According to the Evidence (20 page)

‘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!'

FIFTEEN

E
arly on Wednesday Richard Pryor was up at the crack of dawn again to catch the Beachley–Aust ferry across the River Severn, as he had to give a nine o'clock lecture to the medical students in Bristol. A weekly event during the Michaelmas term, it was sometimes difficult to arrange when attendance at court or an occasional police call interfered with the timetable. Thankfully, the pathology staff, in whose lecture allocation the forensic topics resided, were flexible enough to swap their hourly slots to accommodate his problems.

As he drove towards the medical school on the hill high above the Bristol Royal Infirmary where the Norman castle once stood, he savoured the task of talking to an audience who were keen to hear what he had to say. Students never showed any reluctance to attend forensic lectures, due to their intrinsic interest and the often gory slides that Richard showed to illustrate his teaching. In fact, with some of the more bloodthirsty or salacious topics, he knew that more than a hundred per cent of the class was facing him, as some students from other faculties crept in at the back. However, unlike some of his colleagues in other universities, he did not strive to be shocking or outrageous, but the very nature of the subject seemed to fascinate most people. He tried to tailor his talks to practical matters, especially the legal obligations of doctors, as he knew full well that probably not one of his audience would ever become a forensic specialist, the vast majority ending up as family doctors. Today was an example, as he was speaking about medical negligence, ethics and the General Medical Council, subjects of far greater relevance to doctors than cut throats or shootings, even though they were unlikely to attract any gatecrashers from the engineering or music departments. As he drove home in the late morning after the lecture, he wondered if Dr Pradash Rao had ever been taught much about gunshot wounds, as his report on the warrant officer was woefully inadequate. However, Richard sympathized with him, as he probably was a general-duties medical officer in the hospital, pushed into this extra job with little or no forensic experience.

He got back to Garth House just in time for one of Moira's welcome lunches, this time a pair of fresh trout from the nearby Wye, which Jimmy had produced, tapping the side of his nose to indicate that no questions should be asked as to how he had come by them.

‘I wonder when you'll hear from abroad?' asked Siân as she sat on the other side of the old table with her sandwiches and fruit.

‘Give it a chance. It's only been two days,' chided Angela.

‘I can't imagine anything getting here from America in under a week, even if they use airmail. Germany should be quicker, I suppose.'

‘Couldn't they telegraph it?' persisted their technician. ‘I'll bet they didn't wait a week during the war when there was military stuff to communicate.'

‘If it's a scientific paper, it would be a hell of long telegram,' said Richard. ‘And they couldn't include graphs and diagrams and things like that.'

‘The newspapers send photographs by wire,' said Siân stubbornly. ‘I don't see how written material is any different.' She was the keenest of the lot to see her chief getting his teeth into something that might save the vet from hanging.

‘I know the Met used to get copies of fingerprints by wire from police forces overseas,' said Angela. ‘But I've no idea how they did it.'

This topic exhausted, the conversation moved on, over a creamy rice pudding, to current events. Siân, an avid cinema fan, had been particularly upset by the news on the wireless that James Dean had been killed in car crash in California, especially as fellow actor Alec Guinness had met him less than a week earlier and had announced his premonition of Dean's death. Angela preferred discussing the new fashions in her latest
Vogue
.

Afterwards, they went back to work, Richard to his microscope and Siân to her fume cupboard, where she was digesting tissue in nitric acid to look for diatoms. Ever since their first success in helping the police with a homicidal drowning some months earlier, she had taken a great interest in these microscopic algae and was trying out different methods of extraction, described in some journals that Richard had passed on to her.

Angela was involved in a new procedure – at least new for the Garth House partnership, though she had dealt with hundreds at the Met lab. A solicitor had sent in an item of a lady's undergarments, provided by a suspicious husband seeking a divorce. An alleged stain was claimed to be evidence of adultery, and Angela had to determine whether it was, in fact, seminal and, if so, whether or not it came from someone with a different blood group from that of the husband. Like the growing trade in paternity tests, it opened up a new avenue for increasing their revenue, and she was keen to get a reliable report out as soon as possible to encourage the lawyer to recommend her to his colleagues in the divorce business.

Several days went by in the same pattern. Richard had post-mortems in Monmouth and Chepstow, as well as being asked to go to Hereford for a ‘special' case. This was a death under anaesthetic, which had to be reported to the coroner if it occurred within twenty-four hours of an operation. It was customary for the coroner to ask an outside pathologist to conduct the examination, rather than the resident pathology consultant, in order that no suggestion of a cover-up could be made.

In this case the issue was straightforward, as Richard Pryor found that the relatively young patient had severe coronary artery disease, which had been symptomless and impossible to foresee as a fatal complication – even a preoperative electrocardiogram had shown no abnormality.

On Friday still no word had come from Stow-on-the-Wold about receipt of the reports from abroad, but Richard was diverted by the arrival of a British Railways Scammell lorry. The three-wheeled ‘mechanical horse' laboured up the drive to the back yard, where the flat-capped driver waved a delivery form at Jimmy Jenkins, who came out of his shed to see what was making the racket. By the time he and the driver were dropping the tailboard, Richard had appeared, beaming with anticipation.

‘Your grape plants have arrived, doctor,' announced Jimmy ungraciously as he helped lift off the first of six large boxes from the lorry. As soon as the truck had gone, Richard insisted that they prise off the thin slats and inspect the contents.

‘Bit small, ain't they?' growled Jimmy, holding up a foot-long twig with a piece of sacking wrapped around the root.

‘They'll grow like crazy once they're established,' said Richard with a confidence born of inexperience. ‘They'll need drastic pruning when they're bigger.'

‘Are you sure you should plant them in the autumn like this?' grunted the countryman, who had an almost instinctive feel for what was right.

‘Many vineyard owners prefer the spring, but this valley is one of the most frost-free places in the country,' said Pryor, repeating the wisdom he had gleaned from half a dozen books on the subject.

‘You'd have been better off with bloody strawberries,' growled Jimmy, half to himself, but he went to work with a will and soon they had a hundred plants laid out on the yard.

‘They look a bit dry, God knows how long they've been on the railway,' advised Jimmy. ‘The sooner we get them in the ground the better.' After a dousing with the hosepipe, they barrowed the vines up to the plot and began planting. Jimmy dug a hole with a spade and threw in a shovelful of rotted manure, while Richard unwrapped the sacking from each plant and held it at the right level while Jimmy refilled the hole. They stuck at it for two hours, until Richard decided that he would leave the remaining fifty for next day.

They celebrated with a flagon of beer drunk on the seat outside the back door, Richard glowing with satisfaction and manual labour, though he suspected that with all that bending and crouching his back would be killing him in the morning.

‘So when will we be drinking this wine, doctor?' asked Jimmy with thinly veiled sarcasm.

‘Give the vines two years and we'll be picking a crop,' said Richard confidently. ‘And the next year we'll be drinking Chateau Wye Valley!'