Snippets of the book 'A Estrela de Madeleine' by Paulo Pereira Cristóvão
As summarized/translated by Astro.

From the introduction:
Due to legal issues, it cannot be me, the author, to tell you what the truth, the truth of the case, is; but I can assure you that you can find it here, among the lines of this book.

From the first 7 chapters: what the fictional detectives noticed:

The furniture is impeccably aligned against the walls, as if someone had tried to make as much room as possible, in the center of the living room. In the bedroom, the bed where the child was sleeping is on the opposite side of the window. Under the window, there is another bed that had not been in use. Whomever entered through the window, would have left foot marks on the bed, which in that position resembled a trap. But that had not happened.

Throughout the entire scene, the twins slept undisturbed. They were eventually carried away into another apartment, and never woke up.

(...) discovers that the child's parents have already phoned to England, asking for the intervention of friends, both within the government and the media. Guilhermino had been informed of the situation by the National Director, who had been called by the British ambassador in Portugal.

----

In the meantime, the inspector had been at the Tapas Bar; he had been sitting at the table where the group had also been, and he had talked to the waiters. They had told him that the group usually drank significant amounts of alcohol. On the night that Madeleine disappeared, they had consumed twelve bottles of wine, and some appetizers.

The investigators have gathered informal statements, and they start to compare them. They soon realise that something is wrong. The couple's friends stated that they got up several times to check on the children, while the waiters from the Tapas bar say they did not get up that often at all. But even within the group of friends, there are contradictions.

Two English people, one of them Jane Tanner, say that they saw a man carrying a child that could be the missing infant. The description given by Jane is very vague and carries a factor of doubt, as Gerry and a friend whom he was talking to, standing on the same location as Jane when she passed, saw nobody. The friend confirmed this.

-----------

(...) telling him that a Dutch newspaper has received a map that supposedly shows the location of the child's body, and the lead is being taken seriously.

Francisco meets his chief, and two Dutch journalists, who have been in Portugal for three days, trying to find out the location of the place that is marked on the map. They even hired sniffer dogs. Francisco and João Tavares feel like arresting them on the spot, for endangering the investigation.

But the lead has to be verified. The journalists take an envelope out of their bag, and they produce a document that they say had been received together with the map. It's a spermogram, a document that is issued when someone has his sperm analysed in a lab.

João Tavares notices that there is no identification of the subject on the document, but he also notices a sequence of numbers on the lower right hand corner. He contacts a doctor who informs him that the sequence identifies the lab, the number of the test and the individual that was subject to the analysis.

Therefore, while other colleagues go to Odiaxere, followed by a trail of journalists, João Tavares and Francisco Meireles go to Lisbon, where they identify the individual, who turns out to be a public servant, divorced and with evident problems of self-assurance and self-regulation. The man confesses that all he wanted to do was to help keep the case in the media spotlight, and that he will seek psychiatric help.

-------------------

On the last day of July, the intuition of the investigators and the results from Krugel find two powerful allies that confirmed the scenario that had begun to form: the death of Madeleine McCann, on the evening of May 3.

Eddie's handler opens the door to apartment 5A, and lets the dog in, to walk freely as usual. The dog sniffs around, followed by his handler, the policemen, experts from the scientific police, and a video technician, who registers the procedure on tape. At a given moment, in the living room, Eddie signals the presence of a cadaver to his handler. According to the laws of forensics, it's a cadaver that has been in that condition for at least two hours.

On the next day, it is Keela who is put into action. After several minutes sniffing around the house, she detains herself next to a sofa in the living room. The investigators move the sofa aside, and Keela shows them two tiny spots of dry blood: one on the floor, the other one on the wall. The material is collected, and a decision is made, against the opinion of Francisco, and João Tavares. The samples are sent into a lab in Birmingham.

On the next day, early in the morning, Eddie is called back to service, to investigate the surroundings of the apartment. The dog stops here and there, marking a path that is referenced by apartment 5A and the beach of Luz. Without knowing, Eddie has just confirmed Krugel's findings.

----------------

These two canines, without knowing it, were at the core of a volcano, when in three separate moments, they "accused" Madeleine's parents of, at least, not saying the whole truth about what happened to their daughter.

First, when they were given plenty of time and space to sniff through Robert Murat's house and all of his belongings, and did not discover anything that could minimally incriminate him.

Second, when they detected the odour of death on the key of the car that they used, which was rented more than twenty days after the little girl went missing. In the same car where they found traces of blood and hair under the spare tire.

Third, when, already in the new house where the couple was staying, Eddie once again smelled the characteristic odour of death on a pair of jeans and on a blouse that belong to Kate. The soft toy that the mother carried with her every time they went out, also presented a smell of death that was detected by the same dog. What the heck do we have here, then? - he thought, intrigued. - Did the parents stage this entire circus to hide the truth?