Situated in the hills behind the ancient town of Ephesus in Turkey is the
House of Mary. Near the small chapel on the site where the Virgin is
supposed to have died, the olive trees are covered in strips of cloth tied
there by people wanting intercession, either to make something happen, or to
stop it. It’s likely that this custom dates back beyond the Christian era,
through the worship of Diana, past that of the Artemis of Ephesus to the
Anatolian goddess Hecate.
For more than a week now, if you visit the village of Rothley, just north of
Leicester, you can see something almost identical. On the railings by the
war memorial, on the four benches nearby, on the bus stop to Birstall,
hundreds of yellow ribbons have been attached, accompanied by flowers,
cards, children’s drawings, soft toys and, above all, images of Madeleine
McCann. “Expect a miracle,” says a card depicting hands clasped in prayer
and draped with a crucifix. More typical is: “Maddy, we didn’t even know
you, but you are with us in our hearts.”
On a wet afternoon mothers with toddlers appear every few minutes, examine the
offerings, read some of the messages and add their own ribbons or flowers.
If a more photogenic group arrives, then the cameramen from Sky or ITN,
whose satellite vans are parked a few feet away, will squeeze off a few
minutes of pictures, as they do now for two mothers and their four young
children. The reporters are in the café round the corner, sheltering from
the tedium, a tedium broken by the once or twice--daily appearances of
Madeleine’s great-uncle, Brian. Otherwise, there is the ten-day-old ritual
of Valerie, the landlady from the Royal Oak, which overlooks the memorial,
bringing out the ribbons for those who want them. Now she kneels down and
empties a heartshaped basket of donations and refills it with votives. If
this isn’t a shrine, then what is? The shrine of Little St Madeleine.
The Rothley memorial is by no means the strangest thing about the McCann case,
now in its third week. There is the huge fighting fund, supported by
multinational companies and likely to raise money far beyond the family’s
requirements. There are the footballers, cricketers, celebrities and
politicians who have weighed in with appeals – ostensibly to people who
might see Maddy, but better directed at the Almighty – and ribbon-wearing.
About 90,000 have downloaded “Madeleine Missing” posters from the Sky News
website, while a “Find Maddy” website has received 60 million hits.
In Praia da Luz, the British holiday village in Portugal where Madeleine went
missing on May 3, the atmosphere is apparently surreal. Local people find it
hard to sleep because of the noise made by the generators powering the
dozens of satellite vans, or are maddened each morning by the overflights of
media helicopters, like gigantic wasps, buzzing the town. Two weeks on and,
far from the numbers diminishing, growing international interest means that
more journalists are arriving. The 200 or more already here are frazzled:
some of them, such as our own David Brown and Steve Bird, have been working
15-hour days for a fortnight on a story that is almost impossible to tell.
It is partly so difficult because the Portuguese police have been reluctant
to break their own strict rules and feed the voracious machine with tips and
steers about the investigation. This is in contrast with the McCanns, who
have endeared themselves to the press by being cooperative, having things to
say and being tolerant, and who – in return – were permitted, on the day
after Madeleine’s fourth birthday, to walk for a whole half-hour on the
beach without harassment. Readers may not think that this is much of a
concession, but readers do not have editors.
This circumspection on behalf of the Lusitanian plod has meant everyone haring
after the latest rumour – such as Thursday’s “red van in Lisbon”, because no
one will advise them not to bother. It also increases the tendency for
speculation to fill the huge gaps. When the star BBC presenter Huw Edwards
arrived in the Algarve to anchor the 10 o’clock news, his first question
must surely have been: “What on Earth am I going to say?”
Why is this happening? Some think it’s because Maddy is blonde, middle-class,
cute and everyone’s archetype – the Hollywood endangered tot. And that’s
where it begins to go wrong, because if this were a movie we’d know the
story arc in advance. In the film some kid may even have been killed at the
beginning, but the pretty one on whom we focus will invariably be saved.
Then there’s the partly true cliché that this is “every parent’s worst
nightmare”. It is also, far worse than that, any child’s worst nightmare,
and if there is a third “worst nightmare”, it would surely be to find
oneself wrongly accused of abducting a child. That is a lot of nightmare,
and with no resolution we are suffering from what a friend of mine described
this week as “narrative anxiety”.
One way of dealing with this is by creating scapegoats. Early on the
Portuguese police fulfilled this role, having been “slow off the mark” or
“incompetent”, and thus possibly allowing Maddy to be moved far away from
the scene of her abduction. Not surprisingly, Portuguese newspapers have
preferred to speculate that the crime has been committed by a paedophile
ring, conveniently based in Britain.
Then there have been the “suspects”, fingered as abducting types well before
any concrete evidence. Robert Murat was “overly helpful”, just like Ian
Huntley was. He lived with his mother, just like Norman Bates did, he had a
girlfriend in circumstances recalling the relationship between Ian Brady and
Myra Hindley. Then there was a Russian with computers, and rumours of
bestiality.
The stories have come from everywhere. A woman calls the Leicester Mercury
because of a sighting of a blonde child near Marrakesh, and a tale like this
chimes with the desire that Madeleine be alive. This makes us – the press
and the public – part of the trauma counselling being offered to the
McCanns. Let us all behave as if the girl were alive. Let no one be so
unhelpful or callous as to say the unsayable until such a time as we know
what has happened.
Since 1991 Kerry Needham has opted to believe that her son Ben, abducted on
the island of Kos in 1991, is still alive. She can call upon the examples of
cases such as that of Shawn Hornbeck in America, who was found five years
after having been kidnapped by a paedophile. Who, under those circumstances,
is going to tell her that the chances must surely be that Ben died within
hours of disappearing? So we coopt ourselves into the wellness business; the
whole country has become one huge trauma counselling service.
It still leaves us trying to make sense of Maddy’s disappearance. We want to
“learn lessons”, but there are twin problems. First, such an abduction could
happen to anyone, not just a child left alone in a room for 20 minutes. The
second is that it hardly ever happens to anyone. In other words, there may
be no lessons to learn, just the void of the child’s disappearance and the
pathology of the person who took her.
Yet the vacuum demands to be filled. The aunt impresses the Chancellor into
the case, telling the BBC that she wanted “moral support and practical
advice” from MPs, some of whom put on ribbons, and themselves become the
scapegoats of those who are anxious about how we are reacting. The fund gets
bigger, the posters go up everywhere. On the BBC Radio Leicester site you
can leave prayers for Madeleine, and messages and prayers for the McCanns.
But why put a picture of Madeleine in your window, 500 miles from the Algarve?
“If I thought it would help show solidarity”, writes one contribu-tor to the
BBC website, “why not? I wear a poppy on Remembrance Day, a lapel badge for
breast cancer awareness, why not a ribbon for Mad-die? So what?” Those who
question this are described as “miserable devils”.
This next thing is hard to write. If I’ve heard one parent say that they’re
now holding their own child a bit tighter, a bit closer, then I’ve heard a
hundred. But it isn’t our child. Our child is safe. The mother who takes the
toddler to the Maddy shrine may be congratulating herself on her own good
fortune, as much as commiserating with the McCanns. Another, placing the
poster in the window, may – like the supporter of a football team – be
associating themselves with the big story, with the historic moment. They
may, in short, be getting a subconscious thrill. They may, as they comb the
papers or scan the bulletins, be feeling a pleasure.
There are many ways of being “overly helpful”, but all suggest the possibility
of guilt. In our case it may be that the abduction of Madeleine McCann has
become, essentially, a bad form of entertainment and that, deep down, we
know it.
Search goes on
May 3 Madeleine McCann is taken from holiday apartment
May 4 Border police and airports notified, volunteers comb village.
Kate and Gerry McCann plead for her return
May 5 British family liaison officers arrive in Portugal
May 6 McCanns attend church service; prayers said for Madeleine
May 7 Police investigate claim about a man seen dragging a girl towards
a marina
May 8 Neighbours in Rothley hold silent vigil. Appeals by footballers
Cristiano Ronaldo, John Terry and Paulo Ferreira. Police say sighting is
false alarm
May 9 Police examine CCTV showing woman with girl fitting description.
Internet appeal begins
May 10 Police say search is being wound down. They issue image of
pyjamas identical to those Madeleine was wearing
May 11 Businessman offers a £1 million reward. David Beckham makes TV
appeal for information
May 12 Madeleine’s 4th birthday. £1.5 million added to reward. Gordon
Brown expresses sympathy
May 13 Family Law Group fly to Portugal, set up “fighting fund”
May 14 Robert Murat’s home is searched
May 15 Mr Murat officially classed as suspect. He claims that he is
being made a scapegoat
May 16 Images of Madeleine are broadcast at half-time during the Uefa
Cup final. Police search home of Sergei Malinka, 22, a Russian computer
expert
May 17 Police investigate phone calls between Mr Malinka and Mr Murat
on night Madeleine taken
