They were surely now above suspicion. The Portuguese equivalent of our Attorney-General hadn’t just said there was insufficient evidence against him and Kate. He had said ‘No proof’. In fact, on another translation of his remarks he had actually said: ‘No evidence’. It was clear to Gerry that this was the unambiguous message from the Portuguese judicial authorities. They were not going to do anything more to investigate the absurd idea that Madeleine died in their holiday apartment. As he and his PR team had repeatdly emphasised, he and Kate had been ‘cleared’ for all time. And indeed, the compliant British media had also unanimously pronounced them ‘cleared’.

The message that they had been finally cleared, after overy a year of putting up with hurtful, ludicrous allegations, was also getting through to the millions of supporters thar they had all over the world. Hundreds of e-mails and letters had poured in to them since the Portugues Attorney-General had made his historic pronouncement that he was ordering the case to be closed.

The only people not totally and unreserevedly satisfied about his and Kate’s total inocence in this affair were those persistent, malicious bloggers and Interet forum members who carried on their relentless and hate-filled campaign of vilification – against all the evidence. A good job, he mused, that at a high level of the British government, they were already looking at how to crack down on free speech on the Internet. It was simply intolerable that people should be allowed to express their opinion about a claim of abduction. To think that ordianry people should be allowed to question what a pair of Doctors said about their daughter being abducted. Such matters should be strictly left to the police and the proper authorities and people must not be allowed to speculate about them, still less commit innumereable foul libels. Thank goodness that Express Newspapers had had the good sens eto pay out £390,000 to each of his ‘Tapas 9’ friends, though that was a pathetic sum in relation to all the distress they had suffered and the fact that, post-Madeleine, their lives would never be the same again. He pondered a moment; £550,000 libel damages for him and Kate, £390,000 for Dave, Matt and Russ and their families…£940,000 in total…not even a million. Still, it all helped to pay the bills of Metodo 3 and Oakley International, even though these organisations couldn’t say who took Madeleine, where they took her, and whether she was still alive or not.

However, it was a complex investigation – and it was good news that, as a recent ‘Sunday Express’ article had put it:

“Millionaire businessman Brian Kennedy, the McCanns’ financial backer, is seeking a former high-ranking police detective to mastermind the private investigation. He has interviewed several candidates and will see more in the coming weeks. Whoever takes on the job faces the mammoth task of assessing information gathered by many private detectives since Madeleine vanished 18 months ago. The investigator will also have to read thousands of pages of Portuguese police files released in August and painstakingly translated”.

That should keep the ‘high-ranking’ detective with plenty to occupy him during the coming dark winter months, mused Gerry.

Gerry’s mood improved still further as he dwelt on all that might come to him and Kate in the future. People were still donating to the Helping to Find Madeleine Fund. Now cleared, he and Kate could look forward to more work – all expenses covered – in promoting organisations like the Amber Alert, the Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, and other groups concerend with missing, abducted and exploited children.

Some good could come from Madeleine’s disappearance after all, perhaps.

Just then, his mobile ’phone, which he’d placed on the table top near to the now-empty bottle of wine, rang loudly and disturbed the silence. As he woke up suddenly from his reverie, or his sleep, whichever it had been, he noticed that the clouds had now become very dark and that and a squally, gusty wind was now whipping up the leaves and dust around the table and the back of his villa.

He glanced at the caller number on his cellphone.

Clarence!

by ‘Montmorillonite’ – COPYRIGHT