Dead in the Dog (27 page)

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!'

S
teven Blackwell was another worried man, as he sat alone in his office early on Monday morning. A Telex had come in over the weekend from the Police Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, carrying an enquiry from the Assistant Commissioner wanting an update about progress in the Robertson investigation. Usually, the superintendent in Tanah Timah was given a fairly free hand, KL rarely breathing down his neck about cases, but it seemed that this death had come to the ears of the High Commissioner in Government House.

Though Steven had already assured his superiors that this was not a terrorist shooting, the murder of a British planter was being taken seriously by the representatives of Whitehall. The political set-up in Malaya was complicated and was likely to become more so as pressure for independence grew with the run-down of colonialism. The ‘Federation of Malaya' consisted of nine separate states, though Singapore, Malacca and Penang remained British Crown Colonies. Each state had a Sultan, a nominal head, who took it in turns to be overall ‘king', but the real administration and the efficient infrastructure was run by the British. Independence was being pushed hard by the Malay population, even though the numerous Chinese and Indians dominated the commercial and professional life. The problem was that many Chinese who, with British help had fought a three-year guerrilla war against the Japanese, now wanted a
Communist
state and had returned to the jungle to fight for it, with open assistance from Red China.

The superintendent sighed and mopped his sweating brow as he earnestly hoped that he could continue to convince KL that this incident was purely a local affair and not some renewed outbreak of insurgency. The best way to settle the matter would be to discover and arrest the perpetrator, but that seemed as far away as on the day of James Robertson's death.

He spent the next hour on routine matters, including a fruitless review of the bank robbery investigation, then decided to go out. His dark blue Land Rover took him and Inspector Tan once more past ‘The Dog' and up the Kerbau road to Gunong Besar estate, as he had decided that Diane Robertson had had long enough now to be ready for a formal interview. Half afraid that she might still be in her pyjamas at ten in the morning, he was relieved to see her leaning over the verandah dressed in a cream blouse and fawn slacks. For once, there was no glass in her hand, just a cigarette which she waved in welcome as they drove up the slope from the road.

‘I'm afraid this has to be rather official, Diane,' said Blackwell as they entered her wide lounge. ‘We've taken statements from almost everyone else, but I left you until you settled down.'