A team of Scotland Yard detectives will travel to Jamaica next week to conduct a review of the Bob Woolmer murder investigation, amid fears that local police may have missed vital clues.

Mark Shields, the Deputy Commissioner of Jamaica Police and a former Scotland Yard detective, told The Times that he will ask for a team of British murder investigators to assist in the investigation, because “sometimes you can miss the blindingly obvious”.

Mr Shields emphasised that an outside review of murder investigations was normal procedure in British investigations after seven to fourteen days. He added that he would expect the Scotland Yard team, probably a six-man force from the Specialist Crime Directorate, “early next week”, but that the exact date of arrival had to be confirmed.

Mr Shields said that he remained confident in his investigation but added: “If we have missed something it’s an ideal time to find out.” He said that the Scotland Yard team will look at the most significant lines of inquiry and conduct a review of the forensic evidence.

Mr Shields said that he is also considering bringing the FBI into the investigation, possibly by sending forensic evidence to an FBI expert at the bureau’s headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.

The move comes amid a growing realisation that behind Mr Shields lies a creaky and antiquated Jamaican infrastruc-ture poorly equipped to deal with such a high-profile and complex case. Allegations are already mounting that the investigation has been bungled.

When Mr Shields arrived in Jamaica in 2005, a country of three million with more than 1,300 murders a year — a rate higher than Colombia’s — there was no routine fingerprinting of suspects, no use of DNA evidence and no closed-circuit television cameras.

He has prided himself in bringing modern investigative technology and techniques to the Jamaican force, and has produced results. Murders are down by 20 per cent, from 1,680 in 2005 to 1,340 last year.

But The Times has witnessed some extraordinarily antediluvian scenes within crucial areas of the Woolmer enquiry. Mr Shields himself, while trying not to offend Jamaicans, has had to concede that it took almost a week to transfer the VHS video CCTV film taken from Woolmer’s 12th-floor hotel corridor on to a digitally enhanced format because there was only one laboratory in Jamaica with the technology to do it. He also conceded yesterday that he had still not yet received the toxicology results from Woolmer’s body, or a report on his body tissue, nearly two weeks after the murder. Without those Mr Shields cannot know Woolmer’s time of death, which he says is key to the investigation. “I wish I did [have the results],” he said. “But I don’t want to pressure them.”

In addition to giving him a time of death, Mr Shields said that the toxicology result would reveal if Woolmer was drugged “so it was easier to strangle and asphyxiate a man who was 6ft 1in and 250lb”.

The next formal stage in the Woolmer investigation is an inquest. The Kingston Coroner’s Court is a tiny, wooden, one-room venue on the third floor above a school in Duke Street, amid the chaos of central Kingston. There is a backlog of more than 4,000 cases at the court.

But when The Times visited the court, Patrick Murphy, a white Jamaican who is the Coronor, was sitting with two assistants simply chatting. They appeared to be doing nothing. Their desks were devoid of paperwork.

The Times also visited the pathology laboratory at the University of the West Indies hospital where Woolmer was taken after his lifeless body was discovered at the Pegasus hotel in Kingston at 10.45am last Sunday.

Police say that Woolmer, the Pakistan cricket coach, was strangled some time between 8pm on Saturday and 10.45am the next day, hours after his team was knocked out of the Cricket World Cup by the debutante Ireland team.

Pathology tests on Woolmer are not being conducted at the hospital laboratory, but the scene inside gave a glimpse of how pathology examinations in Jamaica are performed.

The temperature inside the old, slightly decrepit room was more than 80F (27C). Two clanky metal room fans swirled musty air around six technicians, none wearing masks, who were dipping various bits of body tissue into open vials. One women, standing behind a counter, at first glance looked as though she was about to eat her lunch. In fact she was dissecting some breast tissue. Old cardboard folders lay stacked high, gathering dust.

There have also been concerns raised about the postmortem examination conducted on Woolmer by Ere Sheshi-ah, an Indian who moved to Jamaica 12 years ago. Mr Shields said that he is confident of the finding that Woolmer was murdered. But Carolyn Gomes, executive director of Jamaicans for Justice, said that there is such a shortage of pathologists in Jamaica that bodies are frequently not properly dissected or fingerprinted, and are often buried with bullets in them.

What we know

7.30pm Woolmer last seen alive Saturday evening going to his room at the Pegasus hotel after a press conference with Captain Inzaman Ul Haq, captain of Pakistan cricket team

8pm - 9pm Ordered room service between 8pm and 9pm

8pm - 9pm Last e-mail, possibly to his wife, between 8pm and 9pm

10.45am Discovered unconscious at 10.45am on Sunday by chambermaid

12.14pm Pronounced dead at 12.14pm at University of West Indies hospital

Tuesday Police called the death “suspicious”. Postmortem examination conducted

Thursday 6pm Police declare that Woolmer was “asphyxiated due to manual strangulation”

Friday/Saturday Pakistani team gave witness statements, were fingerprinted and provided DNA samples

Saturday 8pm Pakistani team leaves Jamaica

CCTV Police are now in possession of good-quality CCTV footage from Woolmer’s 12th-floor corridor, showing every person on that corridor between 7.30pm Saturday and 10.45am Sunday

What we don’t know Was Woolmer drugged?

Why was vomit found in his bathroom? Police awaiting toxicology report, so time of death is still unclear

Motive Unclear whether Woolmer was killed because of a match-fixing link or a by an assailant unrelated to cricket

Why was no mark left on Woolmer’s neck? Police suspect killer used ligature but are not certain.

Funeral No date set for release of Woolmer’s body