The Nature of Life and Death

by Patricia Wiltshire

  I was tasked with providing answers to these questions.

  My husband, David, was able to start piecing this puzzle together as soon as he saw the fungus; he identified it as Psilocybe semilanceata and confirmed this diagnosis by microscopic examination of its spores. This is the commonest magic mushroom and it actually pops up on our back lawn at home from time to time. It is one of the LBJs—the little brown jobs that are not easy for most people to identify precisely (although those who want to use them seem able).

  I knew too that there were ways we could find out what had been in these containers. Working as an environmental archeologist, one of my most spectacular successes had been to prove that a “wine strainer,” buried with a Druidic medical practitioner in his grave in Colchester, about two thousand years ago, had contained a concoction made from mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), a common wasteland weed. Mugwort is a relation of wormwood and has long been used in herbalism. The wormwoods and mugworts contain vast arrays of alkaloids, monoterpenes, and many other compounds and, in the past, had sundry medicinal uses. People and domestic animals were dosed with mugwort tea to paralyze intestinal worms so that they could easily be passed out of the gut. Worm infestation was a fact of life for ancient people and clues to their misery have been gained from frequent findings of nematode worm eggs in ancient latrine deposits. As intimated from the field data and laboratory analysis, this Iron Age doctor in Colchester had been treating his patients with mugwort infusions for intestinal worm infestation, and possibly bacterial infections. Because of the plant’s bitterness, he had been adding honey to the medicine. This was so convincingly clear because, although there were occasional pollen grains of cereals, grasses, or weeds—and although the strainer contained a huge mass of mugwort pollen—all the rest I found was from “bee plants.” There is very little chance that the pollen of bee plants could have been included by accident because their pollen does not get into the air, or travel far from the parent flower. Honey, on the other hand, is rich in the pollen of plants to which bees are attracted because of their rich nectar.

  To find out what the ayahuasca drinker man had been keeping in his containers I carried out the same routine as I had for the Druidic doctor’s strainer. One empty flask had dried crusty material around its neck. I simply washed this off and processed it as I had the washings from all the other items. I was transfixed by the results as they started to reveal themselves under the microscope. One flask contained a dense concentration of Cannabis pollen and the pollen of mint; it looked as though an infusion of Cannabis and mint had been prepared as a drink. Another flask contained a very dense suspension of magic mushroom spores; again, it looked as though the fungus had been subjected to some preparation for consumption. The drawer was very interesting because, not only did it contain masses of Psilocybe spores, the pollen profile showed that the mushrooms had probably been collected from a grassy area near woodland.

  It was obvious from my results that the young man was in the habit of not only attending ayahuasca ceremonies but also indulging in Cannabis and magic mushrooms. But did these, in any way, contribute to his death? So little is known about how the human body reacts when certain drugs are taken in combination. We know that the combined use of tobacco and Cannabis can induce psychoses in certain individuals, and we know that drinking alcohol can further aid the passage of DMT through the bloodstream and into the brain unhindered, but as to how the countless other drugs out there, whether natural or synthetic, respond in concert with one another, our knowledge is fragmentary.

  Understanding the true cause of this man’s death was paramount. The shaman had been arrested for possible manslaughter. His freedom hung in the balance. If there was no evidence of anything other than the active agent of ayahuasca in the man’s gut, the police would be able to make stronger their case that the shaman alone was responsible for the dreadful outcome of the ceremony. If, on the other hand, the deceased had dosed himself with something else—something that had perhaps interacted with the ayahuasca, the shaman might be less to blame, and his liberty less at risk.

  In cases like these, it does not pay to jump to conclusions. Mine are not moral nor legal questions. It must not matter to me or my findings whether the shaman might be prosecuted for murder, manslaughter, or some lesser offense. I must, at all times, restrict myself to the facts, to questions of who, what, where, and when: tangible questions demanding tangible answers. And these answers were to be found in the contents of the dead man’s gut.

  During a postmortem examination, it is routine for the pathologist to take samples of the gut contents. On most occasions, I have been somewhat bemused by the way this is done. Some pathologists simply put a kitchen ladle into the stomach and assume the ladleful represents the gut contents. To my mind, this is wholly inadequate. One can never consider the contents of a stomach to be homogeneous, with all the contents equally distributed throughout. By this method of collection, critical evidence could easily be left in the stomach. Sometimes, especially if the death is long after a meal, there will be little to sample anyway, but if the stomach is full, surely the contents warrant more comprehensive investigation.

  In this particular postmortem, the stomach had certainly been sampled. I already had a mortuary jar full of opaque yellow liquid in front of me, with little floating globules of fat on the surface. It smelled strongly of orange, and this, at least, backed up the claim that the man had been sustained by orange juice during his coma before he died. This pale amber-colored liquid I was holding was only the beginning of the story, but as I studied it for the first time, I realized that it was unlikely to provide the information we needed. The fact that the man had continued to defecate, even four days after slipping into unconsciousness, meant that peristalsis—the wavelike muscle contractions that force food along the length of the digestive tract—must have continued throughout his inevitable decline. It was obvious to me that anything he had eaten or drunk at, or before, the ceremony would, by four days after the event, be in his lower gut; and if we wanted to know what else he might have taken, I needed to examine it.

  “I’ll need samples from the ileum,” I said, meaning the stretch of ten feet of the small intestine that empties into the colon. “Could I please have a sample of the proximal and distal colon, and the rectum as well?”

  It took a bit of a struggle to convince the pathologist that I needed the other samples of the gut but, eventually, I received just six—four from the ileum, one from the ascending colon, and one from the transverse colon. They would have to suffice. I did a standard preparation of these and eagerly examined them under the microscope.

  There was little doubt that this person had not eaten for a long time, and perhaps fasting had been part of the shamanistic ceremony. A great deal of what had been in his gut had moved through his body and been collected by the nappies. The stomach contained little but orange juice, and there was nothing at all in the small intestine. It was not until I started looking at the colon that I had my eureka moment—there was plenty to report.

  At first it was only a single orange pip; this was hardly surprising, given the amount of juice his friends had made him drink in their vain efforts to save his life. But then I found what I was expecting—a mass of magic mushroom spores and a good complement of Cannabis pollen. They were more abundant in the transverse colon than the ascending because they were closer to the rectum. The man, it seemed, had been taking mind-altering DMT in the ayahuasca, and mind-altering cannabinoids in the Cannabis. He had also been drinking the magic mushroom “tea” from the flask that would have contained psilocin; in the gut, this breaks down to psilocin, which is the hallucinogenic component in the magic mushrooms. What a cocktail! This seemed heady enough, but what I saw next added an extra layer to this dead man’s experiences. I could hardly believe the number of seeds. Not just any seeds—these were from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum).

  Bakers use opium poppy seeds to coat bread and r
olls, and perhaps you remember a popular investigative TV program where they tested Angela Rippon, a well-known journalist and TV presenter, after a claim that a power station worker had been sacked because, in a routine test, opiates had been found in his blood. He claimed innocence and said that he had been eating seed-coated bread. The program wanted to test the hypothesis that bread rolls could, indeed, yield measureable opiate in the blood. This was confirmed by the analysis of Angela Rippon’s blood after eating such bread for just three days. The seed contains only a tiny amount of opiate but, of course, the more you consume, the greater amount you will absorb. In reality, the amount of opiate in the seed depends on the plant, its growing conditions, and harvesting methods—but there is little doubt that, if you eat the seeds, you might have opiate floating around in your body. The seed normally contains between 0.5 and 10 micrograms of morphine per gram, whereas a medically prescribed dose will be anywhere between 5,000 and 30,000 micrograms. Nevertheless, seeded bread is a problem for the World Anti-Doping Agency–accredited laboratories and a sports competitor may test positive for morphine if the level in the urine is greater than 1.3 micrograms per milliliter. It has become such an issue in the workplace that, in the US, authorities have increased the tolerance level to 2 micrograms per milliliter.

  There were so many seeds in the dead man’s colon that the story seemed to write itself in front of my eyes. I could visualize, now, the way it might have been; how, sometime before the ceremony, the man had brewed and drunk his own mixture of Cannabis and mint tea, and then magic mushroom suspension. Not yet satisfied, he had then eaten a mass of poppy seeds before setting out to the shaman’s ceremony to enjoy his ayahuasca. He had not known it, as he put the cup to his lips, but already in his body were toxins in such quantities and combinations that the taste of that ayahuasca would be the very last one of his waking life.

  Some forensic toxicology colleagues from northern Europe have since told me that the practice of eating masses of poppy seeds is growing in Europe. Perhaps I have too busy a life to ever contemplate, or even desire, the kind of out-of-body experience that is clamored for by certain others. Perhaps I would be too frightened anyway. But my mind boggles at the lengths some people will go to in order to experience a state of mind impossible without chemical inducement. I find it intriguing and inexplicable that they willingly indulge in so many toxic substances, including commonly consumed alkaloids—caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, heroin, and morphine—to lift themselves out of the ordinary and mundane. Even I, though, occasionally have a couple codeine pills to kill a headache.

  DMT, it is said, takes you rapidly into an intense alternative reality. It can take a long time to recover from the experience and, if you have any mental problems, it can exacerbate the symptoms. Some who have indulged say that they keep having flashbacks to the experience, and there is little doubt that this powerful substance alters the mind, sometimes for long periods. Some say they have been shown the face of God. Some say they have visited alien worlds and spoken to alien beings. A common experience is of being able to speak to owls in a strange language, while yet others have reported “going to hell.”

  Punishment after death, for evil committed during a lifetime, is a common concept in religion, and artists throughout history have depicted hell as a place of eternal agony. The fantastical conjurings of Hieronymus Bosch and Brueghel depict a view of chaos that might well be hell. Whether their imaginings emerged under the influence of some kind of chemical agent, no one could say. But, some of the equally bizarre works of the later surrealist artists may have been inspired by absinthe and/or other mind-changing substances. No rational person could take seriously their concepts of hell and damnation as being meaningful. My own view is that everyone’s hell is personal and consists of their own discomforting horrors. The man who died after seeking excitement, uplift, or fantasy at the ayahuasca ceremony might have been in his very own hell during his agitation and raving. What hallucinations did he see whirling around him as his friends struggled to restrain him and make him secure? His screams and frantic movements might suggest that he was suffering, and no amount of care from his friends could negate the effects of the various plant and fungal toxins doing battle in his brain. We are, after all, but chemistry.

  The DMT from the ayahuasca brew might very well have been a contributory substance in the lethal mixture this young man had consumed, but because his body had yielded so many different kinds of pollen, spores, and seeds from hallucinatory plants, it would have been difficult to lay the blame for his death purely at the feet of the shaman. In court, he was deemed not culpable of the crime for which he had been charged, and he was, instead, convicted of possessing a Class A drug, quite separate from the ayahuasca ceremony. He was given a short custodial sentence but it was not long before he was out, and the last I heard he was still holding his ceremonies, still mixing his hallucinogenic brews—still opening the doorway to “other worlds” for those who came to him, eager for a taste.

  It seems sad to me that people are desperate to leave their own reality for another. Perhaps some think that this world that we have—with all its natural beauties, the things we can and cannot see—is not enough for them. As for me, I know I will not be going to a place called hell, virtual or otherwise. Death is coming for all of us, for you and me, and everybody out there. Better, first, get a life.

  CHAPTER 13

  Traces

  It was after dinner on New Year’s Day and, abandoning my resolution to give up wine, I settled down with a glass, Mickey on my lap, and a list of TV programs to watch that evening. Then the telephone rang in the hall.

  “Hello, Pattie, Happy New Year! We have a job for you; could you be at headquarters by six tomorrow morning?”

  It was Dougie Bain, the senior CSI at Hertfordshire Constabulary.

  “Will you contact the experts and put a team together? I need you here by six a.m. tomorrow morning—skeleton found in woodland.”

  Same old story, the inevitable dog had found a murder victim while walking with its owner. It often happens to the hapless who are up and about before the world stirs out of bed. Choosing the right people for the job was easy and, thankfully, quick phone calls established that all were available.

  The following morning there were few drivers on the M25 and I got to police headquarters in Welwyn Garden City within an hour. Trying to look bright and enthusiastic, though feeling light-headed from a lack of sleep, I absorbed the details in the short briefing before we set off in convoy to the deposition site.

  “I’ve followed your teaching, Pat. You go in first and the archeologists after the entomologist. The other forensic scientists and the pathologist can do their work after that.”

  This was a perfect strategy for getting the maximum amount of evidential material from plants, soils, animals, fungi, disturbed vegetation, and footmarks. I could make sure that all classes of potential evidence would be preserved; every specialist would be able to retrieve the maximum information possible. We kicked and crunched our way through the russet leaves carpeting the woodland floor, then slid down a steep bank. A tiny stream meandered along the bottom of a little valley and, at one point, split into two even smaller ones, each flowing around a little island, merging into one again on the other side. The exceptionally neat grave on the center of the island was distinctive, and it was obvious to those of us who work with buried remains that the offenders had chosen the site carefully so that it could be found again easily. As I have previously mentioned, often murderers cannot resist revisiting the place where they have left the victim, possibly to check, or even to gloat. A log of wood might be put over the grave as a marker, or it may be near a distinctive landmark. Here, the little island marked the spot.

  I left all the others and crossed the stream to the grave. The sight that hit me is still vivid in my memory. Defleshed feet poked out of what looked like a shallow mud bath, and the empty eye sockets of a grinning skull were staring
at the muddy puddle where its belly should have been. Maggots and other scavengers had done a good job of picking the bones clean, and I was left alone to observe this unfortunate, and its surroundings, with everyone else well away on the other side of the stream, stamping around to keep warm, smoking, laughing, and eating chocolate.

  The Forensic Science Service staff and pathologist have traditionally considered their work to have primacy at crime scenes, but I had schooled these police officers in what could be lost if they did not modify the usual protocols. After all, it did not need a forensic pathologist to confirm that the owner of a skull, picked clean by birds and rats, was dead. It might be a statutory requirement for the pathologist to declare that death had occurred, but he certainly did not need to be first at the graveside—not if it meant disturbing the natural environment that might yield vital clues.

  It was cold and I had put on too many layers which, together with the all-enveloping Tyvek suit, meant it was difficult to move easily. My nose and eyes kept running because of the cold air, my fingers were stiff inside the protective gloves, and my handkerchief was out of reach; I was uncomfortable.

  The first question everyone wants answered is: How long has the corpse been here? Vegetation in a situation like this often gives the first clue. Digging the grave had disturbed a stand of bracken fern that had been growing all over the island, and it was important to examine it carefully. A little distance away from the grave, I dug away the soil around the cut ferns until I reached the underground stems. These had been roughly cut but they still had their dormant buds, which would grow to replace the damaged leaves. Yes, the buds were there and, compared with others along the stem, they had become swollen and extended.