He stood up and looked across at the very attractive woman who was hunched over her drink on the settee. ‘Diane, I must get back to TT and see if there’s any more news. The army’s out in strength looking for any CTs in the area and I need to check with them. But what are we going to do with you? You can’t stay here on your own!’
She made a visible effort to pull herself together, putting her now empty glass on the table and standing up, brushing back her hair from her forehead.
‘I’ll be fine, Steven, really I will. I’ve got my amah and Siva at the back of the house – and Douglas is only a few yards away.’
He noted that she pointedly avoided any mention of Douglas’s wife.
‘I’ll have to talk to him first thing in the morning,’ she went on. ‘About the running of the estate – not that it will make much difference, he did all the real work around here, anyway.’
Reluctantly, the superintendent had to accept her decision. There seemed little alternative to Diane staying in the bungalow that night – there were no decent hotels nearer than Penang and the government rest-houses in the smaller towns were hardly suitable for an unaccompanied young woman. He could not think of any female companion who would be willing to come and stay with the new widow, given her reputation and the remoteness of Gunong Besar. If only his wife had not gone back to England, she could have sorted this out – Margaret was good at mothering people.
Again reassuring Diane that the police and the army were thick on the ground around the estate and promising to come up again first thing in the morning, Steven Blackwell went out to his vehicle, leaving another Land Rover with two armed constables parked ostentatiously outside the bungalow.
By the time Steven Blackwell got back to BMH, the place was buzzing with activity, mostly centred around the Casualty hut at the end of the car park.
Pushing past two red-capped Military Police standing in the doorway, he found that the Matron had joined the throng and was deep in conversation with Alfred Morris and the night sister. Tom Howden was talking in a corner with Peter Bright, who had seen all the activity when he had driven in a few minutes earlier and come to investigate. Although Morris was his equal in rank, Alf was non-medical and in the absence of the Commanding Officer, the surgeon was assumed to be top dog when it came to a medical problem, which apparently included sudden death. It was not a responsibility he welcomed.
‘So where the hell is O’Neill?’ he demanded irritably, in his cut-glass accent. ‘Did you try his quarters again?’
‘Three times, but nobody answers the phone,’ grunted the pathologist. ‘Alf has just sent a runner up there now, to knock on his door.’
He looked curiously at Peter Bright, who seemed to be in a fever of excitement, more than even these unusual circumstances warranted. The surgeon was agitated, running his fingers through his fair, wavy hair and nervously nibbling at his lower lip. Even Tom’s superficial knowledge of the intrigues in Tanah Timah was enough to set him wondering if Peter’s thoughts were now dominated by the fact that the love of his life had suddenly become a widow.
The major from the garrison was on the telephone, but now slapped it down and came across to the police superintendent. ‘We’ve had patrols up and down that damned road as far as Kampong Kerbau, but there’s not a sign of anything out of the ordinary. I just don’t understand it, the bandits don’t just loose off a single shot, they usually set up an ambush and blast hell out of whatever comes up the road.’
‘That’s if it did happen on the estate road,’ replied Steven. ‘At the moment, we haven’t a clue where the shooting took place.’
Everyone in the room gravitated towards the speakers, forming a circle around them. The QA corporal, her orderly and the pharmacy staff sergeant stood on the periphery, a captain from the provost marshal’s unit pushing in front of them. He was in charge of the military police, though the nearest investigators, the SIB, were in Ipoh. Speaking to Steven, who he knew well both professionally and socially, he voiced what was in most people’s minds.
‘Why the hell poor old Jimmy? And where did it happen?’
A confused chatter began filling the room and Blackwell saw that the whole affair was in danger of becoming a circus, with so many people milling about, most of whom had no real need to be involved. He held up his hands and called for quiet.
‘This is a police matter until we learn otherwise,’ he said loudly. ‘Mr Robertson was a civilian and he suffered his fatal injuries somewhere out there.’ He waved his hand at the rest of Malaya, before turning to Peter Bright and Alf Morris who were now standing together.
‘Could I suggest that the body is taken to your mortuary, as we’ve nowhere else to put him nearer than the ones at the civil hospitals at Ipoh or Taiping. I’ll contact the coroner first thing in the morning, but I’m sure he’ll want a post-mortem carried out.’
The coroner for this area of Perak was an Indian lawyer in private practice at Kuala Kangsar and Steven knew from experience that he would agree to almost any suggestion made by the police.
‘It’s almost one thirty,’ he continued. ‘My men and the army are still combing the area, but there’s nothing more we can do here until the morning, so I suggest we all get back to our duties or to our beds.’
There was a general shuffling as people began moving, but they halted abruptly as a harsh voice suddenly barked at them from the doorway.
‘What’s the meaning of this? Major Bright, what’s going on here?’
It was the Commanding Officer, Desmond O’Neill, dressed in a dark blazer and striped tie, with grey flannels above black shoes. His bony face glowered at them, lips compressed into a thin line.
‘What are all you people doing in my hospital at this hour of the night?’ Even at this tense moment, Tom Howden noticed the colonel’s proprietary attitude towards the BMH.
‘There’s been a tragedy, sir.’ Peter Bright chose his words carefully, being well aware of his senior officer’s peculiarities. ‘James Robertson has been shot dead. Outside somewhere, but he was brought here in case he could be resuscitated.’
‘He’s a civilian,’ snapped O’Neill. ‘He should have been taken to a general hospital.’
No one wanted to point out to him that the nearest was more than twenty miles away but Steven Blackwell was in no mood to be obstructed by some military martinet.
‘He wasn’t actually certified dead until he was on army premises, colonel – and the death may well be due to enemy action. I’ll clear it with the Brigadier in the morning, but I’ve asked if we could have the use of your mortuary in these urgent circumstances. As you will know, bodies go off rapidly in this climate and we’ll need an examination to help our investigation, as this is a murder.’
The cold eyes of the colonel roved aggressively around the room, then his mercurial moods changed into an almost benign state.
‘Of course, superintendent, of course!’ He turned on his heel like a marionette and glared at Tom.
‘Howden, you’re supposed to be a pathologist! Get the corpse to the mortuary and perform a post-mortem in the morning.’
He swung back to the others and his ferocity returned. ‘This is a Casualty Department, not a peep show. Everyone who has no business here can clear out – now!’
With a last glare at the discomfited faces, he vanished and they heard his car start up and accelerate away.
‘Cheeky bugger,’ muttered the garrison major to Alf Morris. ‘If I had another pip on my shoulder, I’d have told him where to get off!’
The faithful Admin Officer murmured something about O’Neill’s bark being worse than his bite, but the major had joined the general exodus and soon only the RAMC staff remained with the policeman.
‘In the morning, I’ll have to come and take statements from everyone who was in The Dog tonight,’ said Blackwell. ‘I’ll contact the coroner as early as I can and get his authority for you to carry out a post-mortem, Captain Howden.’
Alf Morris gave an indrawn w
histling noise to indicate his concern at this.
‘You’d better get back to the colonel to get his consent for that, Steven.’
‘But the bloody man has just ordered him to do it!’ protested the police officer.
‘Our beloved leader can be very fickle,’ warned Peter Bright. ‘What he says tonight, he might flatly deny in the morning.’
Blackwell gave a small sigh of exasperation and after making his farewells, went wearily out to his waiting Land Rover, the surgeon following him to his own sporty MG. By now, the orderly sergeant had got two RAMC privates to bring a trolley from the Families Clinic next door and with the others watching with sombre expressions, they covered James Robertson’s body with the sheet from the examination couch and hauled him across on to the trolley. As they pushed the sad burden away to the mortuary, Tom Howden had a sudden thought, as he had inspected the place only a couple of days ago. The morgue was part of his domain as the pathologist, a hut little larger than a garden shed on the edge of the helicopter landing pad, incongruously next to the badminton court.
‘There’s no refrigeration there. He’ll go off pretty fast in this heat,’ he said to Alf Morris.
As usual, the imperturbable Admin Officer had the answer. ‘That’s under control, we get blocks of ice brought in to put all around them. There’s a Chinese contractor in the town who supplies it, I’ll organize it first thing in the morning.’
With this bizarre image in his mind, Tom went off to scrounge a last cup of tea from the night sister, before going back to his bed in Intensive Care for what remained of the night.
Morning Prayers went off quite mildly, in spite of the fears of several officers that the Old Man would be ranting about their failure to notify him about the shooting, ignoring the fact that he was nowhere to be found. In the event, O’Neill never mentioned it.
As OMO, Tom had to deliver his report, keeping it as low-key as possible. After describing the satisfactory condition of the only patient on the SIL, he gave a sombre account of how Mr James Robertson had been brought in dead, then finished up with the usual. ‘The arms kote was inspected at eleven hundred hours and all was found to be in order, sir.’
He sat down, but jumped up again as the CO barked at him.
‘I’ve already heard from the police, Howden. The coroner wants you to carry out a post-mortem this morning.’ He glared at the pathologist over his Himmler glasses, which he always wore at these meetings. The skin over his high cheekbones appeared stretched more tightly than usual, giving his face a skull-like appearance.
‘Have you ever seen a gunshot wound, captain? I suppose you do know how to perform an autopsy?’
Tom tried to ignore the insulting tone. ‘Yes, sir, I’ve been with my consultant when he dealt with a firearm death. And yes, sir, I’ve done at least twenty coroner’s cases back home.’
With the abrupt changes of mood that seemed characteristic of this strange man, the CO seemed to lose interest and went on to harangue the quartermaster about some delay in delivery of medical stores. The unfortunate Captain Burns offered feeble excuses about inefficiency in the Base Supply Depot down in Singapore. Robbie Burns was another officer who, like Alf Morris, had come up through the ranks and was fervently hoping that he would reach retirement less than a year away, without being court-martialled for strangling the Commanding Officer, who made his life a permanent misery. He was a short, corpulent Scouse, always sweating profusely and incessantly mopping his red face with a handkerchief.
The meeting stumbled through its usual nerve-racking course, with a dozen officers sitting edgily on their chairs, waiting for their colonel to suddenly turn and attack them for some imagined misdeed. Eventually they were released into the mounting heat and went their various ways to heal the sick.
When Tom Howden got back to his laboratory, he found a mug of milky, sweet tea ready on his desk and a solicitous lance corporal hovering around him. Lewis Cropper’s long, sallow face regarded him with spaniel-like concern. A Regular soldier, he was the despair of a series of sergeant majors across what remained of the British Empire, having been posted hither and thither merely to get rid of him. In spite of the fact that he was an excellent laboratory technician, his stubborn refusal to conform to authority kept him in almost continual trouble. He was nosy, garrulous, obsequious and generally bloody-minded to all except his pathologists, for whom he always seemed to have an embarrassingly doglike devotion.
‘Hear there’s to be a pee-em this morning, sir!’ he offered, making Tom marvel at the speed and efficiency of the hospital bush-telegraph.
‘That’s right. Ask Sergeant Oates to come in, will you?’
He sipped at his tea and flinched at the combination of condensed milk and three spoonfuls of sugar. But Cropper made no move to obey.
‘Won’t do any good, sir,’ he answered mournfully. ‘Sarge can’t stand the morgue. Last time, he threw up, then fainted. Says he’s never going to set foot in there again.’
Tom stared at the lance corporal over the rim of his mug. Was he pulling his leg or working up to some scam of his own?
‘I’ll have a word with him – I have to have some help in there.’
‘Well, Derek Oates won’t be any use, I can tell you! The last pathologist, Captain Freeman, said the sarge was to be permanently excused on medical grounds, on account of his puking all the time.’
‘What about one of the Malays, then?’
Cropper made a derisory noise, suspiciously like a verbal raspberry.
‘No chance, cap’n! It’s against their religion or some such.’
He leaned over the desk in an attitude of unwelcome familiarity.
‘S’alright, sir, I’ll help you out. I’ve already sharpened up the tools.’
Like a conjuror, he produced an old box the size of a small briefcase, made of dark hardwood and with the historic broad arrow of the ‘War Department’ carved into its varnished lid. Cropper opened it and displayed the contents to Tom with the proud air of a Kleeneze salesman on a housewife’s doorstep.
‘Pre-war, these are! Don’t know which war, but there’s a lovely bit of steel in them.’
Inside was a fearsome array of instruments, worthy of the worst excesses of the Spanish Inquisition. Nestled into faded blue velvet slots were several large knives, which would have looked perfectly at home in a slaughterhouse. An amputation saw, a steel mallet and several chisels jostled for space with scissors, forceps and a gadget that consisted of two half-hoops hinged together, like a folding crown.
‘What the devil’s that?’ demanded Tom.
‘A coronet, sir. Captain Freeman was very fond of that. You open it out and put it over the skull. Screw those spikes into the bone to hold it firm and you’ve got a nice straight guide for sawing off the top of the head.’
The pathologist grunted, thinking that he could manage without such medieval devices. The corporal’s importuning was interrupted by the telephone and Tom picked it up to hear the police superintendent on the line.
‘Would midday suit you for this post-mortem, captain?’ asked Steven Blackwell. ‘The SIB chap from Ipoh would like to be present as well as the major from the provost marshal’s office in the garrison.’
Tom agreed, then asked about identification of the corpse.
‘I was much too junior to do any police cases back on Tyneside,’ he explained. ‘But I know my boss always had to get someone to officially confirm who the body actually was.’
Blackwell said he had this organized and that he would be bringing James’s widow to BMH immediately before the examination.
Ringing off, Tom Howden saw with relief that Cropper had taken his box of instruments back into the main lab, perhaps for a final honing of the wicked knives. Sitting behind his desk, staring into space, Tom sipped his sickly tea and pondered at the sudden responsibilities that the Army had thrust upon him. Already he was doing work and offering expert opinions on medical matters that would have been considered far above his status in c
ivilian life. After only one year’s apprenticeship in NHS pathology, he was now examining tissues removed by the surgeons and reporting on them, a task which only seniors did back in the UK. It was true that the younger, healthier military patients rarely had the tumours and difficult diagnostic problems seen at home, but there were some gynaecological conditions among the wives which could be potentially serious. Apart from this histology, the bulk of the work was detecting bacteria and parasites, from malaria to hookworm, from tuberculosis to occasional cases of leprosy, as many of the patients were Malays or Gurkhas, who suffered a different range of diseases from the British troops. The jungle patrols were susceptible to Weil’s disease contracted from water contaminated by rats, a dangerous condition which was sometimes fatal. Though Howden’s limited civilian experience had hardly prepared him for all this, his technicians gently carried him along and he was learning fast.
But now, he ruminated, he was being pitchforked into a murder investigation and had to make the best of it. Where tumours and complicated medical conditions were concerned, he could always get an expert opinion by sending the material back by air to the Royal Army Medical College in Millbank, but there was nowhere he could get rapid help over a civilian shooting.
Shrugging philosophically, he swallowed the rest of his tea, realizing that he was in danger of becoming used to the taste of the cloying liquid. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was almost time for him to attend to another of his varied duties, this time the sick parade in the military prison next door. Jamming his cap on his head, he went into the main lab to speak to his sergeant. The room occupied most of the building, only Tom’s little office and the tissue-cutting lab being partitioned off the back of it.
Wooden benches lined most of three walls, the other wall being filled with a kerosene-powered refrigerator, an incubator and a sterilizer. The entrance was opposite these, directly on to the concrete strip that ran under the overhang of the corrugated asbestos roof. Slatted windows, all wide open, fed as much air as possible to the pair of whirling brass fans in the ceiling, as there was no air conditioning. The centre of the laboratory was occupied with another large island bench, with a central raised shelf covered with a profusion of reagent bottles and odd bits of apparatus. This was the sergeant’s province, as he did most of the chemical testing, though like the others, he could turn his hand to anything. Derek Oates was there now and Tom waited whilst he sucked up some blood into a glass pipette and blew it into a tube to carry out an analysis for urea in a patient from the Australian battalion, whose kidneys had been damaged by Weil’s disease.
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