Dead in the Dog

The faithful Admin Officer murmured something about O’Neill’s bark being worse than his bite, but the major had joined the general exodus and soon only the RAMC staff remained with the policeman.

‘In the morning, I’ll have to come and take statements from everyone who was in The Dog tonight,’ said Blackwell. ‘I’ll contact the coroner as early as I can and get his authority for you to carry out a post-mortem, Captain Howden.’

Alf Morris gave an indrawn whistling noise to indicate his concern at this.

‘You’d better get back to the colonel to get his consent for that, Steven.’

‘But the bloody man has just ordered him to do it!’ protested the police officer.

‘Our beloved leader can be very fickle,’ warned Peter Bright. ‘What he says tonight, he might flatly deny in the morning.’

Blackwell gave a small sigh of exasperation and after making his farewells, went wearily out to his waiting Land Rover, the surgeon following him to his own sporty MG. By now, the orderly sergeant had got two RAMC privates to bring a trolley from the Families Clinic next door and with the others watching with sombre expressions, they covered James Robertson’s body with the sheet from the examination couch and hauled him across on to the trolley. As they pushed the sad burden away to the mortuary, Tom Howden had a sudden thought, as he had inspected the place only a couple of days ago. The morgue was part of his domain as the pathologist, a hut little larger than a garden shed on the edge of the helicopter landing pad, incongruously next to the badminton court.

‘There’s no refrigeration there. He’ll go off pretty fast in this heat,’ he said to Alf Morris.

As usual, the imperturbable Admin Officer had the answer. ‘That’s under control, we get blocks of ice brought in to put all around them. There’s a Chinese contractor in the town who supplies it, I’ll organize it first thing in the morning.’

With this bizarre image in his mind, Tom went off to scrounge a last cup of tea from the night sister, before going back to his bed in Intensive Care for what remained of the night.

Morning Prayers went off quite mildly, in spite of the fears of several officers that the Old Man would be ranting about their failure to notify him about the shooting, ignoring the fact that he was nowhere to be found. In the event, O’Neill never mentioned it.

As OMO, Tom had to deliver his report, keeping it as low-key as possible. After describing the satisfactory condition of the only patient on the SIL, he gave a sombre account of how Mr James Robertson had been brought in dead, then finished up with the usual. ‘The arms kote was inspected at eleven hundred hours and all was found to be in order, sir.’

He sat down, but jumped up again as the CO barked at him.

‘I’ve already heard from the police, Howden. The coroner wants you to carry out a post-mortem this morning.’ He glared at the pathologist over his Himmler glasses, which he always wore at these meetings. The skin over his high cheekbones appeared stretched more tightly than usual, giving his face a skull-like appearance.

‘Have you ever seen a gunshot wound, captain? I suppose you do know how to perform an autopsy?’

Tom tried to ignore the insulting tone. ‘Yes, sir, I’ve been with my consultant when he dealt with a firearm death. And yes, sir, I’ve done at least twenty coroner’s cases back home.’

With the abrupt changes of mood that seemed characteristic of this strange man, the CO seemed to lose interest and went on to harangue the quartermaster about some delay in delivery of medical stores. The unfortunate Captain Burns offered feeble excuses about inefficiency in the Base Supply Depot down in Singapore. Robbie Burns was another officer who, like Alf Morris, had come up through the ranks and was fervently hoping that he would reach retirement less than a year away, without being court-martialled for strangling the Commanding Officer, who made his life a permanent misery. He was a short, corpulent Scouse, always sweating profusely and incessantly mopping his red face with a handkerchief.

The meeting stumbled through its usual nerve-racking course, with a dozen officers sitting edgily on their chairs, waiting for their colonel to suddenly turn and attack them for some imagined misdeed. Eventually they were released into the mounting heat and went their various ways to heal the sick.