into the Land Rover and were driven off, leaving a pensive Douglas Mackay staring after them.
Around five o’clock, a meeting was held in the Police Circle building in Tanah Timah, mainly to discuss the significance of the post-mortem findings. Alfred Morris was sent by the CO to represent the hospital’s interests, as the victim had died there and the pathologist was one of its officers. The Admin Officer drove Tom Howden down to the town in his Hillman, both wearing civilian clothes, as was usual on a Saturday. Their identity cards got them past the constable on the gate and, inside the high-walled compound, Tom saw that it was largely a vehicle park and workshops, with a police barracks at the rear.
The headquarters building itself was typical colonial government – two-storey white cement under a red-tiled roof, with wide balconies running around the upper floor. They went up the steps to the front entrance and found themselves in a large hall with busy policemen behind a long counter. A Malay desk sergeant escorted them up an imposing central staircase and out on to the balcony, which had doors at intervals. Tapping at one, he motioned them in and they entered a bare, high room with the inevitable fan turning below the ceiling. There was a large desk, a table, some hard chairs and walls covered with maps. Steven Blackwell rose from the table, where he had been talking with Major Enderby, Sergeant Markham and Inspector Tan.
‘Come and sit down with us, chaps. We were only gossiping until you arrived.’
They sat down and an Indian servant came in with a tray of opened bottles of cold orange squash and grapefruit soda, each with a straw stuck in the neck. When they had settled down again, the superintendent began the meeting.
‘Firstly, I must thank you, Captain Howden, for so readily agreeing to do the post-mortem. If you hadn’t been here, there’d have been at least a few days’ delay – and in this climate, that doesn’t help to preserve any evidence.’
Tom nodded his appreciation, though privately he knew he had had no choice, with the CO breathing down his neck.
‘I’ve written out a rough draft of the report,’ he said, holding up a thin cardboard folder. ‘Only handwritten at the moment, I’ll get it typed up when the office opens on Monday.’
The major from the provost marshal’s department stopped sucking on his straw for a moment. ‘Fine! We were there, so we know the gist of it. But can you give us your interpretation of the findings?’
The pathologist shifted his bottom uneasily on the hard seat.
‘Look, I’m a pretty junior bloke, you know. I’ve had almost no experience of this kind of thing, all I know is from the books.’
‘Just do your best, Tom,’ said Steven kindly. ‘I’m sure you know a hell of lot more about it than us.’
Opening the file, Howden looked down at the two sheets of lined quarto paper, with the government crest at the top. He had no need to read it, as he already knew every word.
‘James Robertson was perfectly healthy, so death was entirely due to a gunshot wound,’ he began. ‘There was a single entrance wound to the left of centre in the front of his chest. The bullet, which you saw was a .303, was still in the back of his chest cavity, so there was no exit wound.’
Sergeant Markham looked up at this. ‘Thinking about it, sir, isn’t that a bit unusual for a service rifle? I’ve seen a few in my time and most them went in one side and out the other.’
Tom nodded his agreement. ‘From what the books say, it’s very common for a high-velocity projectile from a military weapon to make a through-and-through wound. But here the bullet happened to hit the spine at the back of the chest. It made a hell of a mess of it, completely disintegrated one of the vertebrae, but the thick, hard bone must have stopped the bullet.’
A sudden thought occurred to him and by the look on Blackwell’s face, it must also have dawned simultaneously on him. The pathologist beat him to it in stating the obvious.
‘Hang on a minute, there’s something wrong here! Though he may not have died instantaneously, he must have been totally disabled and almost certainly unconscious from the moment the bullet hit him!’
The three other Army men looked mystified, but Inspector Tan was quickest off the mark.
‘So how could he drive his car to the Sussex Club from wherever he was shot?’
‘Which now seems to be a few miles up the road towards Gunong Besar,’ added Steven Blackwell.
‘Are you sure about this?’ demanded Enderby, leaning forward. Tom was confident about this aspect, however little he knew about firearm wounds.
‘His spinal column was smashed through. There’s a condition called “spinal shock” which even apart from his other internal injuries, would almost certainly make him lose consciousness instantly. And apart from that, he wouldn’t be able to sit up to drive, with a broken back – though that would soon be impossible anyway, with massive bleeding inside his chest from the big arteries and veins ripped in the root of his lung.’
Tom looked a little crestfallen after giving this lecture. ‘I should have thought of this earlier, but I had just accepted the business about Daniel finding him in the driving seat of his car.’
There was a tense silence for a moment.
‘This puts a whole new complexion on the matter,’ snapped Blackwell. ‘There are only two explanations. One is that he was shot in the car park of The Dog – which is patently impossible, as no one there heard a shot. And you can’t shoot a man in the front of the chest when he’s sitting in the driving seat, unless there’s bullet hole in the windscreen, especially in a car with armoured side windows!’
‘And the other explanation?’ asked Alf Morris, though he guessed the answer.
‘Is that someone drove the car there from the murder scene, then buggered off before Daniel appeared!’ completed the major from the garrison. After another brief silence while they digested this, Blackwell spoke again.
‘Whatever else this tells us, it means one thing is definite – this was no terrorist shooting! Killing one man with one shot is damned unusual for them anyway, but it’s ludicrous to imagine a CT driving his victim away!’
There were murmurs of agreement, then the Chinese police inspector voiced the next question.
‘Why would the killer do such a thing? It must have greatly increased the risk of him being seen.’
Steven Blackwell shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. If we’re right in thinking that the blood found near that cutting was where the shooting occurred, he might have wanted to shift both the car and the body well away, to delay discovery.’
‘Because of the increased patrols up and down that road, you mean?’ asked Alf Morris.
‘Exactly! If he could have quietly left the car in a corner of the car park, then it could have been some time before the body was found – perhaps not until the next morning.’
‘But he goes and bashes into the back of a truck and brings poor old Daniel out to investigate,’ said Enderby.
‘Bloody lucky he missed seeing the killer, or he might have collected a bullet as well!’ added the SIB man.
‘Where’s the car now, Tan?’ asked the senior policeman.
‘In the garage down below, sir,’ replied the Chinese inspector.
‘Better check the wheel for fingerprints, though both Daniel and presumably a police officer have driven it since the shooting.’ Blackwell drummed his fingers on the table. ‘I wish we had proper forensic laboratory facilities up here. They can do all sorts of things back home now, looking at the soil from shoes and God knows what.’
‘I doubt if that would help much here – everyone has red laterite on their boots. I don’t think any laboratory is going to crack this one for you, Steven,’ said Enderby.
‘Talking of that, Captain Howden, can you do tests for blood in your lab over at BMH?’ asked Blackwell.
Tom looked dubious. ‘We can easily do a presumptive test for blood, though many other things give a false positive. I can certainly tell you if it’s not blood!’
‘Any hope of confirming it’s human and possibly what group?’ persisted the superintendent.
The pathologist shook his head. ‘I honestly don’t know. If it’s very fresh, maybe we could get a group out of it, but it’s way out of my line, dealing with stains rather than fresh blood.’
‘Well, give it a go, there’s a good chap. Tan can give you some of those apparently bloodstained leaves we picked up on the Gunong Besar road. We’ll get a report from KL eventually, but I thought it might help to get a quick answer.’
‘Going back to this post-mortem, Captain Howden,’ grunted Major Enderby. ‘Any idea of the range of the shot?’
‘It certainly wasn’t close, as I said this morning,’ replied Tom. ‘No scorching, smoke staining or powder
