07 February 2012
EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com
Thursday 3 May, 2007
Parental duty
"Yeah, I mean, I was saying this earlier, that at no point, other than that night, did I go stick my head in. That was the only time, because the door was like that. I mean, I knew how I'd left it." (Gerry McCann, in 'Madeleine Was Here.')
"Part of the reason we ended up coming through the back was the noise coming through the front door. We didn't want to disturb them." (Gerry McCann to Matthew Oldfield, in 'Madeleine Was Here.')
"...on the whole, people checked their own children. Erm, and, again, on the actual night Madeleine was taken, that was, was very much different, I think, to, to previous nights, in that, there was probably more cross checking that night." (Fiona Payne - Rogatory Interview).
"...on the first few nights it all seemed, erm, fairly well spaced... Erm, whereas, again, that differed on the Thursday night, in that, it seemed more, erm, out of, people were more out of synch." (Fiona Payne - Rogatory Interview).
4078: "Was that the first time that you had taken it upon yourself to check on somebody else's child?"
Matthew Oldfield: "Yeah, I'd not done it before, (Rogatory Interview)
Precautions
"I know there was a conversation about, oh we've started nipping in that way rather than going the long way round. Erm, so, I suppose, at that point, that's when they, because you couldn't lock the French doors from outside, that's when they weren't locking it." (Fiona Payne - Rogatory Interview).
"No, as I say, it came up at that, that conversation, which I think was on the, on the, on the Thursday night, about, erm, you know, whether I would feel happy leaving, leaving a door unlocked, but that was the only time I'd heard Kate sort of almost saying, question whether they should do it or not." (Fiona Payne - Rogatory Interview).
Photography
"I haven't been able to use the camera since I took that last photograph of her." (Kate McCann to Olga Craig, writing for the Sunday Telegraph of 27 May, 2007. The photograph in question is said to have been taken mid-afternoon on 3 May).
All these 'first time of asking' decisions taken, before Madeleine, on the Thursday.
Not since the sinking of the Titanic have so many coincidences formed the prelude to a catastrophe.
Even the elements conspired.
Gerry McCann left the door to the children's bedroom in a 'slam shuttable' position. He must have done, because that's what the door did on Kate's arrival into the apartment at 10.00 p.m. that Thursday night apparently.
Matthew Oldfield, who, like Kate, was oblivious to the cold night air entering through the open bedroom window, was frightened to touch it.
It was perhaps a blessing in disguise therefore that the door waited fully three-quarters of an hour before closing in Kate's very presence, otherwise she might just have turned around there and then and Madeleine's absence would not have been noticed until breakfast the following morning.
As Kate herself has said:
"I just stood, actually and I thought, oh, all quiet, and to be honest, I might have been tempted to turn round then, but I just noticed that the door, the bedroom door where the three children were sleeping, was open much further than we'd left it." ('Madeleine was here').
Was Rocha Negra ever mentioned in the holiday brochure?
