Deputy police commissioner Mark Shields: pilloried by an impatient British press. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
Rory Carroll is reporting for the Guardian from Kingston
There is a reason the collective noun for a group of British journalists is "pack", and the detective leading the Bob Woolmer murder investigation has found out why. Mark Shields has been hunted, cornered and mauled.
From being feted as the super-cop who would crack open the mystery, he is now being pilloried in some corners of the media as a vainglorious bumbler too busy partying to find the killer.
That is a travesty. Former colleagues from Scotland Yard, and current colleagues in Jamaica where Mr Shields is now a deputy police commissioner, agree he is a diligent professional.
Since the Pakistan cricket coach was pronounced dead in Kingston on March 18, and the pathologist said manual strangulation was the cause of death, Mr Shields has been the public face of an intensely watched global investigation.
Too public, it seems. The Mail on Sunday, in Fleet Street parlance, turned him over. Treating him like an errant soap star over two pages, it sunk its fangs into the English divorcee, highlighting his glamorous Jamaican girfriend and active social life. The implication: a man unfit to nail Bob's killer.
The Daily Mail followed up by trying to draw blood from his plan to return to England this weekend for a short break with his children, suggesting he was abandoning ship when the inquiry appeared to be headed for a long haul.
It is no exaggeration to say Mr Shields has been devastated. And bewildered. Pretty much all of us here covering the case respect him as decent, dedicated and competent. So why the attacks?
For the past week there has been a news vacuum. With no developments to report, one option for the media is to confect "scoops" (we have had al-Qaida and Harry Potter angles).
Another is to switch the focus to Mr Shields. He is handsome and likes the limelight. Hardly sins, but enough for some to consider his private life fair game. So his children and ex-wife are harassed, his off-the-record mention of an Easter break is turned against him and his reputation is thrashed.
Unlike the Woolmer case there is no mystery over whodunnit or why. It is the way of the pack.
