The Pitcairn Perspectives by Philip Spires - HTML preview

The long read: what happened at the Pitcairn house?

An analysis by Julia Krieg and Anand Chakra

It is now two weeks since tragedy struck the Pitcairn household in the family home just off Holloway Road in North London. We are told by police that, since the matter is still under investigation, speculation about what might have happened might prejudice the outcome of enquiries. Though we accept the validity of the position, we believe that there remain many questions to be asked, questions whose answers might contribute significantly to the outcome. There are issues that need to be raised in public simply to ensure that they are indeed addressed by any enquiry into these tragic events. A journalistic silence about what might have happened to the Pitcairns can only assist those parties that still have an interest in glossing over some crucial considerations that certainly influenced what happened, considerations that are in danger of being dismissed by others who seem to have an interest in opting for simplistic, but demonstrably wrong interpretations. It is our intention to ensure that all issues are addressed. It is our intention to refute what we see as baseless, interest-driven interpretations that have already been published in the popular press.

Though the outcome is not disputed, a description of what was reported by passers-by and neighbours two weeks ago must form the starting point of our analysis. We intend to assemble the evidence in detail before we offer our interpretation, a process that is the direct reverse, it seems, of that which has been applied to previous versions of events.

It was around half past nine in the evening when Jaswant Singh, a resident of the area was walking north along Crane Grove. He recalls that it was a particularly quiet evening. “We had been told to stay at home for some weeks, and, though the restrictions were on the point of being lifted, very few people were venturing out. It is a straight road and, though it was not quite dark, the streetlights were already on. I had a perfect view of the road ahead, all the way to the junction at the top. It was spitting with rain, but the visibility was fine. There was no one in view. There was no movement at all. There was no one in sight.”

This first part of Jaswant Singh’s eyewitness account of events appears to be merely anodyne scene setting. But embedded within it is a crucial point that contradicts other public speculation from various sources. This eyewitness account reports no activity along the street. Numerous other published reports have completely ignored this detail, the fact that effectively belies the widely publicized accounts that circulated immediately after the event. Mr. Singh’s evidence directly refutes the basis of these accounts, indeed renders them completely fictitious. There was no evidence of movement, of disturbance or even a closing door along that street before the flames appeared. Other accounts have described Edward Pitcairn leaving the house, falling by the gate to the street and then his mobile phone battery immediately bursting into flames. No one in fact saw this. It is fabrication.

Here is Jaswant Singh again. “I was walking north along that street. It was completely quiet and then, in the distance, I saw flames. On the right, in the front garden of the last house, there was suddenly a single flash and then strong red flames, so strong that I could see them from fifty metres away. I knew immediately that this was serious.”

This, again apparently passing comment, contains a detail that has been consistently and conveniently overlooked. The flames are specifically recalled as red from their inception, a fact that might indicate the presence of lithium. The fire clearly started in a mobile phone battery. It was not true, as reported in previous articles, that the fire started as Edward Pitcairn fell, but it is true that the phone’s destruction caused the fire. It was not the fire that damaged the phone. It was the phone that caused the fire. In addition, and directly contradicting previous reports, Edward Pitcairn was already prostrate on the steps by the front door and motionless before the flames appeared.

Jaswant Singh again. “I started to run up the road, because in the fading light the flames were very bright. When I reached the house, I could see through the gate the shape of a human being outlined in the light. But the person was not moving. Of that I am absolutely sure. He was just lying there on the ground. I could see the silhouette against the flames. I suppose it took me ten seconds or so to realise what I was seeing. And as soon as I was sure there was a body lying on the ground and that it was on fire, I tried to open the gate.”

Again, we have crucial detail here. The eyewitness account describes a visible human form. Jaswant Singh does not describe someone falling, or someone standing. In fact, he specifically, though later, qualified his account by stating that the human being was already prostrate at the base of the entrance steps that lead up to the house from the door. The fact that he added this detail to his story some three days after the event has called his entire account into question. It is our assertion, however, that this detail is entirely consistent with his reporting of a lack of movement along the street at the beginning of his testimony, a detail that was recorded in the statement he gave to police just a couple of hours after the event.

Jaswant Singh again. “There was this guy, lying at the bottom of the steps. He was on fire. Not just a little. There were flames coming up from his body, red flames rising a metre above him. By then his clothes were already on fire as well. The smell was terrible. I tried the gate, but it was locked. I did not try to call out to him. It was obvious that he was already beyond help.”

There followed a hiatus of a minute or more. The front gate of the property was locked. It is made of barred metal and opens directly onto the street. It is quite short, just a metre or so in height. It does, however, have a row of long sharp spikes across the top. A younger man might have climbed the gate, placed his foot on the top rail between the spikes and then jumped over. Jaswant Singh, however, is in his early sixties and, to be frank, is rather well-built. Climbing over the gate was not an option for him but he did try to do so, and the time it took could have proved crucial if there had been a chance of saving any of the victims. In this case, however, the delay probably changed nothing. The attacks against Mr. Singh on social media, claiming he dithered while people died, are thus totally without foundation.

Neither could he climb over the wall. The boundary wall of the Pitcairn house extends the full width of the house’s street frontage and is a metre and a half high. Jaswant Singh recalls, “I did try to climb up the wall, but there were no handholds and anyway I find it hard to support my weight. I did not know what to do. I had already pressed the bell by the gate several times and now I just kept my finger on it. It was still quiet in the street, and I could hear the bell ringing inside the house. I pressed again and again but there was no response. I tried shouting at the house in case there was someone in an upstairs room who might hear.”

We estimate that, as described, these failed attempts at alerting the house’s inhabitants might have taken a minute or two. A minute is about as long as a mobile phone battery takes to burn out. It has to be recorded that Jaswant Singh at no point heard a scream, a shout or any distress call from the man on the steps. For upwards of two minutes, he had been on fire, motionless and silent. Mr. Singh then rang the doorbells of neighbouring houses, one of whom immediately called the emergency services. A published account even accuses Mr. Singh of negligence because he had not already called the police or the fire services himself at this stage. The reporter concerned neither spoke to Mr. Singh nor even tried to contact him and thus never appreciated that he was not carrying a telephone.

A police car arrived on the scene approximately nine minutes later, a fire truck three minutes after that. The police officers were still in the process of forcing the gate when the fire truck arrived. Now almost fifteen minutes have elapsed since Jaswant Singh first noticed the flames, which by now had burned out leaving Edward Pitcairn’s still smouldering body on the steps.

The scene that greeted the emergency personnel was gruesome. The lithium flame had by then completely burnt out, so there was no evidence of red about the flames which still showed around the body, now only fuelled by remnants of the victim’s clothing. Where the mobile phone had been, grasped to the midriff area, there was a charred mass of flesh and bone, the lithium fire having burned almost through the body in the area of stomach and groin.

Within a minute, of course, the fire was doused. They used water. This again is an important detail because, if there had been any lithium metal remaining from the phone’s battery, adding water would have simply reignited the fire. The fact that it did not proves that the lithium fire was already spent, hence the degree of mutilation that had resulted.

The police forced the gate and immediately tried the front door. Since the house is an end of terrace, some officers, according to their training, also sought entry at the back. The layout of the house, however, did not give these officers any direct clue as to what had happened inside. The other victims, of course, were all in the kitchen, which, when standing at the rear of the house, is actually one floor up, since access to the back garden is from what at the front of the house is a basement. Again, potentially vital minutes were spent forcing the front door, which proved to be a very sturdy, hard wood door set in a hard wood frame. Police officers also forced the patio doors in the back, which were of the modern, double glazed, aluminium frame type and were multiple locked, having themselves been installed just two years before, according to the express wish of Gemma Pitcairn, for their extra security. We estimate that it was a further three minutes before the fire brigade officers succeeded in jemmying the front door free of its locks.

Both police officers and firemen reported immediately smelling gas upon entering the house. And thus, we reach another anomaly that has thus far been completely ignored by the shabby reporting of the story elsewhere. This was not simply, ‘There was a smell of gas in the house’ that a well-known populist newspaper reported the day after the incident. In fact, there was so much gas that both the police and firemen, who had entered by the front door, turned back, believing they would need breathing equipment. They were also worried that the air in the house would even be explosive. It was five minutes later that a single member of the fire service, wearing breathing equipment, entered the hallway. By that time, the police had managed to force open the patio doors downstairs, so there was a draught through the house which soon flushed out the majority of the escaped gas. The quote about there being merely ‘a smell of gas’ came from a police officer who did not even enter the premises for a further fifteen minutes, by which time it was possible to breathe inside without assistance.

The fire crew assumed correctly that the gas was coming from the kitchen. A single fireman with breathing equipment made his way straight to the back of the house. For those entering via the front, an open door at the end of the internal corridor would have immediately identified the room at the rear as the kitchen. This would have been obvious, even from as far away as the front entrance. The fireman immediately approached the gas hob, assuming the leak must have originated from there. Previous reports falsely recorded that the officer turned off the gas. Now we have contacted the officer concerned who has spoken to us off the record, and we will not reveal his identity here in order to preserve his anonymity. He confirmed that he did check the gas hob before doing anything else and that all the controls were in the ‘off’ position. If the matter were to go to an enquiry, the officer concerned has assured us that he will testify and that he will confirm the version of events he told us.

Having discovered that the kitchen hob’s controls were all off, he checked the oven, which was obviously electric. He then assumed the leak must have come from a gas boiler, and so the officer tried to locate it. Meanwhile police officers entering the basement, unknown to the fireman above, had already located the gas boiler in the utility room at the front of the house. The boiler was not leaking gas and was of a modern type, so it was not even burning a pilot light. It is worth noting at this point that the police officers who entered the basement had done so without the need for breathing equipment. They reported the smell of gas, but clearly it was not at the concentrations perceived by those who had entered the house by the front door. There was still the possibility that gas was leaking from the main but, once the windows and the door were opened, the smell of gas started to subside. This happened quickly enough not to cause any of the emergency personnel to think of calling to register a leak that might need immediate attention.

Finding no boiler on the upper floor, the fire officer, who had entered by the front door, returned to the kitchen to open all the windows. It was only then that the officer began to appreciate the full extent of the tragedy. He reports that only after dealing with the windows did he turn his attention to the people around the kitchen table. He did try to resuscitate the three people he assumed had possibly lost consciousness after momentarily being overcome by the fumes. To his dismay, he found them to be unresponsive and judged them all dead.

Around the kitchen table were three bodies, all seated at the table as if waiting to be fed. Initially the officer felt they may be merely unconscious, but the reality was soon obvious. All three bodies were slumped forward, with heads and upper torsos actually lying on the tabletop. The table was set for a meal, with cutlery, plates and opened wine. There was spilled wine on the table and, crucially as it turns out, on the floor, some distance away from the table.

Mother and daughter, Gemma and Elsie Pitcairn were sitting side by side. The third body, that of a male in his forties has yet to be identified, but it is assumed to be Gemma Pitcairn’s partner, Geoff Sullivan. This fact has yet to be confirmed, however, since Mr. Sullivan did not actually live at the address, but was only an occasional visitor, reportedly Gemma Pitcairn’s boyfriend. The neighbours have testified seeing Mr. Sullivan regularly at the house, but it seems that no one was ever in social contact with him, reporting that he would say hello in passing in the street, but no more. It seems that Mr. Sullivan had always avoided contact with neighbours. He achieved his obviously desired anonymity to such an extent that the police recorded three significantly different descriptions of him from nearby residents.

A fourth place was set at the table. Next to this plate was a full glass of wine, apparently untouched, unlike those of Gemma and Elsie Pitcairn which were almost empty. The high-backed dining chair at that fourth place setting had been knocked over and was lying on the floor, as if someone had made a hasty exit, pushing it backwards in the process. We may assume that this was the place setting vacated by the fleeing Edward Pitcairn.

It was not obvious at the time, but soon became clear that the person on fire on the steps outside was indeed Edward Pitcairn. Though his daughter and granddaughter could be identified immediately and definitively, Edward Pitcairn’s identity was only officially established after some forensic work via his dental records. His body was very badly mutilated both by the lithium fire and the subsequent burning of his clothing, and even neighbours who by then had approached the front gate did not recognise him. This, however, is not surprising because Edward Pitcairn, in later years, had spent most of his time in Indonesia, only sporadically returning to London. Given that he spent at most two weeks a year in his London home, it is highly likely that most of the neighbours would not even recognise him as a resident of the house.

We all know what certain journalists have written about this case, so we will not repeat those stories here. Suffice it to say that we utterly reject the populist and frankly vindictive interpretation of events. Not only is this version of events based on prejudice and political opportunism, but it is also factually inaccurate. We will list one by one the factual incongruities that prove this slanderous account is utterly false.

What is not in dispute is that four people died, Edward Pitcairn, his daughter Gemma, his granddaughter Elsie and a male in his forties who may or may not be the man known as Geoff Sullivan, Gemma Pitcairn’s boyfriend. Initial reports that the three occupants of the kitchen had been overcome by gas have now been proved to be false. All three died of a fentanyl overdose, ingested prior to the start of the gas leak, since none of the victims appears to have tried to move from their seat. We can reveal for the first time that the wine remaining in the bottle on the kitchen table was laced with enough fentanyl to kill fifty people. This fact would have been unknown to those who wrote the initial stories reporting the deaths, since it has only just been released, following a coroner’s post-mortem on the victims. At least this one part of their otherwise wholly vindictive interpretation was an innocent error. Edward Pitcairn’s body, so badly mutilated by fire, could not be definitively tested for the presence of drugs. It is likely, however, that he did not ingest any of the drugged wine, given that his glass was full, did not appear to have been touched and given, crucially, that he was able to walk as far as the steps into the street.

We have also, however, spoken to the pathologist who conducted the post-mortem. Off the record, she expressed grave concerns about the circumstances that led to the male victim in the kitchen ingesting the poison. Both Gemma Pitcairn and Elsie Pitcairn were sitting next to wine glasses that were almost empty. We may assume that both had drunk the wine and thus ingested lethal doses of fentanyl.

The male on the other side of the table, however, thus far named as Geoff Sullivan, had not obviously used the wine glass that was within his reach. The pathologist also told us that there was evidence of red wine spillage on his face, neck and chest, with his shirt actually being described as ‘sodden’ with wine. We pressed the point in our interview with the pathologist, suggesting this male victim may have been forced to drink the poisoned wine, and may have vomited the contents of his mouth at least once, possibly more than once, in the process, thus explaining the spillage on the floor. The pathologist who inspected the body accepted that this scenario of forced ingestion was at least plausible. The pathologist went even further by releasing to us the finding that the male victim even had traces of wine in his lungs, indicating that he may have been choking or gagging as it was drunk.

Whatever is the explanation, however, it is clear that the male victim did not appear to have willingly drunk any of the fentanyl-laden wine. In some way or other, it had been forced into him, because the conclusive cause of death, as in the case of Gemma and Elsie Pitcairn, was fentanyl poisoning. None of the three victims of the kitchen table, incidentally, had been dead for more than an hour. Crucially the pathologist also reported that the lungs did not contain methane at the concentration expected if they had actually breathed in contaminated air. This proves definitively, in our opinion, that all three victims in the kitchen were dead by the time the gas was turned on at the hob. This corroborates the theory that the gas leak began after the victims’ deaths by poisoning.

Initially, it remained unclear whether the victim outside on the steps of the house was indeed Edward Pitcairn. So badly mutilated was the body that it took detailed forensic analysis to establish his identity. Initially, the body could equally have been that of Geoff Sullivan, who had become a frequent visitor to the house. Two weeks after the event, we are sure that the body outside was that of Edward Pitcairn, but still there exists no solid evidence that the victim inside the house was Mr. Sullivan. The initial reports that definitively place Mr. Sullivan inside and Edward Pitcairn outside on the steps had no basis in evidence known at the time that those reports of the tragedy were published. They might still be proven correct, but such definitive apparently factual reporting so soon after the event is now revealed as utterly unprofessional, either that or misinformed or indeed deliberately and conveniently misleading.

At this point we must collect our thoughts. This tragic incident has involved the death of four people, one of whom was the celebrated, even honoured archaeologist, Professor Edward Pitcairn. The tragedy is immense, even of national significance. Edward Pitcairn’s achievements will be reported and thus documented elsewhere, but we must here at least acknowledge his achievements, especially in relation to his elevating previously dismissed tribal art in Australia into the mainstream of historical human culture. In recent years, of course, he has devoted his time to researching early hominids in Southeast Asia, a project he managed jointly with his former student, Dr. Onggo Sarnu, of the Indonesian Ministry of Culture. Indeed, until last week, Dr. Sarnu’s company, Uking Terbuka, was about to announce the renaming of its residential development in East London as Pitcairn Towers. We are told now that a final decision on this has yet to be made.

Which brings us back to the circumstances, until now only partly reported, surrounding Edward Pitcairn’s apparent demise in a cremation on the front steps of his own house. The unlikely nature of the scenario need not be stressed, merely to state it is enough.

Previously unrecorded, we obtained the following details from one of the police officers who observed the scene, about an hour after the emergency services had completed their work.

“The big problem for us was the smell of gas, not just a smell but a dangerous concentration of gas in the kitchen and hallway that was not directly attributable to any locatable gas leak. The only place where the leak could have happened was from the kitchen hob, but all the controls were off. Later that evening, we had a gas engineer visit the site and he declared the installation free of leaks. In addition, on the floor of the hallway between the kitchen and the front door, I discovered a thin white cable, about a meter in length, of the type that is generally associated with a mobile telephone charger. In fact, I can be quite specific. It was of a proprietary brand that matched the transformer that was still plugged in the socket next to the kitchen cooker. It appears that this cable may have been dropped in the hall, having previously been attached to the particular mobile telephone that later ignited next to Edward Pitcairn on the front steps. The phone Edward Pitcairn was holding was, of course, completely destroyed, so we cannot say definitively that this was the appliance that had been on charge in the kitchen.”

In the reports published over the last two weeks, the existence of this cable on the floor of the hallway of the Pitcairn house has never been acknowledged. We regard its existence as conclusive proof that someone walked along that hallway after the other victims had died. This person was surely Edward Pitcairn and, since he had taken a mobile phone with him that was not his own, it is clear that he was intent on raising the alarm, not fleeing the scene. We here assert that this phone had definitely been on charge by the kitchen hob, that in his hurry to leave the room and only after turning off the gas controls, already perhaps short of breath, Edward Pitcairn snatched the phone on his way into the hall. The cable pulled out of the transformer but stayed attached to the phone, only to come loose and fall to the ground before he reached the front door.

We have now pieced together what we believe is a wholly plausible chain of events which would assemble all known details. Before we do that, however, there remains one crucial question to be asked and then simply answered. This detail alone, it will be seen, rubbishes the claims made elsewhere about these events and the Pitcairn family in particular. What about the fentanyl? Where did it come from?

The populist press, of course, branded the Pitcairn family, mother Gemma and daughter Elsie in particular, as habitual, middle-class drug users. Both Gemma and Elsie Pitcairn are on record as admitting to having tried various drugs. Gemma Pitcairn wrote a widely published and quoted article a decade ago in which she argued for the decriminalization of various drug offenses and the legalization of certain substances. In that article, she admitted to having been a marijuana smoker in her youth. Elsie Pitcairn’s former colleague from Xenon Media, when interviewed shortly after the incident at the Pitcairn house, was quoted as saying that the taking of cocaine by high earning professionals in the media industry is common. This led to reports that claimed Elsie Pitcairn was an habitual cocaine user. We have contacted the colleague in question, whom we can now name as Annie Kuroshi, a manager at Xenon Media, Elsie Pitcairn’s former employer. We pressed her about the statement she made last week. She conceded that what she had said had been accurately reported, but she also asserted that the information had been used very selectively and thus manipulated to tell a story she did not intend. She asserts that she was asked a general question about drug use amongst media professionals, and she did respond by saying that cocaine is very commonly used amongst many of her colleagues. But she also insists that she qualified this answer by saying that, in her experience, Elsie Pitcairn had never to her knowledge personally used that drug, or indeed any other drug. It seems that a media professional may have fallen foul of a selective soundbite quoted out of context.

We have also contacted at least ten people who have shared professional relationships with Elsie Pitcairn on projects ranging from television advertising, film production, music video production, conference presentations and even public relations campaigns. We took the trouble to insert the question about possible drug use on her part after other general questions about her character. Every single former colleague we contacted not only denied that Elsie Pitcairn was a drug user, but every single respondent also dismissed the idea as groundless. Elsie Pitcairn may have been driven by ambition, which sometimes made her as many enemies as friends, and undoubtedly, she was driven by a passion of commitment to environmental and community issues, but she never used drugs of any sort beyond alcohol. We are confident that the evidence we have will stand up in a court of law.

So where did the fentanyl come from? The answer is obvious. It came from Edward Pitcairn. He had a private, and, as it happens, wholly legal supply. No documentation exists to verify the source of the drug, of that we are sure. But we have a signed affidavit from Edward Pitcairn’s private physician, Dr. Khan, which explains everything.

On a particular day, just three weeks before the incident, Edward Pitcairn made a second visit to his physician in Central London. Some weeks before Edward Pitcairn had attended his regular health check, an annual event that previously had always passed him fit enough to return to his work in the caves on Sawu, Indonesia, where he was researching evidence of early human settlement. This year, however, the assessment had been different.

Following bouts of ill health and a particularly serious physical collapse at work, Edward Pitcairn had undergone tests in hospital before he left Indonesia for his annual leave. It fell to Dr. Khan to deliver the results of those tests, which were definitive in finding that Edward Pitcairn was suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer, a condition that was assessed as terminal and inoperable.

At the time of diagnosis, Dr. Khan had offered Edward Pitcairn the possibility of repeated tests to double check the diagnosis. He also raised the possibility of Professor Pitcairn receiving palliative care, which might have extended his life expectancy by a few months. There was also the possibility of pain relief therapy. All of these options were rejected by Edward Pitcairn for various reasons. At the time, he judged the pain relief in particular as irrelevant because he was then not in pain.

About five weeks ago, three weeks before the incident in the family home, however, Edward Pitcairn again made an appointment to see Dr. Khan a second time. He did not go through his normal channels, since he wanted to conceal his predicament from both his daughter and granddaughter. Had he made the appointment in the usual way, via his employer, Hackney Metro University, there was a chance that the information may have come to the attention of Gemma Pitcairn, since she knew the administrative staff dealing with her father very well.

Edward Pitcairn, by then, was suffering severe pain, agony that he continued to conceal from his family. He was, however, still trying to complete work that he said was his only priority. He had rejected palliative care involving chemotherapy and radiation therapy purely because both treatment options would have rendered him physically weak and thus unable to complete his work. It must be remembered that his condition precluded any possibility of cure.

He also rejected running the tests a second time. He had complete faith in the medical professionals in Indonesia and had no reason to doubt their diagnosis. In his opinion rerunning the tests would potentially take a week or more, given the succession of appointments and procedures that would have been necessary. This again would have impaired his ability to complete his work.

The rejection of painkillers came about as a result of two considerations. One was simply that at the time of his diagnosis, he was in no pain. He was advised that this could change at any time, but he also observed that the painkillers might or perhaps would make him sleep. Again, he had the completion of his ongoing work at the forefront of his considerations. Three weeks before the tragedy, however, he admitted that the situation had changed considerably.

Edward Pitcairn arranged to see Dr. Khan privately. He stated explicitly that he did not want this consultation to be recorded on his medical records. Dr. Khan can explain why in his own words. “He wanted to shield his family members from knowledge of the pain he was experiencing. He was suffering severe pain, debilitating pain. What he wanted was some way of alleviating that so that he did not put extra pressure on Gemma, who was, as always, working too hard herself and was suffering increased stress because of the Covid rules. Nor did he want to put pressure on Elsie, who had recently lost her job and, in his estimation, was showing signs of depression. I described what I could prescribe, and he immediately told me he wanted to pay for the drugs himself, privately. He asked for extra doses. I explained that an overdose could prove fatal, especially if I prescribed a fentanyl-based painkiller. We physicians often tread a fine line. Imagine, I am confronted with a patient who has a terminal condition who also thus far has shunned all pain relief. The patient now tells me he cannot bear the pain he is suffering. So, I prescribe a strong painkiller and explain the required dosage.”

Edward Pitcairn did buy a fentanyl-based pain relief prescription. He did so three times, one week’s supply on each visit. We have surveyed all the pharmacies near to Highbury Fields station and, in fact, it took less than a morning’s work to locate the one that Edward Pitcairn used, unsurprisingly the closest one to the family home. The pharmacist, off the record, confirmed that an elderly man answering Edward Pitcairn’s description did obtain pain killers on private prescriptions three times from the same store. The pharmacist remembers asking why the purchaser needed such strong pain killers and remembers the man replying that he was suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer. The answer was memorable, the pharmacist said, since such enquiries rarely provoke such specific, detailed or explicit responses.

Whether Edward Pitcairn actually used the pain killers, we cannot verify. It is possible that he stockpiled the prescriptions, perhaps with the intention of taking his own life with an overdose. How the stockpile, even if it did exist, finished up being added to a bottle of red wine destined for the table to accompany a family meal is a question that remains both unanswered and perplexing. It is a question, however, that will be addressed and answered in our version of events of that night those weeks ago when Edward Pitcairn died on the steps outside his own house, while his daughter and granddaughter already lay poisoned within.

Before addressing these events directly, however, we must report, with due sensitivity, a conversation we had with Dr. Khan earlier this week. We put it to him, in direct, unequivocal terms, that he had been asked by Edward Pitcairn that he should supply him with a lethal dose of fentanyl in order to take his own life. Dr. Khan did admit that the combined dosage of three weeks’ worth of the painkiller preparation would have been sufficient to create a lethal dose, if the whole quantity were to be ingested. We pressed him further on whether it would be enough to kill more than one person, but he would not offer an opinion, merely restating his intention had been to supply a terminally ill patient with palliative pain relief for a considerable period of time. We then pressed him on whether he had monitored Edward Pitcairn to see if he was actually using the prescribed drug. He stated clearly that he had not done so. He clarified, “The physician prescribes. The patient administers. The physician cannot know if the patient is actually taking the medication, unless it is administered under supervision in the type of scenario that Professor Pitcairn had ruled out, because he would not consent to be hospitalized. I trusted Edward Pitcairn to do what he said he would do. And that trust was based upon the many years I have known him as a patient. That is all a physician can do. I am prescribing potentially lethal medication to seriously ill patients all the time.”

We pressed Dr. Khan on whether he had allowed Edward Pitcairn to access sufficient quantities of fentanyl in the knowledge that he would use it to take his own life. Dr. Kahn would offer no comment.

One last crucial detail needs to be recorded before we present our version of events. A neighbour along Crane Grove, resident some distance along the street, it has to be said, reported to us that at approximately seven o’clock on the evening of the Pitcairn house tragedy, a white van arrived outside the house. The neighbour’s account does not record whether the van was marked in anyway and, if truth be told, the neighbour was too distant to have read any identification even if it had existed. A white van, a small saloon car-sized van, pulled up outside the Pitcairn house and two men in high visibility vests got out. These are the two men who were assumed in the populist press to be gas fitters called out to investigate a suspected leak. But, as we stated earlier, the visit by the gas company did not happen until after the tragedy had unfolded. Approximately half an hour later, two men in high visibility vests left the Pitcairn house and drove away in the same white van. We asked this witness whether the men who left were the same two men who had entered the house. The neighbour was not able to record any physical characteristics of either man, since they were too far away to be recognized.

In our version of events, the identities of these two men are crucial. No one from within the Pitcairn household reported a gas leak. To our knowledge, no one in the Pitcairn household was expecting a call of any kind from engineers. We have checked with the Pitcairn’s energy suppliers and with the local company that did regular odd jobs around the house. No one has any record of a request for a visit on that evening from anyone in the Pitcairn family. And neither did the mobile phones of either Gemma or Elsie Pitcairn reveal any recent communication with anyone who might have sent workmen to the house. Neither, of course, were they delivering food. It does not take half an hour to deliver a take-away and, in any case, the Pitcairns were cooking for themselves that night. There were prepared ingredients ready to be cooked on the kitchen work surfaces.

We have now arrived at the point where we must present our scenario. We reject, utterly reject the sequence of events as presented in the popular press. Edward Pitcairn did not deliberately poison his daughter, her lover and his granddaughter. And neither did he do so accidentally.

We do have in our possession a leaked document from a private security company that describes a sequence of events that was to be enacted. Our source made available to us a scenario suggesting that a person who regularly slept on the streets in the area would be substituted for one of the firm’s operatives in an operation to dishonour the names of people involved with environmental protests in the capital. The leak did not specify a target or a method to be used. What it did say was that a man in his forties was to be taken off the street, fed, clothed and generally cleaned up so he could be substituted for another to preserve that other man’s identity. The person who leaked the story only did so after the Pitcairn deaths, since he thought he may have been involved in some way and wanted to clarify that he had played no part in delivering the man to the scene, only in his prior preparation. It is our conclusion that this substitute was to take the place of Geoff Sullivan at the Pitcairn’s table. We also assert that this substitute was one of the two men who arrived in the white van at approximately seven o’clock.

Indeed, it is the role of Mr. Sullivan that is crucial to our story. He was an insider in the Pitcairn household. Presumably he knew about the existence of the fentanyl in Edward’s room. It would thus have proved easy for him to access the drug, lace the wine and then serve it to the family.

It was then that he would have called his accomplice, asking him to deliver the stand-in Geoff Sullivan. By the time the two men in high visibility vests arrived at the house, the Pitcairn family, as far as Mr. Sullivan was concerned, were all dead. Except, of course, we know that Edward was not. The stand-in was duly delivered and, seeing what had happened in that kitchen, ceased to cooperate. He had to be force-fed the poisoned wine, hence the spillage on the male body and on the floor. The poison did obviously take effect and it was then that Sullivan placed his phone on charge next to the cooker and turned the hob’s gas on. At which point he and his accomplice left, Geoff Sullivan donning the high visibility vest on the way. This scenario thus explains why the male victim in the Pitcairn kitchen had no wallet, no mobile phone, nothing about his person that would facilitate his identification. Indeed, when police later searched the house, they found nothing whatsoever to suggest that someone called Geoff Sullivan had ever visited the house, let alone occasionally lived there.

About one hour later, by which time the gas concentration in the kitchen would have reached explosive levels, Sullivan would then ring the specially modified phone, whose battery was set to ignite. There would be a gas explosion in the kitchen and evidence of the poisoning would be erased by combustion, as would any possibility of ever identifying the stand-in.

What Geoff Sullivan did not do, however, was to ensure that Edward Pitcairn had indeed drunk his wine. In fact, Edward Pitcairn had self-administered one of his painkillers before going down to join the family in the kitchen. He had taken only a recommended dose and it took a while to have its full effect. When it did so, he fell asleep, deeply enough so he could not be easily roused. This explains the full glass of wine that was still at Edward’s place on the kitchen table and also explains why Sullivan did not force any wine into Edward Pitcairn’s mouth. Sullivan was under the impression that the job was already done.

The plan was for the gas to leak for about an hour. This would have raised the methane concentration in the kitchen air to about six per cent, sufficient for a gas fire, though probably not an explosion to take place.

The specially modified mobile phone was ready to receive its call on charge next to the kitchen hob which was leaking gas. About a half hour after Geoff Sullivan left, Edward Pitcairn woke from his fentanyl sleep. His family was already dead at the table He smelled gas and reflexes took over. He stood, fired by a raw energy of survival, approached the gas hob and turned off all the controls. He then headed towards the door to the hall, a stagger, perhaps, of four or five steps past the mobile phone still on charge, lying on the work surface next to the hob.

Instinctively, he grasped the phone, aware, perhaps, that this was a means of raising an alarm.

But the phone was on charge. He grasped it and walked, quickly, his snatch disconnecting the charging cable from its transformer, not the phone. Halfway along the hall, the cable became detached from the phone as he staggered, perhaps supporting himself on the wall as he moved. This is the only explanation of the presence of the charging cable halfway along the house’s entrance hall between the kitchen and the front door.

Edward Pitcairn made it to the front door. He opened it, probably staggering, still unable to breathe properly and already weak from his terminal cancer, plus the continuing residual effects of his painkiller drug. He made it as far as the front steps, perhaps still stumbling. The front door of the house closed behind him. It had a sprung closure bracket. He lay down on those steps, or perhaps fell, exhausted and died there, not from fentanyl, and not from gassing, but from terminal pancreatic cancer.

Edward Pitcairn lay there dead for approximately half an hour. He was not noticed, because as Jaswant Singh testified, there was no one around. In addition, Edward Pitcairn had reached the bottom of the entrance steps, so he lay largely out of sight of anyone who did not directly peer through the barred gate that gave access to the street. Crucially, his death grasp still held tight that mobile phone from the kitchen. It had been on charge just minutes before, but now it was rigidly held by a dead hand close to his midriff.

But this was no ordinary mobile phone. It might sound speculative, to say the least, but Edward Pitcairn had inadvertently carried what was to be the detonator of a gas explosion. The mobile phone took its planned call. We must presume that it was Geoff Sullivan, now returned to a safe distance, who called his own number, set off a lithium battery fire and effectively cremated Edward Pitcairn. What it did not do, obviously, was ignite a gas explosion in the Pitcairn’s kitchen in order to destroy both the fentanyl that had killed the three people at the dining table and to hide the identity of the male victim.

Edward Pitcairn was already dead. This is why the eyewitness account of Jaswant Singh describes no movement along the street before the start of the fire. And, indeed, these flames caused no human reaction, despite the fact that the fire was actually burning through the body of an apparent victim. Had that victim retained any degree of consciousness, the flames would surely have prompted some reflex reaction. There was none. And there was none because Edward Pitcairn was already dead, and had been so, lying at the base of the family home’s entrance steps, for at least half an hour.

As a result of our analysis, we declare the popular press analysis of events is completely false. Edward Pitcairn was innocent of having conspired to kill his family members. In fact, Gemma Pitcairn’s lover, Geoff Sullivan was the instigator of a deliberate and planned attempt to eliminate the Pitcairn family and at the same time to destroy the persona and professional reputation of Edward Pitcairn.