Gail Cooper with artist's impression of man on the beach

DETECTIVES have been handed a photograph showing a man behaving oddly in the days before Madeleine McCann was kidnapped.

A British holidaymaker accidentally captured him in the background of a family snap taken at the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in April 2007, days before Madeleine, then three, disappeared.

It was passed to detectives from Leicestershire who are assisting the police in Portugal. Last week we published Gail Cooper’s account of her encounter with the strange man when he later came to her holiday villa in the resort, asking for money for an orphanage.

Today we reveal that one of Mrs Cooper’s friends, Leanda Hodson-Mackey, took a snap of her husband Stephen, 34, and son, then aged two, and the man appeared in the background, walking along the beach during a downpour.

Although his features cannot be clearly made out, there is a rough image which could be enhanced with FBI picture improvement techniques.

Mrs Cooper, 53, from Newark, Nottinghamshire, told the Sunday Express last week she believes the same man went on to kidnap Madeleine McCann.

She had flown to Luz with a party of 13 family and friends in the week before Madeleine was taken, to celebrate her 50th birthday. Mrs Hodson-Mackey, 34, and her family spent four days at an apartment in the Mark Warner complex with Leanda’s mother Trudy Dawkins, 49, and her husband Lee, 40.

The apartment was directly above apartment 5a, where the McCanns would stay the following week.

Last night Mrs Dawkins, also from Newark, said: “When we were back home it was on the news that Madeleine had disappeared and we all racked our brains to see if there was anything we could remember which would help the investigation.

“We all remembered this man walking along the beach in the rain, then Gail recalled he later went to her villa.

“Leanda had a throwaway camera. She went through the pictures she had taken and realised the man was in the background in one. Detectives took a statement from her and took away the picture, but we don’t know what happened after that.

Tomorrow Madeleine’s mother Kate, 42, from Rothley, Leicestershire, will meet Prince Charles at Westminster Abbey during a service to remember young victims of violence. She will be among 1,000 guests marking the anniversary of teenager Jimmy Mizen’s murder in 2008, during a fight in a bakery shop in Lee, south-east London.

The families of Damilola Taylor and Ben Kinsella will also be at the “Building a Legacy of Peace” service.