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
