If the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) and its Intelligence and Investigations Unit, not to mention the IOC and its family of lawyers as well as those at the Court of Arbitration for Sport want to know where it all went wrong when they let 23 positive doping cases go unpunished in secret and without due inquiry in 2021, they could do no better than remind themselves of the critical work and disputative approach of a famous forensic, criminal pathologist from Britain.

Professor Malcolm Cameron worked on the official British autopsy of Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess, the Australian court case in which a dingo was said to have carried off a baby girl in a tale that made the silver screen with Meryl Streep as the mother, and the identification of the Turin Shroud, among other cases worthy of an Agatha Christie masterpiece.

As Wada welcomes the interim report of the investigator it appointed to answer two questions on the front line of a process that has a very long way to go before it can be taken seriously - read my colleague Jens Weinreich at The Inquisitor for clues - - it seems that the global guardians of clean sport are in desperate need to having all of Agatha’s sleuths and Prof. Cameron in one room to help get them get back on track.

“Taffy”, as the Swansea-born emeritus consultant to British Armed Forces in forensic medicine was affectionately known, was not only a real-world Hercule Poirot but the living embodiment of some of the best lines Christie wrote for the Belgian private detective the best-selling author’s website describes as “unsurpassed in his intelligence and understanding of the criminal mind, respected and admired by police forces and heads of state across the globe.”

Prof Cameron was the man who sent testers to Hiroshima airport in 1994 because he guessed correctly that the rogues plying under-age Chinese swimmers with doping might think it was safe to do so during the safety of long-haul flights. Eleven positives resulted in one go at those Asian Games, seven of them among members of the China swim team that had dominated GDR-style at the World Championships in Rome a little over a month earlier.

Taffy was also the forensic mind who asked out-of-competition testers Al and Kay Guy to pop along for a surprise visit to the home of Ireland’s Michelle Smith on a cold, dark morning in January 1998. He also unearthed hidden truths about dozens of underage Chinese swimmers doped by their guardians in the 1990s.