with the television coverage of the West murders in Gloucester in 1991. It was Mitchell who reported the developing story of the apparently respectable married couple who had been charged with murdering their daughter and burying her body under the patio in the back garden. And, after Rose West had been found guilty of murdering Heather and twelve other girlsand young women (Fred West had hanged himself in prison before he could be tried), it was Clarence Mitchell who stood outside the house in Cromwell Street in Gloucester where bodies had been discovered buried in pits in the garden and under the cellar and described how the Wests had tortured and sexually abused their children over a period of many years.
So, for those with memories of this earlier Clarence Mitchell, it was strange to see him cast in the role of spokesman and media representative (‘spin doctor’ was a phrase that was soon used) for a couple who a few days earlier had been declared arguidos or official suspects by the Portuguese police investigating the disappearance of their daughter.
In his new incarnation – and Mitchell chose to demonstrate his belief in the McCanns’ total innocence in a persuasive way: he resigned his government post to become their official mouthpiece soon after they returned from Portugal, his salary taken care of by a Cheshire businessman, Brian Kennedy (no relation to Kate McCann’s uncle of the same name), who had made his money in double-glazing and was now also the owner of Sale Sharks rugby club – facing the cameras with the McCanns usually now standing mutely alongside him, Clarence assumed the air of a man holding his funeral director’s black silk hat considerately behind his back, a little scuffed and showing signs of wear (dandruff dusting the brim, perspiration stains dunning the pleated, satinised lining), mourning a professional future that was now well behind him, as wellas the child who vanished into folklore and common fame in the family-friendly foreign resort.
*
The law as it stands puts no obligation on vendors to disclose a property’s history. A Yorkshire couple discovered this when they attempted to sue the people who had sold them a house that had been the scene of a particularly horrific murder. Alan and Susan Sykes found out about the history of the house in Stillwell Drive, in Sandal, a suburb of Wakefield, while watching a documentary about a man who killed his adopted daughter. The programme was about Dr Samson Perera, a dental biologist at Leeds University, who murdered the little girl, Nilanthie, in 1985. The couple the Sykes had bought the house from in 2000 had decided to move two years after buying it after being filled in on its grisly past by a helpful neighbour.
Apartment 5 A at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz. The McCanns’ family home at Orchard House in Rothley. Casa Liliana, the house belonging to the mother of Robert Murat, the first official suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Praia, a hundred metres from the Ocean Club apartment: a dark house in a landscape of sun-soaked brilliant white render, cocooned within dense hedges and tall wire-mesh fences, bits of the hedge starting to die where people had inserted themselves into it for a better view. Myrobella, the Blairs’ base for twenty-three years in the north of England, with its strategic screening and hot-wired security annexe, its air of concealment,inviting speculation. The West house in Gloucester before the council pounded it to dust, the pedestrian form of its dark shape.
Is there any way of sensing from outside, with whichever organ it might be, in which of two identical properties an atrocity has been committed? A way of telling the ‘house of horror’ from the ‘dream home’, the soap star’s bolt-hole, the prime minister’s residence? Does something of past events linger in the rooms, the places where they happened? Something sensed, felt, remembered, suspected, imagined, no means
So, for those with memories of this earlier Clarence Mitchell, it was strange to see him cast in the role of spokesman and media representative (‘spin doctor’ was a phrase that was soon used) for a couple who a few days earlier had been declared arguidos or official suspects by the Portuguese police investigating the disappearance of their daughter.
In his new incarnation – and Mitchell chose to demonstrate his belief in the McCanns’ total innocence in a persuasive way: he resigned his government post to become their official mouthpiece soon after they returned from Portugal, his salary taken care of by a Cheshire businessman, Brian Kennedy (no relation to Kate McCann’s uncle of the same name), who had made his money in double-glazing and was now also the owner of Sale Sharks rugby club – facing the cameras with the McCanns usually now standing mutely alongside him, Clarence assumed the air of a man holding his funeral director’s black silk hat considerately behind his back, a little scuffed and showing signs of wear (dandruff dusting the brim, perspiration stains dunning the pleated, satinised lining), mourning a professional future that was now well behind him, as wellas the child who vanished into folklore and common fame in the family-friendly foreign resort.
*
The law as it stands puts no obligation on vendors to disclose a property’s history. A Yorkshire couple discovered this when they attempted to sue the people who had sold them a house that had been the scene of a particularly horrific murder. Alan and Susan Sykes found out about the history of the house in Stillwell Drive, in Sandal, a suburb of Wakefield, while watching a documentary about a man who killed his adopted daughter. The programme was about Dr Samson Perera, a dental biologist at Leeds University, who murdered the little girl, Nilanthie, in 1985. The couple the Sykes had bought the house from in 2000 had decided to move two years after buying it after being filled in on its grisly past by a helpful neighbour.
Apartment 5 A at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz. The McCanns’ family home at Orchard House in Rothley. Casa Liliana, the house belonging to the mother of Robert Murat, the first official suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Praia, a hundred metres from the Ocean Club apartment: a dark house in a landscape of sun-soaked brilliant white render, cocooned within dense hedges and tall wire-mesh fences, bits of the hedge starting to die where people had inserted themselves into it for a better view. Myrobella, the Blairs’ base for twenty-three years in the north of England, with its strategic screening and hot-wired security annexe, its air of concealment,inviting speculation. The West house in Gloucester before the council pounded it to dust, the pedestrian form of its dark shape.
Is there any way of sensing from outside, with whichever organ it might be, in which of two identical properties an atrocity has been committed? A way of telling the ‘house of horror’ from the ‘dream home’, the soap star’s bolt-hole, the prime minister’s residence? Does something of past events linger in the rooms, the places where they happened? Something sensed, felt, remembered, suspected, imagined, no means
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