As he spoke, the phone rang on the RSM’s desk and he pushed past the sergeant to grab it. On the other end was a captain from the First Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, who was that night’s Orderly Officer for the Brigade. In a few words, Tom Howden explained what had happened and with a laconic Aussie acknowledgement, the infantryman rang off, leaving the doctor ticking off his mental list of things to do.
‘Will he tell the police, sir?’ asked Crosby, as a gentle reminder.
‘He didn’t say as much, so we’d better make sure.’ He rattled the receiver-rest of the heavy black instrument and told the guardroom operator to get through to the Police Circle. ‘Get Superintendent Blackwell if you can – if not, the most senior copper.’
As the pair waited for the phone to ring again, there was the sound of a car engine coming fast around the perimeter road and Alf Morris’s Hillman pulled up with a jerk. He was wearing a hastily donned plaid shirt and flannel trousers and from the look of his tousled hair, had just got out of bed.
‘What’s going on? The guardroom made it sound as if Chin Peng was banging on the gate!’
‘Not all that far wrong, Major!’ Tom rapidly explained what had happened. ‘I’ve tried to get the CO, but there’s no answer at his house. I’ve notified Brigade and I’m just waiting for a call from the police.’
As if on cue, the phone rang again and the Staff Sergeant picked it up and held it towards Tom, who shook his head and motioned it towards Alf Morris.
‘I think you should take over now, as senior officer.’
Thankful that he had passed the buck, he left the major talking urgently down the phone and made his way back to Casualty. He wanted to check that James Robertson had not unexpectedly come back to life and to offer any further help to Daniel and the staff – not that the competent Night Sister seemed likely to need any support. All was quiet there and after a quick glance behind the curtain at the still figure lying on the couch, the pathologist turned to the trio sitting around the table on the other side of the room. The QA corporal, a reassuring figure in her no-nonsense blue-grey uniform, was resting her hand solicitously on Daniel’s shoulder as he sat hunched in his chair, shivering slightly in spite of the all-pervading heat. The RAMC orderly, a National Service private straight from sixth form, sat in awkward silence, but hopped to his feet as the officer came across. The QA looked up at Tom, her homely face as calm and efficient as that of her nursing officer.
‘Sister Chambers has gone up to the Mess to tell the Matron, sir. She thought she ought to know what’s going on.’
He nodded and turned to the club manager. ‘Sorry to make you hang about like this, Daniel, but the police will be here very soon and they’ll need to talk to you. Is there anyone you want to phone to tell them where you are – your wife, maybe?’
The rotund steward shook his head. ‘Thank you, sir, but no, I’m not married. I live in club, they know where I am.’
Things began to happen then at an increasing tempo and Tom began to wonder how much of this he’d have to report to the colonel at Morning Prayers. First, Alfred Morris came across and wanted to see the body. Tom had a lurking suspicion that he wanted to make sure that his new Orderly Medical Officer was not having hallucinations or was playing some awful practical joke – but the sight of Robertson’s bloody body soon reassured him. Alf was no stranger to blood and mangled bodies, having served in Field Ambulances in both North Africa and Normandy during the war. The oak leaves on one of his medal ribbons showed that he had been mentioned in dispatches, so a single shooting was unlikely to faze him. He went across and sat with the club steward for a few moments, reassuring him in a low, calm voice. They knew each other well, as Alf had been a club member for more than two years. ‘The police are on their way, Daniel. Mr Blackwell is coming himself, so you’re among friends.’
As he spoke, there were more engine noises outside and when the two officers hurried to the door, they saw a Land Rover and a three-tonner, both with the 21 Brigade insignia, turning in through the main gates, which the sentry had opened for them after hurrying across from where he had been guarding James’s car. The newcomers drove across the front of the hospital, homing in on the lights from the Casualty Department. A tall major from the West Berkshires uncoiled himself from the smaller vehicle, followed by a lieutenant wearing an Airborne beret. Two military police, a red-capped Warrant Officer and a corporal, got down from the Bedford truck and four squaddies hopped out of the back.
The major saluted Tom’s uniform, not knowing that Morris was senior in rank, but the pathologist rapidly made the introductions and stepped back smartly to let Alf carry on. As Morris explained the situation and took the infantry field officer for a quick look at the deceased, Tom saw that the MPs were looking curiously at the armoured Buick and pointing at the prominent blood staining visible inside by the light of their large torch. The four soldiers were stood at ease in front of their truck, wondering what the hell was going on.
At that moment, the developing jamboree was further enlarged by the arrival of another Land Rover, this time a blue one. It raced up to the now open gate and swerved across the car park, its daredevil Malay driver squealing to a halt alongside the three-tonner. Steven Blackwell emerged, dressed in mufti, as he had been at The Dog that evening and unlike Alf Morris, had not yet gone to bed.
Once again, the RAMC major recounted the little that was known. As soon as he had finished, his counterpart from the garrison decided that ‘something must be done’.
‘Like the last attack on Jimmy Robertson, this sounds bloody unlikely for a terrorist attack,’ growled the officer from the West Berkshires. ‘But we can’t ignore the possibility.’
What he really meant was that he had no intention of carrying the can if the affair went pear-shaped and they missed the opportunity to nail a few CTs.
‘The deceased is a civilian, so investigating it is down to me,’ added the police superintendent. ‘But chasing bandits is both our jobs, so I’d be grateful if you’d kick-start that. We need to know where this happened and whether Gunong Besar has been attacked or is under threat.’ A new thought dawned on him.
‘And where the hell is Diane Robertson?’
SIX
As the police superintendent was asking the question, Diane was driving fast up the lonely road towards her bungalow. The Austin was going well in the cooler night air and she had her shapely foot flat on the floor, urging every extra bit of speed from the little car. Her face was grim as she peered down the bright cone of her headlights that cut a tunnel through the darkness of the endless trees.
She had drunk quite a lot, but no more than usual on a Friday night and had the usual delusion of drinking drivers that their performance was that much better with a few gins inside them. She threw the small saloon around the bends, veering a little from edge to edge of the rutted red road and within minutes had covered the few miles to Gunong Besar without seeing a single vehicle. At that time of night, it would have been extraordinary if anything else was on that road, apart from the occasional police or military patrol, which as had been promised, were now more frequent.
At the estate, Diane swung up on to the slope of the knoll and drove straight under the house, stopping in an abrupt scuffing of gravel. She slammed the door and ran up the front steps to the verandah. With servants on the premises, the doors to the lounge were never locked and she hurried inside, stepping out of her heels and throwing her evening bag on to the settee as she went straight to the side table to pour herself a large gin and tonic. Her hands were shaking with a variety of emotions and the ice she had spooned out of a vacuum jug rattled against the side of the glass as she raised it to her lips.
After a couple of gulps, she calmed down and walked back out to the verandah, to lean on the rail with her glass cupped in her hands. Ironically, she wondered how many boring hours she had spent in exactly this posture since she came to Malaya. Taking another mouthful, she looked out into the velvety night, seeing only a fe
w distant points of light far away in the valley. Somehow, she thought, it’s going to be Norfolk I’ll be looking at before very long. Now down to the bare ice in her glass, she was debating whether to get another, when a sound caught her attention that penetrated the turmoil in her mind. The sound of engines came rapidly closer and even her slightly fuddled senses recognized that more than one vehicle was approaching. Almost at once, headlights flickered through the trees and moments later, a Land Rover tore up the drive, followed by an armoured car and a three-ton truck. The last two were in army drab, but the first was a blue police vehicle. A dozen soldiers in jungle green scrambled from the truck and dispersed themselves and their weapons into the trees on either side of the drive.
Two men cautiously emerged from the Land Rover, one in officer’s uniform, the other in civvies. Both held revolvers as they stared up warily at the bungalow. In the light escaping from the lounge, they saw a figure leaning over the verandah – a figure with blonde hair.
‘Diane? Are you alright?’
The woman recognized his voice, even though the starlight was too dim to see his face. ‘Steven? What the devil are you doing up here at this time of night?’
There was some murmuring down below and the officer peeled off and went back to his men, as the policeman began climbing the steps. As he reached the top, the armoured car revved away and vanished up the road towards Kampong Kerbau. Holstering his pistol, Steven Blackwell walked across towards Diane Robertson, anxious to carry out this unwelcome task as best as he could manage.
‘What’s going on, for God’s sake? Anyway, come in and have a drink!’
Her bright, brittle voice rang out as she went into the big room and he followed her with a heavy heart.
‘Diane, forget the drink for a moment. Come and sit down, I have to tell you something.’
Hardened policeman that he was, he had been dreading this moment on the drive up from Tanah Timah, but in the event it was almost an anticlimax.
The new widow heard the news of her husband’s death with what at first seemed incredulity, then amazement tinged with curiosity. Diane neither fainted, nor screamed, nor sobbed. What she did do was go across the room and refill her glass, insisting against Steven’s protests that he have a drink as well. She came back to the settee and sat down, looking up at the superintendent. Her face was pale, but otherwise she seemed unmoved.
‘I don’t understand this, Steve. I have to believe it, if you say so! But I can’t understand it.’
He found that he needed the whisky after all and sat down rather heavily opposite the blonde, bemused by her reaction – or the lack of it.
‘We don’t even know where it happened yet, Diane. He just drove up to The Dog – God knows from where!’
She sipped her own drink, staring at him over the rim.
‘So I’m a widow now. I don’t even have a suitable black dress.’ She looked down at the slinky blue model that she was wearing. It must be shock, he thought. Soon, the facts will sink in and she’ll break down.
‘You can’t stay up here on your own. Is there someone who can stay with you? What about Rosa next door?’
Her eyebrows went up about an inch. ‘Rosa! Like hell she will! That bastard was screwing her, didn’t you know? Sorry, I suppose I mustn’t speak ill of the dead.’
Slightly tipsy now, she jumped up and staggered slightly, then went across to get more gin. She held the bottle up and waggled it at Blackwell, but he shook his head uneasily. He didn’t want a drunken witness on his hands, bereaved or not. He stood up and beckoned to her.
‘Diane, come back and sit down, please! You do realize what’s happened, don’t you? James has been killed and we have to find out how and where, urgently.’
She padded over in her bare feet and dropped heavily on to the settee.
‘I hear you, Steve, I’m not numbed with shock. You may as well know, I’d decided to leave him anyway. I was planning to go home to England, I’d had enough of his bloody nonsense.’
She took a deep drink, downing almost half the glass. ‘So if I’m shocked, it’s because of the surprise, not grief. I’m sorry, you’re thinking I’m a hard bitch, but that’s the way it is. But what the hell am I going to do now, with the bloody estate and all that?’
There’s a lot more to be done before those problems need to be faced, he thought grimly, but he kept his mouth shut for the present. He suddenly realized that she had not even asked where James had been killed or who killed him!
Diane suddenly dropped her empty glass to the floor, where it rolled under the settee. She put both hands up to her head and groaned, rocking back and forth. But it was not sudden grief, but frustrated bewilderment.
‘This is unbelievable, Steven! I’m suddenly a damned widow, but I couldn’t care less about bloody James. I know I’m supposed to and from here on, everyone will call me an unfeeling cow! Yet everything has been turned upside down. I just can’t take it in yet, I’m afraid.’
The policeman in him rapidly came back to the surface.
‘I know, Diane, and I’m desperately sorry. But before we settle you somewhere, I have to ask a few things. We still don’t know if this was another terrorist attack, like the previous two. When did you last see James?’
She smoothed her hair back and consciously pulled herself together, sitting more upright on the cushions.
‘Of course you must get on with your job. I’m sorry, Steve.’ Groping in the bag that she had thrown down, she found cigarettes and a lighter. Rather shakily, she lit up, then began speaking.
‘We went to the club separately tonight. As you’ve heard, we haven’t been on the best of terms lately. I took the Austin down at about eight thirty, James was already there.’
‘What time did he go?
‘No idea, he went off this afternoon to Taiping, said he had to see about some repairs to the latex machinery, though for all I know he was meeting some woman there. He didn’t come back here, so I suppose he went straight to The Dog. He was there when I arrived, anyway.’
‘Did he tell you anything about where he had been – or anything else relevant?’
Diane crushed out the almost intact cigarette in an ashtray with a force that suggested that it could have been her husband’s neck.
‘I told you, we weren’t exactly on gossiping terms these past few days. I got mad at him earlier tonight, as he was dancing with that bitch from the hospital half the evening, deliberately leaving me stuck with a gang of old biddies.’
Blackwell found it hard to say ‘Which bitch?’ but Diane sensed his problem and added ‘That Franklin woman, the nurse he’s been having it off with lately.’ Her voice was getting slightly slurred.
‘So when was the last time you saw him? I need to get some idea of when this might have happened, as well as where.’
She rocked slightly and Blackwell was afraid that she might fall over, but she pulled herself together and steadied herself with a hand on the arm of the settee. ‘We had a row later on, after the buffet. When the room was empty, I cornered him and gave him a piece of my mind. Then I walked out and that’s the last I saw of him.’
‘What time would that be?’
‘I told you, after the supper had finished. About half ten or a bit later, I suppose.’
Almost like an automaton, Diane walked over to the sideboard and poured herself yet another drink, before coming back to flop heavily on to the settee. She lifted the glass to her lips, where it rattled momentarily against her teeth as she gulped at the gin. Her lipstick was smudged, half of it on the rim of her glass.
‘And when did you leave the club?’ asked Steven.
‘Soon after that, I’d had enough of his nonsense. I left him picking at what was left of the buffet.’
The superintendent ran a hand nervously over what remained of his hair, as the next questions would have to probe into sensitive territory. He was conscious again of the difficulties of being a policeman in a small European community, where almost everyone
he had to interrogate would be a close acquaintance.
‘Can you tell me what the row was about, Diane?’ he said gently.
He need not have been so worried about embarrassing her, as she merely gave a derisive snort.
‘Need you ask, Steve? I’ve just told you, everyone in TT knows that he has been getting his leg over that bitch from the hospital, but he needn’t have flaunted it in The Dog when I was there!’ She waved an unsteady hand in the general direction of the next bungalow. ‘Though at least he wasn’t playing quite so near home as usual.’
‘So you don’t know what time he left the club?’ Blackwell knew from the club steward that Robertson had left soon after eleven, but he always liked to cross-check when he could. She shook her head, the golden hair swirling across her shoulders.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he went off somewhere to roger that bloody woman in the back of his car. The rear seat is the size of a double bed!’ she added bitterly, thinking of the cramped space in her own little Austin.
‘And did you leave The Dog alone?’ asked Steven cautiously, prodding to see if there was any way of confirming her movements. He had no real reason for this, but from his days as a CID man back in England, he still kept the habit of building up a mental picture of where everyone was at what they called the ‘material time’.
Diane peered at him over the rim of her glass. For the first time, the brittle nonchalance over her sudden bereavement seemed to falter and she answered rather defensively. ‘I gave one of the guys from Garrison a lift back to the gates, as the fellow who had brought him had gone off with some popsy.’
Blackwell nodded encouragingly. ‘Who was that, then? Do I know him?’
‘Oh, Gerry something-or-other,’ she answered evasively. ‘One of the West Berkshires, a lieutenant, I think. I hardly know him.’ She neglected to mention that the half-mile journey took them almost an hour.
He thought of pushing her harder, then decided it could wait, if it ever needed to be followed up. The fact was that her husband had been shot in circumstances which suggested it was part of the civil insurgence that dominated life in Malaya – and yet, like the attack the week before, it seemed at odds with the usual run of terrorist activity.
Dead in the Dog Page 11
