Dead in the Dog (26 page)

As the old Hillman slowed down to turn into the gate of BMH, Alf Morris gave a sigh. ‘I suppose I'd better report all this to the Old Man straight after lunch. He'll want to know what happened, word for word. Fair enough, I suppose. The chap did die in his hospital, as he calls it – and several of those in the frame are his officers.'

They passed the Blanco-belted private on guard duty, Tom sheepishly returning his salute and as they drove around the double bend on to the perimeter road to the Mess, he returned to their recent meeting.

‘Talking of the colonel, I notice that his file wasn't discussed!'

Alf grinned under his moustache. ‘The colonel is pretty pally with the Brigadier, they're in a bridge set over at the Garrison Mess. I can't see the OC letting the police having O'Neill's particulars in a hurry.'

As they drew up outside the Mess, the Admin Officer added a final word. ‘And another person that wasn't mentioned was dear Diane herself!'

S
uperintendent 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.