Chapter 16 – Father and daughter, Inc.

Chapter 16 – Father and daughter, Inc.

When questioned about the relationship that was visible between Madeleine and her parents, all the witnesses that were interrogated by the investigators were unanimous in saying that there was a lot of complicity between father and daughter. The neighbor that lives above apartment 5A stated that she heard Madeleine shouting, during those days that the family spent at the Ocean Club, for two sorts of reasons. Either because she was yelling at her mother while her mother yelled back, or because she was screaming out for her father. This portrait was interesting for the policemen, as it offered them an idea of what that family could be like.

Later in time, when they read the mother’s diary, they confirmed just that. Kate called her daughter ‘hysterical’ and hyperactive, consuming the mother’s strength to a limit, while she complained that Gerry didn’t help her much with the children, leaving her with the chore, the heavy chore, of taking care of those children on her own. She was probably not referring to the action of ‘raising’ them, but rather to daily care: food, clothing, baths, putting them to bed, teaching discipline. This also helps to understand the reason why Madeleine, and probably also the twins, preferred their father. He was associated to playing and to good things. The mother was associated to less pleasant issues of daily life.

When the investigators started looking more closely at the family, they asked themselves if something tragic could have happened during one of those discussions. Could it have been on that late afternoon, when the sun was still shining and the child was reluctant about going to bed? Was the mother tired of a week of holidays, with more work with her children than on a normal week at home? And what if, right from the beginning, nobody believed that the Portuguese authorities would be able to distinguish an accident from something more serious? What if Gerry was confronted with something bad and had only five seconds to decide? What if his love for his wife and for his two other children made him follow the path of concealment and lies? And, if that was the case, wouldn’t there have been the help from someone else? And what if none of this was the case and the parents were completely innocent about the disappearance of their little Madeleine?

These academic questions followed policemen Francisco Meireles and João Tavares even when they spoke to the couple in an informal, friendly manner. This work possibility did not seem inappropriate to them, and the clues that were collected would end up reinforcing what they though had happened.

None of them, despite their convictions about the case, would have bet their salary on it. There were too many circumstantial indicators, and a lack of solid indicators, and nobody can, in conscience, accuse some parents of their own child’s death, unless one is absolutely certain of what one is doing, and that everything supports that accusation. Nevertheless, they were looking at a scenario where the daughter probably admired her father more than her mother; but how many families are like this? The people usually say that ‘one educates, and the one other spoils’.