'She's not my mummy. She's a stranger'

A LITTLE girl calling herself "Maddie" and claiming to have been taken from her mother on holiday was seen in Amsterdam at the time Madeleine McCann disappeared, newly-released case files have revealed.

Possible sightings of the missing girl flooded into the Algarve police incident room from around the world. And fresh documents include scores of e-mails from foreign police forces passing on reports that could provide crucial clues.

Although the investigation attracted dozens of sightings, the new lead from Amsterdam is one of the most intriguing.

Anna Stam, 41, a shop worker in the Netherlands, said she spoke to a girl aged three or four who said her name was "Maddie" and replied to a question about her mother: "They took me from my holiday."

The girl entered her shop in early May last year with a man and a woman and two other children, according to a witness statement to Dutch police. The man seemed to be speaking Portuguese but the woman spoke English and told Ms Stam they had a small circus in France.

Ms Stam was at the back of the shop when the girl approached her and asked in English: "Do you know where my mummy is?"

The assistant answered that her mother was a little further back in the shop, but the child replied: "She is not my mummy. She is a stranger, she took me from my mummy."

When Ms Stam asked the girl where she last saw her mother, she said: "They took me from my holiday." Ms Stam added: "I thought it a little odd and then I heard the woman call the girl. She didn't call her Maddie, but a longer name. She could have said Madeleine."

The girl was described as having dark brown hair in a ponytail, "huge" green-brown eyes and a pale face. The report was sent to the Portuguese authorities in June last year but it is not clear what action was taken. The case files also shed light on other lines of inquiry:

TANNER SKETCH

A rough sketch map shows where a key witness was when she believes she saw Madeleine being abducted by a man.

The drawing – revealed in the massive Portuguese police files made public yesterday – was made by Jane Tanner, one of the friends on holiday with the McCanns. It shows the layout of the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, where the party was staying.

A number 7 marks apartment 5A, where Madeleine and her younger brother and sister Sean and Amelie were asleep on the night of 3 May last year.

The entrance to the tapas restaurant where their parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, were dining with friends is shown with the number 1. The sketch reveals that Ms Tanner, marked 4, was just yards from a man she saw carrying a young child she is convinced was Madeleine.

Until now it has not been clear exactly where she was standing at this moment. The man walked across the top of the road – from point 5 to point 8 – as she approached him, the map shows.

And all the while Mr McCann was obliviously standing chatting to Jeremy Wilkins, a friend he had made on the holiday, further down the road – marked 3.

CCTV FOOTAGE

CCTV images were one of the earliest clues in the search.

Footage from a petrol station on the A22, which runs east to west across the Algarve, shows a young blonde girl with a woman. The picture was taken at 11:10am on 4 May last year.

Police seized CCTV footage from the station and showed it to Madeleine's parents, the police files have revealed. But the lead came to nothing after the McCanns said the girl in the image was not their daughter.

E-fit images never revealed in public appeals

PORTUGUESE police drew up e-fits of suspicious men seen hanging around Praia da Luz before Madeleine McCann went missing but never made them public, newly-released files have revealed.

The two computer images of potential suspects were based on eyewitness accounts on 6 May – three days after Madeleine vanished. But they were not circulated in appeals for information about what happened to her.

Derek Flack, 64, from Ilford, east London, was staying in his holiday home in Praia da Luz in early May last year.

While out for a walk with his partner on 2 May or 3 May he saw a suspicious man gazing towards the Ocean Club complex, where Madeleine and her family were staying at the time.

A Portuguese police report in the file states: "He then realised the man was staring fixedly at the area in question, very focused on what he was doing, and did not notice Flack's presence."

The man was Caucasian, tanned and apparently aged between 25 and 35, and Mr Flack was convinced he was not a tourist.

He appeared to be looking at a van parked near a footpath giving access to the back of apartment 5A, the McCanns' holiday flat.

The report continues: "He concluded that the man was monitoring the movements near that path and into the apartment. The man looked suspicious, he was watching the apartment."

Police showed an e-fit of a man – it is not clear whether this was the person seen by Mr Flack – to another witness, British ex-pat Lance Purser, 45. Mr Purser said he had seen someone similar in Praia da Luz several times about a fortnight before Madeleine disappeared.

Tragedy that has nation torn between sympathy and criticism

YOU don't have to be a parent to pity or condemn the McCanns, although there is no doubt that thousands of parents constantly imagine themselves in the horror of their situation.

We come back to it like an open wound, poring over every tiny detail and avidly perusing every new report, almost as if in hope that enough information will result in the right answer.

Much of the continuing interest is inspired by an unending debate between two distinct camps – those who sympathise with the McCanns, and those who temper that sympathy with lingering questions about whether or not the McCanns were at best naive and at worst negligent in leaving their children alone in the apartment.

Until last summer, we could take comfort in the belief that the type of unspeakable evil that saw Madeleine snatched from her family was vented only on those whose parenting was dubious. The idea that two people as intelligent and educated as the McCanns could consider leaving three toddlers alone for longer than it takes to answer a phone was beyond many people's comprehension.

It took a while for this condemnation to take shape because it seemed so wrong to add to their obvious anguish, but there is still a sense of disbelief that caring parents would take such a risk. Abduction wouldn't be an obvious concern, but what if one of them fell out of bed, or there was a fire? For most, the idea of checking them only every 30 minutes was strange, as toddlers can cry themselves sick in five minutes.

But there's more to it. Every caring parent remembers a moment when their concentration slipped, when they turned their back to do something else, when they put their own desires first. That lapse is not an admitted part of parenting, so we resent the McCanns for spotlighting the consequences as much as we sympathise with them.

We cannot stop reading about Madeleine because we continue to hope that sometime soon her recovery will make the headlines and we can go back to believing that it never happens to the likes of us.

• Joan McFadden is a writer and a mother of four.