According to the Evidence rpm-2

by Bernard Knight

  With a sigh, he sat at his desk and pulled a writing pad towards him.

  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, bein
g 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.