Dead in the Dog by Bernard Knight Read Free Book Online Page A

but no one ventured to enlarge on the subject, though one or two looked rather uneasily over their shoulders.
    Meng smacked a plate in front of him and the others peered at it.
    â€˜Fried bread and a tomato as well, eh?’ observed Percy. ‘She’s taken a real shine to you, Tom.’
    At ten to eight, he was out on the road from the Mess to the hospital. It ran all around the site, parallel to the chain-link perimeter, the wards being inside it. Various other buildings such as the two Officers’ Messes, the ORs’ barracks, Casualty, Sergeants’ Mess, Quartermaster’s stores, mortuary, dental unit and armoury, all lay between it and the boundary fence. The inner square was bisected by the main corridor that ran up from opposite the front gate to the little armoury that lay at the back, between the RAMC Officers’ Mess and that of the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps. Cynics had long claimed that they needed the guns to keep the two sexes apart.
    Tom Howden walked in the already-warm morning as far as this armoury, watching the steam rise off the wet ground as the sun began to make itself felt. When he looked beyond the hospital fence to the edge of the valley, he could see the jungle-covered hills less than a mile away, wraiths of mist winding through the tops of the trees. The air smelled so different from Tyneside, a cloying mixture of flowers, humid vegetation and stagnant water.
    He turned sharp left into the long corridor that was the main artery of the hospital, a place where sometime during the day you could meet every inhabitant of the place. It was a concrete strip edged with deep monsoon drains, each side completely open, with a gabled asbestos roof supported on green-painted posts all the way down to the front of the hospital. On each side, every twenty yards or so, were double doors to the wards, which stuck out like ribs from a spine. They were long green-painted huts, similar to those of the Mess, with slatted doors down most of their length on each side. Just inside the front doors were the sisters’ and doctors’ offices and at the far end, the sluice-rooms.
    Halfway down the corridor, he saw that one of the buildings was different. It was shorter, built of concrete and had a few glass windows, which had several air conditioning units sticking out. This was the operating theatre, the domain of the amorous pair, Peter Bright and David Meredith. On the other side of the corridor was the X-ray Unit and further down the corridor was his own bailiwick, the pathology laboratory, opposite the dispensary.
    Beyond these, he had to dodge a group of barefoot Tamil labourers, who were energetically scrubbing the concrete with brooms, slopping soapy water from buckets carried on a trolley. Just past them, he came to the end of the corridor, where the first two ribs on the spine were offices, fronting the car park and entrance gate with its guardroom. On the right were the RSM’s cubbyhole and the general office, where several Indian and Chinese clerks filed records and banged away on old typewriters. To the left were the rooms of the QA Matron and the Admin Officer, with the Holy of Holies on the far end – the CO’s office.
    Feeling like a fourth-former going to see the headmaster, Tom pulled up his long khaki socks with the red garter tabs, adjusted the lanyard around his shoulder and straightened his cap. Striding to the middle door, he tapped and waited.
    A harsh voice commanded him to ‘Come!’
    Inside, he found himself in a bare office with a dozen hard chairs lined up against two walls, like a vet’s waiting room. Opposite the door, was a large empty desk, on which were a cap and a bamboo swagger stick, lined up with meticulous accuracy to face the entrance. Behind the desk was Lieutenant Colonel Desmond O’Neill, Commanding Officer of BMH Tanah Timah.
    Tom marched across the wide empty space to stand in front of the desk, gave his