‘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.
THIRTEEN
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 Nescafé, 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.’
‘Better get going, Tom,’ said Morris. ‘The police Land Rover is waiting outside.’
‘What about the colonel?’ asked Tom warily. ‘Has he given it the OK?’ He recalled the fuss that O’Neill had made when Jimmy Robertson’s body was brought in to ‘his’ hospital.
‘He’s not here, he was summoned down to Kinrara for some meeting, thank God!’
‘You’re not coming with us?’
Alf shook his head. ‘I’ve got to mind the shop, when the CO’s away. And anyway, it’s not Army business, this. You happen to be the only doctor around here used to seeing corpses! Now be off with you.’
Tom climbed into the back of the blue police vehicle and they shot off, the Malay constable who was driving being obviously delighted to have an emergency as an excuse for putting his accelerator foot flat on the floor.
As they zoomed out into the road and accelerated past the garrison gates, Steven half turned from the front seat.
‘I know no more about this than you heard from Alf. I suppose the servant in Gunong Besar rang Les Arnold as he was the nearest. All Les knew was that for a change, this time it was not a shooting.’
The Land Rover turned up past The Dog on to the laterite road to Kampong Kerbau and within a few minutes was roaring up the steep entrance drive to the Robertson’s bungalow. As the driver skidded to a halt on the gravel, Steven half expected to see Diane leaning over the balcony holding a glass of gin and a cigarette. But she was gone, staying at the best hotel in Penang until the coroner’s inquest was held on her late husband – and until the arrival of the next Blue Funnel ship bound for Britain.
When they clambered out, Tom saw a battered ex-US army jeep parked at the bottom of the steps. He knew this belonged to Les Arnold, but there was no sign of the Australian. The superintendent made to climb up to the verandah, but a Chinese girl appeared above him, with a Tamil woman hovering anxiously behind her. The amah pointed away to the other bungalow, just visible behind the trees and bushes.
‘Siva took Mister Arnold down there, sir!’ she cried.
Steven raised his swagger stick in acknowledgement and with Tom and the driver in tow, hurried between exotically flowered bushes to the driveway of the Mackay bungalow.
Here they found the Australian sitting on the steps up to the house, smoking a cigarette while waiting for them to arrive. He stood as they came near, dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, with a wide canvas bush hat on his head. His usual laconic, sarcastic manner was missing and his long face was solemn.
‘Bad business, this. The damn place must be cursed!’
A few paces away stood Siva, the senior servant in the Robertson household and Arnold waved a hand towards him.
‘The boy here phoned me less than an hour ago – just before I rang you, Steve,’ he said. ‘So I came down here bloody quick to see what was up.’
‘And what was up, Les?’ demanded Blackwell.
‘Come and see for yourself – under here, first of all.’
He loped away down the slope which ran around the further side of the bungalow. The house was built up on a number of brick columns which, due to the uneven slope of the ground, were higher on the end further away from the Robertson house. Here the underside of the floor was eight feet off the ground, giving plenty of height for the two cars which were parked underneath.
Towards the back of this undercroft, a sombre sight awaited them. Hanging by the neck from a rope suspended from a beam supporting the floor above, was the body of Douglas Mackay. His feet were just touching the ground, his legs slightly bent at the knees and his head was tilted acutely sideways. Nearby was an overturned wooden crate.
‘Siva says this is exactly how he found him,’ said Les Arnold. ‘Nothing’s been touched.’
The grave-faced Indian servant nodded. ‘I just went near enough to make sure Mr Mackay was dead, sir. I knew I could do nothing for him, so I phoned to Mr Arnold.’
‘How did you know he was here? You live next door.’
‘The sweeper found him, sir. He goes around the place every morning to clean up. He ran to tell me.’
Blackwell decided to check on the body before things got even more complicated.
‘Tom, let’s have a quick look here first.’ The three whites advanced on the body, which hung in frozen stillness, its contact with the earthen floor preventing any swinging in the slight breeze.
The pathologist had attended three hangings dealt with by his boss during his year of pathology in the UK and as far as he could see, this one was a classical self-suspension. The thin woven rope had cut deeply into the neck, a slip knot riding high beneath the left ear. The skin above it was purple and the face was red and suffused, with small pinpricks of blood under the skin.
The eyes were half open and he could see more small bleeding points in the whites. Tom used the back of his hand to test the temperature of Mackay’s bare forearm. Even given the warmth of the climate it felt cool, and when he gently tried to lift the wrist, there was firm resistance from rigor mortis.
‘How long d’you reckon he’s been dead?’ barked the Australian, heedless of the superintendent’s presence.
‘God, I’m no forensic expert,’ exclaimed Tom. ‘And it’s hard enough for them at home. Here the climate makes a nonsense of temperature calculations, but he’s certainly cooled down a bit.’
‘It looked as if he was in rigor mortis when you moved his arm,’ said Steven, reclaiming his investigative role from Les Arnold.
Howden nodded. ‘He’s still very stiff. I’ve read that rigor comes on and goes off much quicker in hot climates, but he must have been dead for at least some hours. There’s no sign of decomposition or of insects laying eggs on his eyelids, so at a wild guess, I think he must have died sometime during the night or early this morning.’
Blackwell gave him a very worried look.
‘Anything about it that suggests he didn’t do it himself?’
Tom shrugged, reluctant to give too many opinions about things he was not really qualified to pronounce upon.
‘He’s certainly died from having his neck squeezed by that noose. There’s that crate that presumably he stood on to tie the rope around that beam. Then he must have stepped off it!’
‘But his feet are still on the ground,’ objected the planter.
Tom had read many of the forensic textbooks, partly from a morbid interest and he had an answer to that.
‘No problem, the weight of the body leaning into the noose is enough. I’ve seen pictures of people who have hanged themselves from a door knob.’
‘Could anyone else have croaked him and made it look like a suicide?’ demanded the irrepressible Aussie.
Tom was getting out of his depth. ‘I’ve no idea, Les. But I’ve also read that murder by hanging is very rare, unless the victim is drunk, drugged or physically restrained.’
The police officer turned to the servant from next door. ‘Now, what’s the situation about Mrs Mackay? Where is she?’
‘Upstairs in her bedroom,’ cut in Arnold, once again. ‘I just had a quick look from the doorway. I didn’t go in, she was on the floor, obviously dead.’
They began hurrying up the steps to the verandah, Steven Blackwell still questioning the Tamil servant.
‘How did you learn about it, Siva?’
‘After Mister Mackay was found, they sent to next door for me, as their houseboy is very young chap. I told the amah to go wake his wife. She does not get up very early these days. I thought it better that a woman broke the news first. Then the girl came screaming down to tell me what she had found.’
They marched through the open doors from the verandah into the lounge and Nadin led the way into the back corridor, from which the bedrooms opened. At the second door, he stood back to allow the others to look inside. The bare room with its wooden walls and slowly rotating fan had two single beds each with high mosquito nets. The single sheet on the further bed was undisturbed and it had not been slept in, but the one nearer the door was crumpled and the net was thrown up on one side.
‘Where is she?’ demanded Steven Blackwell, always hesitant to barge into what might turn out to be a crime scene. Back in Manchester, he had dealt with several cases where a husband had hanged himself after killing his wife.
‘Between the beds, lying on the floor,’ supplied Les Arnold, more subdued now in the presence of a dead woman.
‘Tom, have a quick look first, will you,’ directed Blackwell. ‘I don’t want us all trampling over everything until we know what’s what.’
The pathologist trod delicately over to the foot of the nearest bed and peered into the space between them. Rosa Mackay was lying sprawled on the planked wooden floor, face up, arms and legs splayed out. She wore thin cotton pyjamas, the jacket stained with vomit, which was also smeared over the floor, as if she had been thrashing about. Her face was contorted and a pinkish froth was issuing from one corner of her mouth.
Tom went nearer and c
rouched alongside the body. As with her husband a few moments earlier, he touched the skin and tested the rigidity of both an arm and her jaw.
‘Still a bit of warmth there,’ he reported. ‘And she’s just starting to get stiff. I reckon she died quite a bit later than her husband, probably not more than a few hours ago.’
‘But died of what, Tom?’ asked the policeman, in a sepulchral voice.
‘I suppose poisoning is the most likely cause, given the circumstances. But I don’t know what poison!’
Les Arnold surprised them by giving them the answer.
‘Reckon I know what it was. Can’t you smell it?’
He gave some exaggerated sniffs as his eyes roamed around the room.
Tom bent nearer the body and followed his example.
‘Smells like paraffin – and the vomit’s a bit greenish.’
‘There you are, then! Got to be paraquat, ain’t it?’
Steven Blackwell cut back into the dialogue. ‘Paraquat? That’s that herbicide, isn’t it?’
The Australian nodded. ‘Yep, used by the gallon around the estates these days. A couple of years ago, one of my tappers, a young girl, topped herself with it after some broken love affair. That’s how I remember the smell, she sicked up this stinking stuff as well. The chemical is dissolved in kerosene for spraying.’
Blackwell was looking around the room and walked over to a chest of drawers on which was what appeared to be an empty Coca-Cola bottle. Without touching it, he looked closely at it and then cautiously sniffed the open top.
‘This smells strongly of paraffin. There’s still some oily green liquid in the bottom.’
Dead in the Dog Page 24