Chapter 12 – M&M&M – Murat, Malinka and McCann

Chapter 12 – M&M&M – Murat, Malinka and McCann

João Tavares has been intrigued about Robert Murat since the early days of the case. He had decided on a discrete surveillance of the Englishman. On his request, the colleagues in Britain had informed that Murat, during the time that he lived in Norwich, had functioned as a bridge between the Portuguese community and the local authorities.

Malinka was living in Praia da Luz. He had been photographed while talking to Murat near his house. A citizen from Eastern Europe with a cold, calm disposition, young Malinka worked with computers, building websites. According to a neighbour, he favours young girls. That phone call in the night of the 3rd of May, still doesn’t fit in João Tavares’ head. The Russian was heard by the police, two days after his friend Murat read in the papers that the Policia Judiciaria was looking for him, and then he erased everything from his computers.

Murat was known by the McCanns before. When Gerry was questioned about that possible relationship from before the events, he replies that he does not want to comment on that matter, a statement that prompted many interpretations. Could this be the missing element to consider his participation in a possible concealment of the cadaver? Theoretically, yes, but nothing was proved.

Could Murat be the link to another person who entered apartment 5A, thus justifying the absence of any traces of the little girl in his residence?

Anything is admissible in the area of theories and hypotheses. At the beginning of the case, João Tavares liked to look at Murat as a person who liked to be helpful, who needed to be socially accepted in order to feel important, who enjoyed being the link between different cultures, who talked too much and apparently watched too many movies. But the truth was that Professor Sullivan, a British expert in profile analysis, had concluded that there was a high probability that Robert Murat fit the pattern of the paedophile who might have abducted Madeleine, abused her, and killed her afterwards.

This specialist analysed the suspect’s past, his present life, he heard people who knew him personally, and formulated his verdict. The police could not ignore this report. They had to presume it was correct, given the reputation of the expert, and acted accordingly.

João Tavares thinks this is nothing but modern fantasies, and that his own, old-fashioned methods are just as reliable, to say the least.

Malinka, unlike Murat, had time to prepare himself for the police. If he had anything to hide from the police, he had time enough to get rid of it.

There was very little to incriminate the Russian. João Tavares would have preferred to keep him and Murat under discrete surveillance, and if there was no reason to question them, they would not have been questioned and that was it. He is very sorry about those days when some of the British journalists who were covering the case directly from Praia da Luz, suspected an individual who walked around the place, helping out and doing translations, and the first thing they did was… to warn the authorities in London about those suspicions. He is also sorry about the fact that the pressure to sell newspapers and tv audiences, had prompted the journalists to publish the story that a certain individual was being the target of the police’s attention, despite the fact that the investigation suffered serious damage from it. For João Tavares, the action of this M&M&M trio is far from clarified.