‘Did Douglas know about this?’
The widow shrugged. ‘Hard to tell, he’s never said anything or showed any sign of knowing. James would have been very careful, he depended totally on Douglas to run this place, he wouldn’t have wanted to lose him. Maybe that’s why he gave her up.’
Blackwell, a happily married man with no inclination to go roving, marvelled at the risks that fellows would take in such a tightly knit community as this. He found it hard to believe that the news bore any relation to Robertson’s death, but it was another piece of information to add to the pitifully thin file on the case. Looking across at Tan, he saw that the inspector was quietly writing everything down in his notebook, so he launched into another topic.
‘Just for the record, to tidy up loose ends, it’s been obvious to everyone that Colonel O’Neill has been more than friendly towards you recently. Is there anything you want to tell me about that?’
He felt a little foolish asking this and Diane’s reaction made him even more embarrassed. She burst out into peals of laughter which though nervous, sounded quite genuine.
‘Poor old Desmond? Come on, Steve, where’s your sense of humour? I was just having a bit of fun, leading the poor old devil on. Those old witches that sit around the club already think I’m a scarlet woman, so I thought I’d give them a bit more scandal to gossip about.’
‘I’d be very careful, if I were you, Diane,’ advised Blackwell. ‘I think the colonel took it more seriously than you think. He could be a difficult man, if he thought you were making a fool of him.’
Diane Robertson waved a hand in dismissal. ‘It’s nothing, he just bought me a couple of drinks in The Dog and pranced about ushering me into his big new car. It’s rather nice, having a colonel fussing over you.’
Steven despaired of this attractive widow, who seemed to have about as much moral sense as the monkeys in the trees outside. After a few more profitless questions, he ended by cautiously raising one last matter.
‘You said that even before your husband died, you were thinking of going back to England, Diane. Would it be indelicate of me to ask if Major Bright might figure in any such future plans?’
She gave him a brittle smile. ‘What you are really suggesting is an Irish divorce?’
Steven stared at her, he had no idea what she was talking about.
‘An Irish divorce is with a twelve-bore, Steve, it’s a joke! That policeman’s mind of yours is really wondering if Peter might have shot James to make me available?’ she explained cynically. ‘It’s an exciting idea, I suppose. A handsome young man willing to kill for me, to get the woman he desires! But I can’t see Doctor Bright going to those lengths, keen as he is.’
Her head-on response to what he had hoped was an oblique question left him speechless, but Diane filled the vacuum.
‘Peter’s a good-looking chap, pots of money in the family. Bit of a stuffed shirt, but I suppose I could do worse. We’ll see how it pans out.’
A few minutes later, the superintendent was driven back down the road where James Robertson was killed, his mind still filled with the brazen attitude of the voluptuous blonde who seemed impervious to any emotion other than her own gratification.
The eight thirty meeting with the Commanding Officer had been even more fraught than usual, with O’Neill fractious after his night on the train up from Kuala Lumpur. He found fault with everyone, starting with Eddie Rosen, who had been Orderly Medical Officer the previous night.
‘Call that a satisfactory report on the SI list, lieutenant?’ he ranted, after the little doctor had given the usual resume on the three men with Weil’s disease. The CO carried on castigating Eddie for not delivering a blow-by-blow account of their temperature, pulse rates and blood pressures during the previous twenty-four hours, though this was a matter for the ward notes, not needed in a brief reassurance that their condition had not deteriorated.
After abusing Rosen, the colonel’s cold glare went around the room, doing his best to find fault with everyone. Tom Howden sat immobile, hoping that his usual invisibility would continue. Thankfully, O’Neill almost never questioned him, as he seemed neither to know nor care what went on in the laboratory and never visited it, except for the perfunctory walk-through at Tuesday inspections.
Unsurprisingly, the focus of O’Neill’s persecution fell upon the unfortunate quartermaster, Captain Burns. With a ferocity unmatched even by his previous tirades, he goaded Robbie about the state of his Stores records and demanded that a complete set of requisitions and dispensations of all drugs and medical equipment for the past three months be produced by next day. He all but accused the quartermaster of embezzlement and corruption, with veiled references to the ‘medical halls’ in Tanah Timah and Sungei Siput, retail pharmacies where cut-price army medicaments would be welcomed.
Robbie’s normally rough and ruddy face became almost puce with suppressed anger and seemed ready to erupt under the interrogation.
Alfred Morris prodded him covertly with his elbow from the next chair, warning him against any violent reaction which the colonel would undoubtedly welcome as evidence of insubordination and mutiny under Queen’s Regulations.
At the end of this blistering inquisition, the CO rapped on his desk with his cane. ‘You’ll see from today’s Part One Orders that training will begin tomorrow for the PE tests in four weeks’ time,’ he snapped.
These were the annual Physical Efficiency tests that all Service personnel were supposed to pass, otherwise they could have their pay and allowances docked. Percy Loosemore had told Tom that these were something of a farce, held in the garrison athletic ground, where they had to climb a rope, jump over some boxes and perform a few other innocuous feats of strength and ability. In addition, there was a three-mile run part-way up the Kerbau road and back, that had to be completed within a certain time. Percy had alleged that last year, several of the officers had arranged for a taxi from Tanah Timah to pick them up as soon as they were out of sight and take them to The Dog, where they sat drinking beer until it was time for them to jog the few hundred yards back to the garrison. But now their increasingly malignant colonel seemed to have other ideas.
‘You may be doctors, but first and foremost, you are soldiers!’ he barked. ‘You’ve gone soft, lolling about the Mess, drinking and going off on pleasure weekends like a lot of suburban bank clerks!’
Glaring around, he dropped his bombshell. ‘Tomorrow morning and on alternate mornings for a month, you will parade at six thirty in full kit on the hospital car park. I have arranged for a drill sergeant from the garrison to give you an hour’s exercises, which will include three full circuits of the perimeter road.’
With his narrow jaw jutting forward, he delivered his final broadside. ‘This applies to all of you, with no exception unless you have urgent clinical duties. I will be there personally to make sure there are no backsliders. I’ll make soldiers of you yet, even if it kills you!’
Mutiny was in the air that day, as the medical officers digested this latest dictat from their leader.
‘The bugger’s flipped completely,’ muttered Percy Loosemore, whose idea of exercise was walking from the car park of The Dog as far as the bar. Appeals to the Admin Officer brought no relief, as Alf Morris confessed that he could do nothing with the CO when he was in this mood. After leaving O’Neill’s office, the others clustered around the notice board at the bottom of the main corridor and read Part One Orders, a typed sheet of paper pinned up every morning which gave details of duty rosters and events for the day. Sure enough, there was the command to appear fully kitted at the crack of dawn, an order which had the Other Ranks smirking all day at the discomfiture of their officers.
‘Funny business, sir!’ grinned Lewis Cropper, as he brought Tom his pallid mug of mid-morning tea. ‘If you can’t find all your kit, let me know and I’ll scrounge some for you.’
The day after the pathologist’s arrival at BMH, the quartermaster sergeant had dumped a collection of pouches, gree
n webbing and a water-bottle on Tom, together with a steel helmet. He had stuffed them into the bottom of his wardrobe and hoped that they were still there.
At the Mess before lunch, more disgruntled discussion took place, with the physician John Martin being pressured to get the Commanding Officer certified before he could wreak any more havoc. This plea fell on deaf ears, especially as the major had a cast-iron excuse to avoid the threatened parade, as he had to be in BMH Kamunting the next morning to hold a special clinic.
As it happened, the object of their disquiet was at that moment himself being interrogated. Steven Blackwell had telephoned for an appointment and Desmond O’Neill had grudgingly agreed, for the superintendent had made a point of reminding him that the garrison commander, Brigadier Forsyth, had sanctioned the questioning of all military personnel. The colonel did it with ill grace and sat stiffly behind his desk, glowering at the police officer.
‘This is highly irregular, Blackwell,’ he snapped. ‘The civil police have no jurisdiction over Her Majesty’s Forces, you know.’
Experienced copper that he was, Steven knew when to come on as a hard man and when to tread lightly.
‘Indeed, sir, I’m sure that if any serviceman was charged with this offence, he would be tried and sentenced by the Army. But as this is a civilian death and your SIB are collaborating fully with us, then the actual investigation is well within the ambit of the Federation Police.’
O’Neill snorted, but he had no valid argument against something sanctioned by the Brigade Commander. ‘What d’you want to know, then?’ he grunted sourly.
‘I have to record the movements of everyone, even those only peripherally involved, sir,’ Steven began diplomatically. ‘I gather that the first you knew of this death was when you arrived back here, some time after James Robertson had been certified as dead?’
‘The place was like a madhouse, people milling about the front of my hospital as if it was a fairground. I soon cleared them out, they had no business bringing a civilian corpse here, anyway!’
‘With respect, it wasn’t known that he was dead, until your doctors had confirmed that. But what time did you arrive, sir?’
‘About twenty to one, I believe – not that it can matter in the slightest! I found a messenger at my quarter, telling me what had happened, so I drove down here.’
‘They failed to contact you earlier by telephone at your house, I believe. Could you tell me where you had been, colonel?’
Desmond O’Neill scowled at the superintendent. ‘What the devil has that got to do with anything?’
‘All part of the routine, sir. You may have seen something or someone which might complement the rest of our evidence.’
The skull-like face looked balefully at Blackwell. ‘I had been to the AKC cinema in the garrison, if you must know. They were showing The Way Ahead, a wartime favourite of mine, if you need to check on my alibi!’ he added sarcastically.
‘The AKC show always finishes by ten thirty, colonel. May I ask where you were between then and the time you arrived at your quarter?’
O’Neill’s sallow face developed a slight flush. ‘I consider that question impertinent, Blackwell. I didn’t rush off from my billet as soon as I had the message, you know.’
Steven remained polite and impassive. ‘But the attempts to phone you there were not made until after midnight, sir. You couldn’t have been home by that time.’
The CO jumped from his chair and stood ramrod straight, glaring at the police officer. ‘Dammit, are you accusing me of anything?’
‘I just want answers about timing, colonel, that’s all. It’s essential to know where everyone was, and at what time that night.’
O’Neill subsided into his chair. ‘I drove around for a while to get some air, if you must know. The cigarette smoke in that damned cinema was so thick you could hardly see the screen. I had a headache and smarting eyes, so I went and sat in the car up on the Sungie Siput road for a while and looked at the valley in the moonlight.’
Blackwell managed to avoid raising his eyebrows at this unlikely tale. He had thought it unwise to bring his inspector on this particular interview, so he had his own notebook at the ready and as he jotted down the colonel’s words, he wondered how much air O’Neill had needed to keep him out alone in his car for almost two hours in the middle of the night.
‘You met no one during that time, sir?’
‘Are you doubting my word, officer!’ snarled O’Neill.
‘All policemen have to seek corroboration for everything, colonel,’ said Steven imperturbably. ‘I take it the answer is “no”?’
‘I saw no one and spoke to no one!’ snapped the other man. ‘Now if you have no more sensible questions, I would like to get on with my work. We are fighting a war here, you know!’
He spoke as if he were General Sir Gerald Templer, not the administrator of a small hospital. Considering that the police superintendent had more than once been personally involved in a shoot-out with the CTs, his remark bordered on the offensive. However, Blackwell let it pass and after a few more unprofitable questions, he left the irate colonel to become more bad-tempered as the day went on.
TWELVE
That Monday turned out to be an eventful day in BMH Tanah Timah, even apart from the colonel’s worsening mania. Lunch in the Officers’ Mess was brought to an abrupt end by the almost simultaneous ringing of telephones and the clatter of an approaching helicopter. Grabbing their caps and belts, the medical staff reached the landing pad just as a three-ton Bedford ambulance lumbered up the perimeter road to disgorge half a dozen medical orderlies. The RSM was with them and told the reception party of doctors and QA sisters, that the casualties were coming from an ambush and a firefight up near Grik, towards the border with Thailand. Tom recalled seeing the long convoy of vehicles leaving the garrison several days earlier and assumed that this incident was the result of the new operation to attack the CTs in that area.
As soon as the Westland Whirlwind dropped from the sky on to the whitewashed circle on the ground, the orderlies ran forward to pull out three stretchers while the rotor blades were still whirring over their heads. Peter Bright and Eddie Rosen hurried to make a quick examination of the wounded men and then motioned for them to be loaded into the first ambulance as it backed up nearer the helicopter. Three other ‘walking wounded’ clambered to the ground, two with arms supported in bloodstained slings, the other with a bandage around his chest. All were wearing jungle kit, with green lace-up boots and floppy wide-brimmed hats. They were helped solicitously into the large box-like ambulance, as the flight crew handed out their weapons to the RSM, who carefully checked their safety state before sending them to the arms kote. Before the senior surgeon clambered aboard the Bedford himself, he called out to the pathologist.
‘Looks as if we’ll need blood pretty soon, Tom. Can you get cracking on that?’
As the big ambulance lurched over the monsoon drain to get back on to the perimeter road, the pathologist hurried down to the laboratory, feeling for the first time that he really was in the army, rather than on a long tropical holiday.
As he marched off down the corridor, he could hear the whine of the helicopter rise to a higher pitch as it rose off the pad and curved away to go back to the battle area.
He could do nothing until the surgical team sent up samples for blood grouping, but he put his technicians on alert so that they could get all the kit ready. As soon as he had the groupings, he could check them against his prisoner list, then get some eager donors brought over to the transfusion basha.
The rest of the afternoon and early evening went in a flurry of activity, as the X-ray department and the operating theatre worked efficiently to deal with the wounds, dealing with fractures, digging out bullets and even screws and nails, as the terrorists, short of proper rifles and ammunition, had home-made weapons that fired these random metal fragments.
Six of Tom’s prisoners came willingly from the MCE to exchange pints of their blood
for about the same volume of Tiger beer. He bled them straight from arm veins into bottles as they lay on bed frames in the palm-leafed hut, red-capped MPs standing at the entrance, glowering suspiciously at their charges who they considered had found yet another way to ‘swing the lead’.
By dinner time that evening, things had settled down and though Peter Bright, David Meredith and Eddie Rosen were still down in the wards checking the post-operative condition of the injured men, the rest of the residents were able to eat in comparative peace. Afterwards, over coffee in the anteroom, they had at least had something fresh to talk about, other than the murder of Jimmy Robertson.
Speculation was rife as to whether this latest operation by the Brigade had rooted out any CTs. The answer to this soon came in an unusual way, as Alf Morris was called away by Number One to answer the phone. When he came back, he dropped heavily back into his chair and turned to Tom.
‘That was the CO on the phone. A nice little trip for you tomorrow, Tom!’
The pathologist’s stolid face looked suspiciously at Alf.
‘I thought we were all doing physical jerks on the car park at half six?’ he grunted.
The Admin Officer grinned mischievously as he looked around the room. ‘I’ve got good news for you, chaps! The colonel, in that inimitable way he has of changing his mind, has decided to call off his scheme for getting you fit! Apart from this communal run up Maxwell Hill on Friday!’
There were cries of relief all round, but Tom still waited for Alf’s ominous message about the next day.
‘The CO has had a request from Brigade for the services of a pathologist to carry out post-mortems on three CTs who were killed in this operation up near Grik. Your predecessor was called out a couple of times for the same thing.’
Dead in the Dog Page 22
