Liam Payne’s body will be transferred to a funeral parlour and embalmed “in the next 48 hours,” Argentinian media are reporting.
The singer’s heartbroken father is said to be hoping to get the go-ahead to fly back home with his son’s coffin at the weekend. Prosecutors have yet to confirm results are back from the toxicology and tissue tests Geoff Payne was told last week would have to be completed before the repatriation could occur.
But the local reports appear to indicate Liam’s dad is close to completing his intentions of speeding up the repatriation process by flying 7,000 miles after learning of his son’s fatal third-floor hotel balcony plunge on October 16. The tragedy sparked an ongoing probe which investigators have linked to a substance-induced ‘psychotic episode’, saying they do not suspect any ‘third-party’ involvement in the 31-year-old Brit’s death.
Police stormed the boutique CasaSur Palermo Hotel where Liam had been staying last Thursday to examine computers and paperwork in what is thought to have been part of a hunt for his drug dealer amid speculation someone from his hotel was supplying him with narcotics. Argentinian news portal Infobae reported last week forensic experts had discovered traces of cocaine in Liam’s body but tests on a white powder pictured in leaked photos showing the inside of his hotel suite after his death had so far proved “inconclusive.”
Other unconfirmed reports originating in the US claimed a cocktail of drugs including designer narcotic pink cocaine containing MDMA, ketamine, methamphetamine had been found in his system during a partial autopsy along with crack cocaine and benzodiazepine. Geoff reached Argentina two days after his son’s death and was pictured reading messages at a makeshift shrine fans made outside Liam’s hotel.
He also visited the third-floor suite the former One Direction singer was staying in after being given permission to take away his son’s clothes and other belongings which investigators said they had no need for. Thousands of grieving Liam Payne fans have signed a petition urging that a memorial is erected in honour of the singer, who had been with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy in Argentina before she returned to the States a few days before he died.
The music lovers are requesting a permanent “structure or mural” is put in place in his home city of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands.
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