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TinLizzy
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  • Register:11/07/2008 1:17 AM

Date Posted:05/01/2010 12:32 AMCopy HTML


ROB
 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”.<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
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