He is leading the search for any sign of human remains amongst the ashes of Carriage H, his team suspended above the floor on scaffolding.

Although the job would be too much for most of us, Dr West is well used to the grim scenes of disaster sites.

Jill Dando: killed with a single gunshot

The world-renowned Scottish scientist has been at the centre of inquiries into Britain's most famous crimes and disasters for more than a decade.

Dr West, 54, carried out the post mortem examination on BBC TV presenter Jill Dando when she was murdered earlier this year. He also declared Robert Maxwell's death a probable suicide in 1991.

Dr West was at the heart of the inquiries into the Kings Cross fire in 1987 and the Clapham rail crash in 1988, and played a key part in the inquiry into the Dunblane school massacre in March 1997.

In 1984 he was able to point detectives to the exact spot where the IRA Brighton bomb had been hidden, as well as showing that WPC Yvonne Fletcher had been shot from the window of the Libyan Embassy in London.

He also found key evidence that overturned the conviction of paratrooper Lee Clegg, jailed in 1991 for shooting teenager Karen Reilly in Belfast.

A fireball tore up an escalator in the King's Cross fire of 1987

Originally from Glasgow, Dr West graduated from Edinburgh University and is director of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Guy's Hospital in London. He lives in Sussex with his wife Vesna.

"My coping mechanism is to concentrate on the mechanics of doing the job, the dissecting, the measuring of wounds and injuries," he once told the Daily Mail.

"In noting and observing, my medical training takes over and I can block out the horror of what I'm seeing.

"When I have to deal with large numbers of bodies such as at Clapham or Kings Cross I suffer from disturbed sleep for a few weeks afterwards.

"I anticipate that as a normal human reaction. I find it goes away of its own accord."

The work of pathologists has been the focus of TV series including the BBC's Silent Witness.

But Dr West has short shrift for the show. "Amanda Burton's attitude was all wrong. She wouldn't last five minutes as a real pathologist."

Colleagues say he carries a pervasive whiff of mortuary disinfectant wherever he goes.

Two things make a good pathologist, according to Dr West.