Devil-Devil (20 page)

‘May the peace and blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, descend upon these ships and upon all who shall be in them, and remain for ever.’

As his closing words were still reverberating across the beach the other nuns turned with alacrity and hurried away from the fishing vessels towards the town. One of them caught sight of the departing Kella and his companion and called out to them.

‘We’re ready to go back now, my dear,’ said the nun brightly, descending upon Sister Conchita.

In a moment all the sisters had caught up with them and were surrounding the couple, smiling with anticipation. Kella could not see one who was under sixty years of age. These were nuns who had spent many years of their lives in arduous work at isolated mission stations and only now were beginning to relax in various administrative tasks in the capital.

‘Actually, I’ve promised to drop Sergeant Kella at the wharf,’ faltered Sister Conchita. In the presence of so many experienced nuns the usually dominating sister seemed positively chastened, noticed Kella, amused in spite of his predicament.

‘No problem,’ said the nun who had first addressed them. ‘Why, it’s practically on our way back to the mission house. It will be no trouble to take the sergeant to the harbour. In you get, sisters.’

Trilling and cooing like the latest recruits to a welcoming aviary, the sisters climbed skittishly into the back of the Ford van. Sister Conchita looked helplessly at Kella.

‘We can’t take them,’ hissed the sergeant. ‘It could be dangerous.’

‘Do you fancy telling them to get out again? No, I thought not. Get in the front with me, and try to keep quiet.’

In a moment the van was pulling away into Mendana Avenue. Kella noticed that the bishop and his priests were getting into a fleet of ancient and ill-matched cars. Sister Conchita drove past them without a sideways glance, studiously avoiding eye contact with any of the puzzled-looking white-robed men.

She steered the vehicle past the poinciana trees and hibiscus bushes bordering the main road. The sisters in the back were chattering together gaily. At the driver’s side, slumped in his seat to avoid recognition, Kella kept a watchful eye for any figures lurking in the shadows on either side of Mendana Avenue. He did not expect an attack to be launched along the main thoroughfare. Any of Cho’s men stationed there would be in the capacity of scouts, to alert the larger groups waiting for him down by the wharf.

At first he thought they were going to get away with it. After all, thought Kella hopefully, the Ford often came down here to pick up sick and injured seamen from incoming vessels. Dextrously Sister Conchita swung the vehicle off the avenue and started bumping down the unmade road towards the wharf at the bottom, a hundred yards away.

It was then that one of the men lurking by the waterside must have spotted the sergeant. His urgent warning yell alerted the others. Suddenly there seemed to be figures appearing from everywhere, racing towards the van.

Sister Conchita kept her nerve. With tightened lips but no change of expression she jammed her foot down on the accelerator. The Ford lurched forward, protesting mutinously at the unexpected turn of speed so unceremoniously demanded of it. The sudden difference in the tempo was enough to dislodge the two islanders who were already clinging to the side of the van. They dropped to the ground with cries of pain.

Within seconds Sister Conchita was applying her brakes vigorously, bringing the vehicle to a shuddering halt on the edge of the wharf itself. Kella’s heart leapt at the sight before him. Instead of the area being dark and deserted, as he had expected, it was bustling with activity. Searchlights, powered by humming generators, lit the whole area harshly. Deacon’s cutter was tethered between one of the Banks Line cargo vessels from Britain, and the smaller
Papuan Chief
, which regularly brought goods from Australia to the Solomons. Both vessels were being unloaded preparatory to a quick turnaround the following morning. Melanesian labourers were hurrying up and down the gangplanks of both vessels, carrying sacks and boxes of cargo on to waiting trucks. With relief Kella noted that there was a highly satisfactory element of exiled Lau men toiling at their tasks. They had already recognized him and were whispering to one another.

Farther along the crowded wharf was yet another vessel in the process of berthing, dwarfing the two cargo ships. This was a huge, modern American cruise liner, one of the types that were taking wealthy American tourists with increasing regularity around the South Pacific islands. Hundreds of them were even now on the decks of the vessel, rubbernecking at the cargoes being unloaded. As Kella stepped out of the Ford, the first of many gangplanks was lowered with impressive efficiency from the liner by its crew of tough-looking American seamen.

Cho’s minions had also noticed the activity and the
proliferation
of labourers and seamen of all races who presumably would come to the aid of anyone threatened on the illuminated wharf. They hesitated amid the shadows at the far end, reluctant to advance in the face of so many potential foes.

‘Are you going to spend all night here, Kella?’ It was Sister Conchita, caustic and impatient.

‘You’re safe enough on the wharf,’ Kella told her. ‘I’ll arrange for someone to escort you all back to the mission house.’

‘When I need your help, sergeant,’ said the nun, ‘I shall ask for it. Kindly leave this to me.’

As the stupefied sergeant looked on, Sister Conchita
descended
from the van and walked round to the rear. ‘Come along, sisters,’ she said briskly, banging on the side. ‘I’ve got a little treat for you. We’re going to look round this lovely cruise ship. Would you like that?’

Chirping their assents gamely, the elderly sisters scrambled down from the van and excitedly followed Sister Conchita along the wharf to the gangplank of the liner. Before the
tolerant
eyes of the surprised and unresisting officers and crew members she led the nuns up to the lower deck of the luxurious vessel.

‘I’m sure that one of these handsome gentlemen will give us a guided tour,’ Sister Conchita informed her charges, bearing down on a transfixed, large and uniformed master-at-arms, who stood hastily to one side to allow the sisters to board the ship.

‘And do you know what I’m going to do while we’re on board?’ went on Sister Conchita, raising her voice to clarion strength, ensuring that any of Cho’s hired hands still in the area could hear her. ‘I’m going to ask the kind radio operator to send a message to Honiara police station to dispatch an armed escort to take us back to the mission house when we’ve had our tour. Won’t that be fun?’

The sisters cheered enthusiastically and disappeared from sight among the entrails of the vessel. Shaking his head in disbelief and wonderment Kella walked across to Deacon’s cutter.

‘What the hell was that all about?’ asked Deacon, who was on deck staring blankly across the wharf in the direction of the cruise ship and its sudden influx of white-robed sisters.

‘Don’t ask,’ said Kella. ‘I’m not sure that I know myself.’

Suddenly he felt tired. Gratefully he subsided on to the warped and ancient planks of the cutter.

‘What happened to you?’ asked Deacon. ‘You look as if you’ve been in a fight.’

‘I think I’ve just been warned to mind my own business.’

‘Not a bad policy,’ Deacon agreed. ‘Bit hard to enforce if you’re a cop though. You look really crook. I’ll send one of the boys to fetch you a taxi to take you to the hospital.’

‘No,’ said Kella, using the rail as a support to haul himself back on to his feet. ‘I’m coming back with you to Malaita.’

‘Suit yourself, mate,’ said Deacon, raising an eyebrow. ‘It’s not like you to run away from trouble, though.’

‘I’m not running away from it, believe me,’ Kella assured the plantation manager. He winced as bolts of pain shuddered through his body. ‘I’m going back into it.’

A Guadalcanal girl emerged shyly from the cabin. Deacon reached into his pocket and gave her some notes. The girl hurried down the gangplank and scuttled away in the direction of the cargo sheds. Deacon gave brusque orders in pidgin for his two crew members to continue casting off.

One of the deck hands prepared to untie the final rope binding the cutter to the wharf. He looked silently at the
aofia
for permission to embark upon this new voyage. Kella nodded imperceptibly, hoping that John Deacon had not noticed the subtle transfer of authority on the vessel.

‘Take me home,
wantok
,’ he said quietly.

He waited until the vessel was chugging out of the harbour before approaching Deacon and asked the question which had been troubling him for some time.

‘What happened between you and Sister Conchita when you brought her over from Malaita?’ he asked.

Deacon did not pause in his task of rewinding a rope as he glanced up briefly at Kella. Quickly he returned his attention to the swelling coil, working with mechanical expertise, the hemp spinning between his callused hands.

‘What did she say happened?’ he grunted.

‘Nothing, but it was obvious that you’re not her favourite plantation manager.’ Kella strolled over to the other man at the wheel. ‘You didn’t threaten her, did you?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘You tell me.’ Deacon worked on in silence. Kella jerked his head at the two Melanesian seamen, who were watching the scene with open interest. ‘You know that if I ask them they’ll tell me. Better I heard it from you.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ erupted the Australian, throwing the rope down on to the deck. ‘It was nothing. The woman got on my nerves. You’ve had nothing but trouble since you met her. I tried to warn her off, for your sake.’

‘No,’ said Kella quietly, shaking his head. ‘It wasn’t that. There’s nobody I’d want more by my side in a fight than you, but you’re no Good Samaritan. You’ve never done anything for anybody in your whole self-centred life, unless there was something in it for you.’

Kella left Deacon at the wheel, walked to the stern of the vessel and looked at the dark outline of the slowly receding shoreline of Guadalcanal. The lights of the fishing vessels danced on the port side several miles away. A light breeze whispered across the deck. He tried to work out what had caused the Australian to become so angry with Sister Conchita. He remembered that in all his time with Deacon there had always been one trait guaranteed to drive the white man to the edge.

It had first manifested itself near Sege in the Western Solomons towards the end of 1942. Deacon had been the coastwatcher in the district, reporting back by radio to the Americans on local Japanese movements. By this time he had also formed his own private navy, launching sudden raids on Japanese shore positions, creating the maximum damage and then withdrawing as quickly as they had arrived.

On that December morning Deacon had skippered a
captured
Japanese 57-foot diesel barge across the Marovo Lagoon as dawn was breaking. Their destination was a Japanese scouting party, which had been landed on one of the small uninhabited islands in the lagoon. The Japanese were plainly engaged in one of their periodic unsuccessful attempts to find Deacon’s headquarters. It was a chance too good to be missed by the coastwatcher. He had taken half a dozen with him on his mission, including his second-in-command Pazabosi and the fourteen-year-old Kella.

They had travelled in the half-light, with Mount Mahimba and Mount Hungu rising in the distance above the
crocodile-infested
swamps. Stopping the engine in a bay, Pazabosi and three other islanders had swum ashore and destroyed the moored Japanese transport vessel, an old whaler, with hand grenades. By this time Deacon and the others, including a thrilled Kella, had concealed themselves in the undergrowth. As the main Japanese force, attracted by the explosions, had rushed out of the jungle into the ambush they had been cut down with fire from a .50-calibre Browning machine gun.

It had been a textbook operation, except in one respect. Among the handful of Japanese survivors Pazabosi had
discovered
a Roviana youth, not much older than Kella, who had been guiding the soldiers across the island. Deacon’s fury had been monumental. He had ordered the terrified, screaming youth to be strapped across an oil drum and had administered a bloody thrashing with a belt to the frightened boy in front of the others.

Afterwards, as the others collected rifles and grenades from the fallen Japanese, Kella had cut the sobbing boy down and did what he could to stem the bleeding from a dozen wounds on his back, until Deacon had called him away roughly and ordered him to return to the barge.

‘Betrayal,’ said Kella, returning to Deacon. ‘That’s one thing you can’t stand. You never could. You react to it by punishing people. What did Sister Conchita do to you that you construed as betrayal?’

‘It was nothing,’ said Deacon, staring straight ahead.

‘It’s not nothing to me,’ said Kella. ‘She may have broken your code, but Sister Conchita was a
neena
. I promised her my
protection
and you threatened her. I can’t have that.’

It was over a minute before Deacon spoke. The tough former war hero suddenly looked tired and defeated. ‘I’m finished on Malaita now, aren’t I?’ he asked, still not meeting Kella’s gaze.

Pazabosi luxuriated in the heat of the afternoon sun on his old and aching bones and wished fervently that he could lie like this on the mat outside his hut for all the time left to him by the spirits.

He knew there were too many things to do for that to become a possibility. Word had reached him that earlier that day Kella had arrived back on Malaita. The police sergeant’s notorious obsession with order and justice meant that he would soon be coming up into the bush to look for Pazabosi and seek an explanation for all that had been going on lately in the mountain area controlled by the old chief.