At 10.45am last Sunday a chambermaid in the Pegasus hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, opened the door of room 374 on the 12th floor to find a gruesome sight: a dead body in the bathroom.

Bob Woolmer, a former England test batsman turned coach of the Pakistan national team, was slumped naked between the lavatory and the bath tub. His face was bruised and slightly bloodied.

There were “traces” of blood, vomit and faeces on the floor and walls, but it was not obviously a murder scene, according to Mark Shields, deputy commissioner of the Jamaican police.

The horrified chambermaid summoned help and a nurse and a doctor arrived. Members of the Pakistan team, in Jamaica for the cricket World Cup, also rushed in. At least six arrived before the police did.

“As soon as he was found to be dying or dead, the team was called,” said Shields.

As attempts were made to resuscitate Woolmer, his body was dragged into the bedroom. He was taken to a nearby hospital by ambulance where he was pronounced dead.

Cricket, to many people the most perplexing of games, suddenly faced an unprecedented mystery.

The previous day Woolmer’s team had suffered one of the greatest upsets in international cricket by losing to Ireland, a team of part-time players.

The defeat blew Pakistan, ranked as the fourth best team in the world, out of the World Cup. Within hours angry fans had spilt out on to the streets in Pakistan and burnt the coach’s effigy, chanting “Death to Bob Woolmer”.

Could Woolmer really have been killed? At first it seemed preposterous. But three days later the police revealed that they were treating his death as “suspicious”.

Within hours rumours were circulating — not of a revenge killing by enraged fans, but of bribery, corruption, match-fixing and poison.

“Woolmer has been murdered by [match fixers] who seek to control the game,” Sarfraz Narwaz, a former Pakistan player, told the world’s media.

Still few would believe it. Narwaz was dismissed as a fantasist. But on Thursday, Woolmer’s death suddenly turned into an international sensation. The police officially announced that they were treating the case as murder: a small bone in his neck had been broken, probably by strangulation.

Cricket’s great whodunnit murder mystery had begun.

SHIELDS, the investigator charged with solving the mystery, enjoys rock star status in Jamaica.

A good-looking former Scotland Yard detective, he served in Special Branch, antiterrorism, royal protection and the serious and organised crime squads before moving to crime-torn Kingston.

After attending his first crime scene, where four bodies lay strewn in a Kingston street after a gun battle, he issued a radical witness appeal. “I gave out my mobile phone number on the front page of the newspaper, saying ‘Call me’. I’ve had thousands of calls since then . . . From that we have had intelligence on corrupt cops, solved murders, found firearms,” he said.

He has faced nothing quite as puzzling as Woolmer’s death, however.

Shields believes that Woolmer knew his attacker and freely let him into the room. The room and body itself showed no obvious outward signs of violent disturbance.

The door and its lock were intact and there were, said Shields yesterday, no signs of “significant injury” and no signs of a wild struggle in the bedroom. “He’s 6ft 1in, he’s a big man and unless he was impaired in some way he would have been difficult to restrain,” said Shields.

“In most murder scenarios there is often a knife wound or a gunshot wound or something else where it’s obvious that this person was unlawfully killed. This is one of those cases where it wasn’t clear at the time that he was necessarily murdered.”

Dismissing much of the rumours swirling around the killing, he revealed that:

- There was no heated argument between Woolmer and his players on the bus following their defeat by Ireland: “If anything, the mood was extremely subdued.”

- An e-mail that Woolmer sent to his wife before his death contained no important evidence: “There is nothing in the e-mail that gives me any cause for alarm. It’s a normal communication between husband and wife.”

- The chambermaid who discovered the body was not sent to the room after an anonymous call to hotel staff: “I’m not aware of any call . . . Judging by the time of day, it’s probable that a chambermaid was working her way along the corridor . . . she was doing what chambermaids do.”

- There were no obvious signs of robbery: “As far as we know there is nothing missing. His passport, his credit card, all of that was in the cupboard. But we’re keeping an open mind. Later on it might transpire that something is missing.”

- Poisoning was unlikely: “If it was poison, then let poison take its course. Why would you poison and then subdue him and go through the thing of going into the room and finishing him off? It doesn’t fit.”

- Woolmer was likely to have known his assailant or assailants or at least felt comfortable about opening his door to them, because he was half-naked. “The likelihood is that if someone is going to open a hotel door room, generally speaking you’d do so in just a towel to somebody you knew or possibly a member of staff,” Shields said.

“It’s not normal if you’re half-undressed to open the door to just anybody. I think that’s common sense. I’m not saying he knew the person, I’m saying it’s likely he knew the person if he opened the door.”

- There is no key suspect: “Everybody is a suspect or a witness. It is a possibility that the killer or killers were associates of Bob Woolmer’s and I emphasis the word possibility.”

Who might those associates include?

BEHIND its gentlemanly veneer, modern cricket is a circus of big money and high stakes, topped off with late-night partying. It is a sport beset by bitter rivalries, prima donnas and rumours of match-fixing and mafia betting scams.

Such a volatile brew provides a cast of suspects for the killing like something out of Agatha Christie or the Midsomer Murders.

Woolmer had certainly encountered the dark side of cricket. In 1996, when he was coach to the South African team, he had gone to a meeting of the players in Mumbai while on tour in India and found them discussing whether to throw a match.

He later revealed: “I went into the meeting and it was a bombshell because of the amount of money — $250,000 I think it was — to chuck a game of no relevance at all.”

He told the players to drop the idea and he claimed to have informed the South African authorities about it — although they subsequently denied this.

Four years later he was again caught up in a match-fixing scandal when Hansie Cronje, the South African captain, admitted that he had taken £125,000 from an Indian bookmaker to throw a match.

When Woolmer became the Pakistan coach in 2004, he knew what he faced.

“There was much to put me off — many stories and rumours of match-fixing and ball-scratching,” he told Ivo Tennant, a writer with whom he worked. “And yet the talent emerging from the country appeared endless.”

In 2005 Woolmer met K K Paul, a senior Indian police officer investigating cricket corruption, and asked about the Cronje scandal.

“He wanted to hear first-hand knowledge of how we narrowed down on Cronje and wanted details,” Paul said last week. “At the end of the meeting there was no element of doubt in his mind [about Cronje’s guilt].”

Woolmer also clashed with some of the men on the Pakistan team. “He used to ridicule players,” said one who asked to remain anonymous. “And sometimes this attitude hurt.”

Richard Pybus, a former coach for Pakistan, pointed out that the team was highly unpredictable: “They have an amazing capacity to ambush themselves and never get into a space where it’s simply plain sailing for a coach.”

On March 13, Pakistan played a World Cup match against the West Indies. The home team included a batsman who had “allegations of involvement with an Indian bookmaker hanging over him”, according to Jamaican newspapers. The West Indies unexpectedly won by 54 runs.

Woolmer was not happy. He criticised Inzamam-ul-Haq, the Pakistan captain, for slow scoring. “Our running between the wickets leaves a lot to be desired,” he said.

Four days later it was the turn of the Irish minnows to humiliate Pakistan. At the press conference afterwards, Woolmer hinted that enough was enough.

“I would like to sleep on my future as coach,” he said. “It’s what I do best, what I try to do best. Therefore I’m not going to throw away coaching like that.

“However, internationally, I will give it some thought. Travelling and being involved nonstop in hotels and so on takes its toll.” Woolmer dallied briefly in the lobby of the hotel, talking to fans and players. Then at about 7.30pm he went up to his room.

He ordered a meal through room service and sent an e-mail to his wife, Gill, in Cape Town, South Africa. “He was really depressed and could not believe how [the defeat[] had happened,” his wife said later. But he believed that “what happened was in the past and one had to move on”.

At some point someone approached his door. It had a spyhole to check the identity of visitors. Whoever it was either entered with a passkey or was let in by Woolmer without fuss.

Danish Kaneira, a Pakistan player, was in the next room. “I didn’t hear any noises coming from Woolmer’s room,” he said later.

The initial pathologist’s report after his body was found was “inconclusive”. Although Woolmer’s body had blood on one cheek and a gash on his nose, there was no clear sign of how he had died.

However, the forensic scientists eventually discovered evidence of foul play. “A bone in [Woolmer’s] neck, near the glands, was broken and this suggests somebody put pressure on it,” revealed one police officer.

The pathologist concluded that Woolmer had been killed by “asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation”.

“It would take some force, because Bob was a large man. It would have taken a significant force to subdue him, but of course at this stage we do not know how many people were in the room at the time,” said Shields as he announced the pathologist’s decision.

“It could be one or more people were involved in this murder,” Outside experts were baffled at the sudden change of tack by the investigators.

“I don’t understand why the word ‘inconclusive’ was used at first,” said Garfield Blake, president of the Jamaican Association of Clinical Pathologists. “To say that and follow it with massive strangulation — these two things are poles apart.” Strangulation can cause death in two ways: either by cutting off the blood flow to the brain or by preventing air getting into the lungs. Pressure on the carotid artery carrying blood to the brain can cause death in less than a minute. Although such strangulation can leave bruising around the neck, it does not always do so.

The police have not identified which bone in Woolmer’s neck was broken, but it is assumed to be the “hyoid bone” — a small structure at the front of the throat, just below the jaw, that is typically broken in stranglings.

MUCH else remains unrevealed or unexplained. Was this murder committed in a rage or was the killing premeditated? Did someone creep up, wrap an arm or a towel round his neck from behind and kill him clinically?

One pathologist last week suggested that the lack of bruising or obvious violence indicated that the attack was carefully planned. Violent killings in Jamaica usually tend to involve guns or knives.

This supports the theory that the killing was either to silence Woolmer or to take vengeance for a grievance — possibly connected to match-fixing.

Last week Michael Vaughan, the England captain, confirmed that match-fixing still occurs, saying: “If I’m honest, yes, I think it does.”

There is no suggestion that Woolmer was involved. Was he about to blow the whistle? The evidence is contradictory.

He was due to publish a new book on cricket, but it contains nothing on match-fixing. He was also updating his biography, but in the notes he had sent to his ghost writer there was nothing about match-fixing either.

Osman Samiuddin, editor of a leading cricket website, said last week that Woolmer had invited him to collaborate on writing about his experience with Pakistan. But Samiuddin released an e-mail in which Woolmer had said: “I am not a name and shame guy, just the honest facts.”

Paul said that Woolmer had told him that he intended to write about “corruption and TV rights”.

However, if the motive was to silence Woolmer, would the assailant not have taken his laptop in the hope of destroying any evidence he might have had? It was left, apparently untouched, in his room.

What of the alternative theory: did an argument, perhaps about match-fixing, run out of control? Did the unfit, unwell Woolmer — he suffered from type two diabetes — get hit in the throat during a row and choke on his own vomit? If so, who could the row have been with?

Police are examining footage from the hotel’s CCTV cameras. One covers the lift doors on the 12th floor. It is thought that no strangers were recorded getting out of the lift on Woolmer’s level that night.

A Pakistani official was reported as claiming: “All the people who visited him on that evening were team members.”

However, Shields said that no outsiders had viewed the CCTV tape. Moreover, Woolmer’s room was at the far end of the corridor from the CCTV, and nearby are a less secure service lift and stairs, although they too have CCTV.

Shields said the CCTV tapes were being transferred into digital format: “I’m not going to rush to conclusions until we have crystal clear CCTV, or we find out it’s a grainy mess.”

Last night the mystery deepened when it emerged from Pakistan that Woolmer had sent a second e-mail from his laptop, resigning as coach. He wrote to Nasim Ashraf, chairman of the the Pakistan cricket board: “I would like to announce my retirement after the World Cup to live the rest of my life in Cape Town."

Pakistani sources suggested that it may have been sent at 6am, less than five hours before his body was found.

Who was the killer? Shields is keeping an open mind. But, he said, “it seems difficult to believe at this stage that it was a complete stranger.”

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