Flectere si nequeo superos
Acheronta movebo
Act Three, continued
So we have a further set of newsfeeds directly from the McCanns - Sun, Mirror, Express, Mail, all fed and synchronised during the night of the 24th November.
It may be that not everyone has thought about the implications.
The same feeds team has only just finished telling us that Scotland Yard officers had made a recent "visit" to their Rothley home. True. And why were they there? They told us that too.
If you read the Bureau regularly you'll know that the same people, the McCanns, used almost the same words to describe that Rothley visit as they did eleven years ago when they described a "visit" by the PJ to their Praia da Luz apartment. The one when Gerry McCann had a "virus". The one where they somehow forgot to tell us the police carried, among other things, a search warrant.
After eleven years nothing whatever has changed: they want you to hear their version before the real ones emerge.
By pure co-incidence this chat with those nice people from the Yard has been followed by "a meeting" at the Portuguese ministry of justice attended by the prosecutor in the case.
Quite a lot happening behind the feeds, isn't there?
Gone!
And now for the message that matters. For the very first time since 2007 the UK press is carrying stories meaning that no abduction ever took place. No threats to sue from the McCanns, no outrage, no appearance by Tony Parsons or David Baddiel screaming of malicious sardine-eating rumours. Nope, the parents put the story out themselves.
"'Hinting both forces [our italics] may have gone cold on the idea the youngster had been the victim of a botched burglary or a paedophile who had forced entry to snatch her," the insider said: "'The theory that Madeleine left the flat of her own accord to go looking for her parents is not something that hasn't been discussed before.'"
Forget any contempt or outrage or mystification. Forget, even, about the dogs. None of that matters for now: what matters is that "woke and wandered" is not compatible in any way with an abductor. It has to mean that nobody was standing outside the window on that chill night.
No abductor coming in the window. No abductor opening doors and closing them again. No abductor armed with drugs or chloroform. Nobody listening to Gerry McCann urinate. No abductor going out of the window. Nobody walking through the streets at 9.15 with Madeleine in his arms - as Grange told us three years ago and the parents are now acknowledging. No hidden lairs in the Algarve.
You don't have to worry about what it all may mean in the long run or what is going on - frantically or with resignation - behind the feeds. All you have to remember is this:
Kate and Gerry McCann are preparing us all for the news that abduction by a stranger never happened.
More if it occurs.
