MADDIE 10 YRS ON: KATEAND GERRY OPEN THEIR HEARTS

Was she dumped at coastal caves?

THIS is the spot where Maddie could have been cast into the sea, an expert fears.

Former cop Paulo Pereira Cristovao, one of Portugal’s most senior missing children investigators, says caves 20 minutes from Praia da Luz were never searched.

Cristovao – ex-president of Portugal’s Association for Missing Children – searched for clues at the time of Maddie’s disappearance. He took the Sunday Mirror to the rocky outcrop five miles west of Praia.

And he told us: “There are caves hidden below us – it is the first suitable place they would have come across when fleeing the apartment. Police would have needed divers to search under the water and inside the rocks, but they did not come here.”

Cristovao told how he went to the McCanns’ apartment in 2007, adding: “I put myself in the shoes of somebody who had just taken a child. To the east are people, buildings and a higher chance of detection. By heading west there is wilderness. The first dirt road off the highway leads here. It is a short walk to these rocks. Somebody could have left the apartment and come back within the hour.”

The spot lies a stone’s throw from Burgau, on the edge of a vast nature reserve. To get here we drove for 15 minutes from the Ocean Village holiday complex in Praia before scrambling over 250 metres of rocky beach for five minutes. Fearing the worst, Cristovao said: “All anybody would need to do is weigh her body down and cast it into the sea. The subaquatic caves would keep her hidden forever if the waves did not take her away. The police did not look here because it was too difficult.”

The expert accused his former colleagues of a string of errors. He said they should have assumed the worst – murder – and locked down the flat.

Instead, it became contaminated as a stream of people roamed in and out. He said evidence that was discounted included a sniffer dog which detected the “scent of a body” and the fact Maddie and her siblings could have been drugged.

Caves were ignored, says Cristovao Cave could hide body, says expert