Compare and Contrast

By Sina J

One of the tasks in my school English lessons was to compare and contrast two pieces of work such as two of Shakespeare’s plays, for example, Macbeth and The Comedy of Errors. This was a straightforward task because no matter which theatre puts on the play or which book is read for reference, the words are always the same because they are reproductions from a prepared script and followed without deviation. Of course some actors add their acting talent to bring their character to life but he or she is not at liberty to ad lib. If we think of the week Maddie went missing as a play and set an exam question and try to apply the same compare and contrast methods then I would fail miserably.

For a start the ‘script’ for that week was written retrospectively, after the final act was ‘performed’ so therefore everything had to be written to fit what had already happened. It was also written by the ‘performers’ and the result is a play written by a committee, much of it ad libbed. The committee members had different roles to play and some didn’t even make a stage entrance, the back stage crew had some input and some players left the theatre with haste never to be seen or heard from again.
To show you what I mean let’s begin by comparing and contrasting witness statements of the cast. I’ll start with Mr Graham MacKenzie, for no particular reason although it may have been more methodical to go in alphabetical order.

Mr and Mrs MacKenzie were booked into room G31 from 30th April to 5th May and in his statement he says during their stay they used the child care facilities. When they picked up their son C*** they would chat to other parents. Why is his child not included in any of the creche lists?
We instantly have a problem because it appears he wasn’t included in someone else’s script, the person who wrote the crèche records. Compare his statement to the crèche records. But also he was only booked for a 5 night holiday from 30th April according to one list so he didn’t take advantage of the Mark Warner package deal. Although comparing and contrasting this to the Mark Warner Property Arrival list the booking was from 28th April to 5th May and his flight details show he flew from Gatwick which is part of the package deal.

He says he got to know Raj Balu from a nearby apartment and another man called Neil, I presume he is referring to Neil Berry as he and Mr Balu had also become friends, even sharing a meal together. Mr MacKenzie says that Neil and his wife booked their stay for 2 weeks but left the resort early.
Is this a deviation from the "official script" or a fact? We need to compare Mr Berry’s statement and then contrast with the room booking sheets which state Mr Berry was booked into room G606 from 28th April to 5th May then room DP01 from 5th to 12th May.
As Mr MacKenzie mentions Mr Berry and Mr Balu in his statement then I think some extracts from their statements should also be included.

If we check the Mark Warner Booking sheets we see that the Berry family had only booked for 1 week.

Neil Berry says…..”At about 16.00 we were at the swimming pool bar within the complex. It was at this time that we had a few drinks with Raj Balu, Jayne Jensen and Anne Wiltshire, as I testified in my statement of 8th January 2008. My family returned to the apartment at about 17.00 and the four of us remained at the pool bar. I must have stayed there for another half an hour (which would be at 17.30) before joining my family in the apartment. I do not remember whether Raj left with me or whether he stayed at the bar.”

Raj Balu…..” Neil and I eventually left the bar after 19:00. I don’t remember if we left together or not”.
One would have thought everyone in this play would have times and actions imprinted in their minds forever.
He goes on to say….” I returned to my apartment and got ready to go out for dinner."
Much like Superman Mr Balu can arrive somewhere at the same time as leaving somewhere else.
“Around 19:00, together with my wife and son, we headed to the Berry apartment. When we arrived, Neil was having problems in assembling a cot, which was placed there for my son. We had to head to the Mark Warner service desk and they sent someone to help us”.
Mr Berry had been seen by an OC employee near a lift shaft in the complex around 16.00.

Neil Berry……”With regard to where I was at 18.00, whom I was with and the fact that I was seen by a witness at this time next to stairs and lift of block 5 of the Ocean Club:
I am not certain where I was at 18.00. It is possible that I was already in my apartment or returning from the bar”.

Fortunately Mr Balu lets us know where he was at 18.00.

About the cot.....

Mr Berry says “After I returned to the apartment I was with my wife and children. The children went to bed at 19.00 and Raj arrived at our apartment with his family, carrying a cot for his son. We did not manage to set the cot up and I went to find a member of staff. I found a Mark Warner employee, whose name I cannot remember but she was the girlfriend of a maintenance employee called Rob. She accompanied us back to the apartment and managed to set up the cot.”

That seems to be a contradiction rather than a contrast but it can be compared.

If Mr Berry was right and Mr Balu brought the cot, did he bring it from his apartment? If so then he was able to dismantle it and if it was a portable cot then designed to be erected with ease. So between 4 professional people no-one had the ability to erect a cot?

But if Mr Balu was right about exactly who was responsible for it, when did Mr Berry request another cot, to whom and who delivered it? Or as he puts it…. “it was placed there for his son” so maybe it just miraculously arrived? A person delivering a cot would have been able to state where Mr Berry was at the time in question.

Why no name and no statement or statements from the person who delivered the cot or the person who came to erect it? The conflict the two statements throw up indicates the involvement of two different Mark Warner employees.
Could it be then that because they needed some sort of reason that this cot as brought on stage? Not necessarily because they had any involvement in the disappearance of Maddie but for some other reason. Whatever the reason was for the cot story, a witness who brought a cot would have provided them with the alibi they needed when they were interviewed and swabbed by the PJ, yet no witness who brought the cot seems to have been interviewed.

Was there really any cot at all delivered, brought or erected in the Berry apartment?
Anyway I digress…..
Mr MacKenzie says he got to know the McCanns when they dined at the Tapas although no-one else mentions that. The only night the MacKenzies appear on the Tapas booking sheet is Tuesday at 8pm. If the restaurant was serving meals at the pace suggested by T9 and this party were usually running late then Mr & Mrs MacKenzie would either have been leaving or had already left the restaurant before T9 arrived so any meeting would have been fleeting if at all.

“During our stay we had seen the McCann party when the children had tea together and also when eating at the Tapas bar in the evenings” NB. Evenings-plural.

As he has only been there once how would he know how many evenings they were supposed to be there?
Mr Mackenzie says they could not get a table on 3rd May so had a take-away meal collected by his wife at 8.30pm. There is no mention of any take away on the booking sheets unlike the following day 4th May when Neil Berry collected a meal for 4 people.
Although I really can't understand why any restaurant would need to know how many people were going to consume a take away meal.
How strange that neither Berry or Balu saw Mrs MacKenzie waiting for a take away or crossed paths or that she saw them.

One would presume everyone who visited the Tapas that night would be interviewed but Mrs MacKenzie was not asked to provide a statement yet was supposedly wandering around the complex around the time T9 were making their way there.
If the Mackenzies were on a package deal why didn’t they take advantage of the dinner at the Mill if they couldn’t get into Tapas again? Was he required in the wings to witness a ‘commotion’?

Ms Cox had been more fortunate and she had a table for 2 booked on 3rd at 7.30pm which had been authorised by Steve. Nicole Cox is the partner of Mr Balu and they have child together.

Mr Balu says……”Neil and E*** (Berry) were having a drink with my wife and I. We had a table reserved in the restaurant for that night, but they were not able to arrange a table and for this reason we decided to leave our table and ate together in their apartment using takeaway service”
There is a tick against Ms Cox’s booking which would indicate that two people arrived. It’s not possible to see the full table number which begins with 2 as it falls off the edge of the copied sheet. Did Ms Cox cancel her table or just ‘leave it’ and someone else got the opportunity to take it? Did Ms Cox get charged by default as her name wasn’t scrubbed and no other name was substituted? The strangest thing is why would Ms Cox and Mr Balu would not share their table with the Berrys, why would the Berrys need a separate table?

Back to Mr MacKenzie who is very vague about the time he heard a ‘commotion’ on the complex later that night, he puts it between 10 and 11 pm. He found out what was going on then informs his wife he is going to join the search for a missing child, spends some time searching in the shrubbery and the gardens of the apartments, working his way around the tennis courts and to the Mccann's apartment where he spends a few moments listening to Gerry McCann on the phone. He went back to his own apartment to inform his wife of what was going on, has a drink and returns to the search. He spends a couple of hours searching. He says the police eventually turned up later in the evening. Add all this activity to the 10 and 11 pm time window he set for the ‘commotion’, add a "later" and that's when he says the GNR did arrive. Is he implying they were slow to respond and the search had been in progress for quite some time?

Yet according to Lieutenant-Colonel Costa Cabral, Head of Public Relations of GNR, the first call to Police Precinct of GNR (Portuguese Rural Police) in Lagos, reporting a missing child and asking for Police help was at 10.50pm and a patrol was sent, arriving at Ocean Club 12/15 minutes later.
So now stage crew are introducing their own script?

Mr MacKenzie also makes a comment about there being no real organisation of the searching….
“There were lots of people just standing round looking, the police eventually turned up later in the evening. There didn't seem to be any real organisation of the searching and I eventually went back to our apartment for the night”
Yet at about 22.17 Hotel manager Emma Louise Knight received a call from Lyndsey Johnson the Crêche Manager, informing her that the girl had gone missing. She met Lyndsey Johnson and the Service Manager, Amy Tierney, near to the Tapas Bar and they initiated the "Mark Warner procedures for the search of a missing child". Did Mr MacKenzie search alone without taking part in the prescribed procedure?
Ms Tierney appears to have 2 roles in this play and in this scene is playing the role of ‘Service manager’. As a creche worker she would have no reason to be at Tapas reception at midnight as she states.

Why was Mr Mackenzie not aware of what was going on that night if he was part of the search? Wasn’t the whole point of missing child procedure to direct participants in a search where to go and as he was supposed to be searching for hours he could hardly fail to be aware? And no, he wasn't somewhere looking in some isolated spot all on his own. He was right at the centre of things, near Gerry McCann for example. And in and out of his apartment.

I do find his statement rather vague not only on time but also the days. When he says he saw Kate collecting the twins from the creche 'the following day at lunchtime', does he mean 4th May or the day after that? Dianne Webster collects the twins earlier than any other parents at 12 o'clock on the 4th .

“The following day we saw Kate McCann when she came to collect the twins from the creche at lunchtime, she was distraught and broke down sobbing”.
More importantly he is confirming his child was at the crèche and as noted before not named on the respective sheets.

Let’s return to the previous scene
What is very strange is if Mrs MacKenzie had collected a meal from the Tapas restaurant at 8.30pm on 3rd May why wasn't she interviewed by the Police? It's not until 16th September that Mr MacKenzie decides to get in touch with the Police to tell them what he heard on the night Maddie went missing when he found out the Police were trying to pinpoint telephone conversations made in the resort. So it was the search for telephone conversations that prompted him.
Why wasn’t Mrs MacKenzie’s name included on the Tapas booking sheets "script" as the Berry take away was the following day?

One comment in Mr MacKenzie’s statement seems to support his belief that someone could have been observing the McCanns. He relates that the temporary apartment he was given on the day of his departure overlooked the Mccanns apartment and there were a lot of cigarette butts on the balcony 'as if someone had been stood there a long time smoking', which he thought was odd. What I would find odd is that the cleaners had not removed them before the next people used the apartment. Convenient butts, a clue befitting any detective B movie ever made.
The stage hands using props in exaggeration, or the existence of these butts may be as questionable as the Berry & Balu cot?



I will leave you with the words of Lady Macbeth in Act 5 scene 1

“Out damned spot”
"What, will these hands ne'er be clean. . . All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand"

The doctor who called to see Lady Macbeth sleepwalking concluded she needed a priest not a physician and that he and her maid must not reveal what they saw or heard.

From The Comedy of Errors Act 2 scene 2

Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking? mad or well-advised?
Known unto these, and to myself disguised!
I'll say as they say and persever so,
And in this mist at all adventures go.