Devil-Devil (3 page)

Unlike the other men in their faded aprons or
lap
-laps
he was wearing the black shorts and white shirt of the local mission senior primary school. Still to be in full-time education at the advanced age of sixteen meant that he was one of the potential high-flyers identified by the expatriate missionary priests to be processed quickly through the system. Soon he would be sent to King George VI Secondary School in the capital and then dispatched to Britain or Australia to gain a degree, and return to work in the government service in the long run-up to independence.

That meant that already the boy would be torn between the fading memories of his custom upbringing and the new and strange Western influences to which he was being subjected. Kella, who had been there, did not envy the youth what lay in store for him. He guessed that it was Peter Oro who had demanded the ghost-caller’s investigation into the death of his grandfather. Kella wondered why.

‘Show me your grandfather’s house,’ was all he said.

Peter Oro indicated one of the huts. It was fashioned like all the others in the village. The roof and walls consisted of layers of pandanus leaves sewn on to bamboo frames with vines. A series of bamboo uprights, each of exactly the same size, were bound to a betel-nut framework. Thatch eighteen inches thick on the roof was designed to keep out the heat of the day.

Peter accompanied the police sergeant to the door and started to follow him in. Kella raised a restraining hand. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said in English, ‘I’d rather look round by myself.’

‘What are you going to do about my grandfather’s death?’ demanded the youth hotly. ‘You heard the ghost-caller say that he was murdered.’

‘Ghosts cannot be produced as witnesses in the white man’s court. But I shall investigate the matter, never fear!’

It was cool and dark in the single room of the hut. In the centre of the living space were a few blackened stones used as a fireplace on the earthen floor. Other fire-stones were scattered across the floor. This indoor fire would only be used for cooking in bad weather, but normally would be kept alight with damp wood all the year round to repel mosquitoes. A bamboo bunk had been built into one of the walls.

The dead man’s personal belongings were kept in the thatching of the roof. Systematically Kella took down the spear, bow and arrows, wicker fish basket and paddle which were stored there. As far as he could see, there was nothing untoward about them.

He turned his attention to the rest of the room. There was a sleeping mat in a corner. Presumably it belonged to Peter Oro. Only the dead man’s closest relative would be allowed to sleep in the hut during the six-month mourning period.

The hut was strangely untidy. As the home of a man whose spirit had not yet made the final journey to the far island, it should have been maintained in an immaculate condition by Iabuli’s next-of-kin. Kella walked round the interior of the hut several times. He frowned. This was not the neglect of a careless schoolboy. Peter Oro had been searching for something.

Kella went outside. The waiting youth regarded him with overt hostility. The villagers stopped milling around, and watched the police sergeant. Kella ignored them. Slowly he walked round the perimeter of the hut. On the far side he found what he had been looking for.

A pile of large round stones was balanced against one of the betel-nut supports. To a casual observer the cache was just a support used to keep a piece of timber in place. Kella was relying on Peter Oro’s ignorance of local customs. It would have been some years since the youth had lived in the village. He might have no idea of the significance of the heap of round stones.

There was a horrified murmur from the villagers as Kella dislodged the pile with his foot and started separating the rocks from one another with his hands. They were comfort stones, used by the old and afflicted. Specially selected for their size and smoothness, they would be heated over a fire until they were too hot to touch, and then pushed with a log until they were under the bunk. The heat radiating through the slats would ease most aches and pains, of which Senda Iabuli assuredly would have had plenty since his fall. By also providing heat to drive out sick spirits, the stones were regarded as holy and must not be touched by outsiders.

Sullen growls of ‘White blackfella!’ emanated from the horrified crowd as Kella discarded the sacred stones. It was a phrase to which he had long grown accustomed and it did not deter him.

Nobody else in the village would have dared to approach the pile, while Peter Oro probably would not have remembered their significance. If Senda Iabuli, or anybody else, had wanted to conceal something during the villager’s last days, this would be as good a place as any in which to do it.

Kella found what he had been looking for towards the bottom of the pile. A hollowed-out bamboo container was secreted behind the largest boulder. Kella removed the wooden top and shook out the contents. He held up the package for all in the village to see. Then he unwrapped the large celeus leaf. Inside was a piece of dried ginger sprinkled with lime.

Kella saw the headman gaping at his discovery. ‘You know what this is?’ the police sergeant asked.

The headman nodded, all traces of pride wiped away. ‘The death curse,’ he whispered.

Kella nodded. ‘Now we can be sure that someone intended to kill Senda Iabuli,’ he said.

Carefully he replaced the contents of the container. He glanced at Peter Oro, wondering how the youth would react to the vindication of his belief that his grandfather had been murdered.

The boy was not even looking at him. He was staring aghast at the scattered sacred rocks. Kella followed his gaze. Something else had been hidden at the base of the pile. The sergeant stooped and picked it up. It was the bone of an animal, carved, polished and trimmed roughly into the shape of a quill, some six inches long.

Peter Oro backed away fearfully, breathing hard. Then he turned and raced off into the trees. Kella swore and hurried after him, ignoring the stinging branches whipping into his face as he tried to overtake the boy. He should have anticipated such a flight. He caught up with him a hundred yards along a track leading to the village gardens. Defiantly Peter faced him.

‘I thought you wanted my help,’ panted Kella.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ spat the boy, almost in tears. ‘You bring too much trouble. Go away!’

Kella was suddenly aware that they were not alone. Thirty yards away at a bend in the track stood a tall elderly islander with a helmet of grey hair. It had been years since they had last met but Kella recognized him at once. For a moment the two men stood with their eyes locked. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the old man lifted a short carved bone on to which he had impaled a bladder of a bonito fish glowing with phosphorous. The islander pointed the stick at Kella. At the same time, with his other hand, he lifted a bag made from a pandanus leaf and rattled the contents viciously. Abruptly he turned and was lost to sight among the trees.

Peter Oro looked at Kella. All traces of the youth’s truculence had vanished. Suddenly he was just another frightened village boy brought against his will into contact with the ghosts.

‘That magic man has cursed you, Sergeant Kella,’ he said, his voice shaded by misery and despair. ‘Now surely you will die!’

The schoolboy turned and ran.

The Roman Catholic mission station at Ruvabi was situated on a bluff overlooking a river winding through the trees towards the placid blue sea a few miles away. The thatched bamboo classrooms stood along one side of a grassy square while the dormitories and the huts of the teachers were across the way. The ramshackle sprawling mission house and a neat red-roofed stone church were a hundred yards off, on the far side of the station, close to the ever-encroaching bush. Scattered
haphazardly
about the area were the huts of those Christian families who had abandoned their villages over the years.

Kella climbed the steep path from the river to the school buildings in the early afternoon. He had departed from the village three hours earlier, leaving the headman sullenly
promising
to keep the dead man’s hut intact. Kella had added a few succinct words as to what he would do to the headman if anything untoward should happen to Peter Oro. On his journey Kella had kept his eyes open in vain for the schoolboy, who had not returned to the village.

Solomon Bulko, the headmaster, was sitting in a cane-backed chair at the head of the path, strumming idly on a guitar as he waited for the police sergeant. He was wearing the black shorts and white shirt worn by pupils and staff alike at the school.

‘Which way now, bigfella?’ inquired the headmaster casually, playing a complicated riff with spectacular ease.

‘Speak English,’ Kella admonished with mock severity. ‘Pidgin is a bastard colonial mish-mash of a language. Set an example to your charges.’

Bulku grinned. He was a plump, jet-black, laid-back islander from Choiseul in the Western Solomons. His indolent manner concealed an incisive brain. He was the closest that Kella had to a friend in the islands.

‘They let you come back then,’ observed the headmaster. ‘I thought they’d banned you from Malaita. I suppose they needed you to do some dirty work for them.’

He stood up and placed his guitar on the chair. He ambled across the bluff towards the school buildings with Kella, equably making no effort to carry the sergeant’s pack.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘Routine patrol,’ Kella told him truthfully. ‘I’m looking for an American anthropologist called Mallory. Have you seen him?’

‘He was stopping at the mission house until last week,’ replied the headmaster. ‘Then he went walkabout into the mountains. Haven’t seen him for four or five days. Is something wrong?’

‘Shouldn’t think so,’ Kella said. ‘He was supposed to fly over to Honiara for a meeting with the High Commissioner this week. When he didn’t turn up, the authorities thought they’d better check.’

‘It’s a long walk up into the high bush,’ observed Bulko. ‘I was up visiting schools there only last week. Don’t worry. He’ll stagger down in a day or two looking embarrassed and the worse for wear. Then he’ll go away and write a book about it:
The
Devil-Devils of Kwaio: an in-depth study
.’

‘Why should he be different from the others?’ agreed Kella. ‘What’s he like?’

Bulko considered. ‘About forty, tall, thin, bald. Inhibited, buttoned-up. Decent enough but not a laugh a minute.’

They had reached the line of classrooms. A dozen of the older students were sitting on the grass, carving war clubs to be sold to tourists in the capital. The boys looked bored as they scraped away at the wood with their penknives.

‘What are you making?’ Kella asked one of the pupils.

The boy shrugged. ‘A club,’ he yawned.

‘I can see that,’ said Kella patiently. ‘What sort of club –
dia
,
subi
or
alavolo
?’

The schoolboy looked blank. Some of the other students began to pay attention, welcoming any break in the tedium of the hot, empty afternoon.

‘They’re all the same,’ answered the youth indifferently. ‘They were for fighting and killing in the time before.’

Kella shook his head. ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘They used the
alavolo
for hand-to-hand fighting. The
subi
had another purpose.’

‘What was that?’ asked one of the other pupils, a faint spark of interest in his eyes.

Kella hefted the half-finished club in his hand. The balance felt all wrong. ‘It was used to smash in the sides of the huts of enemies and then to finish off the wounded,’ he said, handing back the club. ‘This isn’t a proper
subi
. You’re making the head too sharp. Which island are you from?’

‘Ada Gege.’

‘The chief Kwaisulia came from Ada Gege. He was the greatest warrior in all of Malaita. He used the
subi
in his battles. You owe it to his memory to make sure that each one you make is carved properly. If you’re going to do it, do it right.’

Bulko caught up with Kella as the sergeant walked over towards the mission house.

‘That’s right,’ said the headmaster, panting slightly. ‘
Undermine
my authority, why don’t you?’

‘You could use the carving lessons to teach the boys about their traditions.’

‘For God’s sake,’ scoffed Bulko. ‘They’re only for the tourists. We ship the things out by the crateload every month. Who’s to know?’

‘The
mamiski
,’ said Kella. Bulko was a good man but he did not care enough. ‘The spirit people. They would know.’

The portly headmaster put his head on one side and regarded Kella. ‘I never know when you’re serious these days,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later you’re going to have to make up your mind whether you’re the progressive, technologically trained black hope for the future, or just another cosy, old-fashioned witch doctor. Where are you going now?’

‘To talk to Father Pierre.’

Bulko smirked. ‘Don’t count on it. Things have changed since you were last here.’

‘I always see the father.’

‘Now he’s got himself a watchdog, one with sharp teeth,’ said Bulko. ‘Go and see for yourself.’

Kella increased his pace. Bulko called his name. Kella stopped and looked back. For once the plump headteacher seemed serious.

‘I’m sorry about the trouble you had at the killing ground,’ he said. ‘Whitey overreacted.’

‘I made a mistake and was punished for it,’ said Kella. ‘A man was killed because of me.’

‘How many degrees do you have?’ asked Bulko, apparently inconsequentially.

‘You know how many,’ Kella said, suspecting one of the headteacher’s wind-ups. ‘The same as you. A BA from Sydney and an MPhil from London. So what?’

Bulko shook his head. ‘So much education and so little sense,’ he sighed. ‘You didn’t get dumped on by the old colonials because you ballsed-up an assignment. They tried to break you because you’re an educated islander and they don’t want you taking over one of their cushy jobs at the top. These islands will get independence just as soon as there are enough educated islanders to run things. We’re threats. Especially you. They’ve got you pegged as a big man. That means you’re a potential troublemaker.’