The search for Madeleine McCann focuses again on Algarve as answers might finally be found

Madeleine McCann went missing from an apartment block in the Algarve in 2007 but is yet to be found, however with a new suspect identified her family are hoping they might finally have closer

Little has changed in 13 years - Praia da Luz remains the quiet family resort which drew the McCanns to the resort with their young children.

Calm, quiet, apparently safe.

Apartment 5A, where they enjoyed their final days together, is enjoyed by others now. Someone else lives in the place from where a little girl vanished and a family was cast into an unrelenting agony of uncertainty and loss.

In fact there is as little trace of what happened, as there is of Madeleine herself. This is a town which would like to forget and be forgotten. Yet few have been able to forget the little girl who came for a holiday never to return home. Now this community is being asked to think about those months once more - to see if somewhere in patchy faded memories lie answers which have been sought for so long.

Madeleine McCann is now assumed dead by German police. Credit: PA

Could the person responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance have lived among them? A visitor themselves but one who came not to enjoy a holiday but prey on others, breaking into their holiday homes and hotels with dreadful intent. A man who toured the streets in his camper van doing odd jobs yet also doing dreadful things to women and children. A court says he raped an American pensioner in the Algarve. He had also sexually abused young girls.

Was this the man who broke into that ground floor apartment 13 years ago? The German police think so and have once again turned to the town for help. They believe Madeleine was abducted and murdered. And they suspect others do know what happened to her, indeed they may know where her body is. Now the spotlight returns to Praia da Luz, a tiny place where a terrible thing took place. A place where secrets may have been harboured for more than a decade.

The hope now is that all these years on, with a suspect in prison, people may feel finally the time is right come forward. That fragments of memory may bring together the fragments of that night and finally provide truth in this tragedy.