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Det Sgt Bailey is now being questioned by Adam Straw KC, who is asking questions on behalf of the Sturgess family

Straw asks Bailey about the misty goggles he had during the search of the house, to which Bailey says: "I can’t recall it clearly."

"They were steamed up - I would have adjusted them with one or both hands to clear, maybe to get some air and clear it or use my hand to wipe the inside lens," he said.

Asked by Straw if his gloved hand might have come into contact with his face, Bailey said "quite possibly".

The following night his symptoms got "a lot worse" , Bailey says.

He went downstairs at around 05:00 and was "freaking out a little bit".

"My vision was impaired once I turned the lights on – it’s very difficult to describe it but everything was crystal clear and it was juddering... it was quite scary," he says.

His parents were called to take his children to school as he couldn't drive. His symptoms worsened considerably on Tuesday night and he was sick.

Bailey was admitted to hospital on 6 March, and was discharged on 22 March.

Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey eventually returned home at 06:45 on the Monday, having started his shift at 14:00 on Sunday.

"I was very tired and eventually went to sleep," he says.

But, he adds, he was woken around midday with his forehead and the back of his neck very sweaty.

"I wasn't feeling right, and because of what I had been dealing with the night before I thought it would be sensible to go to hospital," he says.

After explaining the situation, Bailey says he was seen very quickly by a nurse who did observations and checked his blood pressure, temperature and heart rate.

He was given "the all clear" and told to go home and keep an eye on his symptoms, he says.

Bailey reveales that a second police officer that was part of the search, Ollie Bell, also felt unwell.

Bell went to A&E after complaining "something was wrong with his eye".

Bailey says he first began to notice symptoms of what he would later discover to be Novichok poisoning within hours of visiting the Skripal's house.

He described how once back at Bourne Hill police station he "felt sweaty", adding: "I remember going to the bathroom and my eyes were little pin pricks."

"I put that down to being tired and it being quite a stressful shift," he says.

In the early hours of Monday morning, Det Sgt Bailey says he travelled with an inspector to Salisbury District Hospital "to speak to the consultant looking after the Skripals".

He recalls speaking to a sister on the hospital's intensive care unit about the possibility of obtaining some blood samples from both Yulia and Sergei.

"We would be seizing them as evidence so we could potentially have them checked to see if there was anything in those samples that indicated why they had become ill," he says.

Bailey says he was wearing gloves when he was handed "two vials of blood and two vials of urine that had been taken" from them already.

Bailey confirms to the panel that he was the one who actually opened the door to Sergei Skripal's house at 02:20 GMT, the day after the Skripals were found.

"We used the key the neighbour had, I had the key," he says.

He then describes how the CBRN-trained officer - referred to in the inquiry only by their cypher VN005 - entered wearing a body-worn camera while Bailey turned on the light switches in the hallway.

Det Sgt Bailey says he believes he only touched light switches, door handles and paperwork inside the property, though throughout the evidence he is relying on his previous police statements as he now "has no memory of that moment at all".

Describing leaving the house, Bailey says he has very little memory but that statements from other officers suggest he held one of the torches they had taken inside while the others undressed in the dark.

He added that he remembers wearing "at least one" pair of protective gloves.

Detective sergeant Nick Bailey - the first person to enter the house of Russian spy Sergei Skripal - describes wearing a white forensic suit for the search, over the top of his clothes, with disposable gloves, shoe covers and face mask.

Beneath that, he had his wallet, warrant card, and work and personal mobile phones.

Asked whether he had been given training for how to get in and out of PPE, he replies: "I don't think so".

The inquiry has just been read a statement from Supt Corner who, wanting to understand if there were other casualties at the Skripal's home, advised a search of the property with a Chemical, Biological, radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) specialist.

The statement reads: “Throughout the period of this incident I was concerned that the Skripal’s house could have someone else located inside who could have required medical attention."

He adds that he “considered the possibility of a suicide pact”.

Supt Corner also says he has "cause to regret" his advice to do a search of the house, considering it later led to Bailey's poisoning.

Dan O'Brien
At the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry in London

The impact of the poisoning appears to have affected Bailey's memory.

This morning, he has been struggling to recall the events of the day, and has required some prompting.

The inquiry has now resumed after a short break.

Bailey describes how a briefing was held about going into Sergei Skripal’s house, now they had more information about his background.

They took advice from a Wiltshire Police colleague who was an officer trained in responding to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear evidence.

This colleague - who is due to give evidence next week anonymously - gave advice on what protective measures to take, including personal protective equipment.

The inquiry is now taking a short 10 minute break, after which we'll come on to what happened when police entered Skripal’s house.

Bailey says his colleague, Insp Schorah, contacted the control room and said: "A Russian spy has been poisoned."

It was "nothing I had heard before, and its not something I thought I'd ever hear again" on a Wiltshire Police radio message, Bailey adds.

The control room then restricted access to the log so only a limited number of officers could view it, and Bailey says he alerted crime scene investigation teams to the situation.

Bailey's statement, which is being read out at the inquiry, recounts how officers discovered Sergei Skripal's background as a spy through an internet search.

"One of my team googled Sergei Skripal's name," he said. "I vividly remember her saying 'Sarge, you're going to need to come and see this' and he walked over to see."

He added that they saw a newspaper headline about Skripal's past as a spy that been released in a spy swap.

Having seen this information, he said "efforts were made to stop the officer and neighbour visiting the house".

The inquiry heard that officers at the scene saw windows were open at the Skripal's house.

A neighbour said they had a key because they sometimes fed the cat.

As they didn't know how long the Skripals would be in hospital, they discussed going in with the neighbour to check the property and shut the windows.

Bailey said uniformed officers were sent to the Skripal's address in Christie Miller Road, Salisbury, to look for the car which was eventually found on the upper floor of the Maltings car park.

He said that Yulia's name was identified from car insurance.

Bailey told the hearing when he first arrived at the crime scene, he knew nothing about the casualties themselves, other than having Sergei Skripal’s name from a drivers licence, and identifying his BMW in a car park.

He had no clue that was a name of a former Russian spy living in the city, and there was no trace of Skripal’s name on Wiltshire Police’s system.

The inquiry heard how Nick Bailey worked in Wiltshire Police's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at the time of the incident, so he was more involved in complex or serious crime.

He recounted how, when messages came in about two people being found semi-conscious, his first thought was that the incident could be drug-related.

His statement from the time said "this could have been a bad batch [of drugs] or something', adding that he "would rather be involved from the start".

Mr Bailey said he was en route to the scene by 16.54 GMT, and by the time he arrived, the Skripals had been taken to hospital. He described seeing police tape up already to secure the area.

Image source, Reuters/����ý

Image source, Dawn Sturgess Inquiry

Describing how he first heard about the incident, which began with Sergei and Yulia Skripal collapsing on a bench in central Salisbury, Mr Bailey said: "I remember a log being generated and coming in which was a report of two unknown people collapsed on a bench either semi-conscious or unconscious.

"I cannot remember whether I saw the log or if I heard people talking about it on the radio. I think it was probably the latter - that I heard people going to the scene - and it just piqued my interest a little bit because it was an unusual log to come into."

Bailey tells the inquiry his recollection of the events of March 2018 are "hazy at best".

“I spent a lot of time obviously dealing with it when it happened, and I got to a point where the only way for me to move on from it was to stop thinking about it and to close it off," he says.

"So it has been some time since I have had to actually then go back to those events - so yes, my memory of the incident isn’t the best."

Dan O'Brien
Political reporter, ����ý Wiltshire

Nick Bailey is now in the witness stand, and is being questioned by Francesca Whitelaw KC, counsel to the inquiry.