THE bell in the steeple of St Vincent's Anglican Church calls the congregation to prayer each morning. The media know that this is the only time they are guaranteed to see Gerry and Kate McCann.

The visibly numb-looking couple run the gauntlet of over 80 journalists with the pleas for interviews and sounds of cameras ringing in their ears. They cross the police cordon at the Ocean Club resort and walk down the road past the Baptista supermarket where the sniffer dogs last detected their daughter's scent.

The tiny whitewashed church is 150 yards away and a teddy bear and two flowers tied to the church door greet them as they enter.

The flowers are withered and dead but have remained there now for 17 days since four-year-old Madeleine McCann first vanished in the picturesque Algarve resort of Praia da Luz.

In the absence of any news . . . good or bad . . .from the local Portuguese police it is their faith in God that has kept the McCann family from going insane during this living nightmare.

The last week has seen four people questioned and the emergence of one official suspect but being in Praia da Luz and witnessing these events firsthand you cannot help but feel that the police do not know what happened to Madeleine and are clutching at straws.

There is an air of confusion among holidaymakers and the massive media corps. People do not know if it is safe to allow their children to run around as freely as you would expect in an area like this, for fear that a paedophile abductor is on the loose.

The media do not know anything and are being kept in the dark by the police who say they are restricted by law from revealing any detail about their investigation. The atmosphere is getting more tense with each passing day and the local people are becoming hostile and unwelcoming to the press. The case is tearing this closeknit community apart. Some locals say the suspect, Robert Murat, is innocent, some say he is guilty.

Camps are forming and with a media getting ever more demanding for hard facts it is only a matter of time before things will come to a head.

Scapegoat Madeleine McCann, a beautiful blonde four-yearold, vanished from her parent's apartment while they ate dinner at a nearby restaurant at around 9.30pm on Thursday 3 May.

A massive police investigation and worldwide publicity campaign has failed to find any trace of her. Progress in the case had been limited until 33year-old British man Robert Murat was interviewed last Monday for 16 hours.

He lives with his mother in a villa close to where Madeleine vanished and helped the media with translation before his detention. He is described as a helpful man with a daughter who looks like Madeleine.

A journalist became suspicious that Murat was overly helpful and reported him to police, but he was already under surveillance.

Murat, who has one eye, was interviewed along with two associates but was released without charge. He was not arrested but is being officially described as a suspect under Portuguese law.

It had been expected that Murat's detention would result in a breakthrough but five days after his release this hasn't happened. A Russian computer expert, Sergey Malinka, was questioned on Wednesday but was also released.

This police activity has grabbed the headlines but with no arrests and a trail that has gone cold there is the real suspicion that Murat has been a scapegoat used to take the pressure off the police.

If there was one shred of evidence against Murat he would have been arrested immediately. A little girl is missing and it has to be presumed that she is still alive.

If the police thought he was responsible for Madeleine's disappearance and knew where she was being kept he would be in custody now . . .there is no doubt about it.

One journalist here said that either the police are totally inept or are geniuses, playing a game of chess with the abductor. As far as I can see it is not the latter.

When I arrived I went straight to the Ocean Club, where three police cordons have been erected and armed guards with angry-looking dogs protect the hotel from unwanted visitors.

Trying to get my bearings I assumed Madeleine went missing from here but 10 yards away on an adjoining street there are six yellow ribbons tied to a small gate leading up to an apartment.

A line of yellow and black police tape is tied halfway up the 10 steps leading to the balcony. I asked a journalist what this was. He told me this is where Madeleine was snatched.

Anybody could duck under the tape and go to the patio door which Madeleine either walked out of or which her abductor opened to kidnap her.

There was nobody guarding the balcony, which is still officially a crime scene.

If a similar incident happened in Ireland gardai would be on duty at the balcony 24 hours a day and nobody would be allowed anywhere near it.

Passers-by were freely taking pictures of the balcony on their mobile phones and there is talk about failures in the investigation.

When you come back to the Ocean Club at night the cordon remains but the half-dozen armed guards are gone. They disappear when the press goes home for the day. Their presence is simply a public-relations exercise.

What happened to Madeleine McCann remains a mystery but there is no doubt from retracing the steps of all the crime scenes that the four-year-old could have been snatched and spirited away in less than 90 seconds.

Gerry and Kate McCann left Madeleine and their other two young children in their groundfloor apartment in the Ocean Club and went for dinner in a tapas bar that is in the large complex about a two-minute walk away.

The couple said they could see their apartment from the restaurant.

You can not.

I went to the same Tapas bar and the view to the McCann apartment is completely obscured by a six-foot white wall, on which another four foot of hedging has grown.

Character assassination Regardless of the rights or wrongs of leaving their children alone, in the hours they were dining Madeleine was kidnapped.

The patio door was unlocked when the McCann's left and the child was either abducted from inside the apartment or she wandered out and was taken by somebody on the spur of the moment.

Police sniffer dogs have tracked Madeleine's scent to the Baptista Supermarket which is exactly 46 yards away from the McCann's apartment and is on the same road. I walked the distance in one minute and eight seconds.

If somebody took her outside the apartment and ran to a car at the supermarket she would have disappeared in less than a minute.

Robert Murat lives in the 'Casa Lilliana', a plush 750,000 villa owned by his mother.

Murat's house is only 49 yards away from the McCann apartment and the winding road between the two is surrounded by villas that have balconies looking onto the route that Murat would have taken if he snatched Madeleine.

It is a busy road and in the one minute and five seconds it takes to walk it is likely that somebody would have seen Murat with the child who could well have been crying.

Murat says his life has been destroyed by the intense media coverage and it is likely that he will launch a number of libel actions if he is not charged. Some outrageous claims have been made against him in the media and his character has been assassinated.

Sergey Malinka has confirmed that he will be suing several Portuguese newspapers after they wrongly alleged the 22-year-old was a sex offender. Madeleine's disappearance is still frontpage news every day in the local newspapers.

The media circus surrounding little Madeleine's disappearance has shown no signs of diminishing over the last 17 days. The sheer size of the press corps covering the case is phenomenal. Each British daily and Sunday newspaper has at least two journalists and two photographers here while dozens more TV, radio and print journalists from across Europe have also called Praia da Luz home for the last two-and-a-half weeks.

There are at least 80 journalists here full-time and to say that cabin fever has set in is an understatement. I asked four reporters from leading English papers what they have been doing for such a long time in the absence of any real leads.

"What can we do? We sit in the sun outside the McCann's hotel all day waiting for something to happen even though we know it probably won't.

We weren't in bed before 4am for the first week with all the drinking but even that got boring.

We're just waiting for it to end, " one journalist said, his nose peeling from the sunburn.

There is clear tension between the British print journalists and their Portuguese counterparts.

This mostly stems from the fact that any rare titbit of information is going to the locals, something Fleet Street's finest are not happy about.

"Look at the crap they wrote today, " a journalist from a daily tabloid said, shaking his head. "They claimed the Russian has sex with cats and dogs every day. What a disgrace. Half of what they've been saying is totally made up."

You know you are in a unique situation when you hear hardnosed British tabloid journalists bemoaning a lack of ethics and proper reporting standards.

A lot of what has been written has been untrue or blown out of all proportion and the Portuguese police have to take responsibility for that.

From the first day they have refused to cooperate with the press corps and have not shared any developments in the case. This has meant that journalists, under severe pressure from their newsdesks, have been hyping up innocuous stories.

A good example was an angle that was frontpage news in a number of tabloids on Wednesday.

The man who designed Robert Murat's mother's villa told of how there was a secret underground chamber measuring 27ft x 15ft that can only be reached by a secret trapdoor.

Suddenly there was talk of secret passages and entrances and it was speculated that Madeleine could be locked inside this secret room.

Media hype The story was untrue, or a flyer as it is described in journalism, and was given credence simply because there was nothing else to write about.

I asked one journalist if the room actually existed. "It exists all right but it's under about 20 foot of concrete. What a load of rubbish that was, " he laughed. His own paper had hyped up the same story.

Witnessing the rituals and where each media organisation fits in the food chain is fascinating.

When I arrived, Sky News and the BBC were in discussions with the British embassy's media person over the timing of a press conference.

"It can't be too early, " Anna Botting, Sky News's glamorous blonde presenter said. "Gordon Brown has a press conference." The press handler readily agreed when Sky and the BBC said that 3.30pm suited them.

Sky has given saturation coverage to the story and Jeremy Thompson and Botting sit on seats under a tree outside the hotel when waiting to go on air. All the other reporters stand and roast in the 300 heat.

Thompson is a suave reporter who has turned mahogany brown in the Algarve sun. He always wears a shirt that looks as if it was freshly ironed.

He is a friendly sort who smiles a lot and wears expensive shades.

Botting repeatedly fans herself and does not like the heat. Her hair never moves an inch and looks like it has seen an unhealthy amount of hairspray.

There are at least 10 people on duty in the Sky entourage all the time.

Sky News and the BBC are the only media allowed behind the police cordon. They are undoubtedly the top dogs.

A terrible blanket of depression has descended on Praia da Luz. Most people feel helpless. Volunteers were needed for the first week but there is nothing left to do now other than watch developments on TV.

The beach and restaurants are very quiet and there is not the laughter and cheeriness that you expect from people on holidays. I met a couple eating dinner on Thursday night and asked them what they thought.

"It's hard to know what to think but after so long it does not look good. Its hard to imagine them finding Madeleine alive."

That is the opinion of most people here but the 50 million hits to the website dedicated to Madeleine gives people renewed strength and optimism, as do the huge sums donated to "Team McCann" from businesses across the world.

Gerry and Kate McCann have vowed to stay in Portugal until their daughter is returned to them.

Unfortunately they may have to reassess this as the days turn into weeks without any positive developments.

Security Editor's BRIEFING

THE Portuguese police have been severely criticised for the way they have investigated Madeleine McCann's kidnapping. If a similar case happened in Ireland the garda approach would be very different.

The first few hours after an abduction are absolutely critical. The trail is still warm and gardai have a valuable chance to canvass the local area for leads, witnesses or just to check that the missing person has not wandered off alone.

When a child disappears gardai immediately approach the investigation as if they were dealing with a murder enquiry. It is better to assume the worst straight away and plan for all eventualities.

Gardai would immediately draft divisional search teams to the crime scene.

Trained officers would carry out an inch-by-inch search of the surrounding area to look for clues and potential evidence.

Trained sniffer dogs would also be sent to the scene to attempt to pick up the missing child's scent. This can give the authorities a good understanding of where the child was before he or she left the area and helps to build a picture of what happened.

Uniformed gardai would immediately begin a canvass of every house in the vicinity. All local people would be interviewed at length to see if they saw anything unusual or anybody acting suspiciously.

Anyone who came across to gardai as being suspicious would get extra attention. This happened when Kathleen Mulhall was initially interviewed about her missing boyfriend Farah Noor, who was eventually found murdered.

Detectives checked into her background when they felt there was something not quite right about her story. Wayne O'Donoghue was also given special scrutiny by gardai during the Robert Holohan case.

Road blocks would be established at all the roads leading to the area where the abduction took place and every garda station in the country would be notified of the incident and a picture or description of the missing child would be issued.

All ports and airports throughout Ireland would be informed and asked to lookout for anybody trying to bring a child matching the description abroad.

The media would also be told straight away so that descriptions would reach the public while the abductor was still trying to bring the child away from the kidnap site.

A lot of criticism levelled against the Portuguese police is justified. The media has an agenda because they are frustrated about the lack of information in the case, but purely from an investigation point of view they have questions to ask.

Locals were not interviewed. Some people living 100 yards away have still not been spoken to over two weeks after the kidnapping.

Because of the isolation of the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz police should have suspected local involvement immediately.

This should have meant that every house and villa was canvassed by teams of police with sniffer dogs. As well as gathering potentially valuable eyewitnesses this would have ruled out the fact that Madeleine was being held nearby.

Police also had the option of asking locals if they objected to having their homes searched but did not do this.

Road blocks were not set up, neighbouring police forces were not told straight away and the media was not courted to help in the search.

If Madeleine McCann is found then these mistakes will be tolerated but if, as is becoming increasingly likely, she is not, the media will demand that the police account for these failings.