Dead in the Dog

EIGHT

The funeral cortege went at a steady forty miles an hour northwards through the flat land between Ipoh and Taiping, green hills and mountains rearing up on the right. The pre-war hearse led the way, as this was a ‘White Area’ with no curfew nor restrictions on travel. In many parts, such as the long winding road up to the Cameron Highlands hill station, only convoys shepherded by armoured cars were allowed.

Behind the vintage Daimler came a motley collection of about a dozen vehicles, ranging from Alf’s old Hillman to Clarence Bottomley’s sleek Riley. There were several other cars belonging to other planters and to garrison and hospital staff, including an Armstrong-Siddeley Typhoon belonging to the matron and Alec Watson’s creaking Morgan. Steven Blackwell’s police Land Rover brought up the rear. He had no car of his own and was quite comfortable with using an official vehicle and driver for every purpose, as he considered that he was never really off duty.

‘Cracking on a bit for a funeral, aren’t we?’ said Percy Loosemore, in the front passenger seat alongside Alfred Morris. ‘Seems as if they’re trying to get shot of poor old Jimmy as quickly as they can.’

‘Got to keep up with the hearse,’ said Alf. ‘It’s a fair old trot from Ipoh up here.’

Tom Howden’s plotting had been successful and he sat in the back alongside Lynette. Few of the women had clothes really suitable for a funeral, but most had managed to find something relatively sombre in a place usually renowned for its summer dresses. Lynette wore a black skirt and grey silk blouse and Tom thought she looked lovely. He was rapidly falling for her and something told him that the feeling was mutual, so he was feeling very contented, in spite of the solemn occasion.

Taiping was a pleasant town at the foot of Maxwell Hill, a three-thousand-foot jungle-covered ridge with a hill station at the top, where there was a Rest House with a real log fire. A long dead-straight Main Street lined with shophouses led to the Lake Gardens, a landscaped park made from a reclaimed tin mine, where lay the New Club, a larger version of The Dog in Tanah Timah.

‘Could call in there for a snifter on the way back, as we’re not having a proper wake,’ suggested the irreverent Percy. No one bothered to answer him as the procession carried on through the town and down a long avenue of stately trees.

‘This goes to Kamunting, where the other BMH is,’ explained Alfred. ‘Like our place, there’s a big garrison almost next door, the 28th Independent Commonwealth Infantry Brigade.’

The cortege slowed down long before these were reached and turned off Assam Kumbang Road into the Christian Cemetery, a quiet park-like field, edged by trees.

‘Is this a War Graves place?’ asked Lynette in a hushed voice as they stopped behind the other vehicles on a parking area inside the gates.

Alf Morris shook his head as he opened the door for her. ‘It’s been here since the last century, since Europeans came out to run the tin and rubber industries. But now unfortunately a large part is kept for the military and their dependants, since the Jap invasion and now the Emergency.’

All the travellers disgorged from the cars and quietly made their way forward towards the front of the cavalcade, where the only hired car was the one belonging to the undertaker, another aged but stately Daimler. From this stepped the garrison padre, who ushered out Diane Robertson, today attired in a grey shantung silk dress and jacket that was the nearest she could muster as a mourning outfit. Also in the Daimler was her manager Douglas Mackay and his wife Rosa, both women trying to look as if the other was invisible. Together with half a dozen sisters from the hospital clustered behind their matron, a couple of planters’ wives made up a respectable contingent of ladies to support the new widow.

From his position as the rearguard of the convoy, Steven Blackwell looked at the small crowd ahead with concerned interest. In cases of murder, it was traditional for the investigators to attend the funeral of the victim, though he had never yet heard of any advantage coming from it.

The coffin was lifted from the Daimler by four of James’s fellow planters, including Les Arnold, and placed on a rather rickety trolley belonging to the cemetery. A large bunch of tropical flowers, which Steven assumed had been ordered by Diane, lay on top. A few of the onlookers stepped forward to add their own sprays of colourful blooms, including Doris Hawkins who contributed one from the Sisters’ Mess.

With the mourners following, the chaplain set off behind the coffin as it was trundled down a path between rows of old graves, some moss covered and dating back scores of years. John Smale wore a surplice over a light cassock with a purple stole around his neck, as he walked ahead of Diane and the Mackays.

The procession drifted along in silence, until the roar of an engine caused most heads to turn, as a black Vauxhall swept in from the road to the parking area.

‘Bloody hell, it’s the Old Man!’ muttered Percy Loosemore irreverently, as Desmond O’Neill hopped from the driving seat and hurried after the funeral procession. Not only did the colonel catch them up, but he pushed past the stragglers and with his jerky up-and-down gait, went straight to the front and squeezed himself between Diane Robertson and her manager. There were some scowls and muted murmurs from the throng, but as he was the most senior officer present, nothing was said aloud. The new widow looked quizzically at him, then turned her attention back to the proceedings, as they had by now arrived at the graveside. Steven Blackwell watched this tableau from the rear, putting O’Neill’s behaviour down to his well-known eccentricity, as the gaunt colonel put his hand on Diane’s elbow and solicitously steered her to the edge of the open pit.

‘What’s the old bugger up to now?’ hissed David Meredith to Alec Watson. Any reply was stifled by the start of the burial service, as the coffin was unloaded on to two planks placed across the fresh excavation. There was no church service, as Diane had impressed on the padre that neither she nor James had had any religious beliefs, but for convention’s sake, the Reverend Smale went though an abbreviated version of the service at the graveside. The police superintendent watched all the bowed heads as they listened dutifully to the calm voice of the priest, but saw nothing that rang alarm bells in his head hinting at someone’s guilt. Even the colonel’s peculiar actions could be put down to a middle-aged fantasy over a beautiful woman.

Within a few minutes the soliloquy was ended, the planks removed and James Robertson’s mortal remains were lowered into the ground.

Tom Howden stood dutifully alongside Lynette and the words of Rupert Brooke’s poem came into his head. He felt that ‘a corner of a foreign field that is forever England’, was most appropriate to this scene. Tom had another wave of unreality passing over him, momentarily disbelieving that he was standing in sticky heat below jungle-covered hills, watching a murdered man disappear below ground, instead of being in the cold drizzle of a December Tyneside.

There was no morbid ceremony of handfuls of earth being thrown on to the coffin and almost casually, the group turned away and left two Indian labourers to fill in the grave. Diane and the chaplain again led the way back to the cars, where a rather ragged series of commiserations were offered by those attending the service, before everyone went off to find their transport.

‘Look, the undertakers are doing a runner!’ exclaimed Alec Watson — and sure enough, the two Daimlers took off empty, obviously going straight back to Ipoh. As the junior medical officers watched, they saw that a redistribution of passengers was taking place. Douglas Mackay and his wife went to Les Arnold’s large estate car, while Diane was escorted to Desmond O’Neill’s Velox.

‘Looks like the old sod has taken a fancy to the blonde bombshell,’ muttered Percy Loosemore. ‘Good job our revered surgeon didn’t come, he’d have blown his top.’

They pressed nearer the cars and as the colonel gallantly opened the passenger door for Diane, they heard her call out rather too gaily for the occasion. ‘God, I need a drink after that! Desmond, call in at the New Club on the way back, there’s a dear.’

The next two days were busy ones for the police in Tanah Timah and the death of James Robertson had to take a back seat as far as Steven Blackwell was concerned, though in truth, there was little to be done except take unhelpful statements from people who knew James.

The reason for the diversion was an armed robbery at one of two banks in the town, which involved a shooting. At one end of the main street was the Chartered Bank and almost opposite, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. They were small establishments, just a couple of rooms with a Chinese sub-manager and a few Chinese and Indian tellers and clerks. Outside the door of the Chartered Bank was the usual guard, a turbaned Sikh jaga sitting on a wooden chair, cradling a twelve-bore shotgun and chewing red chillies as if they were crisps.

At mid-morning on Tuesday, a battered Ford pick-up stopped outside and two men rushed into the bank, another two overpowering the startled Sikh before he could even raise his gun. They hit him on the head and lashed him to his chair, before joining their accomplices inside, where amid much screaming from both robbers and customers, the threat of a pair of sawn-off shotguns made the terrified staff scrabble together as much money as they could muster. Though the police headquarters was only a few hundred yards away, it was beyond the other end of the street and out of earshot of the fracas in the bank.

Within minutes, the thieves had grabbed all they were likely to get and rushed out of the bank. By now the very angry jaga had freed one of his arms from the rope and as the men were scrambling aboard their stolen truck, he managed to reach his twelve-bore and let off a blast which peppered several of the robbers. As they revved away, one them fired a shot in return, which hit the Sikh in the legs. At that distance, the discharge was not crippling, but the guard’s roars of pain and outrage were added to the cacophony coming from the bank.

The sound of shots brought the police racing down the street and soon there was a full scale pursuit in operation. The Ford had vanished in the direction of Ipoh, but was soon found abandoned near a patch of secondary jungle halfway to Kampong Kerdah. Steven Blackwell and many of his officers were busy for the rest of the day organizing a search through the heavily forested land nearby, but without success.

The superintendent was concerned that this might be a terrorist-linked incident, especially as the witnesses confirmed that the attackers were all Chinese. Though this was by no means conclusive, it was known that the Malayan Communist Party sometimes resorted to robbery to get funds to sustain its desperate campaign.

At the back of his mind, Steven also worried about the possibility of a connection with the attack on Gunong Besar and the Robertson murder, even though all common sense indicated that Chin Peng’s men could have nothing to do with James’s corpse arriving at The Dog.

By Thursday, this enquiry had fizzled out for lack of any more evidence and Blackwell’s attention was once more drawn back to the Robertson case. As a result of making some early phone calls, the afternoon again saw him at the garrison headquarters, meeting this time in Major Enderby’s office in one of the ‘spiders’, the long wooden huts that jutted from the central roadway. The SIB sergeant from Ipoh and the tubby intelligence officer, Captain Preston, were there again to discuss the situation.

As he was on his home ground, Enderby, the head of the Brigade’s military police, appointed himself chairman and shuffled some papers on his desk as the other three men pulled up chairs. He stared at them fiercely, this being his usual expression, which he felt obliged to maintain as the local upholder of Queen’s Regulations.

‘As you rightly said on the phone, superintendent, in this rather isolated town, we cannot disregard the possibility that the perpetrator is a member of Her Majesty’s Forces.’

Steven smiled disarmingly at Enderby, as the latter continued.

‘As we’ve decided that it seems unlikely that any of the local native inhabitants did this, then statistically there are far more Service people around here than the relatively few planters.’

Preston, the Intelligence man, bobbed his moon face, yet immediately qualified his agreement.

‘Can’t dismiss them entirely, though. After all, Jimmy Robertson was an estate man himself.’

The craggy-faced staff sergeant scowled down at his gleaming boots as he spoke. ‘In my experience, sir, any bugger can commit any crime!’

Markham always managed to give the impression that he thought all commissioned officers were ineffectual prats, though nothing he ever said could be construed as open criticism.

Steven Blackwell opened a thin manilla folder and laid it on Enderby’s desk. ‘I’ve had the first report up from the Government Chemist’s laboratory in KL,’ he said briskly. ‘James Robertson had a moderate amount of alcohol in the blood sample taken at the post-mortem. It was just over a hundred and forty milligrams per hundred millilitres.’

‘What’s that in English?’ demanded Enderby, his cigarette-stained moustache bristling.

‘Certainly shouldn’t be driving a car, but given Jimmy’s capacity for drink, I’d say it was about average for a night in The Dog.’

‘No surprise there, then,’ grunted the major. ‘Anything more helpful?’

Blackwell turned over a page in his slim folder.

‘Those half-dozen bullets my inspector dug out of the walls of Gunong Besar — they were all.303s and all came from the same weapon. From the rifling pattern, it was a Lee-Enfield, not a Bren.’

None of the others looked impressed.

‘Doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t expect, does it?’ grunted Markham, adding ‘sir’ as a reluctant afterthought.

‘Were they from the same weapon as the one that killed Jimmy?’ asked Preston.

The policeman shook his head. ‘Don’t know yet. These went down to the lab first, after that attack on the bungalow. I hope to hear more tomorrow.’ He picked up another piece of paper.

‘Dr Howden in BMH has had a look at the leaves and grass that Tan collected from the roadway on the way up to the estate. He confirms that the staining was blood and that it was human, but he’s got no facilities for telling if it was Robertson’s blood group. I’ve sent it down to the Petaling Jaya lab, but I see no reason to doubt that it marks the spot where he was shot.’

Major Enderby turned his watery eyes on to the SIB man.

‘Did you hear anything yet about those cartridge cases?’

Markham pulled a folded paper from the top pocket of his starched jungle-green jacket. He opened it and scanned down the page.

‘I’ve just had this signal from Command Ordnance HQ in Singapore, where I sent half a dozen of the shell-cases from Gunong Besar. It seems that.303 ammunition is a hell of a mixture, some of the stuff still in use going back to 1942! The date stamped on it is when the casing was made, but not necessarily when it was filled with propellant.’

The three other men looked at him blankly.

‘So what?’ growled Enderby.

‘Well, if we wanted to know if this was stuff dropped to the CTs when they were fighting the Japs — or if it was pinched from the army recently, there’s no way the date stamping can help, unless it was, say 1954. And none of these were, they were all ’44 or ’48.’

There was a silence. ‘So we’re none the wiser about when they were made?’ asked Preston.

The staff sergeant’s dour face almost cracked into a smile.

‘The clever sods in Singapore tested the residues in the shells, sir,’ he said smugly. ‘Seems until about five years ago, all.303s made by the Greenwood and Batley factory were filled with cordite, but after that, they used nitrocellulose, even into empty cases dated years before. Some of these shells were made by Kynoch, but again they could have been filled later.’

‘What are you trying to tell us, sergeant?’ asked Preston rather irritably.

‘Some of the cartridges had been filled with nitrocellulose, so they can’t be earlier than the late forties, early fifties.’

Again there was a silence. ‘Does that help us at all?’ asked Steven Blackwell.

The SIB man shrugged indifferently. ‘Only that it makes it a lot less likely that these rounds were fired by bandits, sir. Unless there’s been a fairly recent capture of munitions by them, most of their stuff is left over from the Jap occupation, when we supplied the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army with masses of weapons and ammunition.’

Preston, the Intelligence man, shook his head. ‘Nothing lost to the CTs here in the north for several years.’

Major Enderby slapped his hands on his table. ‘Thank you, sergeant. Interesting and confirmative, but we guessed that already from the circumstances.’

‘What will be even more interesting is to know if the bullet that saw off poor Jimmy came from the same weapon,’ grunted Preston.

As Markham handed his paper to the superintendent to put in his file, Enderby changed the subject.

‘Let’s get back to personalities, gentlemen. We agreed just now that the military certainly can’t be excluded from our investigations.’

Blackwell cleared his throat diffidently and Enderby glared at him.

‘You have a problem with that, Steven?’ he snapped.

‘Only that technically — and legally — it’s my investigation. I’m not being awkward, but James was a civilian and he was almost certainly shot on the public highway. Naturally, I’m very grateful for your input and the police couldn’t get anywhere without your cooperation. But I thought for the record, I must make it clear that any arrest and indictment is down to us.’

Major Enderby gave a loud sniff, but he seemed to accept the point.

‘Sure, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves, talking of an arrest. None of us have a clue at the moment.’

The captain from Intelligence looked uneasy.

‘What happens if it does turn out to be someone from the Forces?’ asked Preston.

Blackwell shrugged. ‘That’ll be up to the lawyers. The magistrates or even the Malayan judiciary would have to refer the matter to your Army Legal Branch and then sort it out between themselves. Thank God, that won’t be my problem, all I want to do is arrest the man who did this.’

‘Or woman,’ growled Sergeant Markham.

The other heads swivelled towards him.

‘Woman? Are you serious?’ brayed Preston.

‘As I said earlier, sir, anybody can do anything. Doesn’t take much strength to pull a trigger, even on a Lee-Enfield.’

Enderby tapped the table impatiently.

‘Let’s get back to brass tacks,’ he demanded. ‘As it’s possible that military personnel might be involved, I’ve had a word with the Adjutant and he’s spoken to the Brigadier. It’s agreed that we can divulge any Service records and even Confidential Reports to the police, on a strictly “need-to-know” basis.’

He slapped his hairy hand on to a pile of folders lying on the desk.

‘I’ve had the records pulled of everyone who had anything to do with the Robertsons — and quite a few others besides.’

Steven’s eyebrows climbed up his sun-reddened forehead. The provost marshal’s office had certainly been busy.

‘Does that include people from BMH?’ he asked.

‘Include? They’re the main customers, Steven!’

That night, Tom Howden was again Orderly Medical Officer and sat abstemiously in the Mess after dinner, drinking grapefruit soda while his fellow officers replenished their body fluids with Anchor or Tiger.

A violent thunderstorm was going on outside and rain lashed down like the proverbial stair rods. As Tom looked out through the open doors of the anteroom, he could see a row of regularly spaced cascades pouring vertically from the edges of the corrugated roof into the deep monsoon drains at the edge of the verandah. One of the frequent flashes of lightning showed a figure dashing from an Austin K2 ambulance for the shelter of the covered way. A moment later, Eddie Rosen came in, the shoulders of his green uniform shirt black with rain.

He called to Number One to rustle up some food, as he had missed the regular evening meal, then dropped into a chair.

‘Been assisting the Great Surgeon with a compound fracture, an Aussie who lost an argument with a three-tonner,’ he announced. ‘Peter’s still down in theatre with the gasman. We started late, as Blackwell of the Yard turned up to give the third degree again to the other two fellows.’

Percy Loosemore leered across from the depths of his chair, where he had been studying an old copy of Men Only.

‘They must be the prime suspects, then. Wonder which one of them did it?’

Alfred Morris put down his airmail copy of the Daily Telegraph and frowned at the speaker. ‘That warped sense of humour will get you into trouble one day, Percy,’ he said severely.

‘I wasn’t trying to be funny, Alf! Did you lot know that Dave Meredith was a crack shot? When he was a student, he was in the University of Liverpool’s Small-bore Rifle team and competed in Bisley.’

No one asked him how he came by this nugget of information, but neither did anyone challenge his news. However, Robbie Burns couldn’t resist some sarcasm. ‘And I suppose you’ll tell us that Peter Bright was an Olympic gold medallist with the Bren gun!’

The pox doctor sniggered, determined to get the last word.

‘No, but Posh Pete was a dab hand with a shotgun. I heard him bragging once about how often he went murdering pheasants in Sussex with his father and his fancy Tory pals.’

The Admin Officer rattled his newspaper irritably.

‘That’s enough, fellers! This affair isn’t something to joke about, so let’s drop it.’

The somewhat awkward silence was broken by Eddie Rosen.

‘Tom, if you’re OMO, keep your eyes peeled for the CO. He’s been acting strangely lately.’

‘Nothing new about that! When was he ever normal?’ The quartermaster’s nasal Scouse tones sounded bitter, as he suffered more than most from the colonel’s eccentricities.

‘No, I mean really odd,’ said Rosen. ‘I was OMO last night and on the way to the arms kote, I saw him prowling around the hospital with a flashlight. Later, I caught a glimpse of him shining the torch into the windows of one of the barrack blocks. . and I think it was where the QA Other Ranks sleep.’

A few eyebrows were raised at this — the antics of their Commanding Officer were always fertile ground for gossip.

‘Dirty old bugger!’ said Percy Loosemore. ‘That’s what comes of his wife buzzing off back to Blighty — he’s gone randy.’

With a sigh, Alfred Morris put down his newspaper and came to the rescue of his colonel’s reputation. ‘If you must know, he’s been concerned about security lately, especially since the murder and the attack on Gunong Besar. Now there’s been this bank hold-up in town, and he’s got into his head that we should all be more security conscious.’

‘Funny place to start, the QA’s dormitory,’ grunted the quartermaster.

‘He’s been trying doors and windows, to see if they’ve been locked at night, that’s all,’ said Alf defensively.

‘What, is he afraid that Chin Peng is going to nick the ashtrays from the Sergeants’ Mess?’ asked Alec Watson. ‘I saw him snooping around there after midnight when I was duty officer last week. Then he went up to the armoury and started yelling at the poor little Malay corporal through the door.’

‘What was that about?’ asked Alfred, curious in spite of his ingrained loyalties.

‘Dunno, I kept well clear!’ replied Alec. ‘But his obsession with the armoury has got worse since these shootings.’

The debate about the foibles of their chief was interrupted by the arrival of the surgeon and his anaesthetist who both dropped wearily into chairs and called for beers. As he took their orders, Number One asked solicitously if they wanted him to find them a late meal.

‘No thanks, night sister rustled up sandwiches for us in theatre,’ answered Peter Bright. ‘We had a late start because Sherlock Holmes came again with a list of questions.’

‘Which one of you confessed?’ demanded the irrepressible Percy.

Dave Meredith ignored him, but had a gripe of his own.

‘Damned cheek. Steve Blackwell wanted to know all about my ability as a marksman. How the hell would he know that, I haven’t so much as touched a rifle since I joined the army!’ He omitted to say that the police superintendent had also asked some pointed questions about his relationship with Lena Franklin, Robertson’s latest paramour.

‘He must have had sight of our Service records,’ complained Peter. ‘Some of the things he was asking me, not even you nosy devils know anything about.’

He failed to elaborate on this, but most of his colleagues had a fair idea that Diane Robertson’s name would have featured in Blackwell’s questions.

The Mess seemed to slide into gloomy silence after this, until their Admin Officer made a suggestion intended to raise the mood a little.

‘I’ve been looking at the duty rosters for next weekend, chaps,’ said Alf earnestly. ‘Quite a few of you are free, so why don’t we organize a trip to Pangkor? I know the colonel’s going down to Kinrara to meet the ADMS, so we could get away early on Saturday morning and come back on Sunday.’

There was a stir of interest, except from those who were tied to the hospital that weekend.

‘Be a nice change, we could see if a few of the QAs wanted to join us,’ said Alec, always with an eye to female company. During the buzz of discussion that followed, a mystified Tom Howden asked Alec what this was all about.

‘Pangkor? It’s a tropical island just off the coast. Smashing place, only about fifty miles away. We leave the cars at Lumut, then get a small ferry across. The accommodation’s a bit primitive, just a row of wooden chalets above the beach, but it’s better than this place. You must come, Tom, it’s great! Swimming, boozing, flirting!’

Alf winked across at the pathologist. ‘See if you can get that nice Lynette to come, Tom. Swaying palm trees under a tropical moon, do your love life no end of good!’

It seemed that several other officers had the same idea, as when they got around to discussing which cars to take, David Meredith announced that his passenger seat would doubtless be occupied by Lena Franklin. Then Peter Bright effectively stopped the chatter by rather gruffly indicating that he intended asking Diane Robertson if she would like to join the party.

‘She needs something to take her mind off things, poor woman!’ he said defiantly, making it clear that he was personally intending to provide that something. He got a few knowing looks from his fellow officers and a leer from Percy, but no one pursued the matter and the conversation drifted on to details of the trip, Alf volunteering to contact the beach hotel and make the bookings.

Outside, the storm finished as abruptly as it had begun and gradually the crowd in the Mess began to drift away. Some of those not on duty went out to the cinema or visit other messes in the garrison, while a few sloped off to their rooms to write letters, read or listen to their record players.

An hour later Tom was left alone in the anteroom, apart from Eddie Rosen, who was snoring peacefully in one of the chairs.

The pathologist browsed through his thick dog-eared copy of Muir’s Pathology, but his attention span was limited, even though he told himself that he must keep bashing the books, as he intended taking the Diploma when he got back home. Too many diverting thoughts marched through his mind, from puzzling about Jimmy Robertson’s gunshot wound to the sounds and aromas of a tropical night that wafted through the doors. A recurring diversion was the face and figure of Lynette Chambers. He knew that she was not on duty tonight, but the promised weekend with her on this fabled island was a tantalizing prospect, with which Professor Muir’s book had no chance of competing. He gave up the attempt at study and earlier than needs be, grabbed his hat and belt and went off down to the hospital to do his rounds.

Checking first with the orderly sergeant down at the front, he began working his way back up the corridor, stopping at each ward in turn. At Ward Five, his path crossed that of the night sister and they stopped for a cup of coffee in the office. Tonight QA Captain Joan Parnell was in charge and sitting in close proximity in the small room, he was aware of what an attractive woman she was. Glossy auburn hair peeped from beneath her white linen head-cloth and her smooth features always seemed to hold a slightly mischievous expression.

‘You’ve made quite a hit with young Lynette, Captain Howden,’ she said archly. ‘Fast workers, you Geordies!’

Tom grinned sheepishly. She was an easy woman to talk to as they had no flirtatious hang-up to contend with. He had his eye firmly on Lynette and Joan was intent on prising Peter Bright away from the new widow woman.

‘There’s a plan afoot to make up a party for this Pangkor place next weekend,’ he observed. ‘Will you be able to come?’

‘Is Peter going, d’you know?’ she asked. ‘Maybe we could drive down together.’

Tom felt that he was treading on sensitive ground here, but he could hardly avoid a direct question. ‘He said that he was, but I think he’s giving a lift to Mrs Robertson.’

Joan’s luscious lips tightened at this.

‘Then I’m definitely damned well going!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m not letting her have him all to herself for a whole weekend.’

Tom wisely avoided any comment and tried to change the subject.

‘Eddie Rosen and Alec both said the CO had been acting strangely the past few nights. Have you seen anything of him?’

Joan Parnell pulled her mind away from the prospect of their surgeon cavorting with a blonde on a tropical island and nodded.

‘It’s the talk of the Sisters’ Mess this week. Matron said she’s going to have a word with him, as he’s been poking about the buildings until God knows what hour — including the QA’s Other Ranks billet. The man’s mad!’

‘Have you seen him tonight?’

‘I caught a glimpse of him in the distance about an hour ago, going up the corridor towards the armoury. I’m sure it was him, you can tell by that funny up-and-down walk of his.’

The pathologist drained the last of his Nescafe from a mug advertising a new lotion for treating scabies. ‘Let’s hope I can keep clear of him tonight. He seems to have taken an instant dislike to me.’

Joan gave him a glowing smile and reached out to touch his hand.

‘Don’t take it personally, Tom. He’s like that with everyone, unless they’ve got boobs and long legs! The latest one to hate him even more than usual is Robbie Burns.’

‘I’ve heard they don’t get along, to put it mildly,’ said Tom. ‘But is this something new?’

‘The colonel gives all the QM people a hard time, but now he’s threatened to arrest Robbie and have him court-martialled,’ explained Joan.

‘This place is nothing like Newcastle’s RVI, where I worked,’ said Tom ruefully. ‘What’s he supposed to have done?’

Joan shrugged her slim shoulders indifferently.

‘Some fuss over a fiddled Board of Survey, they say. Nothing out of the ordinary.’

Tom Howden had already been instructed in the art of handling Boards of Survey by Lance Corporal Cropper. Every department had to have its inventory of equipment checked every so often by an officer and a member of the QM staff. Any deficiencies had to be paid for out of the pocket of the officer-in-charge. Where the lab was concerned, the crafty Cropper informed Tom that all his predecessors had wangled their way out of debt by calling a ‘Board of Survey’ to condemn items allegedly worn or unserviceable. These were supposed to be destroyed immediately, but in fact, after replacements were obtained, the old ones were quietly brought back to replace anything missing from the inventory.

‘In this man’s army, you can get away with writing off a truck or a tank with no more than a ticking-off,’ the corporal had confided. ‘But break a bloody thermometer worth five bob and there’s hell to pay!’

It seemed that the luckless quartermaster had fallen foul of the eccentric Commanding Officer over something to do with this time-honoured tradition.

‘Apparently, Captain Burns is livid!’ went on Joan. ‘It seems the colonel has been persecuting him for months and now Burns has been heard to say that he’s willing to swing for Desmond O’Neill! Let’s hope they don’t meet on one of our nights on duty!’

With this cheerful thought, the two went about their business and after finishing his pilgrimage to the other wards, Tom made his final trip to the arms kote. As he went, he kept a wary eye out for the CO, but thankfully the only thing he saw at the top end of the hospital was a cat slinking along a monsoon drain. The excursion to the arms blockhouse also went peacefully, though again there was another new Malay OR locked inside, one Tom had not seen on his previous visits.

By midnight, he was back in his own bed, as the air-conditioned ward was occupied by a gunner with malaria. As he stared up in the gloom at the dim wraith of his mosquito net, he thought of the coming weekend. Visions swam into his mind of nubile maidens in grass skirts dancing on a palm-fringed moonlit beach — and they were all wearing the starched headdress of the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps.