Police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann last night ended a two-day search of the home of the only official suspect in the case.

Officers had used dogs and scanning equipment, which can detect items buried underground and hidden behind walls, in the home and garden of Robert Murat in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz.

Police did not reveal if anything had been found at the house, which is only 100 yards from the holiday apartment where Madeleine disappeared.

Two cocker spaniels, one specially trained to hunt for human bodies and the other for traces of life, were brought from England as part of a review by British police of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine 95 days ago.

A team of eight Portuguese officers led by two British police officers arrived on Saturday morning at Casa Liliana, the villa in the Algarve where Mr Murat, 33, lives with his mother. Much of the first day of the operation was spent clearing thick vegetation in the garden to allow the sniffer dogs to inspect the area.

A Portuguese police source said that the operation was intended to collect any evidence that could link Mr Murat to Madeleine’s abduction or to help to rule him out as a suspect. The search is not based on any specific intelligence, he said.

Three friends who were on holiday with the McCann family at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance confronted Mr Murat at the headquarters of the PolÍcia Judiciária last month. They insisted that they had seen him at their holiday complex on the night she disappeared.

Mr Murat has said that he was at home with his mother, Jennifer, all night, although he is alleged to have originally claimed that he was staying with his German girlfriend, Michaela Walczuch, and her estranged Portuguese husband, Luis Antonio.

Mr Murat, who lived previously in Norfolk, worked as a police translator in the early stages of the hunt for Madeleine but was made the only official suspect, or arguido, 11 days after she disappeared.

The new search of his home came a week after a British police team arrived in Portugal to review the progress in the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine from the ground-floor bedroom of her holiday apartment on May 3, shortly before her fourth birthday.

The “cadaver dog” is reported in the Portuguese press to have discovered a trace of Madeleine’s body in her bedroom, meaning that she would have been dead in the apartment for at least two hours, which does not fit with official police reports so far.

Portuguese detectives refused to comment on the reports but have previously insisted that Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, and the seven friends staying with them at the Ocean Club resort, were not suspects.

Mr Murat’s uncle, Ralph Eveleigh, said that his family welcomed the search. “What we’re hoping is it will actually clear Robert completely of this whole investigation,” he said. “He’s very, very pleased with what’s happening because the English police seem to be calling the shots. They’re in charge of the whole search of the house.”

Mrs McCann yesterday spoke of her regret at leaving her daughter and her two-year-old twin children, Sean and Amelie, on the night Madeleine disappeared, to join her husband and their friends for dinner at a nearby tapas restaurant.

“Every hour now, I still question, ‘Why did I think that was safe?’” said Mrs McCann, 38, a locum GP. “If I had had to think for one second, ‘Should we have dinner and leave them?’, I wouldn’t have done it. It didn’t happen like that. I didn’t have to think for a second, that’s how safe I felt.”

She said that, as she tucked Madeleine into bed that night, her daughter had said: “Mummy, I’ve had the best day ever. I’m having lots and lots of fun.” Asked what message she would send to her daughter, Mrs McCann said: “I would tell her that we love her. She knows we love her very much. She knows we are looking for her, that we are doing absolutely everything and we will never give up.”

Mr and Mrs McCann gave their backing yesterday to a new initiative to help to keep children safe on holiday. The six-point plan – named Code Madeleine – outlines what parents should do if their child goes missing. The objective of the code, developed by the Federation of Tour Operators and the Association of British Travel Agents, is to trigger a system of securing premises and systematically searching for a missing child in the critical hours immediately after they are reported missing.

Meanwhile, Belgian police investigating a possible sighting of Madeleine in the Flemish town of Tongeren are this week expected to receive the results of crucial DNA tests. Forensic science experts have been looking for traces of DNA on a drinks bottle and a straw used by a girl resembling Madeleine at a restaurant.

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