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
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 crepe 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 camera. 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
