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“A confidential source with close knowledge of these events told me a fascinating story about how the poison was finally discovered. It’s never been revealed before. It hinges on expertise, and luck.”

“Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You [Watson] have attempted to tinge it with romanticism”. The Sign of Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)

“At Aldermaston they first used a technique called spectroscopy to analyse the samples. We asked one of the world's most eminent particle physicists, Prof Ian Shipsey, to explain how it works.”

Prof Shipsey: “We take the blood and we place it into a vessel. We attach the vessel to a vacuum pump to remove all of the air. In that vessel is also a sensitive camera that can detect radiation if it’s present in the blood. We attach the camera to a computer, and the output of the camera produces the trace that you see on the screen. This trace [points to screen] is the background level, and this peak is the signal. The location of the peak identifies the type of the radioactive isotope present.”

Watson: “Aldermaston first looked for Gamma radiation, and they noticed something very unusual; a small spike in the trace. By chance a scientist who’d worked on Britain’s nuclear bomb programme overheard the scientists discussing the results. He immediately recognised this as the small gamma ray spike of polonium, which used to be a key component of nuclear weapons.”

Prof Shipsey: “Polonium is 100% deadly. It destroys cells, the immune system, and leads to organ failure throughout the body.”

Watson: “Does it surprise you that he managed to recognise that Gamma spike?”

Prof Shipsey: “For most people it would be hard to do, but with the right experience it’s like recognising an old friend’s face in a crowd.”

Thus exposing as a fairy story, Watson’s wheeze that an almost miraculous breakthrough took place. The unusual reading would undoubtedly have been brought to the attention of someone who could recognise it, ‘like an old friend’s face in a crowd’, sooner or later.

Watson: “The realisation that Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned by Polonium was described to me as a ‘Eureka’ moment. The implication for public health was severe. Polonium-210 is highly radioactive. I understand that night the government’s public health body was warned about a possible radiological contamination incident on the streets of London.

“The Health Protection Agency scrambled its emergency team. 20 scientists worked through the night, such was the risk to public health.”

Peter Clark: “We were finding Polonium on aircraft on which people involved in this inquiry had flown; in a football stadium, in restaurants, in hotels. And of course the public were understandably very concerned – were they at risk?”

Ah yes – the football stadium, where Arsenal played CSKA Moscow that evening. Several witnesses testified that on the day of the poisoning, both Lugovoy and Kovtun were pre-occupied with football and spoke of little else, though of the two only Lugovoy, not Kovtun, had one of the highly-prized tickets, which Berezovsky’s son-in-law had obtained a couple of months previously. At the offices of Continental Petroleum Ltd, where Lugovoy and Kovtun had a meeting that day…

“6.256 Mr Gorokov and Mrs Davison were both, as it happened, football fans who were due to go to the match that evening. They both recalled discussing the prospects for the match with Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun. Mr Gorokov recalled speaking to Mr Lugovoy for 15 or 20 minutes about football, including looking at his ticket and telling him that he had a good seat. He was asked directly whether they had discussed any business at all – he said, “No, this time it was not business; it was only saying this sporting matters.”

6.257 Dr Shadrin recalled that there had been a meeting on that day and that he had had some general discussions with Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun about possible new projects, but his main memory appears to have been of Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun discussing the football with Mrs Davison and Mr Gorokov. He said:

“… frankly I don’t remember that we actually discussed anything… it was midday/early afternoon, because obviously everyone was going to… attend the match… the major part of the conversation was just going into jokes and discussion about football.””

Watson: “The following day [23 November 2006] Aldermaston confirmed it was poisoning with radioactive Polonium 210. Alexander Litvinenko died in hospital the very same day. His hospital room was sealed.”

Prof Nathwani: “I've been a consultant for over 20 years and I've never seen anything like this and I hope I never do again.”

Watson: “So it’s possible that this never would have been found out and it would have been put down to some mystery illness perhaps?”

Prof AN: “Yes, absolutely.”

No, absolutely not, for the reasons specified above.

Watson: “If he’d died a week earlier, it would simply have been recorded as an unexplained death.”

…having already been trailed as a case of radioactive poisoning in the mainstream media, and in official communiques from the Metropolitan Police. Who does Watson think he is fooling?