‘And a little bird told me that Diane might have been playing away lately,’ added Preston, mischievously.
‘I don’t believe it for a moment,’ huffed Alf Morris. ‘Peter Bright is a real gentleman, murder would never enter his head!’
The police superintendent shrugged and turned to another sheet from the file on his desk.
‘Captain David Meredith, your anaesthetist. What about him?’
Alf shook his head. ‘A complete non-starter, I’d say. Having designs on Diane Robertson was the last thing he was interested in — he was dead keen on one of the QAs, Lena Franklin.’
Steven regarded Alf steadily. ‘But we know that that affair had cooled off a bit, according to my sources. And it was very likely Jimmy Robertson who did the cooling.’
‘You’ve been listened to Percy Loosemore, our garrison gossip,’ retorted Morris accusingly. ‘His tongue will get him into trouble one of these days.’
‘This Captain Meredith, isn’t he the one who’s a crack shot?’ growled Markham. ‘Bisley and all that?’
‘Oh, come on, sergeant! There’s the better part of a thousand soldiers in the Brigade, all taught to shoot well enough to hit a bungalow or a chap across a narrow road! You don’t need to be an Olympic hopeful for that.’
‘Anything in his Confidential Report that’s relevant?’ asked the Intelligence Officer.
‘Not very bloody confidential any more,’ muttered Morris, but no one seemed to hear him.
The superintendent rustled some more paper. ‘Short Service Officer, originally Welsh, but his family now live in Wiltshire. Twenty-eight, unmarried — nothing else to say about him, really.’
‘And where was he at the material time?’ asked Major Enderby.
‘Says he left The Dog early, at about half ten and went back to the Mess in BMH. Went to bed, knew nothing of all the drama until breakfast.’
‘Can he prove that?’ asked the ever-suspicious SIB man.
Steven looked at Morris. ‘No one saw him at the Mess, as far as I can make out. Alf, you were called out when James was brought into Casualty, did you see any sign of him?’
‘No, but there’s no mystery there. All the officer’s rooms are in a row down the left-hand side of the two mess buildings. They have louvred doors on each side, one facing on to the grass outside the dining room, the other outwards towards the perimeter fence. The cars are parked out that side for the night, so people can reach their rooms without coming into the mess compound.’ He waved his hands to demonstrate the geography of the BMH Officers’ Mess.
‘But he hasn’t got an alibi either?’ persisted Enderby.
‘I don’t see that he needs one,’ answered Morris obstinately.
Blackwell sighed. They were getting nowhere fast.
‘Let’s get away from the officers for a change,’ he said resignedly. ‘Here’s some stuff on Les Arnold that I didn’t know before.’
He pulled some Telex sheets from a large buff envelope and unfolded them. ‘Police Headquarters in KL has been in touch with their Aussie counterparts in Queensland, who checked up on Arnold. It seems that he did time in the slammer some years ago.’
There was some lifting of eyebrows as Blackwell elaborated.
‘In 1940, he was convicted in Cairns of causing grievous bodily harm to a guy. Got five years jail, but was let out to join the Army when the war started. Went into some tough Special Forces outfit, spent a couple of years fighting in New Guinea.’
Enderby gave a quiet whistle of surprise. ‘Does it say what the GBH was all about?’
‘Some trouble over a woman, it seems. The other guy assaulted him and he went after him. If there hadn’t been a plea of provocation, it seems he might have been done for attempted murder.’
‘Did he beat him up that badly, then?’ asked the sergeant.
Steven Blackwell shook his head. ‘No, he shot him — with a rifle!’
On the short drive back to the hospital, the revelation about the Australian planter was the main topic of conversation between Alf Morris and the pathologist.
‘Just because he shot some chap in the shoulder fourteen years ago, doesn’t make him the culprit now,’ warned the major, anxious as ever never to prejudge any issue.
‘No, but it can’t help putting him near the top of the shortlist, especially when there are no other reasonable contenders,’ answered Tom. He was secretly glad that his brother officers, as he had already begun to think of them, were by implication, off the hook.
‘Mustn’t say a word about all this in the Mess, of course,’ warned Alf, quite unnecessarily as far as Tom was concerned. He was still uneasy at having been made privy to the personal information that Steven Blackwell had produced that morning. After revealing the news about Les Arnold, the policeman had gone on to describe the background of Douglas Mackay and his wife Rosa, though there seemed little there to suggest either as suspects.
‘No advantage in the manager shooting his boss,’ said Tom ruminatively, as they were passing the derelict tin-dredge. ‘If the plantation folds up or is sold, he may lose his job.’
‘I don’t envy Steven Blackwell’s part in this,’ said Alf. ‘It must be very awkward having to interrogate and possibly suspect people you have to live with in a small place like this.’
‘Yes, it would have been much easier if the Commies had shot him,’ answered Tom, with unwitting cynicism. ‘At least we’d not all be looking at each other as if we were afraid that one of us did it.’
As the old Hillman slowed down to turn into the gate of BMH, Alf Morris gave a sigh. ‘I suppose I’d better report all this to the Old Man straight after lunch. He’ll want to know what happened, word for word. Fair enough, I suppose. The chap did die in his hospital, as he calls it — and several of those in the frame are his officers.’
They passed the Blanco-belted private on guard duty, Tom sheepishly returning his salute and as they drove around the double bend on to the perimeter road to the Mess, he returned to their recent meeting.
‘Talking of the colonel, I notice that his file wasn’t discussed!’
Alf grinned under his moustache. ‘The colonel is pretty pally with the Brigadier, they’re in a bridge set over at the Garrison Mess. I can’t see the OC letting the police having O’Neill’s particulars in a hurry.’
As they drew up outside the Mess, the Admin Officer added a final word. ‘And another person that wasn’t mentioned was dear Diane herself!’
TEN
Superintendent Blackwell had not forgotten about Diane Robertson — nor had he written off Lieutenant Colonel Desmond O’Neill from his list of people to interview. He sat alone at his desk in his large, bare office, letting the air from the slowly revolving fan waft down on to his pink scalp. Even after all these years in the Far East, he still thought nostalgically of the cold, damp rain of the Manchester streets — though he knew that if transported back there tomorrow, he would be fed up with it inside a week.
He pulled his mind back to the present and with no leads whatsoever to follow on the local bank robbery, he concentrated on this morning’s earlier meeting about James Robertson. The Telex from Australia was interesting, but Steven knew that some old conviction for a brawl over a woman was little use apart from suggesting a violent temper and willingness to use violence. The fact that it involved a rifle was food for thought, but since coming to Malaya, Les Arnold had not fallen foul of the law in any way, though he had been ushered out of The Dog several times for becoming too stroppy after having too much to drink.
The phrase ‘brawl over a woman’ stuck in Steven’s mind and he wondered if history might have repeated itself, as the Australian planter had made little secret of his lustful admiration for his next-door neighbour, Diane Robertson. Yet the very openness of his libidinous admission rather defused its significance.
With a sigh, he drew a pad of lined paper towards him and began to write, cursing under his breath as the sweat from the edge of his hand dampened the lower part of the page and made the ink run when he reached it. He persevered for a quarter of an hour, then sat back and read through the notes he had made, before reaching across his desk and pinging the small brass bell that sat there. A moment later, his middle-aged Tamil clerk came in from the room next door.