OPENING GAMBIT by Dr Martin Roberts

Opening Gambit

Alice in Wonderland chess game
EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com

By Dr Martin Roberts
08 February 2013

OPENING GAMBIT

Chess
is an intriguing game. Like the stylised warfare it is often said to
represent, a player's success rather depends upon his or her ability to
play two roles concurrently, their own and the opponent's, the tactics
of both becoming increasingly complex as the game progresses. Broadly
speaking, victory is gained when one party overlooks or misreads the
other's intentions.

If there is one anomaly which stands out
above all others in the McCann case, it is the matter of the bedroom
window. For never mind its being an 'open or shut' case, once the pros
and cons of that more obvious aspect are addressed, it becomes something
of a puzzle as to why it should ever have been introduced into the
story in the first instance.

A naïve, dismissive answer might be
that the aperture was brought into play by an intruder into the McCanns'
apartment. But we do not know that. Kate McCann may lay claim to
knowing that, on the basis of having been there, but however proximal
she was, in time or space, to events on the evening of May 3, 2007, such
an explanation can be based on nothing more than surmise, there being
no residual evidence to confirm it one way or another.

Perhaps
the most important thing about the window in question is not whether it
was open or closed, its shutters raised or lowered, or its curtains
drawn, but where it was exactly, i.e. on the elevation furthest from the
Tapas Bar dining area and out of sight of patrons; the same elevation
as the front door in fact.

Anyone who enjoyed the recent Channel 4
documentary, The King in the Car Park, would have understood the
closing analogy regarding alternative interpretations of history, and
the significance of evidence which disambiguates a given situation. If a
topic should sit squarely between diametrically opposed positions, then
clearly both views cannot be correct. Like it or not, one of them must
be wrong. Who can forget the look of disbelief on the face of ricardian
Philippa Langley, when her lady colleague in the trench pointed to
skeletal remains that displayed visible signs of spinal curvature, a
supposedly mythological characteristic of Richard III and one which many
a ricardian would previously have dismissed as merely Tudor propaganda?

I
digress. But only in order to set up the contrast between an abductor's
view of the circumstances surrounding the McCanns' dormant children and
the McCanns' (particularly Kate's) understanding of the same, both
perspectives governed by the same set of constraints; Kate playing
white, the abductor black, as it were.

In her book, Madeleine,
Kate confesses not to know, exactly, why the supposed abductor should
have opened the bedroom window to apartment 5A. Whether to gain access
to her children, export one of them, or simply to confuse the issue, she
offers no definitive answer. She also entertains several other
speculative possibilities concerning the behaviour of Madeleine's
aggressor: that he/she had previously stalked the family for several
days, that they gleaned information from a cursory glance at a staff
note book kept at the Tapas Bar, and that they may well have paid a
reconnaissance visit to the McCanns' apartment prior to the night of May
3, causing the children to wake prematurely.

Let's suppose he/she did all of those things, made all of those moves if you will.

Familiarity
with the McCanns' pattern of behaviour in the evenings, especially if
gleaned from an overlooking balcony by a 'spotter' smoking themselves to
death, would have confirmed which door the parents typically used at
night, as well as the schedule of their return visits from the nearby
Tapas bar (i.e., every 10, 20, 30, 60 minutes). Since no visible signs
of intrusion were reported by the family on either the Wednesday night
or Thursday morning, any preparatory exploration of the 5A interior by
an intending abductor must have been carried out without breaking and
entering, using either the patio door or, given Gerry's assertion to
police that it was 'unlikely' the parents had locked it, the front door
even. Hence the window would not afterwards have entered into
consideration, at least by the intruder. And while lounging in cognito
at the Tapas Bar, casually flicking over the pages of the revealing
staff note book, this Portuguese speaker would most certainly have taken
note of the fact that the rear entrance to apartment 5A was not visible
through the restaurant's Perspex screen (and distant shrubbery),
despite any and all subsequent protestations to the contrary.

It
is this last point which is perhaps of most significance when it comes
to deciding upon the origins of the window's contribution to events, for
whatever the chosen means of entrance into, or exit from the McCanns'
apartment, being witnessed in the act by the carousing family was
arguably the least of any criminal's concerns. Front door or patio door,
the window will have had no part whatsoever to play in proceedings.

Black's strategy is as good as sorted then. And it's black's move. But what does white have in mind?

Contrary
to expectation, and despite having their backs to it while at the
restaurant, the McCanns could 'see the apartment from where they were
sitting.' And since no self-respecting intruder is deliberately going to
place himself in jeopardy, he would most likely opt for being out of
sight when making his entrance. So he'd prefer to go in through the
front somehow.

Of course the McCann position is that an
abductor's access to daughter Madeleine was via the rear patio doors.
But that position was adopted only after it was firmly established that
neither the bedroom window nor the shutters had been tampered with; from
outside at any rate.

The abductor had therefore to force open
the bedroom window (because the front door must have been locked).
Otherwise he would simply have walked straight in; something he appeared
at first not to have done.

So, armed with sufficient information
about white's disposition to allow 'mate in three,' is that not what
black would do? Are we to expect that he would instead delay the agony
unnecessarily, making a pawn sacrifice to no purpose whatsoever (the
'red herring' proposal)? Clearly that is white's interpretation of
black's strategy. But that is what white imagines, and not what black
actually does.

Apologies for the layout of the previous post, this has been happening all the time recently. Any suggestions how I can correct the layout to a normal easy to read one ? [ I don't remember altering anything so that my posts would look so strange.]
Thanks !

russiandoll wrote:Apologies for the layout of the previous post, this has been happening all the time recently. Any suggestions how I can correct the layout to a normal easy to read one ? [ I don't remember altering anything so that my posts would look so strange.]
Thanks !

Hello russaindoll, it often happens to me.
I have to send my post, discover it's all over the shop, then go to EDIT.
Once there, it's time consuming but I put the cursor at the left hand side of each dropped line and bring it backwards by pressing the ENTER key, then I use the SPACE-BAR to give a space.
Just beware, if you just once place the cursor outside your edit work, it will all disappear.
Hopefully someone else will have a better technique. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]