Suddenly we have to hold two entirely contradictory thoughts in our head at the same time. For the McCanns have now either suffered the cruellest fate imaginable – not only to have innocently lost their beloved daughter but also to have been publicly accused of a wicked crime – or they are guilty of the most elaborate and heinous confidence trick in history, deceitfully winning the trust and sympathy of the world’s media, a British prime minister, the wife of the American president and even the Pope, to say nothing of international public opinion. One of those statements, both of them extraordinary, describes the truth. As a senior tabloid journalist put it to me yesterday: “They’re either the victims of a horrible smear which they will never fully escape or they are cold, psychotic killers” responsible for the death of their own child.