shots, well ahead of me, then silence! I kept hopping from tree to tree and worked my way around to the front of James’s bungalow, but there was no one to be seen. By then James had come out, so I went back to phone your police station and the guardroom at the Garrison.’
‘And you saw nothing at all?’
‘Not a thing. If it hadn’t been for the others hearing it – and the holes in the woodwork – I might have dreamt it all!’
Steve Blackwell sipped his orange juice as he turned to Robertson.
‘What about you, James? Anything to add?’
‘I’ve told you all this before – and your inspector chap. Like Douglas, I grabbed my rifle, then crouched down on the verandah, peering through the struts. Couldn’t see a thing, all the shots had been fired before that. I went down the steps and hid behind a bush, then hollered for Douglas. He shouted back that he was going to phone for help, so I went around the whole place to see what the hell was going on. By that time, the servants and the tappers had crawled out of their holes and were jabbering fit to burst, so I had to calm them down. By that time, your boys and the army had arrived.’
‘Have they found anything?’ demanded Diane, pouring herself another gin, without offering one to anyone else.
‘Not so far, but they’re widening out into the rubber and the
A platoon of the Royal West Berkshires were at that moment tramping through the estate behind the scatter of buildings that lay beyond the bungalows and across the road, where the tappers and labourers were housed. The house servants lived in huts immediately behind the two dwellings, already the subject of intensive searching by half a dozen constables under Inspector Tan and his Malay sergeant.
‘We’ve found fifteen spent cartridge cases, all standard three-oh-three calibre, no surprises there,’ added the superintendent.
‘What about footprints?’ asked Douglas Mackay.
Blackwell shrugged dismissively. ‘Pretty hopeless, it rained like hell early this morning. Plenty of smeared prints about, but they could be anyone’s. I doubt if even the Rangers could make anything of them.’
He was referring to the Sarawak Rangers, Ibans similar to Dyaks, recruited from Borneo as trackers. Heavily tattooed all over below the neck, these little men were superb at following terrorist trails in the jungle.
‘So what happens next?’ demanded James Robertson.
‘I’ve got men turning over every house up the road as far as Kampong Kerbau and the army is searching each side of the road all the way from there back to TT. Then I’m going back to see the Director of Operations in Brigade to decide if we need to widen out the search into the hills. I haven’t got enough men for that, it’s up to the Brigadier to decide if he wants to turn this into a major operation.’
‘And what happens if those bastards come back tonight – or tomorrow?’ snapped Diane, with nervous anger.
‘We’re running a permanent patrol after dark, up and down between TT and Kampong Kerbau,’ reassured the superintendent. ‘The police will use an armoured Land Rover and there’s a scout car coming from the Garrison.’
He drained his orange juice and picked up his hat and stick.
‘I wouldn’t worry too much, I’ve got a gut feeling that this was some spur-of-the-moment shoot-up by some crazy devil. Go down to the dance at The Dog tonight and take your mind off it.’
‘I’ll use the Buick, at least that’s got some protection,’ glowered James.
‘More than my poor Austin,’ snapped his wife. ‘I’ll have to send Siva to Ipoh tomorrow, to get a new windscreen fitted.’
As Steven Blackwell turned to leave, Douglas rose to follow him, Rosa almost scurrying to his side to take his arm. The Robertsons offered a surly farewell to the trio and as the manager and his wife walked away across the coarse grass of the knoll towards their own bungalow, Diane went out on to her verandah to glower after them, reserving a specially poisonous glare for the trim figure of Rosa Mackay.
THREE
Although the Friday night function at the Sussex Club was nominally a dance, the majority of the members never set foot on the floor, which was a small area of the big lounge cleared of tables and chairs. The occasion was hallowed by tradition at The Dog, being the main social function of the week, where people came to meet their friends and catch up on the week’s gossip. They came to see and be seen, the men to ogle the younger women in their posh frocks and the older women to indulge in some righteous envy and to complain about their husbands.
In such an isolated community as Tanah Timah, the club provided virtually the only social diversion for the wives, who had not even the workplace or the Mess to relieve the boredom. There were not many Army wives there, as the place was still on the fringe of a brutal war, but as the terrorist threat had receded somewhat in this part of Perak, more of the senior officers’ wives were coming out from home. The planters’ wives had little choice but to stay, though some took extended leave back in Britain, often with the excuse that they had to see their children settled in boarding schools or colleges.
The younger women were almost all commissioned QA sisters from the hospital and being by definition unmarried, were the target of every military bachelor in the Brigade, as well as a few unaccompanied husbands and unmarried planters. Tonight, it was these ladies who monopolized the dance floor, being badgered by subalterns, lieutenants, captains and even the odd major, to gyrate with them on the polished boards, which a houseboy ritually lubricated with French chalk every Friday afternoon.
Tom Howden arrived at about eight fifteen, driven up by Alec Watson in his battered and rusty Morgan sports car. Dinner in the Mess was always brought forward on a Friday, so that they could get to the club reasonably early – a practice almost universal throughout the garrison. At about ten o’clock, the record player was switched off so that the assembled members could adjourn to the dining room, where Daniel always laid out a light buffet to keep them going until midnight, when the revellers drifted back to their mosquito nets.
Alec parked on the tarmac in front of the club, finding a space between the Austins, the Morris’s, the MG’s, the Land Rovers and a few big American gas-guzzlers, several of them armour-plated like the Robertsons’. Inside, there was already hardly an inch left free at the long bar, which ran across the full width of the lounge. A score of low tables fringed the dance floor, each with its circle of cane chairs. They were filled with people and the Indian servants were performing miracles of gymnastics with trays loaded with glasses and bottles, as they threaded their way through the obstructions. Half a dozen couples were swaying to a smoochy Sinatra number, generated by a Decca radiogram in the corner, operated by a fat Tamil houseboy who was worriedly studying a list of records supplied by Daniel, but constantly amended by the demands of the dancers.
The music was almost drowned by the buzz of chatter, which tonight was a good few decibels louder than usual. The inevitable topic was the new attack on Gunong Besar and as soon as Tom came in, he could see that the focus of attention was on James Robertson. He was perched on a stool at the centre of the bar, holding court amongst a cluster of acquaintances, all of whom had their own pet theory of what had happened. As Alec pushed his way to the bar for a couple of Tigers, Tom moved further along to be in earshot of the James’s clique.
‘Bloody bullets were coming like hailstones,’ brayed the planter, waving his gin like a flag. ‘Pushed the memsahib on to the floor out of the way, then took off over the verandah with my shooter!’ He stopped for a gulp of Gordon’s, then carried on with his elaborated saga.
‘But it was too late, the sods had all vanished. They’d shot up Douglas’s place first, then had a pop at the natives around the back.’
‘Sounds a bloody queer attack to me, Jimmy,’ drawled Les Arnold, the Aussie from the next estate beyond Gunong Besar. He was not actually part of the inquisitive circle around James, he had been sitting at the bar before they descended on his neighbour and had been enveloped by them.
‘What’s queer about being shot at, Les?’ demanded a captain from the West Berkshires, rather indignantly.
‘Not like the CTs to fire off a few rounds, then bugger off!’ objected the Australian. ‘Even in Jimmy’s last
