By Crime correspondent Martin Brunt

Will they, won't they go to back to Praia da Luz for the reconstruction?

A call from Portugal tells me the McCanns' lawyer has said the couple are now prepared to take part in a re-enactment of the night Madeleine disappeared.

But the McCanns' spokesman, Clarence, says they are still considering the "request" from the Portuguese police and their legal man in Lisbon has been misquoted.

They still want their arguido status lifted, but would go back if ordered to.

Anything to help the investigation, he says.

But if they have a choice, they don't see the point in a reconstruction that would not be televised as an appeal for information.

He says the detectives turned down that idea months ago.

And, says a friend, no one has bothered to consider the emotional impact on Kate who would find it difficult to watch a young girl playing her missing daughter.

It's unlikely to happen unless everyone agrees to return, including the Tapas 7, some of whom have reservations after twice being quizzed over the events of that night.

Apparently, a third date for the reconstruction has been scheduled, but what's the point if the protagonists are not there?

It was to have been before the year's anniversary, then this week, now the May 30.

The priest who led the mass for murder victim Jimmy Mizen was my kind of clergyman...down to earth and funny in the midst of all that tragedy.

I helped plug him in before he spoke live to our presenter, and told him to say whatever he wanted and to be himself.

"Should I ask Dermot if he wants me to hear his confession?" he whispered just before he went on air.

I told him yes, but leave it right to the end of the conversation.

Everyone was looking for a picture of the young man who has been arrested.

One newspaper had four reporters combing the area, offering £2,000 a shot and it didn't take long for the first photo to emerge.

The police would rather none was published, for legal reasons, but it may prove irresistible on such a big, emotive story.

I await the morning papers.

From Sky's crime correspondent Martin Brunt

I don't suppose it will distract them from their endeavours this weekend, but two of Kate and Gerry McCanns' closest friends in Praia da Luz have been burgled ahead of the Madeleine anniversary.

Anglican priest Haynes Hubbard and his wife Susan lost a computer that contains personal and confidential email exchanges between the two couples.

The laptop also held notes on which Father Hubbard was basing his sermon about Madeleine at the weekend.

Mrs Hubbard is concerned, too, about private telephone numbers stored on a mobile that was also stolen.

The Hubbards became great friends and comforters of the McCanns in the days after Madeleine's disappearance and have kept in touch since Gerry and Kate returned to the UK.

I interviewed Father Hubbard several times and he was always a rather serious guy.

His wife was quite different.

One afternoon I spotted her emptying an impressive bag of bottles beside the recycling point at the end of the promenade.

"Oh no," she gasped in mock horror. "Vicar's wife in secret booze scandal."

She didn't strike me as the Amy Winehouse type.

But, then, I've never heard her sing.

From Sky's crime correspondent Martin Brunt

My fellow hacks and snappers have descended on Praia da Luz and are struggling to find real stories ahead of the Madeleine anniversary this weekend.

In fact, staff on a national newspaper - no guesses which one - have been told to file nothing unless it's a genuine development.

Something to do with fear of a repeat of legal action that recently cost them a cool half-a-million pounds.

But some colleagues are keeping themselves busy.

One photographer has already come a cropper and is hobbling around the resort on crutches.

Falling off a roof-top position? No.

Hit during a frenetic car chase along the coast road? No.

Not even the victim of an undignified bunfight outside the church.

He was injured in a five-a-side football match that has become a daily fixture for the bored media.

Back to the Golden Lion in South London where gumshoe Danny Morgan was murdered with an axe 21 years ago.

The pub doesn't get any prettier, but the story moves on with six arrests and, I think, a good chance of charges after all this time.

The last time I was there we tried to reconstruct the murder in the pub car park. Not easy.

Any minute I thought we'd have half of Catford nick screeching into the yard, Sweeney-style. Or Life On Mars-style, to be a little more up-to-date for younger readers.

We filmed me swinging an axe against a wall and recorded the shadow falling through the air. So far, so good.

Nobody had spotted us, or if they had they took it for normal Thursday night behaviour.

Then, to represent Mr Morgan's prone body, I lay down on the grubby floor near the gate into the beer garden.

At which point an old boy wandered out, stopped beside my head (thankfully), muttered, "The Danny Morgan murder again, what's happened now?"

Then he stepped over me and toddled off into the night.

Takes a lot to shock them in some parts of South London.

It's a habit that drives my family nuts, but keeping my mobile phone switched on and close at all hours does bring its benefits.

The whole household was woken at 6.15 this morning, but the arrests over the murder of Rhys Jones was not a story to be missed. At least not by me.

Better than being stirred by the same news on Beeb radio an hour later.

A vital moment for Merseyside cops because they can't keep arresting their main suspect and then bailing him.

Technically, perhaps, they can do just that, but public confidence demands they nail him and others with charges this time.

They won't have moved lightly this morning.

There's a three-word phrase that springs to my mind and those of most cops on Merseyside, I'm sure.

The phrase offers two alternatives...and the third word is "bust."

Clarence Mitchell says the McCanns want to go back for a Crimewatch-style reconstruction of the tapas bar dinner, and only if it's televised, but they won't return while they are still arguidos.

Their suspect status is unlikely to change anytime soon, but how will it look if they refuse to go and help the police in the continuing search for clues to Madeleine’s disappearance?

Perhaps the McCanns’ lawyers will ask for an assurance the couple won't be arrested.

I doubt the police would be prepared to offer such a deal... one top official wanted to arrest Kate McCann back in September, apparently, but was overruled.

And I can't see the Portuguese cops inviting along the television cameras to a reconstruction. 

They would rather shave off their moustaches. I hear Paulo Rebelo, the detective in charge, has grown his back for his current trip to Leicestershire.

The sun is shining, but the usual problems emerge as we converge on wonderful Woolwich Crown Court for the big terror trial.

We better get used to it ... the judge just told the jury we could all be here till September.

He didn't say which September, but I'm looking on the bright side. There aren't many of those in Woolwich.

They used to let us park in the official car park, but all that has stopped now and we are directed to what passes for a shopping centre.

A hack friend manages to get clamped on day one, then achieves the impossible by getting unclamped at no charge.

I won't reveal which paper he writes for, but he's clearly working for the right tabloid. It's not the Mirror reflecting light from his rear end.

There's a purpose-built, pre-fab annexe for those not in court, where we watch and just about hear what's said in court.

It's surrounded by thick, heavy railings, but we're thinking about setting up some tables and parasols for the summer months. Just to brighten up the place. Maybe a barbecue for late sittings.

They've provided free broadband, but I can't connect my laptop to it for some reason and our mobile phones are taken off us as we go in.

I'm managing, so far, to keep my BlackBerry hidden under my notebook and learning to text with my left thumb while jotting down shorthand with my right hand.

Not easy and am expecting to be pounced on any minute.

The signal is so poor here, I'm unlikely to receive embarrassing calls in the middle of the evidence.

How on earth are those crimelords expected to run their operations from their cells in Belmarsh high-security prison next door?

Relief all round when we discover our phones work perfectly well in the pub across the road.

Martin Brunt, Sky News crime correspondent

So, they were a dog's bones, after all, and not those of Madeleine and few people will be surprised.

Even her parents had poured scorn on the divers searching the Algarve lake for their daughter.

But I wonder if, just for a moment, Kate and Gerry McCann had privately harboured some hope that the underwater search of the Barragem do Arade might solve the mystery of Madeleine's disappearance?

Two weeks ago the frogmen found a bag of small bones which might have been those of a child's fingers, but now they've turned out to be canine.

Lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia paid for the dive team after claiming "an underworld source" had told him the lake was Madeleine's final resting place.

But, according to one diver who considered the job before rejecting it, the lawyer's information came from his own ability to "talk to the dead."

So, another episode ends as one more begins...we are all running around trying to find out where the cops will re-interview the Tapas 7 next week.

:: Picture by Carlos Vidigal Junior

Going on a raid with 600 riot cops was never going to be a straightforward matter.

At one point our crew car managed to get in front of a dozen police vans flashing and screeching through central London.

They had to give us a police driver to make sure we didn't get to the raid too soon and alert the villains.

The soundman was very disappointed he didn't get his own blue light, Kojak-style.

We all felt a bit guilty when a funeral cortege had to pull over to let us pass as we charged through Camden.

We ended up in an Islington street, where they sealed off 150 yards of shop fronts and arrested several dozen suspects for fencing...what's known these days as handling stolen goods.

I went looking for punters to tell me what they thought of it all, but every scruffy Herbert I approached turned out to be an undercover cop or immigration official.

When I did find someone who wasn't Old Bill, he revealed he was working for the BBC.

We left before it was over, but they were still marching handcuffed suspects out of the internet cafes.

I can just see tomorrow's  newspaper headlines - "Operation Overkill".

By Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt

Another leaving do and the conversation is dominated by the death of Greater Manchester Chief Constable Mike Todd.

The division of opinion isn’t over whether he killed himself – almost everyone believes he did, though the manner may not have been as obvious as we thought.

Or even if he was "a ladies’ man". Again, few are in little doubt. And these are people who knew him well.

Most of us conclude that an affair which was an open secret would unlikely drive a man like Mr. Todd to commit suicide in fear of exposure.

He was a guy who confronted problems head on and such exposure would not have threatened his job.

A more damning aspect – that he was using taxpayers’ money to wine and dine her – has been ruled out, according to police sources.

We can’t help concluding there must have been some darker reason behind his death. And that leads to all manner of bizarre speculation, all of which may completely wrong.

The debating point turns to whether suicide is a brave or selfish thing. And most conclude it’s selfish, though it’s beyond me how anyone, emotionally torn to the point of killing himself, is capable of making that sort of judgement.

The conversation eventually lightens up, but only just.

I meet an old Fleet Street crime hack acquaintance, who’s wearing far better than his 79 years might otherwise dictate.

He tells me that if he can choose the manner of his own death it would be playing tennis, swinging a golf club, or in bed with an attractive woman.

And the three options, he assures me with a wink of an only-slightly rheumy eye, are all still open to him.

Heading to Scotland Yard for the farewell of Chief Press Officer Bob Cox, an old-school operator who survived 35 years and seven commissioners at the Met.

His job is being given to two people. If I was him, I'd sue for years of lost earnings.

More than anyone, Bob was the guardian of the Yard's secrets. I wonder what is the biggest story that never got out?

You had to spend a lot of time with Bob to win his confidence, but after that you could always get the guidance you needed. So long as you could unravel the odd riddle delivered in his Irish brogue.

Sometimes he was more straightforward. A hack who called him on the night police shot the wrong man in Earls Court and asked "How bad is it, Bob?" got a two-word answer that left no room for confusion.

An early invite to a "personal briefing" with a top cop almost ended in disaster. The cop chose my bottle of wine over Bob's offering. Not a good start for a fledgling crime reporter.

Bob and his wife Rosie were holidaying once, with a terror chief and his partner, at a remote Scottish hideaway.

The morning after their late-night arrival, a less-than-fully-dressed Mrs. Cox leapt out of bed and threw back the curtains to gaze on the beautiful, and deserted, Highland landscape she thought awaited her.

What she hadn't anticipated was the troop of Special Branch bodyguards hidden among the heather whose rather dull dawn shift was enlivened by a sight that had, until that moment, been a Bob Cox exclusive.

Those officers stationed furthest from the house lunged for their binoculars, once word spread through the undergrowth.

In those days, of course, flashing was something only men could be accused of.

But in these days of sexual equality, who knows? They have long memories and funny laws in Scotland.

Though cops are reluctant to investigate their own, from today Bob Cox (and his wife) isn't one of them. Sadly, for us.

By Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt

Every taxi driver in Jersey knows someone who lived at the Haut de la Garenne children's home.

And they don't half charge a lot for the ride/information.

Got off to a poor start with the cops here...a tip about a new bone discovery proved duff and I got a gentle bollocking, but I think we've made up.

The detective in charge has a colourful reputation among former colleagues who offer endearing stories with only a touch of Life On Mars.

His phone rings with an assortment of interesting tunes, including the Beach Boys...rumour has it that the Dixon of Dock Green theme is another.

He thinks I'm not old enough to remember that daddy of all TV cop series, but I reckon he's younger than me.

My own mobile ring is The Sweeney.

Between us we've hired all the available cars on the island and hotel rooms are disappearing fast.

A colleague found his shower had no curtain, but used it anyway and caused a bit of a mess.

The hotel manager complained and then got in a plumber to remove the shower taps.

Wouldn't a new shower curtain have been easier and cheaper?

Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt

The numbing gale blowing off the moor this week wasn't the only difference between Dewsbury and Praia da Luz.

Few people, it seems, care as much about missing Shannon Matthews as they do about Madeleine.

For journalists, viewers, readers, the poor girl's disappearance hasn't really taken off as a news story.

I joined a media pack outside her home, but it was nothing to the gathering around apartment 5a at the Ocean Club complex a week after Madeleine had vanished.

Is it just because Shannon comes from an extended, chaotic family who live on a scuzzy council estate?

Or is it that she doesn't have parents who can articulate their anguish?

News of an attempted abduction of another schoolgirl on the same day barely rates a mention in the media.

Such a detail would have spawned front-page headlines during the early Madeleine search.

In fact, I think it did.

Expect West Yorkshire police to resolve this case rather quicker than the Portuguese cops.

  By Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt

I've almost given up trying to analyse announcements about the Madeleine case from Portuguese officials.

Everything that appears to be a clue, a development or admission of incompetence is then contradicted. And usually blamed on a poor translation.

Even those with fluent Portuguese struggle to understand the nuances of the country's complicated legal system.

So how am I expected to wade through the confusion?

The latest comes from the justice minister who claims, apparently, that the case is to be wrapped up with detectives conceding defeat.

They just don't know what happened to Madeleine.

In the wake of all this, I get two calls from colleagues in Portugal warning me to treat the story with care.

"It's still not clear what is being said," says one caller.

And that's from someone whose judgement is pretty good, but even he doesn't know what it means.

One thing is clear. The Madeleine story is going off the boil for the British media.

Page 23 in the Daily Express! Behind a photo spread revealing how much celebrity sons look like their mums. And it's not even Mother's Day.

By Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt

One occupant slipped straight through their grasp as cops smashed their way into the home of a suspected drug baron.

So fast, my cameraman missed him.

Tizer the Staffordshire bull terrier shot out of the house like a cork from a bottle of fizz.

The terrified mutt must have thought the dog pooh squad were getting tough.

While the rest of the helmeted heavy mob cuffed and questioned his master, one officer was despatched to find the animal, a beautiful, liver-coloured puppy.

He found him chasing ducks down by the Thames, but the dog got into the water before he could be collared.

Eventually, the two of them traipsed back to the house, to the delight of the suspect's young child, but damper and dirtier than they had set off.

Not everyone was happy...suddenly there was a lot of mud on the newly-laid wood floors. The cop blamed the dog.

But size tens? And only two of them?

Of course, it turned out Tizer wasn't as cute as he looked.

An hour after the cops left with his master, the dog slipped out again...and peed on my cameraman's boots.

By Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt

It was something mentioned to me more in passing, but now the body wrapped in a duvet and dumped behind a shop in London has become an intriguing murder mystery.

Twenty-four hours later it was still officially a 'suspicious death',  even after the cops discovered the man’s head was missing.

I can’t imagine he cut it off himself or someone did it accidentally or as a favour.

Cops were being so cautious they hadn’t even unwrapped the body, to preserve forensic clues, so we still don’t know if the poor victim was black or white.

A detective once showed me a picture of a white murder victim whose body was so decomposed when it was found that you would assume it was black.

Detectives won’t be surprised if the hands of this corpse are missing as well.

Then they’ll have a real Mafia/gangland hit to deal with.

And the story will have got much bigger.

:: For the latest on the mystery, click here

By Martin Brunt, Sky News Crime Correspondent

"Is this a way to run a ****ing police force?" as the late Peter Cook might have said.

Unless I missed it, Portugal's top cop Alipio Ribeiro appears to be oblivious to the impact of his view that detectives were "hasty" to make the McCanns official suspects.

Doesn't he realise that their 'arguido' status has helped fuel a widespread campaign, mostly on the internet, to vilify the couple?

Even those observers who managed, eventually, to get over the hurdle of them leaving the kids alone, had their views influenced by the official police suspicions.

And reporters who find it difficult to believe the McCanns had anything to do with Madeleine's disappearance have always hesitated and thought, hang on a minute, the Portuguese police can't be stupid. Can they?

Mr. Ribeiro should get a grip on the investigators.

And as for the lake that's being searched by divers... they are not police, who dismissed the lake angle months ago.

It's something that was cooked up by a kooky lawyer, who is apparently funding the frogmen at £1,200 a day.

Admirable, but clearly a lawyer with too much money. Not the first I've encountered.

By Martin Brunt, Sky News Crime Correspondent

No Madeleine stories for me for a while, but an invitation this week to listen to Kate and Gerry’s man Clarence debate the question “The McCanns and the Media: Information or Entertainment?”

Well, TV news certainly has an element of entertainment, in the sense that you have to grab the viewers’ attention and interest or they’ll reach for the zapper.

Our host is something called Polis and it’s at the London School of Economics, no less.

“We are not here to judge the McCanns,” advises the invitation, but I bet there’ll be some of that.

I hope Clarence is wearing his shin guards because he’ll be up against a couple of tabloid editors who are no shrinking violets.

Plus a journalism prof and producers of BBC and ITV documentaries on the Madeleine case.

The Beeb docco maker quit because his team would not agree to state on air that the McCanns were innocent, so he'll be on Clarence's side I guess.

No-one seems interested in what Sky thinks. My invitation is to sit in the audience, if I’m in time to reserve a seat.

:: Click here for Sky's special section on the search for Madeleine

The jury had just condemned five of his fellow defendants and acquitted one when I bumped into Keith Borer in the Old Bailey canteen.

The jurors in the £53 million Securitas robbery trial were still considering his future and the omens did not look good.

They were probably enjoying lunch more than he was.

“How are you feeling?” I asked the Kent signwriter as he sat staring into space across the coffee cups.

Staring across the cups is about as close as you’d want to get to the Old Bailey coffee.

“All over the place,” he said and he managed a smile.

In his shabby raincoat and stubble, he didn’t look like someone who had a few million stashed away.

He had, of course, denied the charge of handling £6,000 of the stolen cash, but had admitted changing the logo on a van later used in the robbery.

He had done it as a favour for a friend, one of those who had just been convicted.

“I only found out I was implicated from watching you on Sky News,” he said, with another grim smile. 

An hour later he was off the hook and that was the last any of us saw of him.

Oddly, he didn’t come out the front door for the interview he had offered earlier.

His mind must have been somewhere else. He certainly was.

:: 5 found guilty of UK's biggest robbery

:: VIDEO: How the heist was done

:: PICTURES: Robbery caught on CCTV