’m not entirely sure whether I went round to quickly see Jane at this point or whether it was after my next, erm, my next search, but while I’m talking about the searches I’ll just say that. I think then we decided that we just needed to look a little bit further afield, erm, and I went round the, the front of the apartments, the high side of the apartments, had a look along there, erm, got to the, what I’m calling the main road that drops in from, erm, from the, from the motor, from the dual carriageway outside of town, and then looked, you know, down, you know, looked down the hill there, erm, towards the, the, erm, the western side of the tennis courts, erm, really looking, you know, either side of the road just to see if she was sort of wandering there, erm, and you could hear kind of ‘Madeleine’ being shouted pretty much everywhere around at this point. Erm, that, the next, after I kind of moved down a bit to the left, there was the Supermarket quite some distance away, but there’s a, there’s a, there’s a road and I think it had a car park or a, well certainly a car park but there was an area of sort of rough that you could probably, you know, it’s not tarmaced or anything, had a look around there, couldn’t see her. And then there’s, erm, there was an entrance into, erm, the building kind of opposite this, which is, is, which is like a Shopping Centre, erm, or at least the lower floors seemed to have a kind of a set of like a Curry House and a Bar and a few things and a swimming pool as well, and, huh, I can’t remember the layout in there very much, but I remember it being kind of split on, on at least sort of two levels, lots of little recesses around kind of, I think kind of shop windows and stuff. So I didn’t really know where I was going, I’d never been in it before, but, nonetheless, sort of wandered around the lower floor and didn’t find anything. I went up on, on, I think on the next floor up, as I came off the stairs and came round there was a, a small Coffee Bar or a Bar on the left and looked in there and asked, there was a, there was a, a man and a, erm, erm, presumably a barman in there, just, there was only a couple of people, and said, you know, ‘Have you seen a little girl’ and, I mean, I don’t know how much English they spoke, but they seemed to, they just sort of shrugged and said no. So then just around that area. And then, and then found my way out of the, the Shopping Centre and actually came out at the other end from where, well a different entrance, I didn’t come out the same way I don’t think, erm, and, erm, it was actually on the road that comes down in front of the Baptista Supermarket. I don’t know whether I searched a little bit more around there, but not long thereafter I met Dave coming down the road in front of the Supermarket, erm, just looking terrible, just pale, erm, you know, sort of, you know, sort of fear in his eyes, saying, you know, ‘This is’, erm, ‘This is really bad. This is bad’, you know, ‘No-one’s found her. No-one’s found her’. Erm, and I don’t know what happened at this point particularly, erm, whether we went around there, but at some point or other me, Matt and Dave found ourselves either back at the flat or, or, or, together somewhere nearby and decided that we would, erm, head down to the beach, I think that was just ‘a’, you know, you think ‘Oh there’s water down there it’s dangerous if she’s got that far’ and ‘b’ just, it was, it was desperation and gravity takes, you know, would take you that way. So the three of us swept down through a number of roads, erm, and then came out down at the, you know, down on the beachfront and I think by this point we thought it, you know, it was fairly futile searching as a three so we split up and took sections of the beach and, as I’ve described before, I think Matt looked immediately around where we had come out on the beach, me and Dave kind of headed along towards where the majority of the beach was in the other direction and Dave started searching on that part of the beach and I got myself almost over to where this Café Paradiso or Restaurant Paradiso is, along the boardwalks and out to the, to the water edge, erm, and I found there that you could, if looking back, you, it wasn’t perfect, but you could see a fair amount of the beach and as well, and also be able to look at the waterline as well. Erm, went along there for a bit towards Black Rock, erm, and then, and then at some point decided to turn, to turn back, I mean, I thought, I think it felt rather unlikely that, that Madeleine was going to have walked the distance that I was starting to go, I think, you know, there’s no, there’s no reason why she would have necessarily left the kind of the beach area and gone down there. So I didn’t go all the way, turned back, as I came back, erm, you now, I bumped into the, the woman I described before, early twenties, fair hair, given the light, English, possibly a MARK WARNER employee, although I don’t, I don’t remember, I don’t know whether I’d seen her before, erm, or since, but she was certainly, you know, either, erm, tut, someone who worked out there because she wasn’t Portuguese, she seemed to be already aware that, that somebody was missing, either through bumping into Dave or, you know, having been higher up in the town recently. Erm, and then did a, a, a comb through various streets, erm, not with any great, erm, plan but just to try and cover some area on the way back up to the, the apartments. And then obviously got back up to the apartments and it was clear that, you know, the, erm, you know, that things were still, you know, very, very dire and no-one had found her. I mean, right up until this point I, I thought some, you know, I did honestly think that this was just, that the patio was open and she, you know, and she had gone for, gone for a wander. Erm, by the time we got back from this I think, you know, there was, there were other people were certainly starting to congregate and, in fact, I think some people were starting to search, mainly staff from MARK WARNER, who I think had been alerted fairly quickly. Erm, and it’s a, and it’s a bit of a, it’s a bit of a blur as to, you know, what, what happened at this point. As I said before, I think I probably went round to Jane before I’d done this, this sort of leg to the beach and back, but it may have been, it may have been that I actually went round at this point. And, erm, I went round to the, you know, went round to the room, erm, and, from recollection, Jane was stood in the doorway, I think almost certainly with Rachael, possibly with Fiona as well. Erm, and, you know, I went up and she was, you know, clearly very, very distressed, erm, just, erm, you know, phew, you know, almost, almost sort of shaking, and I, you know, I just thought it was just part of the, you know, the shock that we were all kind of experiencing, and I gave her a quick hug and she said, you know, ‘I think I saw someone. I think I saw someone taking Madeleine away’ and she sort of told me what, erm, what, you know, what she, what she had witnessed when she’d done her check, but, you know, hadn’t put too much weight on it because you know, until, until your suspicions are raised, you know, why would you, why would you. Erm, and as we discussed before, you know, there is no doubt in my mind, I mean, I’ve known Jane for twelve years, that she is, erm, she is calm, she is collected, she doesn’t make a fuss, she doesn’t, erm, she doesn’t get flustered by things, you know, if there’s a problem then she just gets on with it, she’s not neurotic, she’s not hysterical and, you know, from her recollection at the time, this wasn’t, this wasn’t something that dawned on her hours later, this was an instant, erm, visceral feeling, you know, right inside, that, that these two things were absolutely related, you know, as soon as she knew that Madeleine was missing then, then, erm, it was, it was absolutely clear as anything to her, you know. I’ve said, I’ve said the other day on the other film, you know, that she has been treated abominably by the Press, erm, fantasist, liar, you know, sympathetic witness ,whatever you like, it’s been repeated over and over again, it’s gone unchallenged, it’s gone undefended, it hasn’t been, hasn’t been put to bed by a statement from the Police and, you know, this, Jane would not make this up, there is no question in my mind that she would fabricate this, there’s no, as I’ve said before, there’s no, there is no benefit for finding Madeleine by creating some random false lead off into the dark, you know, in a certain direction. Erm, and Jane hasn’t been, you know, has never been more sure f something in her life, I mean, she didn’t see enough of this person to know exactly what they looked like, she didn’t see the child to know that it was definitely Madeleine, but something triggered her suspicion at the time, but because, you know, as far as she was concerned, all was well in the flats, you know, she didn’t really kind of think much more of it, but then, as soon as she knew Madeleine was gone, there was something odd about this chap, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t right the way, the speed, you know, and all the things that she’s, you know, undoubtedly described. But, but she has been treated like xxxx for nine months in the Press, I mean, it’s been disgusting, it’s been absolutely appalling, you know, and I think, huh, I mean, none of, you know, you know, I’ve said earlier, I mean, I cannot abide the media and I think they’re, I think they’re an absolute disgrace at the best of times and had a fairly strong view of them beforehand and it’s only been made dramatically, dramatically worse by this, but, you know, they, they have poured scorn on what we consider and certainly Jane considers to be the fundamental sort of eye witness account of this and, you know, at every stage when she’s done her, you know, when the, the picture was commissioned, it’s been laughed at, scorned at, you know. I don’t think there’s any doubt in Jane’s mind, erm, that this is, this is, this is what, this is the moment where Madeleine was being taken away and, you know, as a, as a statement, you know, a personal witness for her, she is not going to make this up and it’s not going to be, erm, huh, it’s not going to be some hysterical reaction to the circumstances, that is just not Jane’s personality and I think she’s demonstrated that during the year by, by, you know, when not reacting in a hysterical way to, you know, phew, national TV interviews and everything else. So, anyway, I saw her at some point either after the initial searches or after this longer one. Erm, then, erm, there’s a period of time where, where we didn’t search and, erm, we were trying to do things, you know, nearby, erm, one of the, one of the things we tried to do after the Police, the local GNR Police had arrived, was we tried to get, we tried to get the photograph, erm, Kate certainly had some on her camera, they were looking for one, you know, face on that was big enough rather than a, you know, a profile or something, so that took a little while, we then didn’t have any means of printing it and a lot of the MARK WARNER staff were around including John the Manager, I think it was Kat the Nanny, erm, but certainly one of the Nannies made, you know, certainly had found, found either a, well either a printer themselves that would print only from cameras or at least, erm, a connection to the printer that we could use for the card, I can’t remember what the equipment was in the end, but all of this took quite a, quite a while to get hold of. Erm, you know, there was sort of pandemonium outside really, erm, attempts were made to, to get in touch with the Consulate, erm, and, erm, you know, there, and a lot of conversations between us together and also members of the, erm, members of the MARK WARNER staff and bystanders as well about what had happened and there was, there was quite a lot of people helping out in, in the sort of local searches as well around the adjacent blocks. At some point in amongst this but before, probably before I, erm, you know, tried to get hold of the pictures, I actually ventured towards, in towards five, erm, five ‘A’ and, as I said the other day, I really did feel at a little bit of a loss and quite pathetic in terms of, you know, knowing what to, you know, how to support Kate and Gerry and I’ve always felt a little, I mean, we’ve all felt a little ashamed that, you know, were a bit powerless to, to, to really kind of, to help them and to support them, but, you know, my recollection of Gerry at some stage around this time was I came up the steps, I could certainly hear him, I mean, even earlier than this, you could hear wails of despair, erm, you know, almost sort of inhuman wails of despair from Kate inside the flat on, erm, erm, on a number, a number of occasions when we went back and, erm, but this was the first time I’d actually really seen or heard Gerry, he was on the phone to, erm, a member of his family, erm, curled up really on the floor just outside the sliding patio door just sobbing uncontrollably and in between sobs just saying ‘They’ve’, you know, ‘Someone’s taken her’ or ‘Somebody’s blo*dy got her’, you know, ‘She’s gone’ and absolutely erm, you know, you know, for such a strong man to see him on the floor broken he was, he was incapable of even standing up, he was just lying on the floor and just repeating himself, there was so little he could, you know, there was just nothing else in there. Erm, and, erm, at this point, you know, there was, erm, you know, other conversations, you know, this is where I believe I had my first meeting and conversations with, with, with Robert MURAT, he’d helped break up a little bit of a, of a fracas between a couple of guests and the, and the Police, the couple of Police who were, who were there and were standing outside the apartment or just a little bit up from it, erm, and, erm, they weren’t, they weren’t visibly doing very much and I think a couple of the, either British ex-pats who live there or tourists, one of whom, they were both in kind of their fifties, if I remember rightly, they were getting quite, quite mouthy, they were quite, they had a very clear idea of what they thought that should be done and, erm, at one point they were, they were saying this quite loudly to, to, you know, a couple of members of the GNR whose English obviously wasn’t good enough to hear a, a shouted colloquial rant in English at them, erm, and I’ve a recollection of, of, of MURAT sort of saying, you know, ‘Hang on guys they can’t understand you’, you know, being actually very helpful and that is my recollection of him on the night, that he came across as concerned, like a lot of people, you know, said ‘I’ve got a daughter the same sort of age, this is terrible, this is terrible’, helping defuse the situation with, with the, erm, with the, erm, with a couple of members of the GNR. I had another conversation, I mean, over, I’m not entirely sure what sort of timescale this is, I think my original statements said this was all around one am, but it’s all a little bit of a blur, erm, I had a few other conversations with him, erm, either round the back of the apartments, erm, I mean, he was saying that, you know, again, sort of console here, very consolatory kind of comments which were, which a lot of people were saying to anyone who they knew was part of the group, erm, and one thing he did make a mention of was, you know, it was something about Norfolk, which I believe is where he his, his, his wife and kid live and he said there was, you know, there was a case a few, a few years back, erm, of someone went missing and then they turned up, they may have turned up hundreds of miles away, but, you know, they were unharmed, they were safe. Again, you know, the kind of thing that most people were quite happy to, happy to hear and, you know, I didn’t have any, any great sort of suspicion about him on the night, in fact, he didn’t feature in any of our statements on the first or the second attempt, erm, I know Fiona and Rachael have much more vehement views on what he was like, they found him a little, you know, different, but, from my point of view, he was, he was just helping like a number of other individuals and, erm, and being fluent in Portuguese was, was obviously a big help on such a night. Erm, he also sort of gave the impression that he might have done some Police work before and, to be fair, I probably didn’t know at the time but now I don’t know whether he was referring to translation work that he’d done with the Portuguese Police here or whether he’d been involved in translating for, for Police in Britain, you know, in the opposite direction, but I’ve got this vague, vague now recollection of some kind of conversation on that, on that, erm, on that level. Erm, the next, so, you know, at some point I think I felt, I was starting to feel sort of useless again, just hanging around the apartment, you know, there were a lot of people, you know, going around at this point, so I opted, after the pictures and after a period of time back in the flat and conversations to go away again, erm, and this time I searched over and on towards the Millennium Restaurant, so in a, in a completely different direction to where I had been before. As I said, I don’t think the, although people, there was some coordination within small groups of individuals, there wasn’t really a systematic route to anyone being searched, so I may have been covering ground that had been done before, but, nonetheless, I chose somewhere that I hadn’t been before, erm, searched along those roads, there’s a few alleys that kind of, well alleys the wrong word, erm, roads that I presume higher up just sort of go, you know, lead out of town, that run parallel to the road that goes up past Millennium, erm, I went round a few of, erm, a couple of these with increasing futility really, and I think despite there being a bit of moonlight, I couldn’t really see very much, erm, there were sort of dog barks and you kind of think, you know, ‘I’m just going to walk into some field of rabid dogs’, so in the end I kind of double back. And I think almost as I’d, you know, given up on walking up these roads, I went down and, as I said on Tuesday, erm, a car came up one of these roads with what I think was Dan the tennis coach inside and another, at least, I think at least one more occupant, I can’t remember whether he was driving or whether he was in the, in the passenger seat, but he certainly recognised, recognised me in the headlights and being as tall as I am it’s usually fairly easily spotted, erm, and he, and I kind of said ‘Look, I’ve been up there, I can’t really see very much’, he said ‘Don’t worry, we’re driving up these with the headlights, we’ll have a good look’. So I came back to the, the main, the main road, erm, that was leading over to the Millennium and then for a fair amount of time went round all of the individual flats there and looked, the ground floor, you know, they’re all, they’re all identical with walls running like this and gates and you can open the gate and you can look in on the ground floor at all of the gardens and there were a number of other people kind of searching around doing the same sort of thing. Erm, and then at some stage I headed back to the apartment, that was, that was my final search of the night. The, the next real recollection, I mean, I don’t know how much time we spent in our own flats and talking outside, but the next recollection really is, erm, being in the, in the flat, this was sort the first time I remember being in the flat with, with, erm, with, with Gerry, you know, around this point there, there were a lot more, I think, I think the PJ had arrived and certainly there were actually other, other members of the GNR around as well because there was, you know, a fair number of people milling around in the, in the passageway going in through the, the, erm, the locked door, not, so not on the patio side, but there were a lot of people including Police around, around the exit there near the shutters and stuff. Erm, and at some stage sort of quietened off and the, the PJ sat down with, you know, came in and sat down with Gerry, the recollections of what happened there are relatively dim now, but the only ones I can really recall was, although it was prompted by what you showed me on Tuesday, was that we were writing on the back of a piece of card, I thought it was a cereal box but obviously it was a children’s book, a very kind of, very, very, draft idea of what happened in the hour and, erm, and what state the windows and the shutters had been in and I think I, that was, that was written with me sat at the table in Kate and Gerry’s room. Gerry by this point had certainly calmed down but was, his head was just on the table, you know, like that, he was just staring at the, at the table, very, very quiet and very, very low. Dave PAYNE was in there at least at one point early on. And I think possibly Sylvia this Housekeeper, I think she came in, I think she was offering to translate at some point. But anyway Dave PAYNE said to, erm, there were two members of the PJ had arrived, there was a guy I remember being almost shaved bald head, quite dark complexion, and a second one who we kind of nicknamed ‘baby face’ who did our fingerprinting about a week later, erm, and those two were there and Dave was, was saying, you know, ‘Shouldn’t we’, you know, ‘Why are we sitting here, shouldn’t you be on the radio, shouldn’t there be more people here, shouldn’t there be’, you know, ‘this should be on the radio, it should be on the television’ and, erm, I recall ‘baby face’ or his colleague saying ‘No media’, and, you know, and that was full-stop and then turning round to me writing the timeline and saying ‘That’s what we want’, fair enough. Erm, huh, and that’s really it. At some point Jane came in, I think because Jane was in with our kids at this point, I didn’t hang around too, you know, too long and I went out, but Jane came in I think to give a brief statement to the, the, the PJ on the night, erm, and this is where she’s concerned that, she didn’t really want to believe what she had seen and she was worried that she had played it down to those staff on the, on the night, such that, that she was never taken seriously again by the PJ, erm, but, erm, that was, that, I mean, that was, you know, her concern about how she, how she pitched it at the time, but she desperately didn’t want to believe that what she saw was, was true and be the last person, you now, in the group to sort of see Madeleine. Erm, and then I have to say that the rest of the evening is, is a bit of a blur, the PJ were at the flat I think for probably about an hour, but I’m guessing there. At some stage they permitted or told, erm, erm, somebody, Kate and Gerry, that the, that the, that the twins could be taken upstairs, because certainly one of the next things I can recall is quite late on in the evening being upstairs, erm, in five ‘H’, the twins were , I think they’d been taken up there, I think they were still, I think they were still asleep, although at one point they, they did, did wake up and I think Kate and Gerry later on were, were cuddling them. Erm, and we were all just stood there almost in, in silence or at best whispers, you know, absolutely dumbstruck by, you know, the, the, the turn of events. Erm, and, you know, Kate and Gerry were sort of sat on, they were sat on the sofas there or on the edge of the sofa, erm, absolutely broken, just, just, you know, hugging each other and or just sat there, erm, and we were there, you know, well I was up there for a while, I’ve no idea what time this was really, erm, it seemed, well it seemed like we’d been up all night already but it was still dark and I think we went, we decided that we, you know, we weren’t going to, we weren’t going to search anymore, most of the, most of, by this point, most of MARK WARNER I think had largely decided as well that there was no obvious sign of her in the immediate vicinity and the fact that, you know, there was no-one outside at one point and when I went to bed everyone had gone, erm, clearly, well at least most of the GNR, I don’t know if there was anyone still there at all. Erm, and had a very brief, erm, period of lying next to E, I think I went in one room with E and I think E had already been moved into our room and Jane slept with her in there and just lay there for an hour or so, certainly didn’t get any sleep. Erm, and then, you know, we, we got up, I think it was probably in the first twinkling of light, and I don’t really remember anything, there was certainly no breakfast eaten, I mean, there was nothing like that. My next real recollection is going back up to, to five ‘H’, you know, it’d be light by this point so it must have been, you know, seven, you know, seven o’clock, seven thirty or something, I remember it was light. And, erm, you know, the situation was pretty much as I’d left it before and, you know, Kate and Gerry were there and, you know, I think they, I remember them telling us that they, you know, they, I think in the end they’d gone out searching on their own, you know, they were just depressed because they said, you know, there was no-one else there, you know, they were the only ones out, you know. So just, just almost a, a muted silence, but the twins were there, I think they were, they were awake. Erm, I think at some point, as I say, the phone call, questions on there, around the eight o’clock mark, particularly because Rachael at some stage, I can remember her being sat in our apartment and Rachael was talking to a colleague or a friend who worked at the BBC News Desk, I think it was, she was certainly on the phone, you know, on the phone to a colleague who, who either directly or indirectly worked for the BBC or knew somebody who did and, erm, but that was, that was, I’d missed that out, that was certainly earlier on, probably before we’d gone to bed. Erm, and at some point we put the SKY News on the, on the TV in their room and, you know, it was breaking news and I thought I’d better ring my mum because, I’m not quite sure how specific, I forget how specific it was, but I thought, you know, mum needs to know what’s happened and also if it’s ‘a child has gone missing in Portugal’, my mum would probably go ‘Crikey, I hope that’s not one of ours’, so I had a very tearful conversation with my mum explaining what had happened and, erm, you know, and, you know, sort of saying well, you know, ‘E and’, you know, ‘E and E are safe, but it is, it’s Madeleine’ and, erm, erm, you know, as I say, she was pretty upset and, erm, well it was only a brief call and didn’t really have a lot to say and, erm, you know, when my dad came back, you know, my mum was in a terrible state and he thought one of us was dead. Erm, but, erm, I’m not really quite sure how the morning, earlier part of the morning like clumped together, obviously at some point the Police came back, erm, probably not, you know, around, you know, they were there maybe when I was making this phone call again and at some stage there was, we must have been, you know, we’re going to take, you know, some of you to the Station this morning, some this afternoon and we split up into pairs so somebody could stay, MARK WARNER had said, you know, ‘We’ll open the crèche and all of the children can stay at the Tapas irrespective of age and there’s more staff on there so’, you know, ‘if you do need to go to’, you know, ‘the Police it’s covered throughout the day’, but, erm, I don’t quite know where that, that sort of fitted into things. At some stage, erm, Kate had asked for, erm, to find a Priest, I think this was not going to be, this was probably a little bit later on, it was not going to be much longer than before they actually went away with the Police to Portimão. Erm, you know, I certainly saw Robert MURAT again on the morning and that’s the occasion, erm, on which I took his, his mobile number, erm, and I thought, you know, certainly with some of the translational difficulties with, you know, with the staff, that he appeared to be a very, a very kind of useful person to sort of be able to contact should we need him, as I say, I remember taking his details just on the corner of the apartment, we were outside, not, not on the road outside five ‘A’ but just at the junction of the two roads, he was walking off and going around there and I remember kind of catching him and saying, you know, ‘What’s your name’ and just putting Robert and his number into the phone. Erm, I think that was before I then got the number of the Anglican Priest, sorry the Anglican, erm, Father, because Kate’s Catholic, and I was also given some numbers, I don’t, I don’t remember who gave me these, and I rang a couple of them which didn’t go through, so I went down to, at some point during the early part of the morning, I think this was probably after Kate and Jane and Dave and Matt had all gone to the Station, erm, and rang these numbers, I thought maybe it was my mobile not putting me through, I got in touch with the Father from the, from the, erm, from the Catholic Church there, he was out, difficult English between the two of us, but he was out of town but offered to see Kate, you know, on his return, and then when I came back up they said ‘Were you after the Priest’ and I remember, I said yeah, and I remember being directed and sat over there, but actually this was the outgoing, it was his last day in Portimão, erm, his last day in Praia Da Luz, and I had a chat with him poolside, you know, in fact, probably in the chairs we were sat in the night before and then he went off. The kids at some stage here got put into the crèche and for a fair amount of the morning was spent in there, you know, we, we certainly didn’t really feel like being away from them for too long”.
01.48.52 1578 “No”.
Reply “Made the phone call to A N, which is the one you asked, he was on holiday in France and actually riding a bike at the time so he was no use anyway because I’d forgotten he was on holiday and I actually wanted to speak to someone at work saying, you know, ‘pending a minor miracle we are not going to be back on Saturday for work on Monday’, so I rang T W from the balcony of the crèche and, you know, had quite a long conversation with him explaining what had happened”.
1578 “Okay. I think we will leave it there for a short while”.
Reply “Okay”.
01.49.26 1578 “Have a break, a bite to eat”.
Reply “Uh hu. Alright, thanks”.
1578 “The time is one twenty-two pm and this interview is ceasing”.
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