The English Gag Preface by Francisco Moita Flores
The following text is the Preface to Gonçalo Amaral's new book, "The English Gag". Titled "Locard's Truth", the preface is authored by Francisco Moita Flores, a former Polícia Judiciária inspector, now the Mayor of Santarém, and a renowned criminologist, and author.
Locard’s Truth
I read this outcry for freedom by Gonçalo Amaral at a time when the country wallows, and when I say the country, I say the politicians, some characters within the judiciary system supplying the pyrotechnical material for the fireworks that the media launch every day around the ‘Face Oculta’ process [major corruption scandal presently being investigated in Portugal]. And it is the greatest example of hypocrisy. Exactly the same newspapers, the same columnists, who in the name of respect for the parents’ "pain", in the name of respect for arguidos with no other coercion measure, practically imposed the end of any newscast about Maddie, they are exactly the same that, forgetting today what they had said yesterday, flog personalities from the areas of politics or economy with suspicions, half truths and hearsay, based on wiretaps that nobody knows, savagely destroying the character and honour of their targets.
Two weights and two measures. And now, after reading this painful, nostalgic, and yet brave book, following a temporary injunction against ‘Maddie – The Truth of the Lie’, accepted by a Portuguese court, I understand even better what I always understood: the McCann couple’s strategy, since the first day of their media folklore, never had any other purpose: to discredit the Portuguese Justice, the Portuguese Police, and, fundamentally, Gonçalo Amaral, the man who knew the most, and still does, about what they did. And what they didn’t.
Gonçalo Amaral is not a fictional character. He is the boldness of truth. He is the challenge of truth. Even if he doesn’t fully know it. He knows what nobody else does, about Maddie’s hidden destiny. And it’s no use to try to conceal the sun with a sieve, which seems to be the child’s parents’ only obsession, because like Sherlock Holmes invariably replied to his unavoidable friend Dr. Watson, the method of deduction, applied to facts, as long as they are seen in connection, becomes elementary, even for the most stupid living beings, that if action A produced result B, if result B is coherent with consequence C, then A is related to C. It is elementary! Aristotle formulated this reasoning in the shape of syllogisms, Edmond Locard, the father of modern criminal investigation, recovered it to become the instrument of all investigation police forces worldwide, and the results are there. More Joana Morais
