Little Shop of Horrors - Dr Martin Roberts

The Little Shop of Horrors

EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com

By Dr Martin Roberts

04 July 2014


THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

I wonder if the account handlers at Operation Grange (the ones who had their wanted posters designed and printed by the SUN) invited the Plain English Campaign to set out their 250 item questionnaire intended for suspects in the new Madeleine McCann investigation? Did the headings make it any easier to complete? (Personal Data/Criminal Record – 'DO NOT include driving offences, but DO include any murders within the last ten years').

We have long known that the DCI Redwood's crusade is unique in drawing together information from diverse sources, including that of private investigators Metodo 3 (a Scotland Yard 'snatch squad' was pictured wheeling several boxes of files across a Barcelona street as I recall). According to some it was information contained in one of these very boxes which lay at the heart of recent requests to the Portuguese authorities for analytical assistance in connection with hairs/DNA recovered from someone's sofa. Fair enough. Lateral thinking is no bad thing and 'relevance' must surely be determined by the purpose of the investigation, not the origin of data necessarily. Except that 'Lucky Dip' selections from the box marked PJ seem consistently to be of the sherbet lemon variety, i.e., things 'not done at the time', in the opinion of insider (now outsider) Jim Gamble.

That the investigation code-named Operation Grange appears to be "back where it was seven years ago" renders a recent release of information doubly puzzling. We are told, reliably or otherwise, of an intended visit to retail premises of some kind, to be made 'by hook or by crook' and with a sniffer dog or two. The venue is described as somewhere a suspect was seen in the company of a young girl shortly after Madeleine McCann's supposed abduction. If the earlier excavations of Praia da Luz by Grange team members were based on 'intelligence' then this proposed sweep must be the result of a 'tea leaf' reading (well they are on the trail of burglars after all).

Going back seven years, as a Portuguese commentator and others have intimated we might, British search expert Mark Harrison (formerly of NPIA, now a police Commander in Australia) was directly involved in the investigation at that time. This is a man whose knowledge and experience allowed him to 'cut to the chase', literally as well as figuratively, and his report made very clear recommendations as to where searches might most profitably be directed. He proposed separate itineraries to be pursued under each of two scenarios, one of these being if Madeleine should have been killed and buried locally – the very same hypothesis that has been seen to drive the diggings and doings of Operation Grange in Praia da Luz of late.

Given that the analysts of Operation Grange have such information at their very finger-tips, how many of Mark Harrison’s recommended search sites have the more recent endeavours of Scotland Yard addressed?

None! Nor is the petrol station/all night 'deli'/beach stall, or whatever, among them.

So why is Scotland Yard intent on taking the dogs for a walk there? Puzzle number one. Puzzle number two is the reported justification that an anonymous suspect was seen there with a little girl. Presumably whoever 'shopped' him told police they had seen him with a child, not carrying a corpse.

Well, maybe Madeleine, if it were she, went in alive and emerged dead some time afterwards. The dogs will tell us in any case, and I'm sure police canines from Wales are as trustworthy, credible and reliable as any others. But wait a minute! Even if Madeleine died, or was killed on the premises, and an enthusiastic cadaver dog behaves like it’s auditioning for Simon Cowell as a result, if she walked into the shop, then she was alive at the time and could not have been fatally 'larruped' by a burglar inside 5A earlier on. (Good dog, Rover! You're a chip off the old 'Eddie' block).

Are DCI Redwood and colleagues hedging their bets here, as in 'Madeleine McCann may or may not be alive', 'may or may not have been abducted', 'may or may not have died in 5A'? Because the moment they put their faith in Turner and Hooch, or whoever's dog gets to give the signal in Portugal now, is the moment they have to confront the earlier alerts of Martin Grime's cadaver dog, Eddie.

No one is known to have died inside apartment 5A prior to the McCanns' occupancy. However, in the event of a non-fatal burglary/abduction, obstinate refusal to accept any implied association between a suggestion of death on the one hand and the actuality of a sole missing person on the other, results in there being only one, altogether bizarre possibility remaining: that someone introduced a corpse into the McCanns' apartment. On their way back from the shop perhaps.