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Kate and Gerry McCann hoped inconclusive forensic test results would clear them as official suspects in the disappearance of their 4-year-old daughter Madeleine - but Portuguese police are returning to Britain to question their friends.
Portuguese investigators had left Britain after meeting forensic experts to discuss tests carried
out on DNA samples, believed to have been blood, bodily fluids and hair found in the family's Portuguese holiday flat from where Madeleine disappeared in May.
The test results are understood to be inconclusive, raising the McCanns' hopes that Portuguese police will no longer consider them suspects.
But detectives are preparing to return to Britain to speak to members of the so-called Tapas Nine.
The McCanns had hoped that police would lift their status as official suspects in their daughter's disappearance by Christmas, after DNA tests failed to find any evidence which proved they were involved.
But police will deliver letters of appeal to British police, asking them to interrogate the friends again, and asking that Portuguese officers be allowed to be present in the interviews, reported the Daily Mail. There have been reports that four of the friends - Jane Tanner, her partner Russell O'Brien, Matthew Oldfield and David Payne - fear they could be made suspects in the case, said the Mail.
Police and the prosecutor met for more than three hours at Faro police station to discuss the DNA tests results. Three detectives and a forensics expert who met with Forensic Science Service experts reported back to the head of the investigation, Paulo Rebelo. The new British ambassador to Portugal, Alex Ellis, was also at the police station, with the British consul to the Algarve. The Foreign Office insisted his visit was "unrelated" and that he was there as part of a pre-planned tour to introduce himself to important officials in the country, but the timing appeared significant. McCann spokesman Clarence Mitchell said the couple's friends would cooperate with fresh interviews. He said: "If this report is true, Kate and Gerry's friends have consistently said they are happy to be re-interviewed by police if necessary."
Alleged contradictions in the statements of the Tapas Nine first raised suspicions among detectives that the group were lying.
But the McCanns and their friends have always denied any suggestion that they were involved in Madeleine's disappearance, or that they constructed a "pact of silence" to cover up their involvement.
The McCanns, both 39, were named as suspects in September following the disappearance of their daughter from their holiday apartment on May 3. They have always denied any involvement and had looked to the DNA tests to clear them of any suspicion.
But while the tests proved inconclusive, police made it clear they had no intention of giving up on their theory that Madeleine died in an accident in the Ocean Club apartment and her parents, possibly with help from their friends, hid her body to cover up the death.
The Portuguese newspaper 24 Horas claimed the forensics analysis had found evidence which supported the theory that her body was taken in the couple's Renault Scenic, hired 25 days after Madeleine disappeared. But it said the findings were not strong enough to allow police to make any accusations.
It quoted a police source as saying: "The existing evidence up until now is far from clearing the McCann couple in the case. There are more and more indicators that they were involved in the disappearance of the child, but it has been difficult to prove this fact."
Writing in his internet blog before the latest development emerged, Gerry McCann said: "We are confident that the results will no way incriminate us and hopefully everyone can concentrate on finding Madeleine and her abductor."