The three other Army men looked mystified, but Inspector Tan was quickest off the mark.
‘So how could he drive his car to the Sussex Club from wherever he was shot?’
‘Which now seems to be a few miles up the road towards Gunong Besar,’ added Steven Blackwell.
‘Are you sure about this?’ demanded Enderby, leaning forward. Tom was confident about this aspect, however little he knew about firearm wounds.
‘His spinal column was smashed through. There’s a condition called “spinal shock” which even apart from his other internal injuries, would almost certainly make him lose consciousness instantly. And apart from that, he wouldn’t be able to sit up to drive, with a broken back — though that would soon be impossible anyway, with massive bleeding inside his chest from the big arteries and veins ripped in the root of his lung.’
Tom looked a little crestfallen after giving this lecture. ‘I should have thought of this earlier, but I had just accepted the business about Daniel finding him in the driving seat of his car.’
There was a tense silence for a moment.
‘This puts a whole new complexion on the matter,’ snapped Blackwell. ‘There are only two explanations. One is that he was shot in the car park of The Dog — which is patently impossible, as no one there heard a shot. And you can’t shoot a man in the front of the chest when he’s sitting in the driving seat, unless there’s bullet hole in the windscreen, especially in a car with armoured side windows!’
‘And the other explanation?’ asked Alf Morris, though he guessed the answer.
‘Is that someone drove the car there from the murder scene, then buggered off before Daniel appeared!’ completed the major from the garrison. After another brief silence while they digested this, Blackwell spoke again.
‘Whatever else this tells us, it means one thing is definite — this was no terrorist shooting! Killing one man with one shot is damned unusual for them anyway, but it’s ludicrous to imagine a CT driving his victim away!’
There were murmurs of agreement, then the Chinese police inspector voiced the next question.
‘Why would the killer do such a thing? It must have greatly increased the risk of him being seen.’
Steven Blackwell shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. If we’re right in thinking that the blood found near that cutting was where the shooting occurred, he might have wanted to shift both the car and the body well away, to delay discovery.’
‘Because of the increased patrols up and down that road, you mean?’ asked Alf Morris.
‘Exactly! If he could have quietly left the car in a corner of the car park, then it could have been some time before the body was found — perhaps not until the next morning.’
‘But he goes and bashes into the back of a truck and brings poor old Daniel out to investigate,’ said Enderby.
‘Bloody lucky he missed seeing the killer, or he might have collected a bullet as well!’ added the SIB man.
‘Where’s the car now, Tan?’ asked the senior policeman.
‘In the garage down below, sir,’ replied the Chinese inspector.
‘Better check the wheel for fingerprints, though both Daniel and presumably a police officer have driven it since the shooting.’ Blackwell drummed his fingers on the table. ‘I wish we had proper forensic laboratory facilities up here. They can do all sorts of things back home now, looking at the soil from shoes and God knows what.’
‘I doubt if that would help much here — everyone has red laterite on their boots. I don’t think any laboratory is going to crack this one for you, Steven,’ said Enderby.
‘Talking of that, Captain Howden, can you do tests for blood in your lab over at BMH?’ asked Blackwell.
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.