Devil-Devil (27 page)

It was only a little after six o’clock in the morning. The streets of Honiara were almost deserted. Canoes from the fishing village were drifting out to sea. A contingent of prisoners on remand at police headquarters were cutting grass on the roadside verges, watched by a couple of bored policemen. Newly hatched megapode birds flew uncertainly over from their nests in the warm sands of the island of Savo, able to fly within hours of their birth. Sister Conchita concentrated on the road, determined to carry out her present mission efficiently and in a low-key manner.

Back at the mission house the previous evening Father Ignatius, the administrator, had sounded less optimistic. ‘A box of carvings made by the students will arrive from Ruvabi mission station early tomorrow morning,’ he had told her drily. ‘I want you and Sister Philomena to supervise its unloading, see it through Customs and make sure that the crate is stored in the Customs warehouse to await the next cargo vessel to Australia. Do you think you can accomplish that without any unnecessary detours, sister?’

Sister Conchita had assured the administrator that she could. After all, what could possibly go wrong? she thought as she drove the van on to the wharf. This should be a suitably low-key chore and a fitting starting point on her long overdue road towards her acceptance and redemption.

‘Do you know,’ said Sister Philomena, ‘the other day the radio said that they’ve discovered a Japanese soldier still surviving in the bush on Rendova island. Apparently he’s been there for fifteen years, unaware that the war was over. He’s been hiding on a little plot of land barely more than acre square, seeing nobody and doing nothing.’ The elderly sister sighed. ‘And I will bet you anything that he’s still had a much more interesting life than I have since they brought me back to Honiara!’

‘Is it that bad?’ asked Sister Conchita.

‘I will say just one thing,’ replied the old sister. ‘For the sake of your immortal soul, keep on doing the wild things they tell me you’ve been doing lately for as long as you can. Don’t let them grind you down, sister!’

The large visiting vessels of a few nights ago were no longer in the harbour. The cruise liner had departed during the night for Port Moresby, while the two cargo vessels had set out on their return voyages the previous day. Only a solitary battered Chinese trading vessel was moored askew in the harbour. Half a dozen Melanesian labourers were unloading the cargo it had picked up on its labyrinthine voyage back from Malaita.

The two sisters descended from the cab and approached the trading ship. One of the labourers saw them coming and manhandled a wooden crate on to a trolley, which he proceeded to wheel towards the Customs shed. The two nuns fell into step beside him and entered the building.

The shed was long and low, with a counter running its length. Standing behind the counter were three Melanesian Customs inspectors wearing uniform grey shorts and shirts and red berets. The labourer came to a halt, waiting for one of the inspectors to check the contents of the crate. Idly Sister Conchita examined the label on the box. It had been dispatched from Ruvabi some time before she had first arrived at the mission station. Heaven only knew how long it had been carried up and down the coast of Malaita before the trading ship had decided to return to Honiara.

One of the Customs inspectors, middle-aged and
bespectacled
, detached himself from the group and came over to the box. Yawning, he scribbled his initials on the lid with a piece of chalk. Automatically the labourer started to wheel the box towards the warehouse door at the far end of the shed.

‘Aren’t you going to examine the contents?’ Sister Conchita asked the inspector.

‘Oh, they never do,’ said Sister Philomena. ‘What’s the point?’

‘No examine, no examine,’ said the inspector quickly, waving the labourer on. ‘Everything all right. Plenty good too much.’

Something in the urgency of the official’s tone alerted the nun. The man was looking at her with something almost akin to fear in his eyes at her unexpected attention to detail. In spite of all her good intentions Sister Conchita heard herself ordering the labourer to wheel the crate back to the desk.

‘I’d feel happier if you were to open the crate and see what’s inside,’ she said firmly. ‘After all, I am responsible for the contents, and I wasn’t at Ruvabi when they were packed.’

The inspector hopped from one foot to another in an agony of indecision. His two companions, alerted by the sudden noise, walked over. As they neared, the first inspector looked as if he wished he were somewhere far away.

‘I would like this crate opened and its contents checked, please,’ Sister Conchita told the other two inspectors, who were looking on without much interest. She did not know why she was being so persistent but the first Customs man’s undisguised air of apprehension alerted her to the fact that something might be wrong.

‘Oh, sister,’ wailed Sister Philomena. ‘We’ll be late for breakfast!’

Sister Conchita continued to stare down the other two Customs officials. They were looking puzzled. One of them yawned and nodded and said something to the labourer. The Melanesian took a crowbar from a pile of tools in a basket in front of the desk and started to prise open the lid. It took him less than a minute to reveal the contents of the box. Sister Conchita and the others gathered round. She took out several of the carvings and examined them in silence. Then she removed another two carvings and looked at them carefully as well. Finally she replaced them.

‘Sister Philomena,’ she said quietly, ‘I want you to wait here until I return. Make sure that no one touches this box or its contents. Is that clear?’

The elderly nun blinked in surprise. Then suddenly she looked twenty years younger. After all, she had served in the Sinerango district in 1927, when there had been a tax revolt and District Officer Bell had been murdered. She glanced at the patently sedentary and uneasy Customs officials before her with an expression making it all too clear that if she had outfaced Malaitan rebels these three would present no problems.

‘Certainly, Sister Conchita,’ she said, throwing back her head with an expression of sheer pleasure. ‘Nothing will be moved, I promise you. Where are you going?’

‘To police headquarters,’ said Sister Conchita, hurrying out of the shed.

Just before noon Kella approached the bush village of Nikona, high in the mountains. This was where Sam Beni, fatalistically disposing of ammunition from his barge, had told him he would find Pazabosi.

It was one of the most inaccessible regions of the whole island of Malaita. The highest peak here was marked as Mount Kolovrat, over four thousand feet above sea level. To the bushmen it was known as Tolosoi. Few if any of the names on the white men’s maps were used by the islanders.

Even Kella had found the climbing hard. He stopped gratefully to rest on the trunk of a felled tree in a clearing containing gardens reclaimed from the jungle outside the bush village. The collection of huts was on the far side of a wall of trees left standing by the villagers to shield the gardens from the constant winds blowing at this altitude. A number of women, wearing skirts to denote that they were married, were digging in the gardens.

The Tali Kali dialect of this part of the bush area contained enough similarities with the Lau language for Kella to be able to make himself understood. He called across to the women that he was from the artificial island of Sulufou, and that he wanted to see their leader Pazabosi.

At first the women seemed to pay no attention, but after a few minutes, one by one, they put down their wooden digging sticks and drifted unhurriedly away in the direction of the village on the far side of the line of waving trees.

Kella had to wait another quarter of an hour before there was any response. Then three young men came from the village through the trees and swaggered truculently in his direction. They were hard-looking, marked across their faces with savage warrior slashes. They all carried stone-tipped hunting spears.

One walked ahead of the others and addressed Kella curtly. The islander wore a bone through his nose, and in his ears were sticks of cane, dyed red and plaited with yellow fern. In his hair he wore a decorative comb of fine strips of black palm bound together with creepers.

‘I am Hita,’ he announced bombastically, as if that explained everything.

‘It is Pazabosi I have come to see, not you,’ said Kella.

‘There is no point in talking to him. Pazabosi is old and useless. If you seek anything from the Kwaio people talk to me. I am their leader.’

An ambitious young buck on the make, thought Kella. There was often one in a clan, waiting for a propitious moment to take over the leadership. It looked as if Pazabosi had his problems. If so, that would explain a great deal.

‘As long as Pazabosi lives, he is the paramount chieftain of the Kwaio,’ said Kella, as if explaining something to a child. ‘He has earned his position through deeds, not words.’

He spoke loudly and clearly, so that the other two warriors would hear him. The affronted Hita clutched his spear more firmly. His companions looked surprised at the police sergeant’s forthright attitude.

Before Hita could reply, Pazabosi came out of the trees and walked across the garden track to them. The old clan leader was wearing a long
lap-lap
. He surveyed the group calmly. The two warriors seemed uneasy at his presence and looked to Hita for a lead.

‘The white blackman has come into our territory,’ growled Hita. ‘I was about to send him away.’

‘I choose who stays and goes in the Kwaio country,’ rebuked Pazabosi. ‘Kella and I fought together against the Japani in the war. We were real warriors, not barking young hounds who have never seen battle.’

Hita surged forward furiously, but his two companions held him back. Pazabosi looked on disdainfully. Finally Hita subsided. He turned and stamped away into the trees, followed after a confused moment by the two warriors. Pazabosi stared
thoughtfully
after the three men.

‘I may have to do something about Hita soon,’ he said in English.

‘Or get someone to do it for you,’ suggested Kella.

‘Is that what you think I’m doing?’ asked the old bushman, a smile dusting his mouth. ‘Do you imagine,
aofia
, that I am setting up a conflict between Hita and yourself?’

‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ said Kella. ‘You always were a good plotter. Hita and I are both threats to you in our different ways. Why not get us both to eliminate one another?’

Pazabosi nodded approvingly. ‘You always caught on quickly when we were fighting the Japani,’ he commented.

‘Of course,’ Kella told the old man, ‘you could always retire and make Hita chief in your place.’

‘I took the leadership from Alibaua of the Golobi clan when I was about the same age that Hita is now,’ said Pazabosi. ‘Luckily, I was more intelligent than Hita.’

‘Not to mention being a greater warrior,’ said Kella.

Pazabosi smiled again. ‘Have you come all this way from the salt water just to spread your honey, Kella?’ he asked.

‘No. I have come to fetch the white man Mallory back.’

‘I know nothing of this,’ said Pazabosi, no longer smiling.

‘Over the last week I have learned things about you and Mallory,’ said Kella. ‘I would like to tell them to you now. Just so that you can correct me if I am wrong.’

Pazabosi sighed. ‘When I first heard that you were back on Malaita, I did my best to make sure that you kept out of the Kwaio high bush,’ he said. ‘I even walked down to the saltwater village to put my bones curse on you, as a sign that you would not be welcome up here.’

‘Is that why you did that?’ asked the sergeant. ‘I thought you were warning me off investigating the death of Senda Iabuli.’

‘Why would I be interested in a saltwater man like him?’ asked the clan leader indifferently. ‘No, I just didn’t want you coming up here. It is a difficult time for the Kwaio people at present, and you have a reputation for interfering where you’re not wanted, Sergeant Kella.’

‘You saved my life during the war,’ Kella told the other man. ‘Because of that, bush custom says that you have an obligation to me. How I use the life you gave me must always be of interest to you.’

‘And sometimes a source of annoyance,’ said Pazabosi. ‘Go on.’

‘It all started when Mendana Gau, or someone connected with the trader, stole the sacred
havu
from the custom temple at the waterfall. Am I right?’

Pazabosi said nothing. Kella went on. ‘The
havu
is the most sacred of all the Kwaio relics. Your people were very angry when it was taken. They looked to you to get it back for them.’

‘Of course,’ said Pazabosi wearily. ‘They expect me to do everything.’

‘They thought you would raise a force, track the thieves down and kill them,’ said Kella. ‘Only you couldn’t do that. You had entered your
trochea
, the secret period of contemplation that an old man goes through before his death.’

‘You know about the
trochea
?’ asked Pazabosi without emotion. ‘Yes, I suppose you would. You follow the custom ways more than any other young man on Malaita.’

‘It was more than that,’ said Kella. ‘I was meeting more and more people who knew that something had gone wrong up in the high bush, and who were surprised that you had done nothing to remedy it. They thought that you were waiting for a custom sign, but I wondered if perhaps you
couldn’t
do anything about it. If you had entered the
trochea
you were bound by custom to spend your time thinking about the past and preparing to meet the spirits in the future.’

‘It would have been an offence against the ghosts if I had taken my mind off them at this time,’ acknowledged the old chief. ‘Once I had started to prepare for death, I could not fight again. That’s why I tried to frighten you away, Kella. I knew that you were the only man on the island who would be likely to guess why I could not respond to the theft of the
havu
with force.’