Devil-Devil (24 page)

The men on the verandah raised their sticks threateningly. Reluctantly Wilmot heaved himself back into the cab.
Unobtrusively
Sister Conchita started the engine and sat impassively behind the wheel. The younger man sauntered down and put his head in through the open window. He ignored Sister Conchita.

‘Go away, Wilmot, and do not come back,’ said the man. ‘Chinatown is out of bounds to you.’

‘Please, Mr Cho,’ Wilmot whimpered. ‘You don’t
understand
. I’m leaving the Solomons. For years I’ve done everything you ask of me. I’ve kept a steady supply coming to you, on the understanding that you would look after the money you owed me. Now I’ve got to have it.’

‘What money?’ asked Johnny Cho contemptuously. ‘Have you a contract?’

‘Of course not! Not for what I’ve been providing you with. It would have been too dangerous. How could there be any paperwork?’

Cho spread his hands in an expansive gesture. ‘Sorry! No contract, no deal. Goodbye, Mr Wilmot.’

‘Please,’ begged the trader, almost in tears.

‘Of course,’ said Cho, smirking, ‘if you think you have cause for complaint, you could always go to the police. Good morning.’

Suddenly he raised his fist to hit Wilmot through the open window. Sister Conchita had been waiting for such a move. She accelerated suddenly. The van lurched into motion. Propelled by the weight of his blow John Cho staggered forward. He lost his balance and fell forward into the dusty road. His men rushed down to assist him to his feet. Sister Conchita spun the van round and headed back towards the mission, brushing the infuriated Chinese men aside as the Ford gathered speed.

‘Sorry!’ shouted the nun unconvincingly as her vehicle bounced erratically away.

Wilmot sat slumped in the seat beside her, staring dully ahead. What had all that been about? thought the nun as she headed for Mendana Avenue. Wilmot had plainly been involved in some sort of shady deal with Johnny Cho, and the Chinese man had reneged on his end of the bargain leaving the Distressed British Subject with nothing, and palpably even more distressed than ever.

Not for the first time Sister Conchita realized that there was so much about life in the Solomons about which she knew nothing. She wished that Sergeant Kella was there to explain matters to her.

‘We can’t put it off any longer,’ conceded Chief Superintendent Grice. ‘We’ve got to go over to Malaita and find Professor Mallory. There’s been no sign of the man for a couple of weeks. The American authorities are starting to kick up a stink.’

And that would mean an imminent unpleasant interview with the chief secretary, he thought gloomily. Either that, or an official visit from the touring inspector of the Commonwealth Police, and another nail in his professional coffin.

‘We don’t have nearly enough men for a systematic search of the Kwaio high bush,’ Inspector Lorrimer pointed out. ‘Even if we did, half of them would refuse to go over to Malaita anyway. They know they’d get picked off like sitting ducks by Pazabosi’s men.’

‘And then there’s the matter of Peter Oro’s death,’ Grice ploughed on, ignoring his subordinate as usual. ‘We can’t write that off as just another bush killing. Oro was a senior student at a mission school, for God’s sake!’

‘Practically an honorary white,’ murmured Lorrimer. He paused and then went on, ‘If we must interfere, Sergeant Kella’s the only man for the job. You know that, sir.’

‘Kella isn’t available,’ said Grice quickly. He ransacked his mind, trying to remember exactly what he had said to the stubborn Melanesian outside his office only a few days ago. His memories of the encounter were vague, but he thought he had tried to get rid of the polite but importunate sergeant in the time-honoured way.

‘He’s taken some leave,’ he said vaguely.

‘That almost certainly means he’s gone back to Malaita,’ pointed out Lorrimer. ‘He’ll already be over there, probably in the bush.’

‘That’s immaterial. I don’t want Sergeant Kella involved in this. I don’t even want to know where he is,’ said Grice. He drummed on his desk with his fingers as he searched for the right phrase. ‘He’s too emotionally involved with events on the island,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Leave him out of it. Anybody would think we couldn’t handle this ourselves.’

He looked hopefully at the younger officer. Lorrimer’s roots might lie in the Metropolitan Police area, and his culture and loyalties were as alien to the chief superintendent’s as those of a Tikopian pearl-diver, but the pragmatic Grice was aware that he could always manipulate Lorrimer by playing on the inspector’s conscientiousness.

Lorrimer sighed and stood up. He knew, as well as his superior officer did, that Kella would go where he wanted to go and do what he wanted to do. He just hoped that the Melanesian sergeant’s
mana
had taken him to the Kwaio area. Over on Malaita, the success or failure of any police mission would depend on Kella’s response to it.

‘How many men can I take, sir?’ he asked.

Kella walked down the track from the mission school to the river bank. He had spent the night at the school after performing the straight path ceremony for the ghost-caller. He walked through the trees to the site of Lofty Herman’s former grave at the foot of the cliff.

A protesting Solomon Bulko lumbered mutinously after the police sergeant, complaining that he had to start teaching in half an hour’s time. The headmaster was wearing long black trousers and a white shirt. He was reacting with petulance to the branches whipping into his sweating face.

‘I went into teaching to get away from this nature shit, man,’ he complained loudly as he plodded after the police sergeant. ‘What are you trying to do, return me to my fucking roots?’

The early morning sunshine seeped through the branches and dappled the ground. Kella reached the rockfall where the skeleton had been found. He examined the scattered stones there carefully. He had noticed when Sister Conchita had first brought him to the scene of the earthquake that some of the rocks were freshly scratched and scarred, but he had been too busy getting out of range of the rifle shots with the sister to pay much attention to them at the time.

Now, bearing in mind the ghost-caller’s confession that he and Senda Iabuli had been responsible for the death of the tall beachcomber in 1942, the disturbed grave assumed a much more important aspect of his investigation.

‘Take a look at those,’ he told Bulko, indicating the marks on the boulders.

‘What am I supposed to be looking for?’ demanded Bulko, disdainfully, peering from a distance and fastidiously keeping to the path, away from the jagged stones.

‘Examine the rocks that were on top of Herman’s grave.’

‘So, they’re rocks,’ said Bulko, reluctantly advancing a wincing pace or two in his highly polished shoes before stopping. ‘Seen one, you’ve seen them all.’

‘The marks on the rocks,’ Kella persisted patiently.

With an effort Bulko folded slightly at his swollen midriff. He stared with distaste at the debris heaped before him. He resembled a bulky ebony carving teetering on an insecure base. When the mission school headmaster straightened up, he was no longer indifferent.

‘Someone’s been hitting the rocks with a tool,’ he
acknowledged
.

‘Be bold,’ Kella urged. ‘Take it one logical step farther. Someone’s been digging these particular rocks up with a pickaxe. That’s the only explanation for these recent scratches and indentations. I noticed them the first time I saw them, but I didn’t pay much attention, until I found out last night who killed Lofty Herman.’

‘How the hell did you do that?’ asked Bulko, blinking. ‘Who was it?’

Kella hesitated. Both as the
aofia
and as a policeman he should not disclose Andu’s deathbed confession. But at this moment he needed a sounding board for his theories. Solomon Bulko possessed the twin attributes of being both highly intelligent and completely apathetic about island life. He would pass Kella’s ideas on to no one, mainly because he did not have the slightest interest in them, unless they affected his comfort or well-being.

‘I heard about it yesterday,’ Kella said, not going into details. ‘Lofty Herman was probably killed and buried by two men from the nearest saltwater village. Their names were Andu and Senda Iabuli. Now they’re both dead.’

Bulko shook his head. ‘Surely the grave was unearthed as a result of the earthquake?’ he asked. ‘At least that’s what I was told.’

‘No way,’ said Kella decisively. ‘That’s what we were meant to think. Those rocks were deliberately dug up by hand by someone, no doubt about it. Lofty Herman’s grave was disinterred on purpose.’

‘Why on earth would anyone want to do that?’ asked Bulko. ‘Graves are supposed to be sacred in these parts.’

‘You’d have to be pretty desperate,’ admitted Kella. ‘Either that, or resigned to your fate.’

‘What’s the weather like on your planet?’ sighed the headmaster. ‘Do you mind telling me what you’re talking about?’

‘I think’, said Kella, ‘that Herman was killed by Andu and Iabuli on behalf of the local people.’

‘For what possible reason?’ asked Bulko in exasperation.

‘Fear,’ said Kella. He elaborated on the theme he had been considering all night. ‘In 1942, the British were abandoning the Solomons in droves, and the Japanese were coming in to take over. The locals were worried in case the Japanese thought they were harbouring a white man.’

‘So they murdered Herman, you mean?’ asked Bulko, jolted out of his customary complacency. ‘That’s creepy!’

‘If I’ve got it right, yes; Iabuli and Andu were deputed by the rest of their village to murder the unpopular Herman, in case his presence got them in bad with the Japanese when they arrived. Custom states that
ramos
who kill for the good of their clan must keep all knowledge of their activities to themselves, and take any consequences upon their own heads. It’s a part of their
mana
.’

‘If you say so,’ sighed Bulko. ‘On Choiseul we don’t run around killing people – hardly ever, anyway. As a rule we’ve got enough intelligence to lie ourselves out of trouble.’ A thought occurred to the headmaster. ‘Where would those two have got a rifle from to shoot Herman with?’

‘They probably used Herman’s own weapon. No white man travelled on Malaita without a rifle in those days. He was almost certainly sifting for gold in the river, and left his rifle on the bank.’

‘So these two old men dug up Herman’s grave a week or two ago?’

‘Not both of them, no,’ said Kella. ‘I don’t think Andu was involved in that. He was a ghost-caller. He wouldn’t risk upsetting the spirits by meddling with the dead. With Iabuli it would be different.’

‘How come?’

‘Iabuli knew that he only had a short time to live. Because of his astounding escape from his fall from the ridge, the other villagers believed that he was in league with the devil. He had already received a curse from the village headman, placed among his comfort stones. Iabuli knew that before long his own people would murder him to drive away the devil from the area.’

‘You Malaita men sure are primitive bastards,’ complained Bulko, with a genuine shiver.

‘You mean we have a proper and fitting respect for our ancestors,’ corrected Kella. ‘The only reason Iabuli would risk offending the ghosts would be because he wanted to do something for his grandson Peter Oro before he died.’

Bulko groaned. ‘I might have known that one of my students would be involved,’ he said self-pityingly. ‘I think they do it just to annoy me. But how do you know all this?’

‘By putting different pieces of information together,’ said the police sergeant. ‘Last week Michael Rapasia, one of your teachers, saw Senda Iabuli talking to Peter Oro at the school. And then there were the tools.’

‘What tools?’ asked Solomon Bulko.

‘Don’t you remember? You told me that the shed containing the school’s garden tools had been broken into, and the implements scattered all over the area. You thought at the time that it had been done by students who wanted to get out of gardening chores.’

‘I remember,’ said Bulko.

‘Well, that was what you were supposed to think. I believe that Senda Iabuli had persuaded his grandson Peter Oro to steal a pickaxe and a spade. To conceal their loss he spread all the tools over the bush. Was Oro one of the pupils who later recovered some of the tools?’

‘As a matter of fact, I think he was,’ said Bulko miserably.

‘Including a pickaxe?’

‘I can’t remember,’ said the headmaster dismally. ‘Probably.’ He looked imploringly at Kella. ‘So Iabuli persuaded Peter Oro to steal a pickaxe and dig up Herman’s grave with him. Why on earth would he do that?’

‘Maybe there was something buried along with Lofty Herman’s body all those years ago,’ Kella suggested, ‘something that might have been worth retrieving, to leave Peter Oro as a legacy. I’ve just heard that Oro was seen hanging around a treehouse in the bush containing trading goods.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Do you expect me to know everything?’ asked Kella.

The Friday night swill was in full flow at the Auki Club. John Deacon and Hans Gunter, a German logger, were playing the label game, watched by Lorrimer and the forty or so other expatriate men and women present.

Twenty bottles of beer were cooling in a large metal cask of water in the centre of the room. It was Deacon’s turn. Deliberately the Australian selected a bottle from the tub. He whirled it in his hands and then peeled the soaked label from the bottle. Then he replaced the label, with the logo facing inwards.

Taking careful aim, Deacon spun the bottle up into the air. It struck the ceiling with force. The label came off and stuck to the ceiling, the logo and description now facing outwards, joining the other labels already there. As the bottle fell back, Deacon caught it, removed the top with his callused thumb and swallowed half the contents with one gulp.