Hi I'm writing a story where the dead body of a man, presumed to have come off a commercial tanker is found on a Portugese beach. I need to know how it would be dealt with, who would be involved from reporting to the local police, what would happen to the body, who would carry out an autopsy and assuming the body was unidentified where would it go and how long kept until burial if not identified. And who would give authority to be transferred to another country assuming it was eventually identified Also any info on websites with info on British forensic or police procedures Thank you !! Jackdaw
The kind of information you're looking for, you may need to find someone in a Portuguese police department willing to talk about procedures (on paper and in reality) with you. I doubt you will find much about this online, unless someone has already written something similar in a novel. I know that Patricia Cornwell has written about British forensics in one of her novels, and in another couple of novels her character had to obtain information from the French medical examiners - Cornwell herself has worked on a medical examiner's staff, and has developed her own network of contacts worldwide. Most crime novelists do develop their own list of technical consultants for realistic inside information on procedures and real day to day operations. Your story sounds like it will require quite a few such contacts to be successful.
If you can read Portuguese the official police report into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal contains forensic information. It is freely available online, and at the bottom of the Madeleine McCann wikipedia page, which also provides some information on Portuguese judicial proceedings, investigatory processes and terminology.
Hi Jackdaw. Google. The most useful tool for any writer wanting a crash course in anything they want info about. Luckily I'm writing one similar based in England. lol...
