In a long career, Cary had examined murdered children and victims of other gruesome crimes – but not this. ‘It’s been described as the most dangerous post-mortem undertaken … I think that’s right,’ he said. The case was unique. It was the first known example of acute polonium poisoning anywhere in the world.
Slowly, a picture was forming – of mediocre assassins who left behind clues. As Emmerson put it, the nuclear trail was ‘almost as sure as the path of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel’. A senior scientist explained radioactive readings taken from a range of sites associated with Lugovoi and Kovtun. Litvinenko’s deathbed interviews with police were made public. So was the last photo taken of him alive. There was discussion of Litvinenko’s corporate security and investigation work. To what extent might this explain his murder?
For those following the inquiry, this new evidence was fascinating and multi-layered. For the first time, the public could see CCTV footage of Litvinenko arriving at the Millennium Hotel and of his shifty-looking killers in the minutes before he was poisoned. Other guests had their identities blurred out: they looked like surging blobs. There were surprises. Who knew that British spies use Waterstone’s bookshop as a meeting place? Or that Litvinenko’s anonymous monthly payments from MI6 were listed on his bank statement next to a meal from Nando’s in Finchley?
Every evening the new evidence was posted to the inquiry’s website, www.litvinenkoinquiry.org. Sometimes the court official responsible – a pleasant New Zealander called Mike Wicksteed – didn’t finish work until midnight. There were witness statements, newspaper articles, transcripts of interviews from Moscow with the two murderers, telephone schedules, forensic contamination reports. The contamination schedule listed every location where polonium was discovered. It ran to an impressive 265 pages.
At lunchtimes, Marina Litvinenko would head over the road from the white neo-Gothic court building to Apostrophe, a sandwich bar. Over soup and green tea, she would discuss the case with her legal team: Emmerson, junior counsel Adam Straw and her solicitor Elena Tsirlina. Sometimes I would join them. Our mood was more cheerful than gloomy. Marina would greet witnesses, kiss old friends on the cheek; her fortitude was amazing.
Back in the courtroom, there were entertaining moments. In April 2012, Andrei Lugovoi took – and apparently passed – a lie detector test in Moscow. A Russian TV documentary producer named Alexander Korobko arranged it. In the wake of the result and with pompous fanfare Russia’s state media announced that Lugovoi’s innocence had been conclusively demonstrated. ‘We did the test because Andrei was so passionate about his innocence,’ Korobko told RT, the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda channel.
To give the test added credibility, Korobko got a British member of the Polygraph Association, Bruce Burgess, to conduct it. Burgess had embarked on a career in lie detection after doing other jobs including working as an apprentice ladies’ hairdresser. He trained in the US at the Backster School of Lie Detection in San Diego. In the noughties he appeared on various UK daytime TV shows, including Trisha and Jeremy Kyle. He would carry out tests on individuals accused of marital infidelity; the parties would get the result – usually showing one of them had been unfaithful – live on air in the studio.
Korobko made Burgess an offer: an all-expenses-paid trip to Moscow, plus a £5,100 fee. The producer was enigmatic about who would be taking the test. He merely told Burgess the subject was a ‘celebrity’. Burgess flew to the Russian capital with his son Tristam. There they were introduced to Lugovoi. The Burgesses performed the test, recorded on video, in Moscow’s Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel.
Nearly three years later, the inquiry summoned Burgess to give an account of what transpired. Aged seventy, with shoulder-length white hair and beard, Burgess looked like a 1970s rock star gone to seed. He admitted to feeling uncomfortable after discovering in Moscow that Lugovoi was accused of murder. After discussions, Burgess said he came up with three questions. The two main ones were: ‘Did you do anything to cause the death of Alexander Litvinenko?’ and ‘Have you ever handled polonium?’
The inquiry was shown video footage from the encounter. Lugovoi sits in a leather armchair in the middle of a business suite, legs spread. Seated at a table behind him are an interpreter and the Burgesses. Their subject is hooked up to a polygraph, which measures breathing rate, pulse, and sweating. When asked the two key questions, Lugovoi replies: ‘Nyet.’
Afterwards, Lugovoi admits to feeling some ‘internal tension’. Burgess says: ‘Have faith in me.’ Minutes later he delivers Lugovoi the result. ‘You were telling the truth. No deception indicated,’ he says. The next day Lugovoi invited father and son to breakfast at his daughter’s upscale Moscow restaurant. The bill was on the house.
The inquiry adjourned for lunch. Emmerson whispered to me: ‘Big bang coming up.’
At 2 p.m., Emmerson examined Burgess. It was a masterclass in how to eviscerate a witness, like watching a tiger play with a small, whiskery rodent. He asked if Burgess considered himself a ‘reliable evaluator of whether someone is telling the truth’. Burgess mumbled: ‘No, not really.’ This was an odd reply. Its reason became apparent.
The barrister asked: ‘What about yourself, Mr Burgess, do you consider yourself to be an experienced liar?’
In December 2009, Emmerson revealed, Burgess had been convicted of perverting the course of justice and sentenced to twenty-four weeks in jail, suspended for two years. He’d been caught speeding. He told police a fictitious ‘friend’ was behind the wheel. Burgess resigned from the Polygraph Association; the invitation to travel to Moscow came at a time when he was broke and somewhat demoralised. Korobko knew of Burgess’s criminal record: this, it appears, is why he hired him. By way of justification Burgess said: ‘We all lie at one point or another.’
There was more – the test results indicated that Lugovoi had actually failed the second question: ‘Have you handled polonium?’ The inquiry heard it was ‘quite easy’ to dupe a lie detector test – especially if you were a trained spy or intelligence agent. Countermeasures might be physical or mental. Techniques included counting backwards from 100, imagining that you are walking your dog on a promising spring morning, or thinking of an erotic situation. Even with likely coaching from the FSB, Lugovoi flunked it.
This was gripping courtroom theatre. Owen was on form, too. He observed: ‘I’m amused to see that walking the dog on a promising spring morning is compared with thinking of a sexually arousing scene.’
There were more signs that the Kremlin was following events in London closely – and not in a happy way. In an interview with RT, Viktor Ivanov described the inquiry as ‘a spectacle, a farce, a knockabout act’. The allegations against him were, he said, a conspiracy by Britain and its intelligence agencies. Ivanov also expressed bafflement as to why the US had sanctioned him.
The same day Burgess sagged in the witness box, the Moscow agency RIA Novosti put out a short news story. It said President Putin had handed out a state honour. The award was for services to the fatherland, second-class. Its recipient: Andrei Konstantinovich Lugovoi. The presidential citation said the honour was bestowed in recognition of his contribution to Russia’s parliament and to law-making.
Lugovoi was deputy chairman of the Duma committee for security and fighting corruption, the agency noted. The committee wrote legislation for Russia’s spy agencies. In late 2013, Lugovoi had proposed a blacklist of leading opposition news websites. They included a blog written by the anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny and a news portal run by Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion, Kasparov.ru. Putin approved Lugovoi’s suggestion. It was part of a wider crackdown on internet freedoms, justified in the wake of Snowden’s revelations on the grounds of ‘digital sovereignty’.