IT TOOK just two short but horrifying hours for the men to die. The clang of the 15-tonne covers of the cargo hold shutting down on the two stowaways, hiding in the bowels of the cargo ship Pascal, was the pronouncement of a death sentence.

As horrible as the truth is about the final moments of the two north African migrants, it is perhaps a little more palatable than the myths. At first, after their bodies were found in the hold of the Pascal in Ayr harbour at just after 2.30pm on May 26, it was thought that the men had endured up to 12 days at sea, surviving in dark suffocating conditions with no more than a bottle of water to share, before succumbing.

Now, it appears, their fate was sealed from the moment they sneaked onboard using the conveyor belt which fed the cargo into the hold while in the port of Sfax in Tunisia. It also seems today that there is finally a chance that the men's bodies will eventually be identified and repatriated to their loved ones back in Tunisia. Until now, it was feared that they would face the ignominy of lying, unknown, in a county mortuary before winding up in an unmarked council grave in Ayrshire.

The mostly Russian crew of the Pascal, a 90-metre 3000-ton ship, has now been interviewed by police through a translator and allowed to leave Scotland. It is unlikely the crew would have relished the return journey. Sailors, notoriously superstitious, would have viewed the trip back home onboard the so-called Tomb Ship' with feelings akin to horror.

The skipper told Detective Inspector Jim Honeyman and his team that once the heavy cargo doors were swung shut there was no more than two hours of air in the hold.

The men may have thought that they had a chance to make it to Spain as stowaways and start a new life working in wealthy Europe. The German-owned ship, which is registered in Antigua, made regular runs between Italy, Tunisia, Spain and Scotland transporting chemicals for fertiliser. On this journey, however, the crew only stopped briefly in Spain to refuel, and did not open the hold. Even if they had, the two stowaway men would have been already dead.

The lengthy time that the bodies lay undiscovered in the sweltering hold probably accounts for the extreme state of their decomposition. This in turn has made identification very difficult for police. All they have got to go on is a partial identity card, which could also be a driving licence, found on one of the bodies, and a string of numbers printed on the card's surface.

It's hoped that the card details, which have now been sent to both the Tunisian embassy in London and Interpol, will help identify the men. In Tunisia, families who have not heard from loved ones who planned to work as migrants in western Europe, are being urged to come forward. The details of these men will then be cross-checked against the identity number on the card. That should confirm the identity of one of the bodies. It is hoped that the first identification should quickly lead to the identification of the second body.

The ID card is so badly contaminated by the decomposition of the bodies that the Sunday Herald was unable to photograph it. "It's a health hazard," said Honeyman. Police, with the help of fire crews and paramedics, had to don protective suits in order to enter the cargo hold to extract the corpses. It took eight hours to get the bodies out from the belly of the ship.

The police are sure that the ID card is Tunisian as there appears to be a Tunisian flag printed on its surface. "We've no reason to believe the men are from any other country than Tunisia," Honeyman added.

Although the post-mortem examination on the bodies, which was conducted last Friday, came back inconclusive as to the cause of death, the police are fairly confident that the skipper's assessment of almost instantaneous suffocation is correct.

They are still waiting for full toxicology reports, which will come through in the next few weeks, to see if the cargo of rock phosphates - which was bound for a Scottish firm - might have also poisoned the men. However, police say that simply being in the presence of phosphates is not likely to kill.

"There are certainly no suspicious circumstances," said Honeyman. "They weren't killed and thrown in the hold, that's for sure."

The skipper and his crew of eight were badly shaken by the experience. They told police they had heard of such things happening at sea before, but had never come across stowaways in all their years as sailors. For Strathclyde Police, this was also the first time officers had ever come across such a case. Sadly, the fate of the two Tunisian stowaways is not particularly rare. Thousands of Africans perish each year trying to reach western Europe.

It would have been almost impossible for the men to alert the crew that they were trapped and dying in the hold. The hold was 25-feet deep and with the engines going full tilt at sea, the tapping of a hammer on the hull would have gone unheard. Even if they had been able to alert the crew, there is little that could have been done. The cargo hold doors are too heavy to be raised at sea and need the help of a crane and the stability of a port before they can be opened.

"The doors are never opened unless the ship is docked," said Honeyman. "They are never opened at sea. Once they are on, they don't come off."

B y law, the police cannot release the bodies until they are positively identified. When - if - they are identified, the bodies will be handed over to the Tunisian embassy for repatriation.The Tunisian embassy is anxious to get the bodies safely back home as quickly as possible. There are at least 1000 families who are believed to have loved ones working illegally in the west. "They are worrying that these two men might be their sons, their brothers, their fathers, their husbands," said Honeyman. "Many of those who migrate end up out of touch for some time."

The Tomb Ship' has become a big story in Tunisia. People are now coming forward to say that they don't know where a son or a brother is, who was last heard of heading for Europe, and asking the authorities to check on them.

Honeyman says he needs DNA samples to come via the Tunisian authorities from worried family members in order to speed up the identification process. Facial identification is impossible due to the extreme decomposition of the bodies. "All we need to do is get a DNA sample from a worried mother in Tunisia, get it sent over here, and then we can start getting through the process fairly quickly," Honeyman explained.

"Our positive line of inquiry takes us from the number on the card to those in Tunisia who have loved ones overseas," Honeyman added. "I'm reasonably confident we can ID these men and repatriate their bodies."

While detectives hope they can close the case in two to three weeks, the main concern is that the ID card found on one of the bodies is fake. If that's the case, the men's bodies may never be successfully identified and may never, therefore, leave Scotland.

"It seems a lot of people leave North Africa in order to get here to work and have a better standard of living," Honeyman says. "Often no-one knows they have left until immigration authorities catch them."

It's likely, he muses, that the corpses are just two of the many thousands of such desperate Africans who risk their lives every year simply to find a bearable life somewhere across the Mediterranean Sea. "It's a sad and tragic story," Honeyman says.