He read through the brief opinion and handed the papers back to Bannerman. ‘Let’s see what he has to say when we both look at the actual wound for the first time.’
The staff sergeant led them through some corridors and then out through a door at the back of the ground floor. As usual, the mortuary was hidden in the nether regions, next to the boiler house. Thankfully, it was little used, as the hospital catered mainly for young and often otherwise usually fit service personnel, so there were few deaths in peacetime.
‘Small, but well formed!’ murmured Angela as they entered the featureless concrete building, externally resembling a large garage. Inside, it was spartan and spotlessly clean, with a small refrigerated body-store and a post-mortem room with a single table. An RAMC corporal, a technician from the pathology laboratory in the college, was waiting to act as mortuary assistant, and the body of Herbert Bulmer was already on the table, decently covered with a white sheet. As they entered, a tall man came forward to introduce himself as Steven Lorimer.
He still had a bushy moustache, which used to be referred to as the ‘Flying-Officer Kite’ style, even though he had been an RAF surgeon rather than an aviator.
Richard and Bannerman chatted to him for a few moments, partly to cover the slight stiffness than often existed when two strange experts met, who may have potentially opposing opinions. The presence of the handsome Angela helped to ease the moment, as she was adept at social lubrication.
Then they got down to business, and the corporal handed the two doctors rubber aprons and gloves before he removed the sheet from the corpse. The smell of formalin and other preservatives confirmed that the body had been embalmed, which was obligatory before it could have been flown home from the Gulf. Although dead and buried for several months, this had kept it in fairly good condition, apart from the unnatural grey-green colour and the waxy texture of the peeling skin.
‘It’s really only the head wound that concerns us, would you agree?’ asked Richard courteously. ‘I doubt looking at what’s left of the internal organs is relevant, especially after a previous autopsy.’
Steven Lorimer readily agreed, as, not being a pathologist himself, he was not keen to go groping through the debris that lay beneath the long stitched incision down the front of the body. ‘Let’s have a look at his head, then. I’ve only seen the photographs, which weren’t all that brilliant,’ he said.
With the head propped up on a wooden block, they stooped to stare at the back of the scalp. Another line of stitches ran over the head from ear to ear, but Richard wanted to see the outside before he opened this up.
‘Of course, the hair has been washed after the first post-mortem, so there would be no signs left of any propellant or soot deposit from a close discharge,’ said the surgeon.
Pryor agreed, but pointed out that the record stated that the man had been wearing a bush hat at the time. ‘They didn’t think to keep that or even take a photo of it,’ he added. ‘So we’ll never know if it was soiled or scorched.’
‘Given the size of the wound shown in the photographs, I feel sure this was a very close discharge,’ said Lorimer rather stubbornly. ‘Can we have a good look at it in the flesh, so to speak?’
Richard carefully parted the brown hair that lay over the back point of the head. It was short, as was to be expected in a serving soldier, and when moved aside revealed a roughly oblong wound in the scalp. The edges were ragged and inverted. Thankfully, the previous doctor in Al Tallah had not stitched it up at the end of the examination, so it was in its original state.
‘Certainly no sign of burning or blackening,’ said Richard. ‘The hairs aren’t clubbed, either.’
Angela noticed that Lorimer looked slightly bemused by this and she explained for his benefit, as this was marginally within her expertise. ‘The keratin of the hair can melt under intense heat and then re-solidify, so you get little beads on the ends like the head of a match.’
‘I see. But, again, if a hat was interposed, we wouldn’t expect heating effects on the surface.’
Richard began to carefully shave the hair from a rim around the wound, to be able to see the margins more clearly. As he did so, he questioned Lorimer. ‘So why do you feel this was a close, almost contact wound?’
‘Because of the size of the wound,’ answered the surgeon confidently. ‘It must be over an inch long and half that wide. If it was a more distant discharge, a forty-five-calibre missile would have punched a clean, round hole of about that diameter. This big hole is due to the gas from the muzzle blasting into the tissues.’
Richard suspected that the surgeon was repeating the usual mantras from the standard textbooks, rather than from his own experience, and had several reservations about that claim. He kept his thoughts to himself and turned his attention to the scalp wound again. When the hair was removed from around it, it was seen to be a wide slit, with tearing at the left end and some brown scuffing at the other end.
He stood back to let Lorimer have a good long look, then suggested to Bannerman, who was waiting well back in the doorway that they should get some close-up photographs.
‘I’d anticipated that, doctor. There’s a photographer from the RAM College outside now.’
While the man came in and began taking some flash photographs, Bannerman invited the three doctors out into the body-store, where there was a desk against one wall. Again he rooted around in his leather case and pulled out a glass tube with a screw top.
‘While we’re waiting, perhaps you’d like to look at the bullet. It was flown back from Al Tallah after our liaison officer retrieved it from the police.’
He placed the tube on the table. Richard Pryor opened it and carefully unwrapped a wad of cotton wool to reveal a badly deformed bullet. It was heavy and bent, like a small banana. The two doctors studied it for a long moment, then Richard carefully turned it over to look at the whole distorted surface. When he had satisfied himself, the other doctor prodded it rather aimlessly and then nodded his agreement to having the missile put back into its protective wrappings.
‘I think you should send it to your army experts in Woolwich to examine it fully,’ said Richard, looking at the man from the War Office.
He didn’t actually wink at Bannerman, but the astute colonel got the message that there was something significant in this suggestion.
When the photographer had finished, Richard went back to the head and cut the stitches that had secured the scalp after the original post-mortem. Pulling the tissues back, the two doctors studied the exposed skull, which had several fractures running up from the area of the bullet wound. Carefully lifting off the skullcap, which had been sawn around its circumference by the Al Tallah pathologist, Richard placed it on a dissecting table that the mortuary assistant had placed over the legs of the corpse. He then removed a large wad of crumpled bandages that had been used to stuff the cranial cavity after the first examination.
‘They cut through just below the point of impact,’ observed Pryor, ‘so bits of skull have fallen out, where the fracture lines cross his saw line.’
The back point of the skull had been shattered, and Richard retrieved several loose fragments and fitted them together as best he could, like the pieces of a jigsaw. This produced a defect with jagged edges, roughly the size of the external scalp wound.
‘Is there any point at looking at what’s left of the brain?’ asked Lorimer, looking askance at the front of the cadaver, where the long line of string stitches stretched down the middle of the chest and belly.
Richard shrugged. ‘I very much doubt it. It was pretty mashed up by the bullet, according to the first autopsy report and the poor photos we have. Since then, it’s been dissected, then no doubt stuffed back into the abdominal cavity and then buried for three months.’