Day two in the search in Portugal’s Algarve region for clues to where Madeleine McCann is – and there are pockets of police activity dotted around the vast scrubland.
From where I’m standing, I can see three searches under way, all in abandoned buildings.
Ahead of us, officers in white hard hats empty rubble from inside another dilapidated building.
To the left, a team of three lift stones through the window of an old stone hut.
It’s thought that ground radar equipment may then be used to scan the floors.
As we walk through the brush, the ground is dry and hard.
‘Nothing has been Found’
Digging here is hot, exhausting work – but so far, there is no news.
Police are trying to keep the press back – but the area is too large.
I ask one officer for an update: “Nothing has been found,” he tells me, before heading off to the tents that are the base for the 30 or so German police running this operation.
Many people question just what could possibly be found here 18 years after the three-year-old British girl went missing from her family’s nearby holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.
Professor of Criminology at the University of Porto, Fernando Teixeira, told me that the search will have been meticulously planned.
He says: “They use identification work if any bone fragment appears, and this is done in the laboratory unit.”
He adds: “In the field, through equipment supported by engineering, it is possible to detect whether there are in fact bone fragments that will have been deposited in the geographic areas.”
Read More: Madeleine McCann search: Abandoned buildings examined as ground radar may be deployed
