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 Sian 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 Sian.
‘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
Early 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 Sian 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.’
