The black cloth draped over Deborah Parry's head prevented the photographers from getting any unauthorised pictures. Lucille McLauchlan was already on her way back to Scotland in a helicopter.
After 17 months in a Saudi prison cell ended with the dramatic intervention of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, the two women at the centre of an expatriate nurses' murder story returned to Britain yesterday and straight into a diplomatic storm.
The initial delight at their release has quickly turned sour. When news first broke that King Fahd had commuted their sentences for the murder of their Australian colleague, Yvonne Gilford, the media was taken by surprise. But when it was revealed that the women had signed exclusive deals worth a reported £250,000 with the Mirror and the Express, the surprise turned to anger.
While photographers jostled each other at Gatwick Airport yesterday to get the first pictures of the women, the BBC had already announced it had secured exclusive access to the two women's diaries, which were written while they were in prison in Saudi Arabia. The BBC said it did not pay the women for their co-operation.
In the Panorama programme shown last night - The Nurses' Story - the extracts from the diaries proved extremely disturbing. Claiming that the Saudi police had systematically tortured them and they were beaten into making a false confession, McLauchlan claimed in her diary she was positive "they are going to rape me. Hammed (the official in charge of the murder investigation) tells me `Do you want to start writing or does the Lieutenant take his trousers off?' "
The programme also pointed out a conflict in one of the key areas of the case: the claim that when McLauchlan was arrested she was carrying a bank card belonging to Ms Gilford and had just drawn money from her account. McLauchlan was adamant that she was never in the bank and claimed she had been arrested while smoking a cigarette in the street. But in a statement to her British lawyer in Saudi Arabia, she later admitted that the money belonged to her and she denied stealing Ms Gilford's bank card.
Parry, who was being interrogated in another room, also believed she would be raped. "They were rubbing my thighs, I thought I would be raped by them all," she wrote. "Kept on being struck across the throat, my face was slapped, was told that if I didn't start writing it would be worse."
With diplomatic observers concerned that the Saudi authorities would be "perplexed" by the British reaction to their return, the lawyers representing the two women were anxious to play down their criticism of Islamic laws. Mr Peter Watson, representing McLauchlan told a press conference she was not attacking Saudi Arabia or its religion but there were police officers who that had behaved "abominably". Mr Rodger Pannone, who was speaking on Parry's behalf, said that although she respected Islam, she had an "abhorrence" of the treatment she and McLauchlan had received from a small number of police officers. He said she would fight on to clear her name. Mr Frank Gilford, Yvonne Gilford's brother, who lives in South Australia, accused the two nurses of dealing in blood by selling their stories to the newspapers. He said that the £740,000 he expected to receive as a result of waiving the death penalty on Parry was compensation and not blood money.
"If anything is classed as blood money, I'd say that is blood money; cashing in on Yvonne's death," he told Australian radio. "The British media are paying them money for the story of her death, so I'd class that as blood money."
The Press Complaints Commission has launched an investigation into the newspaper deals after some Labour MPs claimed it was "deeply offensive" that the women should be seen to profit from Ms Gilford's murder.
Thwe two nurses went last night facing a fresh investigation into the murder allegations against them that could lead to them being struck off the British nursing register. The United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing was preparing to launch an investigation after receiving a formal complaint against from the labour MP for Glascow Kelvin, Mr George Galloway.