SC In terms of what we can say definitively, that is accurate. We have no independent verification. The first four entries were also submitted to free article sites in Donald Cottee’s name.
MdM Dr Car, you have indicated that entries in the file were indeed created by both Susan and Donald Cottee. Can you be sure of that?
SC I can say with reasonable confidence that there were two different authors. This is suggested by the content, but I also submitted the material to linguistic analysis.
MdM And such an analysis is conclusive?
SC It is indicative, and no more. I separated the entries into two files, with Donald’s entries assembled in one and Susan’s in the other. I subjected the two files to separate analysis and significant differences appeared. The lexical density of Susan’s entries was significantly lower than Donald’s. Her readability score was correspondingly different, with Susan’s work always easier to read. Donald’s regular usage of euphemisms for swear words was not present in Susan’s entries, and the Cottees’ internet access did demonstrate regular visits to a site that listed all the silly words he used. Perhaps most interesting of all was that Donald’s entries regularly refer to Susan. His wife’s name is always one of the most commonly occurring words throughout his entries. Susan Cottee, on the other hand, rarely mentions Donald, and when she does he is usually ‘Donkey’. In addition, Donald used consistently longer sentences, a difference that proved statistically significant at the 0.05 level on a chi-squared test. I can state, therefore, that there is evidence to suggest that the entries that appear to be written by Donald are by one person and those by Susan were written by someone else.
MdM So despite all of your work, you cannot say anything definite? It remains possible that it was planted by someone who wanted to publicise a particular story, or exploit events or even mislead an inquiry?
SC I have said what I can, Miss del Mar. I cannot speculate on the basis of the text I received. There is evidence that the Cottees may also have used a second internet connection, via computers in The Castle, and also via a wifi connection that served another mobile home near to their own in La Manca, a signal that they sometimes poached. But again there is no definite information on either of these possibilities. And, given the destruction or loss of The Castle’s facilities and the inability to prove they accessed another connection, I can say nothing definitive or specific about either possibility. And it would be irresponsible to speculate. It may be significant, however, that we only have this material by chance.
MdM So, Dr Car, what can you prove?
SC What can I prove? With due respect, I am an academic. I research. I analyse. I locate, evaluate and present evidence. And unless that evidence is manifest in a test-tube under perfect laboratory conditions, is one hundred percent monitored and measured, then I am afraid proof is never possible. All I can offer is informed opinion which may, or may not, be more accurate or more trustworthy than the uninformed.
MdM I want to ask about something different... I understand that you have also checked Donald Cottee’s academic record? Does it bear any resemblance to what he described in his writing?
SC Indeed. I contacted the registrar’s office of the University Of The Air, and the academic records office of the University of Punslet. I also trawled through other institutions well known for offering extra-mural studies. Donald Cottee was registered on a degree course with the University Of The Air and achieved a liberal arts degree some years ago, studying an almost standard mix of social sciences, media and environmental units. He was also enrolled in several other institutions, taking a wide range of courses, many of which he did not complete. In the limited time that has been available, I have already concluded that most of the references to courses studied in his journal are pure invention, except for S100 Statistics, which was a course he did with the University Of The Air, as part of his degree.
There was a moment’s silence when open eyes and strained expressions asked silent questions. It was clear that there was no more to be said on either side. María del Mar remained pointedly silent, but offered a gesture of the hand that invited Steven Car to vacate the stand and leave. It might have been interpreted by some as dismissive, but Dr Car seemed not to worry. He certainly took no offence. By the time Steven Car passed his final comment, María del Mar had already mentally moved on. And so it came as a lightning bolt that both stopped and numbed.
SC Was the memory stick subjected to fingerprint analysis?
There was silence from the bench for some time. Dr Car had paused near the exit. He was very interested in the response. It was Pérez Molino who spoke.
PM Why do you ask that, Dr Car?
SC Obviously I retain significant doubt as to whether either Donald or Susan Cottee ever handled that stick.
PM So you think that it might have been planted in the Cottee’s mobile home?
SC Obviously it’s unlikely, but it’s a possibility I would have wanted to be able to rule out. As things stand I cannot even be sure that anything about that file is authentic, though I have no reason to question its authenticity either. All we can say is that it was apparently written by someone who knew Kiddington and significant details of the Cottees’ lives.
PM We are not aware that anybody had records of the Cottee’s fingerprints.
SC Donald Cottee was arrested because of his campaigning against the wind farms. British police would have taken his fingerprints. I would have thought it would have been standard practice with evidence, unless, of course, you do police work as it is shown on television or the films, where intuition solves everything and evidence is irrelevant. Good morning.
And with that Steven Car left the room. The silence that hung over the proceedings felt very heavy. We were all aware that there had been an attempt to undermine Dr Car, to render his contribution either irrelevant or discredited. Throughout, he had retained a calm, balanced position and had not once given the slightest indication that he might react. Then, as a parting shot, he had traded fire with fire, effectively discrediting the entire process in which we were involved. It was a masterstroke. Without it, María del Mar might have carried the whole day. But from then she was more defensive. Her confidence was shaken and this probably resulted in her approaching the next witness with more force, even aggression, than was needed. As a result, though her obvious attempt to discredit her as well actually succeeded, it did not carry the impact that it otherwise might.
This next person to be called was Christine Gillespie, a resident of La Nucia. She appeared towards the end of Donald Cottee’s blog, on the day when Donald followed Phil and Karen Matthews in their Land Rover. And she actually met Cottee, though only momentarily, when he told her he had a message for Phil Matthews, a man she knew as Mr Mason. She took the stand when called. She immediately projected a rather defiant, argumentative manner. I hate to describe someone as stereotypical, but she was. She was overweight, flabby, pale-skinned, loose-limbed and clumsy. Her voice rasped, her words clipped and short, with even the shortest response sounding bad-tempered. She was Scottish, with a thick Glaswegian accent that the council members found difficult to understand. Their response was to run the proceedings more slowly, taking time to dissect and understand her replies. I thought it strange that none of her expressions were referred to me.
MdM Good morning Mrs Gillespie.
CG It’s Gillespie, not Hillepsie, thank you.
MdM Thank you. I am aware of that. I believe you have received a copy of the document we named The Cottee Blog?
CG I have.
MdM I assume that you have read it?
CG Not likely! It’s enormous. And it’s so boring. I got lost after page three. I just couldn’t pick up the story. He was against windmills, wasn’t he?
MdM Will you now please tell us about Mr Philip Mathews and his partner Karen McEvoy.
CG I don’t know any Mathe
ws or McEvoy. I’ve been told they are the same people. I’ve seen photographs. They do seem to be the same. I know them as Mason, Philip and Karen Mason. They told me they were married.
MdM They were renting your apartment?
CG They were there for just three months before they disappeared.
MdM How much rent did you take in advance?
CG Just the first month.
MdM And they paid the rent on time?
CG Not likely. We never saw another penny. I went up to see them at the end of the second month and they asked me if I could wait a week or two. They seemed nice people, not rough or badly spoken in any way, so I said yes. We had them round for a drink when they answered our ad in the Costa Blanca News. They seemed so nice. They told us they had steady work and a good income. They had an expensive car that was quite new. It’s always a way of telling people apart, my husband says. Never trust anyone that can only afford a cheap car is what he thinks.
MdM That was how long before they moved in?
CG Probably just a couple of weeks. Their story was that they were in temporary accommodation and needed a place quickly. They came one weekend. They had hardly any possessions, which surprised us, but they said they had travelled light, and had left Britain quickly to take up a job offer. They said they would be bringing their own furniture eventually, so they may start moving some of our things around to make space for it. We didn’t give it a second thought at the time.
MdM This temporary accommodation, did they tell you where it was?
GC No.
MdM And did you ask for references?
CG No.
There was a moment of silence while María del Mar spoke to García López. She then questioned Christine Gillespie again.
MdM Mrs Gillespie...
CG Gillespie! How many times do I have to tell you how to pronounce my name?
MdM ...I find it incredible that you should rent your apartment to complete strangers without references or a signed, verified, legal contract. I am inclined not to believe you.
CG You can believe what you want. We work in cash...
MdM And you are non-resident in Spain, despite the fact that you live here permanently. You make no tax declaration and still run a British-registered car.
CG Look, we are honest, law-abiding people...
MdM Neither adjective holds true, Mrs Gillespie.
CG Gillespie, not Hillespie!
MdM And what contact did you have with Philip Matthews and Karen McEvoy after they moved in?
CG Hardly any at all. They were never in. We saw them a couple of times in the first week, but since then we’ve never been able to catch them in. They would leave around nine in the morning and come back around four. But then they went straight out again and didn’t come back until two in the morning. They’d make a lot of noise for half an hour and then it would all go quiet until the next morning.
MdM And when was the last time you saw them?
CG It was on the morning of the day they all disappeared. The Wednesday. They went off at the usual time, but they never came back. We didn’t hear anything, even at night, for two days. And there was no car parked outside. It was then that my husband decided to go into the apartment and it was then we discovered they’d cleared the place out. They took everything they could move, even the light fittings off the wall and the potted plants from the balcony.
MdM And you never heard anything? There were no strange noises?
CG Absolutely nothing. But then both my husband and I are out most of the day. There’s usually no-one in the house from around ten until around three, so they could have taken things out at any time.
MdM And you had no idea what they were doing?
CG We’d started to get suspicious. A neighbour called us the week before to say that she’d seen a white van parked in our drive when we were out. Now when the Masons - sorry, the Mathews or whoever they were - first visited us to ask about the apartment, they mentioned that one of the things they did was ‘Man with a van’ trips to and from Britain. Occasionally, they said, they might bring the van round, but we never saw it.
MdM Did they tell you where they kept the van?
CG No. All he said was that he had a garage.
MdM In his blog, Donald Cottee describes coming to your house late one afternoon. He had followed Philip Matthews and Karen home via Montesinos. After they later left, he says that he tried to deliver a message for them. That was when he realised they were using a different surname in their dealings with you. What do you remember of him?
CG Of Donald Cottee? Look, he was a total stranger. I didn’t know him from Adam. I wasn’t going to let him in, or trust him, was I? He’d rung our bell and was standing in the street. He had no obvious means of transport. Frankly, I was glad to see the back of him. I was afraid he might jump over the wall and attack me. I mean, you read all sorts of stories about women being attacked in the papers, don’t you? I wasn’t going to tell him anything. All I could see was a rough-looking man with a shaved head. He was dressed like he ought to be renting a lounger on Benidorm beach, or sinking lager at lunchtime in one of the one euro a pint British bars. And that’s all I remember.
MdM He tried to leave a message for Philip Matthews?
CG Well he did, but of course I didn’t know any Matthews. Our renters were called Mason, after all.
MdM And what did the message say?
CG I don’t remember any details. It was scribbled on a piece of paper. It mentioned somebody called Olga... I took no notice because it was addressed to a Mr Matthews and our people were called Mason.
MdM But he mentioned their first names? Did it surprise you that the first names were the same? Did it make you suspicious?
CG At the time I had no reason to distrust them. And I certainly had no reason to trust a stranger on the street. I thought no more about it until we discovered we’d been robbed.
MdM And that was just a couple of weeks later?
Christine Gillespie nodded. There were suddenly tears in her eyes. They dissolved as fast as they appeared. They were probably ‘on demand’ tears, but she had rightly concluded that there was nothing to be gained here by throwing a tantrum.
MdM And what did you do when you found you had been robbed?
CG Well, at first we didn’t do anything. Our insurance didn’t cover us if we had renters. So what we did was a bit stupid, but it made sense at the time. Look, I know what we did was wrong, but we’d been wronged ourselves.
MdM Why did you not report the theft to the police?
Christine Gillespie was silent.
MdM Was it because you were renting the apartment and not declaring the income?
Christine Gillespie remained silent.
MdM And was it also because both you and your husband are resident in Spain, but have never registered? Is it also because you are not even listed on the town’s padron? Is it also because you both work in Spain, but declare no income and pay neither tax nor social security contributions? Is it because your husband does freelance painting work up and down a ladder despite the fact that he is in receipt of full disability benefit in the United Kingdom where, officially, he is still resident, on the basis that his back was so badly injured in a fall five years ago that he can no longer work? Or is it because you run a British registered vehicle that is neither taxed nor tested for road worthiness? Or is it that you yourselves are tenants with a lease that specifically states you may not sublet? Is that why you broke the lock on the outside door and reported it as a burglary?
CG Look, Señora, it’s not us that’s on trial. We had nothing to do with these disappearances.
MdM But the point I am making, Señora Gillespie...
CG Gillespie!
MdM The point I am making is that we have several people involved
as subjects or witnesses in this inquiry who are drawn, shall we say, from the lower social classes of the United Kingdom. It might be concluded, from what we have heard, that all of them have lied, all of them have been engaged in illegal activity, or vice, or both, and all of them have lived, at least in part, lives of deception. Since Donald and Susan Cottee are themselves of this same social class, it is my contention that what is written in the Cottee blog may well be pure fabrication and that the substantive points made about certain people’s intentions and behaviour should be discounted.
CG Look, I’m not on trial. We are the victims. We had all of our things stolen!
MdM Mrs Gillespie....
CG Gillespie!
MdM Were you aware that the information technology and photographic equipment that Philip Mathews and Karen McEvoy used at The Castle was also stolen?
CG I’d heard there’d been a fire.
MdM There was an attempt to hide the evidence. Someone emptied the place, took everything, and then attempted to set the building on fire. But they did not succeed. The only result was some charring of the walls. The upstairs room where Philip Mathews and Karen McEvoy used to work was not touched by the fire and it was empty.
CG Are you suggesting that I might have been involved in that as well?
MdM I merely ask if you saw Philip Mathews, Philip Mason bring any IT equipment back to your house?
CG I’ve already told you, they brought nothing. They took everything away!
MdM Mrs Gillespie...
CG Gillespie!
MdM ...according to your statement to the police, it was burglars who took your possessions during a break-in. I suggest that you are a liar.
CG I didn’t come here to be insulted.
Christine Gillespie stood up and marched out via the door where she had entered, despite attempts from the clerk to direct her the other way. I realised later that this ploy of María del Mar had effectively closed off any further useful examination of the role of Philip Matthews and Karen McEvoy. The diversion had become more significant than the substance.
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 61
