Can You Handle The Truth?

A journalist friend once covered an inquest into an accidental death at which the deceased's widow was asked if she had any questions for the investigating officers.

She had only one, for the policeman who had been first one the scene: did her husband suffer?

"No," said the cop, "he'd died instantly."

One's journalist friend knew the particular cop and spotted his 'tell'. "You were lying," she suggested to him afterwards. "Yes," he replied. "The back of the poor bastard's head was missing and he was alive and conscious for at least 10 minutes after I got there. But I couldn't tell her that."

You can accept the official version:

Pte Kovco died from a single shot to the head, fired from his own service pistol at his barracks in Baghdad in April 2006. An earlier military inquiry found he shot himself accidentally while "skylarking" with his weapon.

Or you can insist on the truth:

...in the month before he was deployed to Iraq, Pte Kovco had a brief affair with a woman in Brisbane. He told her he had been molested by a 17-year-old neighbour when he was young and had thought about shooting himself in the head. "He said that he was drinking and on the back of a ute in a paddock when his father came and stopped him."

-- Nick