Bernard Knight - Dead in the Dog

His train of thought was interrupted by one of the Indian civil employees coming in with a tray containing his eleven o’clock grapefruit soda to wash down a Paludrine tablet, his daily defence against malaria. Behind him came Inspector Tan, with some statements about a recent serious wounding in a kampong a few miles away. Steven motioned to him to sit down on the other side of the desk. He had not told him of the business with Colonel O’Neill and the armoury as, if it was a total red-herring, the fewer people who knew about it, the better.

‘Tan, where do we go from here, eh?’ he began, wanting to see if the highly intelligent inspector had any new thoughts to offer about the impasse in which they found themselves. ‘Do you feel that it is at all possible that our culprit is from the hospital?’

The smooth-faced officer sat primly in his chair opposite his chief. ‘Anything is possible, sir. Who of us can ever tell what emotions are seething beneath the surface of any of our fellow men?’

Steven had a fleeting impression that he was listening to some saying of Confucius, but Tan soon became less philosophical and more practical.

‘Sir, we have the surgeon gentleman, Major Bright, who it seems is very enamoured with Mrs Diane. I came to learn that he would very much have liked her to divorce her husband so that they could marry — and time was running out, as he is soon due to return to England. That could be a motive for him to rid himself of Mr Robertson. He has no firm alibi for the time of the shooting.’

‘So he’s a favourite of yours for the killing?’

Tan gave a slight lift of the shoulders, his face remaining impassive. ‘It seems unlikely, but it is a possibility. Perhaps a better one than for his colleague, Captain Meredith, the anaesthetist. He too had a motive in that Mr Robertson appears to have captured the affections of one of the nursing sisters, who the captain had considered his own lady friend. But that seems a much weaker motivation than the first.’

Trust his inspector to lay out the facts in such a clear, if dispassionate way, thought Blackwell.

‘Any other suspects appeal to you, Tan?’ he asked.

‘I understand that the Commanding Officer has been acting somewhat strangely,’ replied Tan, again surprising his boss with his grasp of the local gossip from BMH. ‘Recently, he also seems to be unusually attentive to Mrs Robertson, though I fail to see the relevance of that.’

The Chinese officer paused for a moment. ‘Those are the military candidates, sir. But of course, there are the civilians, the planters. Mr Arnold has a rather dubious past, including using a gun to wound someone in Australia, but I see little motivation for shooting Mr Robertson. I have heard that he has expressed open admiration for Mrs Diane, but I doubt that he wanted to remove her husband in order to marry her.’

‘What about the Mackays?’ asked Steven, curious to hear what his inspector’s analytical mind felt about them.

‘From my interviews with them when I took statements, I felt that there was some unhappiness between them. I heard rumours from elsewhere that it was possible that Mr Robertson had carried on some adulterous relationship with Mrs Mackay, but that seemed in the past. I cannot believe that it would be in the best interests of Mr Mackay to kill his employer, unless he was consumed by an excess of outraged jealousy.’

Steven was secretly amused by Tan’s rather pedantic and prim phraseology, probably culled from classic English novels, but he appreciated his clear overview of the situation, which confirmed his own feelings.

He placed his Paludrine tablet on his tongue and washed it down with the fizzy grey juice.

‘We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next, I’m afraid,’ he said to his inspector, reaching across for the reports on the local assault.

They had not long to wait.

The next couple of days seemed relatively placid in BMH Tanah Timah, though various things were going on under the surface. Major Morris went discreetly to the arms kote and identified the rifle that his commanding officer had taken out. Through his many contacts in the garrison, he arranged to have it test fired over there, taking it personally in his car to one of the Brigade armourers. He brought it back almost immediately, together with the spent bullet and took the latter over to Steven Blackwell, to be sent down on the night train to the forensic laboratory in KL. He knew he was taking a chance over this, as if the colonel ever learnt of it — assuming that he did not eventually turn out to be the guilty party — then he was likely to face a court martial and the end of his career and pension.

Desmond O’Neill was also unaware of another matter concerning himself, as Major Martin, the senior physician, had had a covert telephone conversation with a friend and colleague in BMH Singapore, another major who was the Command Psychiatrist. After hearing what Martin had to say, he promised to come up to Tanah Timah the following week, in the guise of one of his routine visits to the physicians in the other four military hospitals.

The more junior medical staff, including Tom Howden, knew nothing of these machinations. The pathologist was quite content to get on with running the laboratory, the novelty of having his own place for the first time keeping him as happy as a sandboy. He spent half a day writing up a full report of his examinations of the shot terrorists. The film he had exposed up near Grik was developed by the photographic unit in the garrison and he was glad to see that his amateur efforts had resulted in clear, if horrific, pictures. These were duly sent down in the official mail to GHQ in Singapore and presumably would eventually find their way to the War Office and their gun experts in Woolwich. He carefully excluded the aerial shots he had taken from the Auster, which he airmailed home to his parents, to be shown around the rest of the family and neighbours to proudly demonstrate how their young Tommy was fighting to keep back the Communist hordes!

On Friday, after a nine-o’clock cup of pale fluid which his corporal alleged was Nescafe, he was at his microscope studying the first batch of blood films, two of which his technician Embi bin Sharif said were positive for malaria. In the middle of this peaceful exercise, he heard a sudden clatter of ammunition boots on the concrete floor of the main laboratory and a moment later the blond head of Sergeant Oates appeared around his door.

‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but a guardroom runner is here with a message for you to go down to Major Morris’s office at once. He says it’s really urgent.’

The pathologist grabbed his cap and hurried after the runner, who had no idea what the panic was about. When he reached Alf’s office, he found Steven Blackwell sitting in front of the Admin Officer’s desk, both men looking extremely grim.

‘I didn’t use the phone, Tom, you never know who’s listening on that switchboard. This is a very sensitive issue.’

Howden wondered if the colonel had gone completely berserk or perhaps the Third World War had started, but Alf rapidly explained, speaking quietly as the slatted shutters offered little privacy on the front verandah of the hospital.

‘The superintendent here has been told that two bodies have been found up at Gunong Busar this morning. He thought it would be as well if a doctor went up there with him and you seem the obvious choice, as there isn’t a civvy doctor nearer than Sungei Siput.’

Tom looked at the superintendent. ‘Two more dead? Who are they?’

‘I only have third-hand information, but I’m afraid it seems likely that they are Mr and Mrs Mackay. I had a phone call from Les Arnold, who was phoned by the Robertson’s head servant. Les was going down there straight away, but he rang me first.’