Dead in the Dog

TEN

Superintendent Blackwell had not forgotten about Diane Robertson — nor had he written off Lieutenant Colonel Desmond O’Neill from his list of people to interview. He sat alone at his desk in his large, bare office, letting the air from the slowly revolving fan waft down on to his pink scalp. Even after all these years in the Far East, he still thought nostalgically of the cold, damp rain of the Manchester streets — though he knew that if transported back there tomorrow, he would be fed up with it inside a week.

He pulled his mind back to the present and with no leads whatsoever to follow on the local bank robbery, he concentrated on this morning’s earlier meeting about James Robertson. The Telex from Australia was interesting, but Steven knew that some old conviction for a brawl over a woman was little use apart from suggesting a violent temper and willingness to use violence. The fact that it involved a rifle was food for thought, but since coming to Malaya, Les Arnold had not fallen foul of the law in any way, though he had been ushered out of The Dog several times for becoming too stroppy after having too much to drink.

The phrase ‘brawl over a woman’ stuck in Steven’s mind and he wondered if history might have repeated itself, as the Australian planter had made little secret of his lustful admiration for his next-door neighbour, Diane Robertson. Yet the very openness of his libidinous admission rather defused its significance.

With a sigh, he drew a pad of lined paper towards him and began to write, cursing under his breath as the sweat from the edge of his hand dampened the lower part of the page and made the ink run when he reached it. He persevered for a quarter of an hour, then sat back and read through the notes he had made, before reaching across his desk and pinging the small brass bell that sat there. A moment later, his middle-aged Tamil clerk came in from the room next door.

‘Santhanam, will you ask Inspector Tan to come up, please? And get us a couple of cold drinks from the fridge.’

His impassive assistant appeared within a few moments and sat on the other side of the desk, gratefully accepting one of the icy grapefruit sodas. Steven pushed across the notes he had made.

‘I’ve been trying to make some sense of all this business, Tan. Let’s go through each of the names and you tell me what you think.’

The inspector gravely read through what his boss had written, sucking intermittently on the straw in his bottle of ‘GFS’. Eventually, he looked up and put the pad back on the desk.

‘Diane Robertson, she is not a favoured candidate.’ He made it a statement, rather than a question.

Blackwell shook his head. ‘No, I can’t see it, really. We know they had problems with their marriage, and both seem to have been routinely unfaithful, according to all the gossip. But why should she kill him?’

‘Jealousy and anger at his constant affairs, perhaps,’ ventured Tan. ‘But separation or divorce would seem an easier solution.’

Steven mopped his neck with a handkerchief. ‘Technically, she could have done it.’

‘Certainly she would have been someone he knew and would have stopped for, which was what we assumed must have happened,’ agreed the inspector.

Blackwell shrugged. ‘Yes, but I still don’t fancy her as the killer, somehow. What about Leslie Arnold?’

‘He has this unfortunate past history of violence,’ answered Tan. ‘Though I suppose it shouldn’t be held against him. He admitted to you that he had lustful feelings towards Mister Robertson’s wife,’ he added primly.

Steven tapped his desk with the end of his fountain pen.

‘There’s been a rumour for some time that Arnold would have liked to buy Gunong Besar if it came up for sale. It seems he’s made a success of his own place and would like to expand. But I hardly think he would kill the owner just to get his hands on the property.’

Tan gave one of his rare smiles. ‘Perhaps he thought he might get James’s property and his wife with the one shot!’

The superintendent sighed again. ‘He has no alibi for the time of the shooting — and he does live next door to the dead man, up a long and lonely road. But we’ve got not a shred of evidence against him.’

The inspector put a slim finger on the notes before him.

‘The Mackays are also next door and on the same lonely road, sir.’

‘Yes, I wonder about the Mackays. Upright, sober and churchgoing, not typical of most of the folks around here. Yet I sense something wrong between them, there’s a tension you can almost feel when you’re with them.’

Tan said nothing, as the emotions that Europeans experienced were a mystery to him. He had been brought up in a large Cantonese family in Ipoh where everyone had seemed too busy making money or working towards a career to be cursed with introspection or jealousy.

‘Again the bush-telegraph around Tanah Timah whispered that Jimmy Robertson may have made a play for his manager’s wife at one time, but we can’t accept every bit of spiteful tittle-tattle that goes around.’

Tan was not sure what ‘tittle-tattle’ might be, but he got the general drift of his superior officer’s remarks.

‘Then there are the military people, sir. That’s going to be difficult for us.’

Steven Blackwell groaned. ‘Don’t I just know it! They’ve played along so far, but a lieutenant colonel is going to be a tough nut to deal with.’

‘You have no serious suspicions of the Commanding Officer, have you, sir?’

‘I suspect everyone, Tan. Reluctantly and probably hopelessly! But all the people who had access or even a fragile motive have to be considered.’

‘With respect, Colonel O’Neill seems a rather strange person. Several of the more junior witnesses I interviewed, claimed that he is insane.’

Blackwell nodded resignedly. ‘His wife has left him, though there was some innocent excuse put about. He seems to have been obsessed with Mrs Robertson lately, though he has been rumoured to have been pestering several other ladies in and around the garrison.’

He thought back to the strange behaviour of the hospital commandant at the funeral, when he almost hijacked Diane and drove off with her in his car.

‘What about the other medical officers from the hospital, sir?’ prompted Tan. ‘Several would seem to have some sort of a motive.’

‘Motives for anger and perhaps jealousy,’ agreed Blackwell. ‘But sufficient for murder?’

‘Captain Meredith, the anaesthetist, appeared incensed and affronted at the fact that James Robertson stole the affections of the nursing sister Franklin,’ said Tan, using the pedantically perfect English that he had learned in a good school and from reading many classical novels.

‘He’s the one with the Olympic standard shooting skills,’ mused the superintendent. ‘Though blasting a chap in the chest at a few yards’ range doesn’t take much marksmanship!’

‘Major Bright was also used to firearms in civilian life,’ said the inspector. ‘There seems little doubt that he was extremely keen on Mrs Robertson and wanted her to get a divorce, according to rumours I’ve heard from these witnesses.’

Blackwell nodded. ‘But surely, it would have made more sense for James to have shot him, if Bright was trying to steal his wife, rather than the other way around?’

It was Tan’s turn to shrug now. ‘If Major Bright couldn’t have a divorcee, maybe he thought he could have a widow?’

Coming from the inscrutable inspector, this almost amounted to a witticism, thought Steven! He reached over and pulled his pad towards him, running his finger down the list of entries.

‘We’re running out of suspects, Tan. Unless there’s someone out there we know nothing about.’

‘You didn’t specifically mention Mrs Mackay, sir. If she had been seduced by James Robertson, perhaps she was scorned when he turned his attentions elsewhere. Or perhaps he had threatened to tell her husband?’

Blackwell pulled at the blackened, damp patches under his armpits, envying his inspector, whose khaki uniform was always pristine however hot the conditions. ‘Rosa Mackay? Apart from living next door and on the same bit of road where he was killed, I don’t fancy that little mouse as a killer, somehow. But we must keep all our options open!’

The weekend at Pangkor was a mixed success. For some, including Tom Howden and Lynnette, it was an idyllic couple of days, but the tensions introduced by several of the couples made for some uneasy moments. Neither could the fact of James’s death hanging over them be ignored and some furtive glances suggested their awareness that his killer might be amongst them.

A cavalcade of cars set off from BMH immediately after breakfast, a mixed bunch of vehicles ranging from the Matron’s Typhoon to Alec’s shaky Morgan. The absence of the Commanding Officer gave an almost palpable sense of relief as they loaded up their sun hats, flippers and snorkels, together with a smuggled supply of Anchor and Tiger beer, the bottles wrapped in newspaper to conceal them and reduce the rattle. It was forbidden to carry any food outside the garrison, as part of the military regime to defeat the CTs was to deprive them of all support from the civilian population. The villages near the jungle were fenced off and strict control exercised over the movement of food or any other supplies that could aid the terrorists. Though it was unlikely that a few sandwiches from BMH Tanah Timah would significantly aid the Communist campaign, the principle was firmly enforced, but a few bottles of beer at NAAFI prices was hardly likely to lead to a court martial.

The dozen or so weekenders were arrayed in their off-duty civvies, the men in shirts and shorts, the women in summer dresses or halter tops. With Albert Morris’s Hillman in the lead, they set off through the gates, leaving an envious skeleton staff to deal with emergencies until the next evening. The three-hour journey took them back down to Sungei Siput, then along the main north-south road through Ipoh, the capital of Perak State. The route then wandered westward through Batu Gajah and Bruas, eventually reaching the coast at Lumut, a small town on a wide creek coming in from the sea. They had coffee in the nearby Rest House while waiting for the ferry to Pangkor Island, which lay a mile or two offshore.

Leaving the cars parked behind the Shell petrol station, they trooped up an ominously bending plank on to a big motor boat which smelt strongly of fish. The accommodation was benching which ran along each side, under a wooden canopy supported on poles. Settling themselves on the seats, clutching their beach bags and holdalls, the party from BMH provided a source of wonderment for several large-eyed Malay children who stood clutching the skirts of their mother’s sarongs. Forty minutes later, they disembarked at the fish quay at Pangkor village, on the mainland side of the island. Tom Howden, born and bred on the banks of the Tyne, had a spasm of nostalgia as he smelt the place, the reek reminding him of North Shields, with its own fish quay and its herring-smoking factory.

With Alf Morris in the lead, the party set off in a straggling line along the track between the coconut trees which lead from the village towards the opposite side of the island. Half a mile away was Pasir Bogak Bay, an idyllic curve of sun-bleached sand, which to Tom’s eyes looked like every tropical beach that he had seen in his childhood picture books.

Even though most of the group had been there before, the sight was so sublime that they all stopped at the top of the beach where the sparse grass under the trees gave way to the glorious sand. Opposite was the smaller island of Pangkor Laut and farther out, some smaller islets dotted the blue waters. Smitten by the sight, they stood and gazed until Alf Morris chivvied them back into action.

‘Right, folks, let’s get settled in, then we can get ourselves into the water or whatever else you want to do!’

They ambled behind him along the shore line to where their accommodation lay. There was no hotel, but a line of small chalets stood under the trees, rather like the bathing huts at an English holiday resort. Each had a verandah with a pair of rattan chairs and inside was a couple of beds and very little else. On the end of the row, a larger hut acted as the Chinese manager’s office, bar and cookhouse, food being eaten at wooden picnic tables under a canvas awning outside. The staple diet was nasi goreng, Malayan fried rice, as well as omelettes, fried chicken and a curry. When the NAAFI beer ran out, there was more Anchor and soft drinks on sale, dispensed by the manager, Lee Hong and his wife.

The party paired off in decorous fashion, the women under the watchful eye of Doris Hawkins, while the men gravitated into amiable partnerships. Tom paired up with Alec Watson and as soon as they had dumped their belongings on the narrow beds, they hauled on their swimming trunks and hurried outside, the pathologist keen to spend as much time with Lynette as possible.

‘Let’s get in the water before eating,’ suggested Alec. ‘Bad to swim on a full stomach, so they say!’

He dashed off down the beach, but Tom hung about waiting for Lynette, though he was still slightly shell-shocked at finding himself in such a beautiful place, which looked as if Man Friday’s footprints would at any moment mark the virgin sand. Soon the others began emerging from their chalets and he noticed that Diane Robertson, looking extremely seductive in a one-piece swimsuit of black satin, came alone from the end chalet, apparently not wanting to share with the military.

The Matron appeared in a voluminous beach-dress, declaring that she was not going to expose herself until the sun went lower in the sky. She plumped herself down at one of the tables with a book and a large gin and tonic, and gazed benignly at her nursing officers, as they prepared to disport themselves.

As everyone gathered at the edge of the beach, various pairings became apparent, almost like blood cells agglutinating! Tom spotted Lynette, looking extremely pretty in a floral swimsuit and gravitated to her side, as Peter Bright marched across to Diane, a little apart from the rest. Joan Parnell made a beeline for Montmorency, but several people noticed the glare that she gave Peter as he commandeered the new widow. David Meredith somewhat hesitantly sidled up to Lena Franklin and though they exchanged a few words, Lena broke away and ran down towards the sea.

This was the signal for everyone to jog down to the water’s edge, where waves just big enough to break over the ankles washed in from the almost tideless Malacca Straits. Heedless of Percy Loosemore’s pessimistic warnings abut sea snakes whose bite could kill in ten minutes, they were soon all frolicking in the warm water. The more adventurous swam out to the coral reef and, with masks and flippers, dived to look at the underwater marvels, but most stayed in the shallows, swimming, splashing and fooling about like children on holiday.

Tom tried not to make his monopolization of Lynette too obvious, but it seemed that she wanted to be monopolized. They swam and dived and splashed. At one point she ducked his head under and kept it there with a foot on his neck, but let him up before he drowned!

Diane was a powerful swimmer and no one was surprised when she and Peter Bright took themselves off further down the beach, well away from the main party. Had anyone had binoculars, they might have seen that the pair spent much of the time standing waist-high in the water, apparently in earnest discussion and sometimes apparently heated argument.

After an hour or so, the sun and the exercise began to take its toll and gradually they left the sea and flopped on to the benches and chairs under the awning, calling to Lee Hong for drinks, before deciding what to choose from the dog-eared cardboard menu pinned above the bar.

After eating, the group split up again, everyone doing their own thing. Some went back into the sea, others wandered down the beach to watch the fishermen hauling in their seine net. A dozen locals, ranging from young boys to wizened old men with sun-blackened skin, chanted rhythmically as they heaved on a great U-shaped rope which dragged a net with a few score fish up on to the beach. Tom Howden was content to lie on the sand under the shade of a coconut palm, with Lynette half asleep alongside him. The afternoon lazed away all too quickly and as the sun slid lower in the sky, they went back down the beach into the warm water for another swim. As twilight approached, Lynette decided to retreat to her chalet to put on some clothing which exposed less skin to the evening mosquitoes.

Left alone, Tom wandered along the top of the beach along the tree-line, watching with wonderment as the sun sank below the horizon in a sky which was a riot of colour, bands of peach and violet climbing up from the sea towards the zenith. After a few hundred yards, he became conscious of voices coming from within the trees and without consciously wishing to eavesdrop, he recognized the deep tones of Peter Bright.

‘It’s not the done thing, you know, Diane!’

‘You don’t damn well own me! I’ll do what I like, thank you!’

Embarrassed, Tom turned and walked quickly away, his feet making no sound in the soft sand. He had no wish to listen to some lover’s tiff, especially as the two people sounded very angry. Obviously the path of true love was not going smoothly. Back at the huts, people were following Lynette’s example and going to get changed, long sleeves and insect repellent becoming the order of the day. The pathologist followed their example and went back to his chalet in the middle of the row, where he found Alec in a clean shirt, carefully combing his fair hair in expectations of impressing his latest target, the Junior Theatre Sister. Perhaps unwisely, given the young Scot’s fondness for gossip, Tom mentioned the spat he had heard between Peter Bright and the new widow.

Alec grinned at the news. ‘Join the club, lad! I was in the bog earlier on and just happened to hear voices passing outside. It was the Welsh wizard and Lena Franklin — she was giving him hell for being so jealous about Jimmy Robertson. Virtually accused him of shooting the poor bugger!’

Tom could not help being intrigued by these local dramas, in spite of his better self telling him to mind his own business.

‘What did our gasman have to say to that?’ he asked.

Alec shrugged forlornly. ‘Dunno, they walked out of earshot straight away. Short of running after them with my pants around my ankles, I couldn’t get the rest of the squabble.’

When they all met half an hour later under the awning to eat, the grouping had changed somewhat. Diane was pointedly sitting with Doris Hawkins, Lena and Alfred Morris, leaving Peter Bright with a sullen-looking David Meredith on another table. Joan Parnell grasped the opportunity to slide next to the surgeon on the picnic benches, with another of the QA captains filling the fourth place. Tom naturally shepherded Lynette to another table, where Alec and Clarence Bottomley were sitting.

The last glow of light reddened the horizon, the palms silhouetted blackly against the sky. With the gentle swish of the sea as a background, and a pretty girl at his side, Tom Howden felt as if the Malayan Emergency had been conjured up merely for his benefit. He found it hard to believe that forty thousand men were engaged in a bloody campaign up and down this lovely country, though at home this was already being called ‘The Forgotten War’.

‘Could have been posted to Catterick — or some gloomy dump in West Germany,’ observed Alec, as if reading his friend’s mind. ‘Not bad this, romantic setting, good beer, plenty of grub and very convivial company!’

Tom had to agree, though his ever-present Geordie conscience nagged him later that night, as he lay in the chalet, listening to the chirp of the cicadas and the occasional screech of a monkey. This ‘emergency’ — for the Government stubbornly refused to call it a ‘war’ because of its effect on planter’s insurance premiums — was no fun for a hell of a lot of people. The previous day, he had taken blood samples from three very ill soldiers, young men like himself, called up for National Service, who had come in from a week’s patrol in the jungle. The lads had had to sleep in water in the swamps, contaminated by rat’s urine, which had infected them with the leptospirosis germ. It could be fatal, as could the many cases of malaria which he saw on blood-slides in the laboratory every day. Amoebic dysentery, hepatitis, scrub typhus, encephalitis and a host of other tropical nasties lurked to disable or even kill the vulnerable squaddies. Though the terrorist attacks seemed to have passed their zenith, there was always the danger of a road or rail ambush and the hand-to-hand combats in the ulu and the deep jungle still took its toll of young lives. As he lay listening to Alec snorting in his sleep, Tom thought that only a quirk of fate prevented him from being one of those lads with Weil’s disease. If he had not got his scholarship to medical school, he might well have been on that jungle patrol, instead of living well in an Officers’ Mess, able to have a romantic weekend with attractive nursing officers. With this philosophical guilt revolving in his head, he soon fell asleep, to dream of drizzle-soaked pavements and the corner chip shop in a cold and miserable Gateshead.

On Sunday, they arrived back at the hospital in the early evening, before darkness fell, as part of the road back from Lumut was in a ‘black area’ and was under curfew outside daylight hours. Tired from too much sun and exertion, they scattered to their messes and their rooms, to get washed and dressed for dinner.

In the RAMC Mess, most gravitated to the anteroom for a beer and a nostalgic chat about the weekend, to the annoyance of those who had had to stay behind and look after the hospital.

‘When’s the Old Man back?’ asked Percy.

Morris signed Number One’s chit for his Tiger before replying.

‘He’s coming up on the night train, but I’ll bet he’ll be holding Morning Prayers as usual, so don’t think of staying in bed.’

The discussion settled, as it often did, on to the colonel’s strange behaviour. Major Martin, the senior physician was there, as his wife had gone off to the Cameron Highlands for a week and he came to eat in the Mess. He seemed genuinely worried about the state of Desmond O’Neill’s mental health.

‘Damned difficult situation, with him outranking us all and being the CO,’ he said gravely. ‘But I think there’s something seriously amiss with him. If it was you behaving like that, Alf, I’d get the Command Psychiatrist up from Singapore and give you a going over!’

‘Why don’t you do a dummy run on Percy Loosemore?’ said Peter Bright acidulously, having suffered much from the dermatologist’s sarcastic humour about his personal affairs.

Clarence Bottomley’s languid accents cut off Percy’s retort.

‘Joan Parnell was telling me that Matron’s concerned about the colonel’s antics, too. It seems he’s been lurking around their mess and the QAOR’s billet at dead of night. When she tackled him about it, he claimed he was concerned about prowlers!’

‘And this business of the armoury is strange,’ cut in Tom Howden. ‘One of my Malay technicians came to me on Friday and asked if I could do anything about the postings. I was going to see you about it, Alf.’

The Administrative Officer grunted. ‘I already know the problem, Tom. What did your MOR want?’

‘He said that two of his pals, who had been on a lot of night duty at the arms kote, had suddenly been posted off to BMH Kamunting, though one had only come down from there two months ago. The other has a wife and kids living in the kampong near here and it was making life very difficult for them.’

‘What’s going on, Alf?’ asked Eddie Rosen. ‘You must have authorized the moves.’

Morris sighed. ‘I tried to put the colonel off, but he insisted. It was he who demanded that they went. I couldn’t get any proper explanation from him, just some blather about weapons security after all the recent trouble.’

John Martin shook his head sadly. ‘The man’s acting very oddly, especially since his wife went away. This business with the Quartermaster is another example, he seems to be getting more and more paranoid.’

As usual, Percy Loosemore seemed to have the best information about this particular problem.

‘I went down with Robbie Burns to the Gunners’ Mess in the garrison the other night. After he’d filled himself up with Johnnie Walker, he started babbling and reckoned that O’Neill was threatening to have him court-martialled over him fiddling the stores. Robbie got very aggressive and began ranting that he’d swing for the bastard one of these days! I had to drag him home before he said something too outrageous.’

Alfred Morris, already with too many problems on his plate, looked even more worried at this. ‘I hope to God that Robbie doesn’t do anything stupid,’ he muttered. ‘With a grudge like that and a few whiskies inside him, he’s not a chap to meet on a dark night!’