A woman was poisoned by her businessman boyfriend while on holiday on the river Nile - only for him to blame a drug smuggler, a court has heard.

John Allan, 47, from Birkenhead, Merseyside, is charged with murdering his partner, lawyer Cheryl Lewis, at the New Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor in Egypt.

A jury at Liverpool Crown Court heard Mr Allan suggested her killing was the work of infamous Liverpool drug dealer Curtis Warren, who is currently serving a jail term in the Netherlands.

Ms Lewis, 43, had allowed her offices to be used by customs officers for surveillance of Warren.

After she was pronounced dead, Mr Allan, who denies the murder charge, told Thomson holiday representative Heidi Rees: "If this has got anything to do with Warren I'll kill him, but forget you heard me say that."

Mr Allan, who also said he was a British Government special agent in Africa, said Ms Lewis may also have been killed because of his past.

He later told Ms Rees: "It's all my fault for things I have done in the past. I was a mercenary, I did arms deals in the Middle East and I'm going to release a book in two weeks' time that I've written, exposing the names of all the arms dealers."

'Highly dependent'

David Steer, QC, prosecuting said: "Here was the defendant within a very short time of having been told Cheryl Lewis was dead and prior to any cause of death being ascertained, indicating at the hospital to Heidi Rees that her death may have been the deliberate killing by another."

Ms Lewis, who ran her own practice on the Wirral, lived in Oxton, Birkenhead and had been seeing the defendant for around seven years since separating from her first husband.

Mr Allan - who has a degree in chemistry - divorced his second wife in 1993.

She was awarded 60% of their printing business, and after that Mr Allan appeared highly dependent on Ms Lewis for his finances, Mr Steer said.

He said Ms Lewis was taken ill two days before the end of their week-long holiday.

'Foaming from the mouth'

The court heard that Pamela Black, an American tourist, overheard the defendant tell the receptionist: "My wife needs a doctor. I think she's dying."

Mr Steer said Ms Black went to the couple's room and found Ms Lewis naked, sweating profusely, barely breathing and foaming from the mouth.

He said she also noticed a smell from her mouth like nothing in "her experience of life", while her skin was an ashen grey colour.

Ms Black said Mr Allan refused to talk to the defendant to keep her conscious or to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, said Mr Steer.

Mr Steer said Ms Rees said the defendant seemed to relax as Ms Lewis neared death.

The Crown says some of Ms Black's jewellery, which Mr Allan claimed was stolen in Egypt, had been sold to a Chester jeweller and one bracelet was given to one of Mr Allan's lady friends.

The trial continues.