Traces of blood discovered in the bedroom where Madeleine McCann was sleeping on the night that she disappeared do not come from the missing girl, The Times has learnt.

The conclusion that the blood came from a man follows two weeks of reports that the traces proved that Madeleine had been killed in the Algarve holiday apartment.

The finding will give fresh hope to Kate and Gerry McCann, who have said that they continue to believe that their daughter will still be found alive 105 days after she was taken from her bed.

The minute spots of blood, which were discovered on a bedroom wall by British sniffer dogs, had been sent for testing at the headquarters of the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham.

The four pages of technical results conclude that the blood did not come from Madeleine.

The analysis shows that the blood probably comes from a white man from the “northeast European subgroup”. However, this conclusion is only 72 per cent accurate owing to the poor condition of the sample because of its age and also that the bedroom wall had been cleaned with a detergent. The Forensic Science Service is carrying out further tests on the samples.

Detectives had already suspected that the blood came from a man who had injured himself while staying at the two-bedroom apartment after Madeleine disappeared. This explains why the blood was not discovered when Portuguese police examined the apartment in the first weeks of the investigation. The ground-floor apartment in the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz was cordoned off by police for five weeks after Madeleine’s disappearance before being handed back to its British owners.

Mrs McCann contemplated for the first time yesterday returning to Britain to live without Madeleine: “We know we will be going back and I guess one day we will wake up and it will be right. We never thought that we would go before she came back. Now we just don’t know. We have the twins to consider. “I can’t imagine how we came out as a family of five and going back as a four.”

The Times reported yesterday that Portuguese police have said for the first time that the focus of the inquiry is that Madeleine is now dead. Inspector Olegário Sousa, of the PolÍcia Judiciária (PJ), said: “The possibility of Madeleine’s death is the one that we are paying more attention. However, none of the other possibilities is closed.”

Mr Sousa confirmed that one of the dogs had found a scent indicating that a corpse had been in the apartment.

Kate and Gerry McCann, both 39, from Rothley, Leicestershire, are likely to face fresh questioning by police next week. The seven British adults with them at the Ocean Club are also likely to be requestioned.

The couple and their friends were dining at a tapas restaurant at the resort complex on May 3 while Madeleine was asleep in the apartment with her two-year-old twin brothers and sister, Sean and Amelie.

Mr Sousa said this week that the McCanns are regarded as witnesses and are not considered suspects. But he refused to rule out the possibility that their friends may have been involved.

Portuguese police are believed to have found some new evidence in the case about two weeks ago which led to officers saying that they now considered it possible that Madeleine, who disappeared shortly before her fourth birthday, was now dead. However, reports that they are hunting a mystery British man who had stayed in Praia da Luz at the same time as the McCanns have been dismissed. James Gorrod, 34, a solicitor from Exeter, said that detectives had cleared him and his wife of any link to her disappearance. They had raised suspicion because they were a couple who were on holiday with the McCanns and had hired a car with a child seat. However, it transpired that they were travelling with their two-year-old son.

Detectives in Portugal are expected to hold the first press conference on the investigation tomorrow for more than a month. A judge is expected to decide this month that the only official suspect in the case, Robert Murat, 33, should be cleared.

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