Dead in the Dog

by Bernard Knight

  In another corner, Embi bin Sharif, one of the MORs, was quietly chanting some mournful Malay song as he dried thick drops of blood on glass slides to look for malarial parasites under his microscope. Embi was a smooth-faced lad, unfailingly smart and polite, with almond eyes and sleek jet-black hair. He came from even further north in Perlis, the small state next to the border with Thailand.

  At the other end of the bench, another private soldier was happily playing ‘postman’, rhythmically banging a rubber stamp from ink pad to a pile of pathology request forms universally known as ‘F-Med Tens’. Aziz Ismael was a fat, cheerful fellow with a mass of curly hair, unusual in a Malay. He was from nearby Kuala Kangsar and he was a fount of local information on almost any subject.

  When Derek Oates’s mouth was free of his tube, the pathologist broached the subject of the post-mortem.

  ‘I gather you’re not too keen on the mortuary, sergeant?’

  The trim young man looked somewhat abashed. ‘Sorry, sir, I’d be no use to you. I can’t understand it, because when I have blood in a tube, I’m fine!’

  He gestured towards the bijou bottles and universal containers filled with the red fluid which were arrayed before him on his bench.

  ‘But when I see it on a dead body, I just fall apart. I feel rotten about it, sir, it’s something I just can’t beat.’

  Tom nodded at him, it was something not worth pursuing. Oates was such an excellent worker that he saw no point in making an issue of the fellow’s unfortunate phobia. ‘Cropper says he’ll give a hand, as I gather the other lads are not keen on the job.’

  ‘They won’t go near the place, sir. Malays seem to have all sorts of superstitions, especially about the dead. Aziz will probably give you a run-down on that!’

  ‘Right, sarge, I’m off to see the naughty boys in the nick, then I’ll be doing this post-mortem at twelve. Everything under control here?’

  Oates assured him that there were no problems and Howden set off up the main corridor, conscious again of the sticky heat as the day warmed up. He passed the operating theatre which lay opposite the X-ray Department and the Officers’ Ward before coming to another pair which housed the long-term tuberculous patients. These were mostly Gurkhas, who were prone to many infectious diseases, including potentially fatal measles and mumps. Coming from their remote Himalayan fastness in Nepal, they lacked the resistance acquired by most other races.

  Beyond the last pair of wards, were two odd structures before the corridor ended opposite the arms kote. On one side was a large khaki tent, which was Percy Loosemore’s stamping-ground, the ‘STD’ or Special Treatment Department, a euphemism for the VD clinic. Across the corridor was another part of Tom’s domain, the blood transfusion ‘basha’, an open-sided shed with a large attap roof, made of neatly laid palm branches. This was where blood donors gave their contributions when needed, though so far he had not been called upon to officiate there. The hospital had no ‘blood bank’ – at least not in refrigerated bottles – as the precious fluid was kept ‘on the hoof’ inside the donors until needed.

  Tom reached the perimeter road and turned left towards the open gate into the main garrison. As he walked, he thought with some apprehension about the post-mortem he was soon to carry out. He was not bothered about the actual procedure itself, though in spite of his earlier response to the CO, he had virtually no experience of gunshot wounds, having only once watched his boss in Newcastle deal with a shotgun suicide. However, he had got up early to read the relevant chapter in his well-thumbed copy of Glaister’s Forensic Medicine and reckoned that he could just about flannel his way through.

  No, it was the prospect of having the widow there to identify James’s body that worried him. Back home, he had several times been present when grieving relatives had to view the bodies of their loved ones and he still remembered the sobbing, the wailing and even the odd faint, even though most people seemed to be overtaken by a numbed silence as they looked through the glass panel into the viewing room of the mortuary. He wondered how Diane Robertson would take it. There were all the rumours about the Robertsons’ marital discord and she seemed a pretty hard character, he mused – but one never really knows how someone will react.

  These thoughts occupied him until he reached the inner gate to the garrison and once inside he turned right to reach another smaller compound. This occupied the furthermost corner of the stockade, divided off from it by another high double fence. The outer layer was of chain-link, topped with coils of barbed wire and just inside was a tall palisade of corrugated iron to screen the inmates from the rest of the garrison. A lofty gate of similar material had a small steel-mesh door set into it, beyond which a red-capped MP corporal stood on guard.

  When he saw the officer approaching, he stamped his shiny boots across to the door and gave a cracking salute, which Tom returned in the half-embarrassed way that most newly enlisted doctors employed.

  ‘Morning, sah! Identity card, please, sah!’

  Though he came every morning, the pathologist held up his ID to the wire and with a rattling flourish of keys, the redcap let him in and locked the gate behind him. There was a single road running up the middle of the two-acre site, with the familiar long, low huts placed at right angles on each side. The first on the left contained the guardroom, Commandant’s office, mess room and stores, while on the other side of the lane was the sickbay with other unidentifiable rooms beyond it. A dozen drooping figures stood on the verandah outside, with another MP corporal stalking up and down the line, his chest stuck out like a turkeycock.

  When he saw the officer approaching, he slammed himself to attention and screamed at the patients to do the same. All hauled themselves upright, except for one, who seemed to be bent in half from some back trouble.

  The corporal gave Tom a vibrating salute, which he again returned half-heartedly and went into the sickbay. It was a bare room, with a table and chair for the doctor, a spartan examination couch and a white bench with a cupboard above for the meagre medical supplies. Hovering near this was an elderly RAMC corporal, seconded from the 38th Field Ambulance at Taiping.

  Sid Hooper was a burly, impassive man, with a row of medal ribbons on his tunic, half-hidden by the creased white coat he wore as his badge of office. He gave the weary impression of having seen it all before and that none of these bloody shirkers outside were going to put one over either on him or his doctor.

  ‘The usual bunch of lead-swinging layabouts today, doc,’ he announced. ‘One of ’em might possibly have something wrong with him.’

  Tom took off his hat and dropped it on to the table, before sitting down.

  ‘Wheel them in, corporal. Let’s make it quick, I’ve got a lot to do this morning.’

  The corporal went to the door and after some more screaming from the MP outside, a man charged in, his nailed boots clattering on the floor at the tempo of a double-quick march. With a final crunch, he stopped in front of the table and stared fixedly at the wall beyond Tom’s head. Hooper came across with a tattered document in his hand.

  ‘Gunner Andrews, sir. Crime sheet as long as your arm. Sunburn.’

  The man was dressed like most of the prisoners, wearing only green shorts above heavy boots and socks. The upper half of his body was bright red from the sun, as most of the men were sent out on working parties to cut grass or clear monsoon drains around the large garrison enclave.

  ‘S’me back, sir,’ was his only complaint and within seconds, the sickbay sergeant had slapped the paperwork before Tom, on which was already written the word ‘calamine lotion’, obtained a signature and harried the patient out through the door to wait for his treatment after the doctor had left. As he went, Tom saw that the blistered skin across his shoulders was peeling off in strips, but he was given no time to make any other examination.

  The rest of the sick parade went in a similar fashion. For sunburn they had calamine, for foot rot they had anti-fungal powder or were ‘excused boots’ in favour of plimsolls for a
few days. For alleged stomach ache they had magnesia, for headaches they had aspirin and for the ‘runs’ they were prescribed kaolin-and-morph mixture. All this was decided by Hooper and only if the medical officer suspected something more sinister were they examined more closely. Any really suspect conditions meant that they would have to be sent over to Casualty in BMH, a procedure which raised frowns from the prison staff, as it meant finding them an escort and disrupting the iron regime of the Military Corrective Establishment.

  This morning, there was nothing to suggest any mortal conditions amongst the supplicants, most of whom used the sick parade to wangle an hour off grass cutting. Even the man with the bent back seemed to recover when screamed at loudly enough by the MP corporal.

  As he walked back to the hospital, Tom wondered whether he had really needed five years in medical school for the sort of practice in which he now seemed to be involved. Even the prospect of a post-mortem seemed more attractive than signing chits for calamine lotion and ‘excuse boots’.

  Back in his office, he spent what was left of the morning in checking the positive blood films for malaria and looking at the bacterial cultures which had grown overnight in the incubator. Sergeant Oates was equally as proficient at recognizing them and diplomatically speeded the process by gentle remarks such as ‘I think this one is Staph aureus, sir, don’t you?’ The malarial films had already been screened by Aziz, who only sent in the positive ones for the officer to check. In fact, the MOR had already confidently written the type of parasite on the form and Tom found later that he was never to catch Aziz out in all the time they were at BMH.

  After another infusion of sweet tea, he sat signing report forms and waiting for the phone to ring, heralding the arrival of the autopsy delegation. At eleven thirty, the guardroom rang and he went down to the front of the hospital where he found Steven Blackwell and Inspector Tan waiting in Alf Morris’s office with Diane Robertson.

  She wore a black skirt, perhaps as a concession to mourning, topped by a white silk blouse, but otherwise looked her usual glamorous self.

  ‘You’re the new pathologist – it’s Captain Howden, isn’t it?’ she said brightly. ‘I’ve seen you in The Dog once or twice.’

  Tom mumbled something about being sorry to have to meet in these sad circumstances, but Diane appeared unfazed by the fact that he was shortly going to dissect her husband.

  ‘The Army police chaps will be along by twelve,’ volunteered Blackwell, intending to cover up any awkwardness in the situation.

  ‘So shall we get this over with first?’

  As they left the office, Tom whispered quickly to the Admin Officer.

  ‘Alf, is the colonel coming to this?’

  Morris shook his head. ‘Not as far as I know, though you never can tell with him. He’s told me to make sure everything is laid on. As a former public health wallah, I don’t think he’s too keen on dead bodies.’

  They followed the two policemen and the widow up the main corridor, Diane taking Steven’s arm. Tom suspected that she was feeling that she ought to put on some sort of show of being a bereaved widow for the many curious faces that peered out of ward doorways as they went. She was never one to miss the chance to hold on to a man, even if he was a bald, middle-aged married policeman. At one point, Diane turned around and gave Tom a dazzling smile and asked if he was settling down well. In spite of the bizarre circumstances, he felt a twitch of desire as he appreciated again what a gorgeous woman she was.

  At the point in the corridor level with where the mortuary lay, Lance Corporal Cropper was standing at attention. Tom Howden groaned at the sight, as the self-important technician had obviously appointed himself as guide. After he had jerked his hand up to his crumpled beret in salute, he marched in front of the posse across the stunted grass and the perimeter road. Tom felt that Cropper only needed a black top hat with a crêpe band to look like an undertaker’s mute leading a funeral. When they reached the isolated hut, the corporal ceremoniously threw open the door and stood aside.

  Alf Morris had seen to it that a couple of orderlies had brought the body out of the post-mortem room and arranged it on a ward trolley in the tiny anteroom just inside the door. Covered with a couple of clean sheets and with a vase of flowers temporarily borrowed from a ward placed on a nearby shelf, the scene was at least innocuous, if not actually dignified.

  ‘We’ll make this as quick as possible, Diane,’ said the superintendent gently. ‘It’s a legal requirement, I’m afraid. All I want you to do is to confirm to me and Dr Howden here, that this is the body of James Robertson, OK?’

  He led her through the door and though Tom tried to block Lewis Cropper, the corporal dodged past him and advanced to the head of the trolley, taking the ends of the sheet in both hands.

  Tom and Alf Morris stood at the foot and the stringy Inspector Tan hovered behind, as Steven Blackwell nodded at Cropper, who reverently folded back the sheet to expose the face of the dead man. There was a tense silence as they all looked at Jimmy Robertson, who even in death seemed to have a bad-tempered look on his face.

  Tom waited for sobs, screams or moans, but Diane surprised them all.

  ‘I’ve never seen a dead person before,’ she observed conversationally. ‘But yes, that’s certainly my husband.’

  As she turned and walked out into the brilliant sunlight, Diane asked Alf Morris about funeral arrangements. ‘I’ve no idea what to do. I’ve sent a cable to his brother in England, he’ll tell my mother-in-law.’

  As they walked away, Tom heard the Admin Officer telling her that once the coroner had completed his formalities, the Church of England padre from the garrison was the best person to help her. He should have been here this morning, said Alf, but was on a long weekend leave in the Cameron Highlands.

  The two policemen went to see her to her car at the front of the hospital, saying that they would be back in a few minutes and Tom was left with his officious corporal, though in truth, he was now quite glad of his help. They wheeled the corpse into the inner room, which was half filled with a white porcelain slab on a pedestal fixed to the concrete floor. A column of soldier ants was marching from somewhere in the corner, up the pedestal and down the other side, causing Cropper to pump energetically at them with a Flit gun, filling the air with a mixture of paraffin and DDT insecticide.

  A large kitchen sink against one wall had a single brass tap, with a long wooden draining board attached to one side. A small table stood under the slatted window and a broom, a long-handled squeegee and two buckets stood in a corner. A pair of rubber aprons with chains around the neck and waist hung from a nail on the wall.

  ‘We had to move the ice to get him on to the trolley,’ explained Cropper, pointing at a dozen chunks of cloudy grey ice, each the size of a breeze block, which now lay on the floor in a spreading pool of melted water.

  They folded up the sheets, slid the now naked cadaver on to the slab and Cropper pushed the trolley out again, so that there was some space left in the small room for spectators. He had put his precious instrument box on the table and laid the weapons out in a row on the draining board.

  A few minutes later, the two police officers returned, as smart as ever in their pristine khaki uniforms, though Tom noticed that the back of Steven’s shirt was as black with sweat as his own.

  ‘I think the main object of the exercise is to retrieve the bullet for forensic examination,’ said Blackwell. ‘Though I suppose knowing the range it was fired from might be a help, too.’

  Taking off his uniform jacket, Tom hung the red rubber apron around his neck and hooked the chains around his waist, then put on some thick rubber gloves. The corporal did the same and by then, the clump of boots in the outer room heralded the arrival of the military men, Sergeant Markham from the SIB and Major Enderby from the provost marshal’s department. They had brought a photographer with them, a sergeant from the Intelligence Corps, who proceeded to take a series of pictures of the body with a rather large and clumsy MPP Press c
amera. The pathologist wisely got him to take some of the bullet entry wound from as close as he could possibly get the lens.

  ‘No burning, smoke or powder marks on the skin around it,’ he pointed out to the spectators, carefully checking all the points he had mugged up in ‘Glaister’ that morning. ‘Nor were there any on the shirt, so it wasn’t a close discharge.’

  The two civilian police seemed immune to the proximity of a corpse, having seen plenty during the years of the ‘Emergency’, as it was euphemistically called. The SIB sergeant seemed to have a similar indifference, but the major, who had been a lawyer before entering the service, and the photographer, were looking rather pale about the lips.

  ‘You’ve got the clothing safe, superintendent?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘All packed up, though I can’t see it’ll be of much use. The lab in KL isn’t all that hot on some aspects, they’re really a chemical analysis outfit rather than forensic, though they’re trying to expand. We may have to send the shirt down to Singapore if necessary, but it’s the bullet that really interests us.’

  While they were talking, Tom got on with his examination, examining every square inch of the body, though he found nothing out of the ordinary apart from the small hole in the chest. He helped Cropper to lift the shoulders while they slipped a thick block of wood under them, then opened the body with one of the murderous-looking knives. He had to admit that his technician had done a good job of sharpening them and the dissection went ahead with no hitches.