Arranging an interview with Prof Jack Crane had a slightly surreal air to it. He was reluctant to commit to the weekend - being on duty, there might be a murder to deal with. The rest of his diary was clear, apart from Friday when he had to do an exhumation.
Northern Ireland's state pathologist's diary is not going to get any lighter, as he tos and fros between Belfast and the Balkans, where his work will be vital in the painstaking process of securing convictions for war criminals.
Just as surgeons in Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital are renowned for their pioneering efforts in patching up victims of paramilitary attacks, Prof Crane's 19-year career in pathology has made him expert in carrying out post-mortem examinations on victims of shootings and bombings. This expertise has been called on throughout the world. His advice has been sought on the cause of the 1985 Air India plane crash off the coast of Cork which killed 329 people. Prof Crane says he believes there was a bomb on board the aircraft, which exploded in mid-air. He also recently advised the Portuguese government about a plane crash in December 1990 in which the then prime minister and six others died. "Initially they thought the crash was due to mechanical failure or pilot error," he says. "But by looking at the pattern of injuries of the bodies, I have been able to advise the parliamentary commission looking into the matter that this was probably, not certainly, an explosion onboard the aircraft and obviously that's important because the government is now pursuing a criminal investigation."
Prof Crane's bright office is in a redbrick building in the RVH complex off the Falls Road in west Belfast. A courteous and boyish-looking 45-year-old bachelor, Prof Crane is immaculately dressed in grey woollen trousers and a pale blue shirt (he confesses to buying his clothes in London). His monogrammed cufflinks hint at a character preoccupied by detail. He collects antiques and relaxes by listening to classical music and by walking his dog, a golden retriever called Jake, who features in two photographs on Prof Crane's neat desk.
He has been the North's state pathologist since 1990 and is also professor of forensic medicine at Queen's University, Belfast. He has carried out autopsies on the victims of the 1987 Remembrance Day bomb in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, the Shankill Road bombing in Belfast in October 1993 and last year's Real IRA Omagh blast in which 29 people and two unborn children were killed.
When Prof Crane joined the hospital's pathology department during the Troubles, there were about 100 murders in the North per year. There are now about 30, but he says there has been an increase in drug-related deaths and suicides since the paramilitary groups called their ceasefires.
Prof Crane's work has often been central to the outcome of criminal cases, including the murder conviction of a man who beat to death a north Belfast teenager eight years ago. The 13-year-old schoolgirl was murdered in 1991 and her body had lain undiscovered in a coal-bunker for five years. When Prof Crane examined it, he noticed an oval shaped skull depression which was consistent with her being struck by a distinctive spiral-handled poker like that owned by one of her neighbours - the man who was subsequently convicted of her murder. He has a photograph in his office of himself holding a poker beside the girl's damaged skull.
"That was one of my most satisfying cases in that I was able to do something to help the police in an investigation," he explains. "Here was an example of how forensic medicine went a long way in securing a guy's conviction. It was also very satisfying for the family of the girl after so many years of not knowing how she had died."
Prof Crane's evidence also ensured that a gross miscarriage of justice in Britain came to an end last year when Mr Paddy Nicholls (70) was acquitted at the Appeal Court after spending 23 years in prison for the murder of his landlady.
While such job satisfaction is normal, Prof Crane stresses that his role is that of an independent expert who strives not to get emotionally involved in his cases. "We give evidence in court a lot and, as far as I'm concerned, what happens at the end of the trial is unimportant to me, whether the person is acquitted or convicted. I don't see myself winning. I see my job as giving my evidence to the court as best I can and then it's up to the court to decide how they use it and to come to their decision. So I don't get disappointed if someone is acquitted when perhaps it's felt they should have been convicted."
Prof Crane has also been involved in many of the North's controversial cases, including the initial conviction of the British army paratrooper, Private Lee Clegg, for the murder of teenager Karen Reilly, in a stolen car in west Belfast in 1990. Since 1997, he has made regular trips to the Balkans to carry out post mortems on hundreds of bodies, mostly Muslims, taken from mass graves, some of them still booby-trapped by Serbs. He is one of many pathologists from United Nations countries who carry out this work for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) based in The Hague.
Prof Crane's latest trip was to the Kosovan town of Prizren where he worked with a team of pathologists, to examine about 70 bodies of ethnic Albanians killed by Serbs and scattered around the region. All the victims had been shot, and some of the bodies were badly burned in order to prevent identification. The oldest victim recovered was a 102-year-old man, the youngest was aged two. After autopsies were carried out, the villagers held a mass funeral, which Prof Crane and his colleagues were invited to.
While dealing with death can be demanding work, Prof Crane says he is never "disturbed" by it. "One's always saddened to see deaths occurring in violent situations and one has to say often it's needless waste of life, especially among young people. There we had a fatality in Donegal of four young bright students being killed in a car accident recently. I dealt with a case outside Omagh at the weekend where two young guys from Monaghan were killed. So I think one's always saddened when young lives are taken. But certainly I don't get affected by the job. I think you have to remain detached from it if you are to do your job properly. So I don't take my work home with me."
