McCanns home but nightmare goes on
Madeleine McCann’s parents woke up today back home in Britain, but without their missing daughter and with a cloud of suspicion hanging over them.
Kate and Gerry McCann left their house in the village of Rothley, Leicestershire, in England with their three children for a happy family holiday in Portugal at the end of April.
More than four months later they finally made the emotional journey back to the UK yesterday with their two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, but not their eldest child.
To make the situation even worse, in the previous week the McCanns were made formal suspects in Madeleine’s disappearance and warned by their lawyer they could be charged over her death.
His voice breaking, Mr McCann insisted they played no part in her disappearance after touching down at East Midlands Airport just after noon yesterday.
He said: “Whilst it is heartbreaking to return to the UK without Madeleine, it does not mean we are giving up our search.
“As parents we cannot give up on our daughter until we know what has happened.”
The couple do not know if or when police will call them back to Portugal, although they will obey even if they fear they could be arrested, a family friend said.
“They are not running away. It is a change of place but they are very happy to help the police,” the friend said.
“If they need to come back for interviews, they will come back for interviews.”
The family’s decision to return to Britain was in large part based on their desire to maintain a sense of normality for their two youngest children.
Mr McCann said: “We want the twins, as much as is reasonably possible, to live an ordinary life in their home country, and we want to consider the events of the last few days which have been so deeply disturbing.”
It is very unlikely they will bring the twins back to Portugal with them if police need them for further interviews, a friend said.
Mrs McCann’s uncle Brian Kennedy spoke briefly to reporters outside the couple’s house in Rothley yesterday.
He said: “It has been a very emotional experience. In one way they’re happy to be back, but they have a mix of feelings as you would expect.
“It has been the most trying three or four days of their lives. They are very tired – shattered, as anyone would be.”
The McCanns’ return to Britain yesterday onboard easyJet flight 6552 from Faro capped a week of dramatic developments.
On Monday Portuguese detectives telephoned Mr McCann to summon him and his wife for further questioning.
Three days later Mrs McCann went to the headquarters of the Policia Judiciaria (PJ) – Portugal’s CID – in the town of Portimao and was questioned for 11 hours.
During the interview detectives suggested to her that traces of Madeleine’s blood were found in the family’s hire car, a silver Renault Scenic.
Mrs McCann is understood to have told them angrily there was “no way” this could be the case because they did not lease the vehicle until 25 days after her daughter disappeared.
She returned to the police station on Friday and was declared an “arguida”, or formal suspect.
Detectives asked her 22 key questions about what happened to Madeleine, including whether she accidentally killed her.
Mr McCann was separately interviewed for eight hours the same day and was also made an arguido.
There were no bail conditions attached to their arguido status and they retained their passports, meaning they could freely return to the UK.
On Saturday the couple made a last-minute decision to reinstate their original plan to fly home yesterday.
Mr McCann drove his family out of the gates of their villa at about 7.10am yesterday and they arrived at Faro Airport’s VIP entrance an hour later.
The first two rows on the aircraft were reserved for the McCanns, who were accompanied by Madeleine’s aunt Trisha Cameron and their spokesman David Hughes.
Sean and Amelie joked and played with their parents throughout the two-and-a-half hour flight back to Britain, according to one of the journalists also onboard.
It is now 130 days since Madeleine went missing from her bed in her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz while her parents dined at a nearby tapas restaurant.
Mr and Mrs McCann insisted they would not be “bullied” into leaving the Algarve by a series of Portuguese newspaper headlines from early August onwards suggesting they were involved in Madeleine’s death.
But the growing backlash against them, coupled with the direction the police investigation has taken, appears to have speeded their return to the UK.
