Dead in the Dog

‘No surprise there, then,’ grunted the major. ‘Anything more helpful?’

Blackwell turned over a page in his slim folder.

‘Those half-dozen bullets my inspector dug out of the walls of Gunong Besar – they were all .303s and all came from the same weapon. From the rifling pattern, it was a Lee-Enfield, not a Bren.’

None of the others looked impressed.

‘Doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t expect, does it?’ grunted Markham, adding ‘sir’ as a reluctant afterthought.

‘Were they from the same weapon as the one that killed Jimmy?’ asked Preston.

The policeman shook his head. ‘Don’t know yet. These went down to the lab first, after that attack on the bungalow. I hope to hear more tomorrow.’ He picked up another piece of paper.

‘Dr Howden in BMH has had a look at the leaves and grass that Tan collected from the roadway on the way up to the estate. He confirms that the staining was blood and that it was human, but he’s got no facilities for telling if it was Robertson’s blood group. I’ve sent it down to the Petaling Jaya lab, but I see no reason to doubt that it marks the spot where he was shot.’

Major Enderby turned his watery eyes on to the SIB man.

‘Did you hear anything yet about those cartridge cases?’

Markham pulled a folded paper from the top pocket of his starched jungle-green jacket. He opened it and scanned down the page.

‘I’ve just had this signal from Command Ordnance HQ in Singapore, where I sent half a dozen of the shell-cases from Gunong Besar. It seems that .303 ammunition is a hell of a mixture, some of the stuff still in use going back to 1942! The date stamped on it is when the casing was made, but not necessarily when it was filled with propellant.’

The three other men looked at him blankly.

‘So what?’ growled Enderby.

‘Well, if we wanted to know if this was stuff dropped to the CTs when they were fighting the Japs – or if it was pinched from the army recently, there’s no way the date stamping can help, unless it was, say 1954. And none of these were, they were all ’44 or ’48.’

There was a silence. ‘So we’re none the wiser about when they were made?’ asked Preston.

The staff sergeant’s dour face almost cracked into a smile.

‘The clever sods in Singapore tested the residues in the shells, sir,’ he said smugly. ‘Seems until about five years ago, all .303s made by the Greenwood and Batley factory were filled with cordite, but after that, they used nitrocellulose, even into empty cases dated years before. Some of these shells were made by Kynoch, but again they could have been filled later.’

‘What are you trying to tell us, sergeant?’ asked Preston rather irritably.

‘Some of the cartridges had been filled with nitrocellulose, so they can’t be earlier than the late forties, early fifties.’

Again there was a silence. ‘Does that help us at all?’ asked Steven Blackwell.

The SIB man shrugged indifferently. ‘Only that it makes it a lot less likely that these rounds were fired by bandits, sir. Unless there’s been a fairly recent capture of munitions by them, most of their stuff is left over from the Jap occupation, when we supplied the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army with masses of weapons and ammunition.’

Preston, the Intelligence man, shook his head. ‘Nothing lost to the CTs here in the north for several years.’

Major Enderby slapped his hands on his table. ‘Thank you, sergeant. Interesting and confirmative, but we guessed that already from the circumstances.’

‘What will be even more interesting is to know if the bullet that saw off poor Jimmy came from the same weapon,’ grunted Preston.

As Markham handed his paper to the superintendent to put in his file, Enderby changed the subject.

‘Let’s get back to personalities, gentlemen. We agreed just now that the military certainly can’t be excluded from our investigations.’

Blackwell cleared his throat diffidently and Enderby glared at him.

‘You have a problem with that, Steven?’ he snapped.

‘Only that technically – and legally – it’s my investigation. I’m not being awkward, but James was a civilian and he was almost certainly shot on the public highway. Naturally, I’m very grateful for your input and the police couldn’t get anywhere without your cooperation. But I thought for the record, I must make it clear that any arrest and indictment is down to us.’

Major Enderby gave a loud sniff, but he seemed to accept the point.

‘Sure, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves, talking of an arrest. None of us have a clue at the moment.’

The captain from Intelligence looked uneasy.

‘What happens if it does turn out to be someone from the Forces?’ asked Preston.

Blackwell shrugged. ‘That’ll be up to the lawyers. The magistrates or even the Malayan judiciary would have to refer the matter to your Army Legal Branch and then sort it out between themselves. Thank God, that won’t be my problem, all I want to do is arrest the man who did this.’

‘Or woman,’ growled Sergeant Markham.

The other heads swivelled towards him.

‘Woman? Are you serious?’ brayed Preston.