Dead in the Dog

Tom looked dubious. ‘We can easily do a presumptive test for blood, though many other things give a false positive. I can certainly tell you if it’s not blood!’

‘Any hope of confirming it’s human and possibly what group?’ persisted the superintendent.

The pathologist shook his head. ‘I honestly don’t know. If it’s very fresh, maybe we could get a group out of it, but it’s way out of my line, dealing with stains rather than fresh blood.’

‘Well, give it a go, there’s a good chap. Tan can give you some of those apparently bloodstained leaves we picked up on the Gunong Besar road. We’ll get a report from KL eventually, but I thought it might help to get a quick answer.’

‘Going back to this post-mortem, Captain Howden,’ grunted Major Enderby. ‘Any idea of the range of the shot?’

‘It certainly wasn’t close, as I said this morning,’ replied Tom. ‘No scorching, smoke staining or powder tattooing on the clothing or skin. The books say that the distance over which that occurs is very variable according to the type of weapon and ammunition, but in any case, wouldn’t happen if the muzzle was more than a few feet away.’

‘So not a very close discharge – but it could be ten feet or half a mile!’ said the major. ‘Any idea about the direction?’

Tom rubbed his chin and looked at his papers while he made time to consider his answer.

‘Anatomically, it was a bit downwards through the chest and slightly from left front to right middle, as it smashed the spine. But of course, it all depends how the deceased was standing or sitting when he was hit.’

‘How d’you mean?’ asked Steven.

‘Well, the books warn against assuming that a downward path means that the shooter was firing from above. If the victim was leaning forward a bit, then even a horizontal shot would incline downwards through the body?’

There was a silence as they digested this. Then the inscrutable Inspector Tan spoke, again picking up something that the others had so far missed.

‘Superintendent, you said just now that a driver couldn’t be shot straight through the front of the chest while sitting at the wheel, especially in an armoured car like that Buick. So that must surely mean he was shot when he was out of the vehicle?’

They all thought about this, but it was Blackwell who responded first.

‘Of course! And it had to be like that, otherwise how could that blood have got on to the grass at the side of the road!’

‘If it is blood,’ muttered Enderby, with typical lawyer’s caution.

‘Let’s assume it is for the moment,’ said Steven, rather impatiently. ‘So why the hell would a man get out of his car on a lonely road late at night, not many days after a presumed terrorist attack less than a mile away?’

‘Because he recognized someone he knew,’ snapped the SIB sergeant.

‘Someone whose own car had broken down – or who pretended it had,’ offered Enderby.

‘But then the killer would have had to leave his vehicle at the scene, if he drove the body down to the club in Robertson’s car,’ objected the implacably logical Chinese inspector.

Steven Blackwell raised a hand. ‘Let’s not get too far in front of ourselves, chaps. At this stage, I don’t think that matters all that much. We’ve learned something very important from Dr Howden, that James Robertson must have been driven to The Dog by someone, presumably the assailant.’

The taciturn sergeant joined in the discussion.

‘I wonder how he got away so quickly? Surely he didn’t drive away, or that manager chap would have seen or heard a car, as he seems to have gone out straight away when he heard the crash.’

‘He wouldn’t have a car there, anyway, if he drove James’s down from the murder site,’ reasoned Enderby.

‘Unless he was someone who was in the club earlier and had left his car there, then footed it up to that cutting. It’s only a couple of miles away.’

Alfred Morris’s observation suddenly brought home the fact that the murderer, now known not to be a terrorist, could quite well be one of their own acquaintances. It was an unpleasant realization, unwelcome to them all. Steven Blackwell sighed, thinking of the difficult work that lay ahead, interviewing people who he knew all too well.

‘This means that we will have to concentrate on all weapons that could possibly be involved, both in civilian and military use. A hell of a job, I’m afraid.’

He looked at the two majors. ‘This is going to be bloody difficult! It’s going to be a nightmare testing even the relatively few guns in civilian hands, amongst the planters, let alone the military weapons. The chaps on the estates are not going to take kindly to being deprived of their shooters, even for a short time.’

‘Will they all have to be sent down to the forensic lab in KL?’ demanded Enderby. ‘I can’t see the Brigadier suspending his war for you, even for a murder!’

‘That’s out of the question, of course,’ said Steven. ‘We’ll have to be very specific about what guns we test, to limit the numbers.’