The decomposed body of a man was found wedged in a crevice off the cliffs at l-Aħrax in Mellieħa, the police suspecting he might be the person who went missing nine days ago.

Investigators found the body after a passer-by spotted a silver Isuzu Gemini, believed to belong to 47-year-old Paul Grech who was reported missing on Wednesday, and called the authorities. The car was parked off the main road leading to the chapel at l-Aħrax.

Officers went on site at about 10am and found the empty car close to the cliffs. Nearby, close the cliff edge, was a pool of blood.

Investigators and Civil Protection Department personnel searched the area and at about 2.30pm came across a pile of plastic bags filled with pieces of polystyrene. When these were removed, they spotted the body of a man lying on his left side, curled almost into a foetal position, beneath a pile of stones.

He was wearing a top and a pair of shorts.

It took three hours for forensic experts to remove the body from the tight gap.

After carefully slipping a plank of wood under the corpse, they tied a rope around it and slowly pulled it out of the crevice using a police Land Rover.

Mr Grech, of Naxxar, was last seen in Buġibba at about 6.30pm on October 10, wearing dark blue jeans and a shirt.

A police spokesman would only say nothing was being excluded but sources said it was being treated as a murder investigation.

Earlier in the day, the army recovered a heavily decomposed body at sea in the area known as Hurd’s Bank, about 22 miles off the Maltese coast. No other details were immediately available.