by M. R. Hall
The four male jurors were an equally eclectic mix: a huge bearded character of indeterminate age with thick tattooed forearms, a young Pakistani man with carefully sculpted hair, a retired blue-collar worker with a wiry frame and a permanently sceptical frown, and lastly a middle-management type in his fifties – the only one among them wearing a jacket and tie.
Jenny stole several glances at the lawyers as each of the jurors read from the oath card of their choice with varying degrees of confidence. She could tell that both sets were having the same thought: who were these small-town nonentities who were being called upon to decide a case of national importance? It was the moment in every inquest that always made her smile. Despite the best efforts of successive governments who had tried in their various ways to wrench this eight-hundred-year-old process out of the hands of local coroners and the ordinary men and women who made up their juries, inquests carried on as they always had. The truth fell to be determined not by trusted judges who had shown career-long loyalty to the Establishment, but by grandmothers, mechanics, young British Asians and unemployed young women struggling to survive on benefits.
The only downside of the jury system was the time it took to explain to complete novices, many of whom would never even have heard of a coroner, what was expected of them. Jenny took her time asking them to put all the courtroom dramas they had ever seen out of their minds and to think of the inquest as a fact-finding exercise. If, when they had heard all the evidence, they felt that they still hadn’t sufficient grounds to make any finding as to how Privates Lyons and Green met their fates, they would be obliged to return an open verdict. But were the evidence to paint a clear picture of the causes of death, they would be able to return a verdict that reflected it. Possible verdicts included accident or misadventure, suicide, death by gross negligence or unlawful killing. In order to return a verdict of suicide or unlawful killing, the jury would have to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the evidence justified it. For all other verdicts, they merely had to be sure on the balance of probabilities. A jury in a coroner’s court also had the option of making specific findings of fact which they could record as a narrative verdict. The range of options open to them meant that they would have to pay extremely close attention to the evidence. They were about to embark upon one of the most serious tasks they had ever, or would ever, undertake. Lastly, she counselled them to stay away from all news reports and not to read anything about the case, online or otherwise.
‘There is nothing that any of those journalists sitting up in the gallery or camped outside this court can add to what you hear for yourselves in this court. You, and only you, are the arbiters of truth in this. Do you all understand?’
Nine heads nodded in unison. Even the two young women, who half an hour before had looked entirely resentful at this intrusion into their lives, were sitting up and taking notice. For once in their lives they were being called upon to do something truly important. Jenny never ceased to be amazed by how even the most unlikely looking jurors invariably rose to the challenge.
Kathleen Lyons and Rachel Green chose to leave the courtroom while Dr Andy Kerr was in the witness box. While Jenny had prearranged with the lawyers that the evidence relating to the deaths of Lyons and Green would be taken in turn, the pathologist would deliver his evidence in a single block.
Over the years Jenny had known him, Dr Kerr, normally a man to avoid speaking in public if he could possibly avoid it, had gradually grown in confidence. He came forward and held himself with an air of quiet authority. His educated Northern Irish accent increased the impression that he was a man who dealt solely in fact, never in groundless theorizing.
His testimony would begin with his findings on examining the body of Private Pete Lyons. Before she started to lead him through his evidence, Jenny asked Alison to distribute bound bundles of photographs to the members of the jury. She warned them that they contained graphic images of the bodies of both soldiers during their post-mortems. If they felt unable to look at them now, they didn’t have to. There would be plenty of opportunities for them to do so privately in their own time.
Jenny turned to Dr Kerr and asked him to take the jury through his findings.
There was a gasp from one of the young women and several shocked faces when Dr Kerr referred to the first photograph in the bundle which showed the clothed, partially decomposed body on the autopsy table. Although the head was situated above the shoulders, it was clearly not attached to the torso. Jenny herself felt a sudden and unexpected sensation of physical revulsion. She reached for her glass of water and took a large gulp.
Dr Kerr’s even delivery took the worst of the sting out of the grisly evidence. There was no disguising the fact that he had found the examination an ordeal. He explained that the body was that of a slightly built male, five feet six inches tall, who in life would have weighed somewhere in the region of 115lb – a little over eight stone. His best estimate was that death had occurred ten days before the body was recovered and placed in refrigeration. This was consistent with him having gone missing in the early hours of 22 August. According to the official report he had been handed by the army, the body had been found on the roadside at Shalan-Gar following a tip-off and had been dressed in the clothing that it could be seen wearing in the photograph: boots, camouflage trousers and T-shirt. The wrists had been bound behind the lower back.
Cause of death was not hard to ascertain. The head had been separated from the body with a sharp instrument, probably a machete. Three or four points of impact were visible on the vertebrae at the back of the neck. Jenny didn’t invite him to enlarge on precisely what this might have meant. In the circumstances, it would have been an unnecessary detail. There were twenty-three bullet wounds in the body. All of the rounds had been fired from behind and had passed through and exited the front of the torso, causing inevitable damage to bones and organs on the way. The relatively minor blood staining to the T-shirt indicated that the shooting had occurred after death when the body had already been emptied of most of its blood. These injuries were consistent with a burst of automatic gunfire from short range.
Jenny allowed the jury a short pause in which to recover before she continued. Most had chosen to look at the photographs, and most of those who had were wishing they hadn’t. The grandmother in the second row was already wiping away tears. Paul Green and Sarah Tanner, however, both remained expressionless. It was the young woman at Sarah’s side who turned a ghostly white.
‘Aside from these injuries, did you detect any others, Dr Kerr?’ Jenny asked.
‘If you turn to the sixth photograph in the bundle, you will see a close-up of the fifth rib on the left side of the body. The thickening around the rib that you’re looking at there is fibrocartilaginous callus – cartilage that bridges the gap as the bone heals. It was a fracture, not a break, and I estimate it may have occurred three or so weeks before death.’
‘What would cause such a fracture?’ Jenny asked.
‘A blow. I’m unable to say what kind, but it was a significant trauma.’
‘And what symptoms might it have produced?’
‘It would have been painful, for sure. He wouldn’t have been able to sleep on that side and the area would have remained sensitive. It may even have hurt to breathe deeply – when running, or carrying a heavy load, for example.’
‘More than just a niggle, then?’
‘Certainly. I would be most surprised if he didn’t complain about it.’
‘Would you be surprised that he continued on active duty while carrying an injury like that?’
‘All I can say is that it wouldn’t have been comfortable. You or I would have spent at least a couple of weeks on painkillers.’
Jenny glanced over at the lawyers for any sign of reaction. There was none. All had their heads down, taking careful notes. Claydon White and Robert Heaton favoured the old-fashioned method and wrote by hand; Carrie Rhodes typed dextrously on a slim, state-of-the-art laptop.
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sp; ‘Lastly, Dr Kerr, can you talk us through the results of the blood and histology tests you ordered?’
‘There were no obvious abnormalities in the tests we were able to conduct at this stage of decomposition. There were no signs of disease in the major organs. There was no sign of opiates or other drugs in the tissues, and hair analysis came back negative for alcohol or drugs.’
‘He was a fit and healthy young man who was both clean and sober?’
‘Yes, ma’am. As you would expect from a young soldier on tour.’
‘Thank you, Dr Kerr. Before we move on to Private Green, Mr White or Mr Heaton may have some questions for you.’ She turned to the lawyers, ‘Gentlemen?’
Robert Heaton rose to his feet and, and assuming the role of a wise old head, peered at Dr Kerr over gold-rimmed reading glasses.
‘The fracture you mention, it’s the sort of thing sportsmen – rugby players or boxers – live with all the time, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘Soldiers take all sorts of knocks on active service. This is just run-of-the-mill stuff, surely?’
‘It’s a minor injury,’ Dr Kerr said diplomatically.
‘And probably far less serious to a man in his position than, say, a fractured toe?’
‘A fractured toe would impede movement far more, yes.’
Heaton nodded. ‘Well, we all know the phrase “soldier on” – that’s clearly just what he did, isn’t it?’
‘I presume so, sir.’
Heaton aimed an avuncular smile at the jury, letting them know he was on their side.
‘Now the matter of his stomach contents – disregarding the final meal of rice, vegetables and dates, are you able to say when his previous meal was taken?’
‘Not exactly. Intestinal transit is a very hard thing to estimate. Typically the stomach takes four or five hours to empty and the small intestine two and a half to three hours. Somewhere between five and eight hours would be a reasonable guess. But it would be a guess.’
‘Assuming he died sometime in the morning of the twenty-second, and that is an assumption, could the penultimate meal have been eaten late the previous evening?’
‘It’s just about possible,’ Dr Kerr agreed. ‘I would say late in the evening.’
Heaton thanked him politely for his assistance and sat down.
Claydon White took his time standing up. It would be the first time the jury would have heard him speak and he was determined to make an impression. Dressed in a dark navy suit and sombre silk tie, he exuded a glamorous dignity that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a mafia funeral. Without saying a word, he already had their attention.
‘Private Lyons was crudely and brutally decapitated – is that correct, Dr Kerr?’
‘It is.’
‘The rough twine around his wrists, the inexpert method of execution, the needless burst of gunfire into his dead body – it feels more like the work of an opportunistic lynch mob than that of professional assassins.’
‘I have no way of telling,’ Dr Kerr answered.
Jenny let Claydon White’s comment, disguised as a question, pass. Having been burned once, the last thing she was intending to do was allow him to paint her as his antagonist so early in the hearing.
‘At the time of his death, Peter Lyons weighed barely eight stone and had been on active service for weeks with a fractured rib. He was eighteen years old. What would a healthy weight have been?’
‘Yes, he was technically underweight. Another ten or fifteen pounds would have been desirable, but in the intense heat it’s not surprising he ate less than he might otherwise have done.’
‘Would you agree that he had been allowed to fall into poor physical condition?’
Dr Kerr considered his reply carefully. ‘The most I can say is that his weight was at the bottom end of acceptable, but he was about to return home.’
White shot straight back: ‘It wouldn’t have taken much to overpower a boy in that state, would it? And with a damaged rib, he wouldn’t have been able to defend himself in a hand-to-hand situation?’
‘I would have to agree that he would not have been particularly strong, though he was undoubtedly very fit.’
Claydon White nodded as if Dr Kerr had answered his question entirely in the affirmative. It was an old advocate’s trick that never lost its power. It had worked: the jury’s eyes remained trained on him, not the witness.
‘And his system was completely clean. No alcohol or drugs. Not at the time of death or in the weeks beforehand?’
‘Correct.’
‘Thank you. One last question, Dr Kerr – not very technical, I’m afraid – but would you say that eighteen-year-old, eight stone, Private Pete Lyons, known to his comrades as “Skippy”, I believe, was a man or a boy?’
Dr Kerr hesitated for a second or two, which was all Claydon White needed before stepping back in. ‘It’s not clear, then, I take it? We’re talking about a boy not yet a man, aren’t we? And a slip of a boy at that?’
‘He was a young man,’ Dr Kerr said, and left it at that.
Claydon White nodded his thanks and sat down.
In the brief silence that followed their exchange, Jenny found herself looking at the two rows of soldiers from the platoon, most of them barely out of boyhood. Some stared straight ahead, others dipped their heads or glanced uncomfortably away. All were struggling to contain their emotions. In amongst them she noticed Sergeant Price, his chin resting on his chest. His hand moved to his cheek.
From her seat at the clerks’ desk beneath Jenny’s, Alison noticed it, too. Could he really have shed a tear? She remembered him saying that he had known Skippy since he was sixteen and found herself softening towards him again. It had been easy to forget that he’d lost two friends, and even if he had been spying on them, he was only a lad following orders, and a lad who had been lucky to survive an IED blast with only the loss of an eye. Several seats along from him she could see Major Norton, his face as blank and expressionless as always: he didn’t seem quite human. If that’s what it took to survive, she thought to herself, a boy like Pete Lyons would never have stood a chance.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Kathleen Lyons returned to her seat but Rachel Green remained absent as Dr Kerr moved on to deal with Private Green’s post-mortem. The photographs, at least, were easier to look at: they showed an intact body. Dr Kerr confirmed at the outset that the cause of death was a single bullet wound. The projectile had entered behind the right ear and exited through the left temple. The only other injuries of note were assorted lacerations on his forearms, face and neck. These were consistent with him having been in the proximity of a grenade blast. Although there was no shrapnel embedded in his skin, there had been small stones and grit which had probably been scattered by the force of the explosion. In addition, there were two significant bruises on the side of Private Green’s chest and back, likely to have been caused by automatic rifle rounds striking his Kevlar vest. If there was such a thing, his was a typical battlefield death: he had been unlucky enough to catch a bullet beneath the rim of his helmet. An inch higher, and in all likelihood it would have bounced off.
Like Private Lyons, Green was in a depleted physical condition. He was a touch over six feet tall but weighed only 65.2kg or 10st 4lb. Despite his small build, his organs and skeleton were healthy and there was nothing to suggest that he wasn’t fit for active service. Dr Kerr re-emphasized that carrying less bodyweight in fact made operating in extreme heat easier. Having dealt with this point, Jenny moved on to the issue she had been dreading. She asked the pathologist to explain the findings gathered from the blood, hair and tissue samples taken from the body.
Knowing exactly what was required of him, Dr Kerr kept his answer as low-key as possible: ‘Alcohol was present at a level of fifteen milligrams per hundred millilitres. This is what I would term a trace amount. Cannabinoid THC was detected at three picograms per microgram. Although this is technically a positive test, it is on the mar
gins of reliability.’
Shooting Claydon White a look warning him not to interrupt, Jenny pressed on: ‘Are you saying, Dr Kerr, that the cannabis trace in the blood sample was so small that for all practical purposes it can be disregarded?’
‘If there was a genuine trace of THC, and I stress if, then it was at such an insignificant level that it would have had no effect on Private Green’s cognitive function, his reaction times or his ability to perform his duty.’
‘Is the same true of the alcohol?’
‘It was a negligible amount. I would be surprised if it affected his ability to function in any way.’
Jenny moved on rapidly and ran through the last details. She established that Private Green’s helmet and Kevlar vest were not among the items of clothing repatriated along with his body. The clothing that had been returned had been examined but revealed nothing of significance. A tiny amount of broken glass in the left breast pocket of the tunic was consistent with that area having been struck by a round that was repelled by the bulletproof vest worn outside it.
Before inviting cross-examination, Jenny offered an olive branch to the lawyers girding themselves for attack: ‘I am prepared to disregard the THC detected in the blood test and to discount it from consideration. I am also prepared to accept that however it got into his system, the trace of alcohol had no material bearing on the immediate cause of Private Green’s death. Does this satisfy the interested parties?’
Robert Heaton rose quickly. ‘From our point of view that would appear entirely sensible, ma’am.’
Claydon White interrupted. ‘Ma’am, this was a soldier on active service. Alcohol and drugs are strictly forbidden by standing order and for good reason – these young men needed their wits about them. There are many reasons he might have had alcohol in his system which would have had a direct bearing on the circumstances of his death. We are not prepared to sideline this issue. We intend to examine closely the culture within this platoon and to get to the bottom of how Private Green was allowed to go into a life-or-death situation with alcohol in his system. You heard it from Dr Kerr’s own mouth: a single inch is what separated his life from death.’
