it was immediately slammed shut again to keep the bandits out. The pathologist was now in a cell-like room which contained only a small table and one hard chair, apart from the diminutive Malay lance corporal. On the table was a gaudy vacuum flask, a glass half filled with water and a copy of the Koran. The small space was suffocatingly hot, even though there was a fan in the ceiling below some kind of vent through the roof above, but the corporal seemed oblivious of the heat. He handed Tom’s card back with a tentative smile on his smooth olive face.
‘Everything OK, sir,’ he confided, his almond-shaped eyes taking in the shiny new brass of the officer’s cap badge and pips.
Tom nodded at him and consulted his creased sheet of paper again.
‘I have to look in each of the magazines, corporal. I’m rather new at this business.’
The Malay’s face stretched in a conspiratorial grin. ‘Me also, sir. I got posted from BMH Kamunting last week. Another fellow from here sent back there – is crazy!’ He looked suddenly doleful. ‘My wife and my two kid still in Taiping.’
Tom muttered his commiserations at the habitual waywardness of the British Army, but wanted to get out of the stifling heat as soon as he could.
‘I suppose I’d better look in there, corporal.’ He waved his paper at a pair of steel doors, one on each side of the room. The soldier went to the table and took a bunch of keys from a drawer, then unlocked the doors and switched on the interior lights. Tom put his head inside the first and looked at a motley collection of weapons, some clipped in wall racks, others on the floor or on top of ammunition boxes. Most had OHMS labels tied to the trigger guards, with names and numbers written on them. He knew little about guns, but could recognize Lee-Enfield .303s, some Stirlings, Stens and a few more modern-looking weapons which he assumed were the NATO
In the other room, as well as more rifles, there was a Bren gun on the floor and a row of grenades and a couple of revolvers sitting on top of a box. In spite of the CO’s alleged mania about the armoury, the place looked like a second-hand shop, but presumably Albert Morris or someone knew exactly what was in here.
‘You want to see book, sir?’ The MOR scrabbled in the drawer again and for a moment Tom thought he was going to pull out a girlie magazine, which seemed an odd companion for the Koran. But it was a worn red ledger that the corporal displayed and when Tom opened it, he saw it was a listing of all the weapons and other armaments that had been left there, with signed entries for each deposit and withdrawal, though there were some crossings-out and corrections here and there.
‘God, I hope wasn’t supposed to check everything against this list!’ he muttered aghast, urgently consulting his piece of paper again. But there was nothing there about making an inventory, only an exhortation to sign alongside the time and date of the inspection, so with sigh of relief, he scrawled these in the back of the book and told the corporal to close up the doors and let him out. After a precautionary peep through the letter-box, the MOR unlocked the door and creaked it open, to let Tom escape into the comparative coolness of the night.
As it clanged shut behind him, he stepped out in happy anticipation of a good sleep in an air-conditioned room – hopefully the first time for a fortnight that he would stop sweating.
FIVE
Captain Howden’s optimism was premature, as he had hardly slipped under the single sheet of the blessedly cool bed, when he heard the muted ringing of the telephone in the adjacent ward office. A moment later, there was an urgent tapping on the door and the QA corporal put her head in.
‘Sir, you’re wanted in Casualty straight away. Night Sister says it’s very urgent!’
Tom waited until the face vanished before he hopped out of bed, as he was only wearing his underpants. He rapidly threw on his clothes and hurried out, still belting his jacket. Going down the corridor at a trot, he glimpsed figures flitting across the end and when he reached the front, he looked over towards his right and saw the orderly sergeant and the gate guard standing by a large American car, its lights full on and the engine still running. It was on the further side of the vehicle park, outside the Casualty hut and as he jogged across, the dispensary sergeant reached in to turn off the engine.
‘What’s going on?’ puffed Tom, as he passed.
‘Don’t know, sir, but there’s blood on the seats!’
With this cheerful news ringing in his ears, he ran into Casualty and almost knocked over the last person he expected to see there. It was Daniel, the manager of the Sussex Club, whose face was as pale as his Eurasian complexion would allow. Although he looked shocked and agitated, he seemed physically intact as he wordlessly waved a hand towards the other side of the room, where a curtain had been pulled around one of the examination couches. Three pairs of legs were visible beneath it and one pair was instantly recognizable as belonging to the night sister.
Tom pulled the curtain aside and peered in. A still form lay on the couch and a tray of syringes and ampoules rested across his legs. A lanky medical orderly was standing near the man’s head, looking as shaken as Daniel. A QA corporal rested a sympathetic hand on his shoulder and Lieutenant Lynette Chambers completed the tableau, as all three were staring down at the patient with expressions best described as impotent sadness.
‘There was nothing we could do for him, he was dead before he got here,’ intoned the night sister, looking up at Tom with a hint of defiance.
He went to her side and looked down at the body of James Robertson, still wearing the obligatory tie required by The Dog, though the blood-soaked shirt beneath it had been ripped open to expose his chest.
‘He’s been shot, sir!’ muttered the orderly. ‘I did a bit of mouth-to-mouth, then I was going to try cardiac massage, but Sister said that with that chest wound, it would do more harm than good.’
‘We’ve given him nikethamide and coramine, just for form’s sake,’ murmured Lynette. ‘But he was gone before he came through the door. No pulse nor heart sounds, no respirations – and his pupils were fixed and dilated.’
The pathologist had not been away from clinical medicine long enough to forget these signs of death – nor to remember that an experienced nursing sister knew more about dire medical emergencies than he did. He bent to peer more closely at the drying blood on the front of Robertson’s chest and could see a small circular mark partly obscured by a blood-clot on the left side, just above his nipple.
‘Shall I clean it up for you to see, sir?’ asked the QA corporal, the first time she had spoken. She was a solid- looking blonde with a square jaw and in spite of the unexpected drama, seemed quite cool and collected.
Tom shook his head urgently. ‘No, for God’s sake don’t touch anything! He’s a civilian, this will have to be a police matter from now on.’
He stepped back from the couch and pushed his cap back on his head.
‘Do we know what happened?’
‘Not really, Captain Howden,’ answered the sister, now primly formal in the presence of Other Ranks. ‘That car raced up to the gate and Daniel from the club, yelled for it to be opened. I was in Matron’s Office and ran across as he drove in. Mr Robertson was slumped in the passenger seat, bleeding. We got him on to a trolley and brought him in, but as I say, he was already dead.’
‘Has Daniel told you what happened before that?
Lynette Chambers shook her head. ‘It was hardly five or six minutes ago – we’ve been too busy since then, just in case there was a spark of life left.’
‘I’ll have a word with him now. Can we get him a cup of tea or something? He looks a bit shocked.’
As the corporal hurried off to the nearest ward for tea, Tom took the tubby manager by the arm and gently sat him in a chair at the duty desk. He perched himself on the top and looked down at Daniel, who looked pathetically incongruous, still wearing his bow tie above a bloodstained white shirt.
‘I’m Captain Howden, a new man at the club. Can you tell me what happened?’
The steward passed a hand shakily across his high forehead.
‘All members had left, sir, it was just after midnight,’ he explained in his sing-song voice. ‘The boys were clearing up after the dance and I was totting takings behind bar. Suddenly I heard a car outside and then there was a crash!’
He rolled his eyes dramatically and waved a hand in the air. ‘I ran outside and saw Mr Robertson’s old Buick had run into the back of the Ford pick-up belonging to the club. Not badly, but enough to have made that
