Elite forensic squad to probe London tube disaster

Last week's cataclysmic crash on the Central Line of London's tube may have been caused by "the train failing to travel along the rails and then hitting a brick wall", a top disaster investigator has concluded.

The train was carrying 800 people when the last three carriages came off the rails as it entered Chancery Lane station in central London on Saturday. More than 30 people were injured as passengers were thrown around like rag dolls in a tumble drier and showered with shards of killer glass.

The entire Central Line fleet will remain grounded for up to 10 years as a crack squad of transport forensic scientists conduct a fingernail search of the scene in an attempt to reconstruct the disaster. Chancery Lane station will not reopen until the Ethiopian cleaner — who has the only broom on the entire network — is located and called to the scene.

Reports indicate that he was caught on CCTV cameras carelessly tossing sawdust on some particularly malodorous vomitus at Theydon Bois. He has not been seen since, and is thought to be somewhere on the Victoria Line.

Tube officials are confident that they will find both the cleaner and the cause of the crash. "We have the best in the business working on this," asserted one besuited middle manager as he sped to the incident in his Mazda convertible.

Indeed, the investigators have an enviable track record in solving some of the world's most formidable forensic challenges. In 1974, they concluded that the Turkish Airlines DC-10 crash in France — in which 346 people died — had been caused by "the aircraft hitting the ground at high speed after falling from a great height".

Their comprehensive dossier on the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake presented the controversial theory that "things fell down because the ground was moving a lot", and the team's contribution to the 1983-4 General Belgrano enquiry was to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the "ship sank after filling with more water than it could reasonably be expected to carry".

Meanwhile, the manufacturer of the train — Bombardier — has defended its track record. "Faster then Mercury, cheaper than Poundsaver, safer than Titanic: that's our motto," one Bombardier executive proudly told The Rockall Times.

The report into the crash is expected in about 12 years. It will completely exonerate the manufacturers and London Transport and place the blame firmly where it belongs — on the shoulders of the driver.