According To The Evidence

FOURTEEN

Next morning Moira had her first failure, for when she got through to the Forensic Institute at the University of Copenhagen she discovered that the doctor to whom Richard wished to speak had gone to Greenland for two weeks.

‘They said that the Danes cover it for forensic cases and he’s had to go back there for a court case in a murder,’ she announced despondently.

‘Never mind. I think we’ve got enough with the German and the two Yanks,’ Richard told her reassuringly. ‘Now I’ll have to get the solicitor in Stow to get his sworn statements from the States. That should keep him busy for a few hours.’

With no post-mortems to do that day, he felt at a loose end until the War Office wallahs came in the afternoon. He recalled that he was having trouble with the Humber’s handbrake, which came to the top of its ratchet before the brakes gripped. Though Jimmy had offered to fix it for him, he preferred to have it looked at by a competent mechanic. Jimmy was adept at farm-style lash-ups, but Richard decided that though a plough might be mended by the use of binder twine and a few blows from a hammer, a brake problem was too serious to be dealt with in that fashion.

He drove down to Tintern and called at a small garage behind one of the pubs, which he had patronized before. It was little more than an oily shed, but the grizzled man who ran it, with the help of a teenager, offered to look at it straight away. As he vanished under the Humber, Richard was strongly reminded of another dungareed mechanic with a young assistant, who so recently had been under a vehicle fixing the brakes. However, this one soon emerged unscathed and, wiping his hands on a rag, announced his diagnosis.

‘Your cable needs tightening, that’s all, doctor. Leave it for half an hour and it’ll be ready.’

There was an hour before Moira would have their lunch ready, so he decided to have a pint at the Royal George, almost opposite the abbey. The majestic ruin set against a backdrop of autumn-tinted woods was a calming sight, as he sat outside with a tankard of best bitter. Though he had enjoyed his years in the Far East, this beat sitting in the stifling heat of the bar in the Singapore Swimming Club, with the condensation running down the outside of a glass of Tiger.

As he sipped, he looked at the tall, roofless edifice opposite and wondered what it had been like in its prime, before King Henry had destroyed it because of his desire to change wives. This triggered another flashback, this time to his conversation with Angela the previous evening. They were both healthy, virile people with no outlet for their emotional or physical appetites, a state of affairs which was unsatisfactory, to put it mildly. True, both of them had been fully occupied for the past six months in setting up their new venture, but now that a regular pattern had been established for their work, it was surely time for some social life. As the level in his glass dropped, he went over the options – joining a golf club, perhaps. He was not an enthusiastic sportsman, apart from yelling for Wales at a few internationals at Cardiff Arms Park, but a club might be somewhere where he could meet people outside the tight medical-police-lawyer circle that now dominated his acquaintances. But the thought of seeking a new wife among the sturdy tweed-clad golfing fraternity was not all that attractive.

Was Angela just teasing him about Moira having a crush on him? He thought he had sensed a slightly caustic undercurrent in her voice, but it would be ridiculous to think that she felt that Moira was in any way a competitor. What nonsense! He chastised himself for even considering it and irritably swallowed the rest of his ale and stalked back to the garage.

‘All done, sir! And I’ve topped up your brake fluid, radiator and engine oil as well.’

Impressed by the man’s speed and efficiency, he happily paid the thirty shillings he was asked for and drove back to Garth House and his ‘monstrous regiment of women’. Over a tasty casserole for Angela and himself, the conversation centred on why the War Office wanted them to look into a case.

‘Don’t they have any pathologists of their own?’ asked Siân between bites at her Cox’s Orange Pippin.

‘Yes, I was one of them!’ retorted Richard. ‘But it sounds as if they want someone who’s now outside the service, to appear independent if there’s some sort of claim against the army.’

He was proved right when the visitors arrived soon after lunch.

They came not in a sleek staff car nor a green Land Rover, but in a private hire taxi which had met them at Newport railway station. The driver hesitantly slowed near the bottom gates, then drove up and stopped on the drive level with the front door.

This was hardly ever used, as everyone else went around to the back yard. Richard hurriedly found the key in his office and went to admit two men in sombre double-breasted suits and a middle-aged woman wearing businesslike spectacles.

He shepherded them into Angela’s sitting room, the most comfortable place, with its superb view from the large bay window. She had suggested it, and, when they had settled, Moira came in to ask if they would all like tea or coffee. The niceties finished, the elder of the two men introduced themselves. He was a large man with a grey walrus moustache and pale, watery eyes. In true Whitehall style, he clutched a bowler hat.

‘I’m Paul Bannerman, from the Army Legal Branch,’ he announced in a deep, resonant voice. ‘This is Gordon Lane, one of our Crown solicitors – and our lady colleague is Mrs Edith Wright, who will take any notes that are required.’

Gordon Lane was about forty, a slightly hunched man of slight physique but with an amiable, round face.

Bannerman hauled up his briefcase from the floor, a black leather one with a crown embossed on the flap. Taking a file from it, he launched into an explanation.

‘I’m the only serving officer here, a half-colonel, though I rarely put on my uniform,’ he said with an unexpected smile. ‘We know that you were one of our pathologists during the war, leaving with the rank of major.’

Richard was surprised to learn that the army had kept tabs on him for so long, as it was almost a decade since he had returned to civilian status.

‘That’s partly why we sought your help, as you are familiar with service life and must have had considerable experience of gunshot wounds,’ said Lane, the solicitor. His voice sounded shrill compared with Bannerman’s base tones.

‘The other reason is that you are now an independent expert, not beholden to any official institution,’ added Bannerman. ‘So no one can accuse you of any bias or partisan opinions.’

Mrs Wright sat stiffly on one of the harder chairs, her notebook open on her lap, but so far she had nothing to write.

Angela, whom Richard had already introduced as his forensic science partner, was anxious to know what this was all about.

‘We wondered why you came to us, as there are quite a few experienced people in London,’ she said.

Bannerman nodded. ‘It was certainly the fact that Dr Pryor was a former army pathologist that attracted us. I’ll tell you the problem, shall I?’

It had to wait a few moments, as Moira came in with a large tray and served coffee all around. ‘Have you had lunch?’ she asked solicitously, but was relieved to hear that they had eaten on the train from Paddington – no doubt all travelling First Class, thought Richard.

‘This all stems from the death three months ago of a British soldier in one of the Gulf States,’ began Bannerman. ‘Herbert Bulmer, originally from the Duke of Hereford’s Light Infantry, was a Warrant Officer, Class Two, in a Special Forces Training Unit. He was forty-four and had an excellent record in the war, serving in the Western Desert and Italy.’

He paused and looked at a paper in his file.

‘Last year the War Office accepted a contract from the small Gulf state of Al Tallah to train a unit of their forces in counterinsurgency techniques. WO2 Bulmer was one of those sent out there for six months from our own training facility on Salisbury Plain.’

Richard and Angela looked at each other covertly, being still none the wiser as to the reason behind this visit, but clarification was on the way as Gordon Lane took up the story.

‘We sent seven men out there on quite a lucrative contract, as Al Tallah is an oil-rich state. The instructors were all senior NCOs, apart from a former Black Watch major who was in administrative charge. They were to train six batches of men from the Al Tallah Defence Force, giving each of them one month’s instruction. Unfortunately, four months into the programme, Bulmer died in an accidental shooting incident.’

‘We say it was accidental,’ cut in Bannerman. ‘But his widow is not only suing the War Office for negligence but is trying to get the man who shot him charged with murder!’

There was a heavy silence as Richard and Angela digested this unexpected twist.

‘So what were the circumstances and why is it so contentious?’ asked the pathologist.

‘The shooting occurred during a mock assault on an aircraft that was supposed to have been taken over by hijackers,’ explained Paul Bannerman. ‘It was a standard training exercise that had been carried out many times before with different groups. They used the grounded fuselage of an old Dakota that was dumped out on the perimeter of Al Tallah airport.’

He went on to describe the nature of the procedure, which was a live-fire exercise using real ammunition. Richard knew from gossip in the officers’ mess years ago that some of these commando types indulged in very risky training scenarios, like the notorious ‘killing house’ used by the SAS near Hereford.

‘What happened was that man-shaped plywood targets were set up in front of the cabin, near the cockpit. This first exercise was to accustom the trainees to the noise and confusion of an assault, with live-weapon firing and thunderflashes being thrown about.’

The colonel in barrister’s clothing went on to describe what had happened. The two instructors were WO2 Bulmer and Staff Sergeant Leo Squires, with four local trainees in the first batch. They were to burst in through the cabin door with Bulmer in the lead and Squires behind him, immediately letting fly with their weapons at the targets. The other four followed and, after flinging thunderflashes up the fuselage, would also open up with their automatic weapons.

‘How did they avoid shooting each other?’ asked Angela, thinking that this sounded a bit like overgrown boys playing soldiers.

‘Well, they didn’t in this case, I’m afraid. The pre-exercise briefing told the trainees to spread out sideways and keep low. Not much room for that, as this old plane was a Douglas DC3, left over from the war.’

‘So what happened that this man ended up dead?’ asked Richard.

‘There was the expected God-awful noise of weapons and explosives in that confined space. According to the witnesses, the confusion lasted a minute or so while they riddled the targets, then it was seen that WO2 Bulmer was lying in the aisle. When he failed to get up, it was found that he was dead, with a gunshot wound in the back of his head.’

‘So who was behind him?’ asked Angela.

Bannerman explained that the standard ploy was for the leader, Bulmer in this case, to advance up the aisle between the seats, firing as he went, with the second instructor behind him and the trainees spread out on each side of the back row of seats, everyone hammering away at the targets.

‘What about the second trainer, right behind the boss?’ asked Richard.

‘He fires around him when he gets the chance and takes over in a real situation if the leader gets hit by the baddies.’

‘God help any passengers!’ murmured Angela. She noticed a quickly suppressed smile on the face of the secretary, proving that she was human after all.

Bannerman heard her as well and grinned. ‘I don’t think this particular exercise was meant to be a very realistic procedure. It’s really to get the new trainees used to a hell of a lot of noise and confusion.’

Pryor wanted to get back to the actual event. ‘So what happened next, when they saw he was dead?’

Bannerman sighed. ‘It was a first-class cock-up, I’m afraid. Naturally they wanted to get Bulmer out in case he needed medical attention, though the staff sergeant said he knew straight away that he was dead. He said he’d seen enough battle casualties after D-Day to know a corpse when he saw one. They lugged the body out of the fuselage, then someone ran for an airport ambulance.’

‘No photographs were taken of the body in situ, though I suppose that would hardly be the first thought in anyone’s mind,’ said the Crown solicitor. ‘Of course, this was a foreign country. We had no other military presence there to organize things.’

The story unrolled, telling how the ambulance took the dead man to the civilian hospital about five miles away, where Bulmer was pronounced dead and taken to the mortuary. The major in charge of the training unit was called from his office in the British Consulate, a villa in one of the suburbs, and he immediately reported the matter to the civilian police.

‘They don’t have a coroners’ system there, I presume?’ asked Richard.

‘No, the police do it all, in a random sort of way,’ said Bannerman. ‘They took statements from everyone, as did the Al Tallah army people. The police eventually ordered a post-mortem, done next day by an Indian doctor at the hospital. I’m not clear whether he was actually a pathologist, but he was the chap who did the work for the police.’

Bannerman turned over a few pages in his folder and pulled out several black and white photographs, each half-plate size.

‘The police took these, but they’re not of very good quality, I’m afraid.’

Richard looked at the grainy, underexposed and slightly out-of-focus pictures, then handed them over to Angela. One showed the naked body lying on a mortuary table. From the background surroundings, it looked a fairly primitive place, not unlike some of the ones he was familiar with in rural places in Wales and the west. Two others were of the scalp wound and another one showed the interior of the head, with fracture lines across the back of the skull.

‘Later, our major took a few pictures of the inside of the aircraft with his own camera – in fact they are much better than the police photos, as he had a Leica.’

He handed over a couple of smaller prints, which were indeed much sharper than the others. They showed the interior of a battered fuselage, with all the lining stripped out down to the bare metal. Many windows were smashed, and most of the remaining seat frames were devoid of upholstery. At the front, three crude silhouettes of men were leaning drunkenly, punctured by bullet holes.

‘What happened to the body?’ asked Angela.

‘After the post-mortem, it was embalmed for transit and flown home to be buried with military honours in a cemetery near his home in Lewisham.’

‘Was there a further post-mortem here?’ queried Richard.

Bannerman shook his head. ‘No, it was reported to the coroner on arrival, but he accepted the War Office account and declined to hold an inquest, allowing the death to be registered in the normal way.’

‘So what went wrong, to bring you here today?’ asked Pryor rather bluntly.

Gordon Lane leaned forward to explain. ‘Naturally, the widow was awarded his full pension entitlement, and the War Office paid all expenses related to the death. She seemed resigned to the situation, as she was aware of other deaths these days among servicemen in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus. But a month ago we had a writ served on us for a large negligence claim – and subsequently her solicitor has demanded that Staff Sergeant Leonard Squires be charged with murder.’

Richard’s face showed his astonishment. ‘Murder! I could understand some sort of negligent manslaughter, but murder’s bit steep, isn’t it?’

Bannerman agreed. ‘We think it’s nonsense, added to bolster up their civil claim for large damages. This solicitor is what the Americans would call an ambulance-chaser. He’s got hold of this poor woman and brainwashed her into thinking there’s a pot of money to be made, including him.’

‘But how on earth can they sustain a murder charge?’ asked Angela. ‘The whole affair seems very risky, but I suppose that’s what being in the army can mean. And why should it even be negligence, if that training routine is an accepted part of military practice?’

‘Well said, Dr Bray,’ replied Bannerman. ‘We are naturally contesting the allegations, which is why we’ve come to you to see if there’s anything in the medical aspects that are relevant.’

‘The allegation of murder is based on undoubted bad blood between Herbert Bulmer and Staff Sergeant Squires,’ said the solicitor. ‘The wife has letters to show that her husband wrote home to her several times complaining about Squires.’

He went on to describe how the warrant officer had claimed that Squires was insubordinate and aggressive, even to the point that they came to blows in the accommodation provided for them by the Al Tallah military.

‘It seems that the antagonism began even before they went out to the Gulf, as several of the unit members we interviewed back at their depot near Salisbury said it was well known that the two men didn’t get on, to say the least.’

‘What does Squires say about this?’ asked Richard out of sheer curiosity, as it was no part of his medical brief.

‘He readily admits that he couldn’t stand Bulmer, who he claims was officious and overbearing, treating him as if he was a raw recruit rather than an experienced NCO who was only one rank below him.’

Bannerman added to this litany of dispute. ‘Squires reckoned that Bulmer treated him with contempt in front of the trainees and often countermanded Squires’ orders to the men. We couldn’t get any confirmation from any of the officers, but a sergeants’ mess is well known to be adept at keeping their own affairs under wraps.’

‘So the allegation is that Squires took the opportunity of the firefight in the plane to put one in the back of Bulmer’s head?’ suggested Richard. When he was in the army himself, he had heard rumours of similar ‘accidents’ to junior officers or senior NCOs, when they were up at the head of a patrol.

He picked up the photographs again and studied them, even fishing a small lens from his pocket to look closely at the ones showing the head injury.

‘A pity they’re such lousy photos,’ he muttered.

‘Can you tell anything from them?’ asked Bannerman.

‘It’s a big wound, slightly ragged around the edges, as far as one can tell. What weapons were being used?’

‘Bulmer and the trainees had standard-issue Sterlings, but Squires used a Thompson sub-machine gun. God knows where he got it from, but some of these Special Forces types insist on having their favourite weapons.’

‘There’s no doubt, I suppose, that the fatal shot came from his gun?’ hazarded Richard.

Bannerman shook his head. ‘None at all! The Al Tallah police have virtually no forensic facilities, but they didn’t need to. A Sten gun uses nine-millimetre ammunition, but the Thompson fires forty-fives.’

‘So there was no microscopic matching of the bullet to the weapon?’ asked Angela. Although she was not a firearms examiner, a lot of knowledge had rubbed off on her during her years at the Metropolitan Police laboratory.

‘No point, even if Al Tallah were able to get it done,’ said Paul Bannerman. ‘No one else there had a weapon of that calibre.’

‘Did they keep the bullet after the investigation was over?’ asked Pryor.

‘It’s still available in Al Tallah, as far as I know. Did you want to see it?’

Richard rubbed his chin, still staring at the photographs. ‘It’s possible, so perhaps you could make sure that they don’t chuck it away. What about his clothing? Did they keep that?’

Bannerman looked nonplussed. ‘Clothing? I’ve no idea. Gordon, do you know anything about that?’

The solicitor shook his head. ‘We can find out from the major out there. He’s still in Al Tallah. We sent a pair of NCOs out to replace Bulmer and Squires.’

The show must go on, thought Angela cynically – especially if the War Office is getting a nice fat fee for the training.

‘So we don’t know if he was wearing a hat of any sort,’ continued Richard.

Bannerman pursed his lips. ‘Again, I don’t know. The usual kit for that part of the world is a khaki tunic and shorts and a bush hat with a floppy brim. Does it matter, doctor?’

‘It might if the shot went through the hat. For a start, it might help with determining the range, if there was burning or propellant soiling from a close discharge.’ He looked again at the photos. ‘There’s no chance of seeing anything like that on these fuzzy pictures.’

‘Why do think it might have been a close discharge?’ asked Gordon Lane.

‘The wound is large and split, as far as can be made out. A direct distant shot wouldn’t do that, but a near-contact one could. The gases from the muzzle can be forced under the scalp and, because there is unyielding skull underneath, it causes a blowback which can split the skin.’

The prim Mrs Wright paled a little at the description she had to scribble on her notepad.

‘Is there any eyewitness evidence as to how close the two men were when the shooting started?’ asked Angela.

The two War Office men looked at each other uncertainly.

‘Not really. There are fairly sparse statements from the trainees. Some of them hardly speak any English and, given the hectic turmoil of the moment, I doubt their testimony would be of much help.’

‘It’s only now that these issues have blown up into such importance,’ said Lane. ‘Before, it was a tragic accident three thousand miles away. Squires was put through the grinder when he was brought back to the depot, but of course he would quite naturally avoid saying anything that was to his disadvantage.’

‘It’s only since the wife and her stroppy lawyer came on the scene that we’ve had to sit up and take notice,’ confessed Bannerman. ‘Is there anything you can do or suggest that might take us further forward?’

‘Have you got the post-mortem report from Al Tallah there?’ asked Richard. The colonel delved into his black bag again and brought out a single sheet of paper. When he handed it to Richard, he saw it was poorly typed on a printed pro forma with ‘Al Tallah Police Department’ at the top.

‘Pretty skimpy, but we get them just as bad in this country,’ he commented as he began reading.

The brief report described a well-built man six feet in height. There was no mention of clothing or a hat. A fulsome description of rigor mortis and lividity was unhelpful, given that the time of death was known to the minute, but the actual head wound was given scant attention. It was described as being on the ‘back of the head’, and its dimensions were stated as ‘about one and a half inches by one half-inch’. There was no mention of burning of hairs or the blackening of surrounding skin.

The rest of the body was dismissed in a few repetitions of ‘NAD’, an overworked acronym meaning ‘nothing abnormal detected’. At the end was a terse summary: ‘Death was due to skull fracture and brain damage due to a gunshot wound to the back of the head.’ At the bottom, it was signed ‘Dr Pradash Rao’.

‘Pretty uninformative,’ grunted Richard, always annoyed by skimped workmanship. ‘He offers no opinion as to whether it was a close or distant discharge.’

‘Is there anything you can tell us that might help us in challenging this claim?’ asked Bannerman. ‘They are saying that the army was negligent in not ensuring that the trainers were competent enough to avoid such incidents – which rather cuts across their other allegation that Squires deliberately shot Bulmer out of malice, though they also claim that the antipathy between the two men should have been known to senior officers and that the two men should not have been posted to the same place, especially if the opportunity arose to escalate their quarrel through the use of firearms.’

Richard shrugged. ‘I’m afraid the legal complexities are outside my remit. But a couple of things occur to me about the gunshot wound.’

He turned to Gordon Lane. ‘There’s absolutely no doubt that the fatal shot came from Squires’ weapon, which fired a forty-five-calibre bullet?’

When the solicitor confirmed this, Richard tapped the photographs with a finger. ‘Then I’m surprised that if a man was hit in the back of the head at close range with a forty-five, there was no exit wound. It’s by no means inevitable, but a big slug like that fired from a few feet away – or even much nearer, for all we know – usually causes a through-and-through track across the skull, with a messy exit wound on the other side.’

‘Why didn’t this happen in this case, doctor?’ asked Bannerman.

‘As we’ve got only lousy pictures and an uninformative post-mortem report, I can’t tell. If it was a long-range discharge, the bullet may have been at the end of its trajectory and lost much of its energy, but this can’t be the case here, inside an aircraft. One other reason can be that the bullet hit really dense bone inside the skull, but that’s all in the base and this impact is too high for that.’

He shook his head in annoyance. ‘One way to take this forward is to have the bullet for examination, but, really, the only effective way is to have another post-mortem.’

There was a silence, then Bannerman reminded him that the man had been dead for over three months.

‘That’s not a big problem,’ replied Richard. ‘You said the body had been embalmed, so it will still be in reasonable condition.’

The two lawyers looked uncomfortable. ‘I see your point, but it’ll be a mammoth task to get permission for an exhumation.’

Richard was too polite to say that that was their problem, but he suggested that if the widow and her lawyer were that keen on pursuing the claims, they would have to agree to it.

‘Getting Home Office permission is the hardest part of obtaining an exhumation,’ he said. ‘But, of course, you are in a different position, with your ministers in government able to oil the wheels of bureaucracy.’

They discussed the matter for a further half-hour, though much of the conversation was between the pair from the War Office, bemoaning all the work they would have to do to get these various suggestions put into practice.

‘We’ll have to get this major back from the Gulf to see exactly what he knew about these two men,’ said Bannerman. ‘We may have to send some SIB men out there to interview those trainees more thoroughly, too.’

Eventually, they got up to leave, with a promise that they would keep in touch about developments. The last welcome invitation Bannerman made as they went out to their hire car was for Richard to keep a note of his fee and expenses as he went along.

The driver went up to the yard to turn around. When they had passed back down the drive and out into the road, Angela and Richard went into the house and locked the front door.

‘What did you think of that?’ he asked her. ‘A bit out of the usual run of cases, eh?’

‘What was that SIB he mentioned at the end?’ she asked.

‘Special Investigation Branch – it’s the army’s version of the CID, part of the Military Police, under the Provost Marshal.’

They went back to the staffroom, where at teatime Siân and Moira were waiting impatiently to hear what the mysterious men from Whitehall had to say. Richard gave them a summary of the problem and said that unless more information could be found, there was little help he could offer.

‘Do you think they’ll get an exhumation?’ asked Siân.

‘Perhaps the thought of digging up her husband might persuade the widow to drop the case,’ said Angela, recalling the unpleasant procedure at their last exhumation in Herefordshire a few months earlier.

Moira shuddered at the thought of disturbing anyone’s final resting place, especially that of a soldier killed doing his duty. It was too soon after the loss of her own husband for this image to be anything but disturbing. She tried to put the thoughts aside and asked Richard if he felt there was anything he could do for the lawyers.

‘Not unless they come up with something more definite. But I’m not happy about that gunshot wound, even if that staff sergeant was so close that his weapon was virtually touching the victim.’

‘Perhaps it was!’ declared Angela. ‘With that standard of investigation, anything could have happened.’

Richard Pryor finished his tea and stood up, ready to go back to work in his room. ‘Well, there’s nothing more to be done about it unless those War Office types can come up with some more information, especially consent for an exhumation.’

At the door he turned around with a last exhortation. ‘Keep your fingers crossed that we get something soon from Germany and the good old United States of America, or our veterinary client from the Cotswolds is going to be in deep trouble!’