anything except to the police and coroner. It soon became obvious that this was a forlorn hope in such an incestuous environment as BMH Tanah Timah.
‘I hear it was a .303 you dug out of Jimmy’s chest,’ stated the brash Loosemore, confirming that the hospital bush telegraph was in excellent working order. Tom immediately suspected Lewis Cropper as the source of the leak, but knew that the lance corporal would plaintively deny it if accused.
Once more, the Administrative Officer tried to come to the rescue.
‘In the circumstances, I don’t think Captain Howden should be asked about details by any of us – the whole affair is
His attempt to save the pathologist any embarrassment was almost immediately doomed to failure. A sudden warning came from Alec, who was sitting facing the open door that had a view of the entrance path.
‘Hell’s bells, here comes the Old Man!’
The rare visit of the colonel to the Mess sent three of the members scurrying through the opposite verandah doors to hide in the toilets at the end of the block, but O’Neill arrived too quickly for the rest to vanish, though it had been known for the CO to find a completely deserted anteroom, with everyone crammed into the bogs.
He stalked in and everyone stumbled hastily to their feet in awkward silence. Dropping his hat amongst the others on the table inside the door, he ignored the assembly and spoke directly to the pathologist.
‘Well, Howden, what did you find?’
Tom looked beseechingly at Alf Morris, but the major evidently decided that capitulation was the better part of valour and gave a tiny nod of his head. The new doctor tried to be as non-committal as he could.
‘Confirmed the obvious, sir. A bullet lodged inside the chest, made a mess of the root of the right lung.’
The colonel stared coldly at him over the steel rims of his glasses.
‘What sort of bullet?’
As the rest of the hospital already seemed to know, Tom decided that its Commanding Officer might as well join them.
‘A three-oh-three, sir, according to the police and the SIB chap.’
‘And the range of discharge?’
‘Hard to say, sir. Certainly not close.’
Desmond O’Neill grunted, then glared around the circle of officers, who still stood awkwardly near their chairs, most wishing they had also made a dash for the toilets.
‘Goes to confirm what I thought. This was a bandit taking a pot-shot at a planter. Enemy action, poor fellow. Ironic he was a civilian.’
The colonel’s staccato style of speech produced a few reluctant murmurs of agreement from his staff, then taking up his usual role of pourer of oil on choppy waters, Alf Morris tried to make the CO more welcome in his own Mess.
‘Are you staying for lunch, sir? Can I get you a drink?’
O’Neill shook his head and stared around disapprovingly.
‘No, thank you. Don’t go along with doctors drinking at lunchtime, slows you down for the afternoon.’
With another of his mercurial changes of mood, he gave a ghastly death’s head grin at them all, then turned on his heel and walked rapidly out of the room, grabbing his cap on the way. A moment later they watched him walking quickly on to the perimeter road with his peculiar springing gait, lifting himself from heel to toe at every step.
Once out of sight, there was a collective sigh of relief in the anteroom, as people sank back into their chairs.
‘What the devil was all that about?’ demanded Percy. ‘He could just as well have phoned you or called you down to his office, Tom.’
Howden shrugged, relieved that he had got off so lightly. ‘Search me, why is everyone so interested in what sort of damned bullet it was?’
This was a question that would be central to the meeting to be held with the police late that afternoon.
It was just as well that terrorist activity had quietened down in previous weeks, as it allowed Steven Blackwell more time to devote to the death of James Robertson. True, there was still plenty of work, but he had three inspectors and half a dozen sergeants to carry on with the other cases, supervising the donkey work of thirty constables working out of Tanah Timah Police Circle. There were the usual run of robberies, thieving being a national tradition in Malaya, as well as a few serious assault cases, mainly among the estate workers. But on this Saturday, the superintendent felt obliged to devote all his time to the only case involving a European.
After leaving the mortuary at BMH, he forsook his lunch to drive with Inspector Tan up the road to Gunong Besar, aware that the first priority was to discover where the shooting had occurred.
‘Robertson’s car arrived at the club, but there was no indication of which direction it had come from,’ he said, using the attentive Chinese as a sounding board for his own thoughts. ‘I’m just guessing that he was on this road somewhere.’
The Dog was the last building in Tanah Timah on the road to the Gunong Besar estate, being on the hill just beyond the little bridge that lay a few hundred yards from the junction opposite the police station.
Blackwell told the driver to go very slowly from that point and both of them scanned the track and verges closely as they went. ‘Thank God it hasn’t rained yet today,’ he said, staring at the red laterite dust of the rutted surface.
They stopped a couple of times when one or other thought he saw something, hoping for a spent shell-case. But one was a piece of wrapper from a cigarette packet, the other a lost wheel-nut from some vehicle.
As they drew nearer the rubber estate, their luck improved. As they approached the cutting through the bluff of red rock which rose up fifteen feet above them, Tan, who was sitting in the back of the open Land Rover, suddenly tapped the driver on the shoulder.
‘
‘Surely that is blood, superintendent?’ he said quietly, his forefinger hovering over leaves that carried splashes of brown against the green.
Steven bent down to look at the nearby grasses and weeds and saw more fine blotches. There seemed to be none on the ground, but the adjacent road ballast was gritty and powdered, not offering a good surface for the retention of stains.
‘Let’s have a good look around here,’ he ordered and with the driver, they combed a dozen yards up and down the road for any other signs.
‘There were a lot of police and army vehicles up and down here last night, sir,’ said the inspector. ‘No chance of distinguishing Robertson’s Buick tyres – anyway, he drives up and down here every day.’
‘I’m not concerned with his car, there’s no way we could tell if it was stopped here. But that blood – if it is blood – is all we’ve got.’
He looked up at the tops of the two bluffs, one on each side of the narrow road. They were partly covered in coarse grass, but due to the rocky nature of the outcrops, they were well clear of the trees.
‘Tan, get some men up here to search along a couple of hundred yards on each side,’ he ordered. ‘Tell them to look out for cartridge cases. And we’d better take some of those stained weeds to check if it’s blood – and if it is, whose blood!’
There were some cellophane exhibit bags in the Land Rover and between them, they carefully picked off every leaf and blade that showed some of the brown splattering, and placed them in the bags.
‘I’ll see if that young pathologist can do a quick test, though the stuff will still have to go down to KL with the rest of the samples,’ said Steven.
As they were so near Gunong Besar, he decided to make a quick call on Diane Robertson to check on her welfare, as he suspected that her nonchalant manner at the mortuary was a cover for a later breakdown, but again he was proved wrong.
When they arrived, Inspector Tan went off to interrogate the servants who lived behind both bungalows and Blackwell climbed up to Diane’s verandah, half expecting to find her either in a state of sobbing collapse or half drunk. She was neither, though she had the inevitable glass in her hand as she sat on the settee talking to Douglas
