Dead in the Dog

He need not have been so worried about embarrassing her, as she merely gave a derisive snort.

‘Need you ask, Steve? I’ve just told you, everyone in TT knows that he has been getting his leg over that bitch from the hospital, but he needn’t have flaunted it in The Dog when I was there!’ She waved an unsteady hand in the general direction of the next bungalow. ‘Though at least he wasn’t playing quite so near home as usual.’

‘So you don’t know what time he left the club?’ Blackwell knew from the club steward that Robertson had left soon after eleven, but he always liked to cross-check when he could. She shook her head, the golden hair swirling across her shoulders.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he went off somewhere to roger that bloody woman in the back of his car. The rear seat is the size of a double bed!’ she added bitterly, thinking of the cramped space in her own little Austin.

‘And did you leave The Dog alone?’ asked Steven cautiously, prodding to see if there was any way of confirming her movements. He had no real reason for this, but from his days as a CID man back in England, he still kept the habit of building up a mental picture of where everyone was at what they called the ‘material time’.

Diane peered at him over the rim of her glass. For the first time, the brittle nonchalance over her sudden bereavement seemed to falter and she answered rather defensively. ‘I gave one of the guys from Garrison a lift back to the gates, as the fellow who had brought him had gone off with some popsy.’

Blackwell nodded encouragingly. ‘Who was that, then? Do I know him?’

‘Oh, Gerry something-or-other,’ she answered evasively. ‘One of the West Berkshires, a lieutenant, I think. I hardly know him.’ She neglected to mention that the half-mile journey took them almost an hour.

He thought of pushing her harder, then decided it could wait, if it ever needed to be followed up. The fact was that her husband had been shot in circumstances which suggested it was part of the civil insurgence that dominated life in Malaya – and yet, like the attack the week before, it seemed at odds with the usual run of terrorist activity.

He stood up and looked across at the very attractive woman who was hunched over her drink on the settee. ‘Diane, I must get back to TT and see if there’s any more news. The army’s out in strength looking for any CTs in the area and I need to check with them. But what are we going to do with you? You can’t stay here on your own!’

She made a visible effort to pull herself together, putting her now empty glass on the table and standing up, brushing back her hair from her forehead.

‘I’ll be fine, Steven, really I will. I’ve got my amah and Siva at the back of the house – and Douglas is only a few yards away.’

He noted that she pointedly avoided any mention of Douglas’s wife.

‘I’ll have to talk to him first thing in the morning,’ she went on. ‘About the running of the estate – not that it will make much difference, he did all the real work around here, anyway.’

Reluctantly, the superintendent had to accept her decision. There seemed little alternative to Diane staying in the bungalow that night – there were no decent hotels nearer than Penang and the government rest-houses in the smaller towns were hardly suitable for an unaccompanied young woman. He could not think of any female companion who would be willing to come and stay with the new widow, given her reputation and the remoteness of Gunong Besar. If only his wife had not gone back to England, she could have sorted this out – Margaret was good at mothering people.

Again reassuring Diane that the police and the army were thick on the ground around the estate and promising to come up again first thing in the morning, Steven Blackwell went out to his vehicle, leaving another Land Rover with two armed constables parked ostentatiously outside the bungalow.

By the time Steven Blackwell got back to BMH, the place was buzzing with activity, mostly centred around the Casualty hut at the end of the car park.

Pushing past two red-capped Military Police standing in the doorway, he found that the Matron had joined the throng and was deep in conversation with Alfred Morris and the night sister. Tom Howden was talking in a corner with Peter Bright, who had seen all the activity when he had driven in a few minutes earlier and come to investigate. Although Morris was his equal in rank, Alf was non-medical and in the absence of the Commanding Officer, the surgeon was assumed to be top dog when it came to a medical problem, which apparently included sudden death. It was not a responsibility he welcomed.

‘So where the hell is O’Neill?’ he demanded irritably, in his cut-glass accent. ‘Did you try his quarters again?’

‘Three times, but nobody answers the phone,’ grunted the pathologist. ‘Alf has just sent a runner up there now, to knock on his door.’