Free Crime Scene Investigator by Paul Millen Page A

her and prepare for a post-mortem examination. The Home Office pathologist was going to be busy.
    The dynamics of the room changed when the stomach pumping began. I realised that John and his two colleagues moved from around Wood’s head to his feet, whilst the nurse and I found ourselves at the business end of the procedure. I glanced at John and got a knowing smile. We got on with it. We filled nearly all three jars before the nurse was happy that there was nothing left in his stomach.
    I recovered some blood-staining from Wood’s forearms as well as his clothing. The medical staff also took the blood samples for blood grouping and also one for drugs. I also managed to persuade the doctors to take a second blood sample for drugs an hour after the first. This, I hoped, would help determine the effect of the drugs on Wood’s action at the time of the attack. Had he taken the drugs before or after? I thought two samples with a known time in between might determine the length of time the drugs had been in his system, indicating whether the levels were increasing or decreasing in his blood. Further timed samples would be better still, but that would be asking a little too much. A urine sample was also needed but that would have to wait until Wood awoke or the medical staff decided to empty his bladder by other means if he remained unconscious. Two blood samples for drugs was one more than the toxicologist normally got.
    As the events unfolded in the following days, the story was confirmed. There was no objection to the examination of all the items I had taken and so I submitted them to the forensic science laboratory.
    Wood pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his wife and their family doctor on the grounds of diminished responsibility. His plea was accepted. The toxicological examination of the blood and stomach contents helped his defence. He had been under the influence of his medication at the time of the attack and he had tried to kill himself after realising what he had done.
    It was a tragic story for his family and the family of Dr Goss. Wood was committed to a secure hospital. Within two years he was seen in a main shopping area where someone recognised him. He had been released back into the community. There was a lot of strong opinion about it, and I too felt, at the very least, surprise. I reminded myself that, whatever the judgement of the court, his subsequent treatment and release was the job of others. Mine was to help establish the truth and I think I did that.

8. The Flying Squad
    I used to watch the TV series of
The Sweeney
during my years at school and college. The stories, involving fast cars, hardened detectives and tough criminals within the underworld, were popular and entertaining but seemed a million miles away. I had no ambition to become a police officer and so it never occurred to me that one day I would be a part of the real thing.
    The Flying Squad had been formed in the 1920s within the Metropolitan Police. It was an élite group of detectives who were given the job of investigating violent crime. The mobile and proactive nature of the squad with its wide geographical remit caused a
Daily Mirror
reporter to refer to it as a flying squad of detectives and so the name stuck.
    In good old cockney rhyming slang it became known as the Sweeney, after Sweeney Todd, the fictitious demon barber of Fleet Street.
    In the 1970s the Squad’s role was redefined to investigate the increases in armed robbery, kidnappings and kindred offences. It proactively targeted those gangs who committed armed robbery rather than waiting for them to commit the offences and catch them after. It became the Central Robbery Squad but this was not a name to match the romantic and macho Flying Squad which it soon re-adopted.
    The Sweeney
immortalised the Squad for a generation. DI Jack Regan and his sidekick Detective Sergeant Carter inspired young boys and coppers alike. They were earthy and tough with laddish lifestyles but