One Blood (31 page)

There were a few battered trading vessels with shallow draughts moored to the wharf, taking on board cargoes of copra and fruit and vegetables, as well as tins of diesel fuel. They were made to appear almost spanking new by a decrepit private yacht lying next to them, with several rake-thin, sun-blackened, heavily bearded expatriates sprawled exhaustedly on its deck. Probably another would-be round-the-world effort in the throes of disintegration, thought Kella. It would come to an end as soon as the disillusioned young crew abandoned the effort and wired home for money, or sank ignominiously and ingloriously among the reefs somewhere offshore.

He continued his progress along the wharf. With half a dozen inter-island trading vessels waiting to leave, the odds were that at least half of them would be crewed by Malaita
men, and of these crews, a large proportion would come from the Lau area. He found who he had been looking for two-thirds of the way along the jetty. As it happened, they were not seamen. A wizened elderly islander was sitting on an upturned box, smoking a clay pipe. There were half a dozen other Malaitans around him, all stevedores living in Gizo, whose job it was to load and unload visiting vessels. Kella could see from the tribal markings on the old man’s face that he came from the Lau lagoon area. The policeman nodded respectfully and squatted on the deck next to the old man, politely making sure, as a sign of the deference due to age, that he was at a lower level than the other islander.

‘
Maani koba ana uta
,’ he said. ‘May you be warmed by the sun.’

The old islander nodded. He took his pipe from his mouth and gave the traditional title of respect to the
aofia. ‘Lau talo inao
. The first to take up a shield in battle.’

‘I am looking for a young white man,’ went on Kella in Lau after a further leisurely exchange of compliments. ‘His name is Andy Russell. He is tall and thin and does odd jobs for the government. Do you know him?’

The old man pointed with the stem of his pipe. ‘Sometimes he works at the canoe village, half an hour’s walk along the beach,’ he said.

It was a pleasant morning as Kella left Gizo and walked in the direction indicated by the old wharf labourer. The sand was warm beneath his feet. Small hermit crabs, alarmed by his approach, scuttled out from beneath the shells littering the beach and ran in all directions. It did not take long to leave the district centre behind him. When he reached it, the canoe village was no more than a hamlet of four huts clustered a hundred yards in from the beach, on the bank of a stream running down to the sea. On the sand between the huts and the beach were a number of canoes in various stages of construction.
They ranged from simple dugouts to a half-completed ornate replica of a war canoe, complete with a fierce Nguzunguzu figurehead representing the god of war. Isolated pieces of half-completed hand-carved accoutrements lay scattered on the ground waiting to be fitted into place, including outlines of ribs, gunnels, thwarts and stem pieces. A fire containing burning tongs had been kept alight so that the interiors of some of the canoes could be burnt out when the time came.

Next to the canoes on the sand were thirty or forty wet logs drying in the morning heat, each about twenty feet long, of good-quality wood, already stripped of their branches and planed to a rough finish.

Four men were working on the canoes. They toiled with the confident air of men comfortable in their own physicality and secure in the knowledge that they were good at the work they did. One was in his fifties. The other three were younger, presumably the sons of the older man. They looked at Kella with hostility, but did not at once stop working. Finally one of the younger men put down his adze and walked over to the sergeant. He was slight but muscular, with the bunched shoulder muscles of a paddler. He was not overtly aggressive, but neither was there any trace of humility in his attitude.

‘What does the white man’s policeman want here?’ he said in good English. ‘We keep the law and mind our own business.’

‘I’m looking for the young white man called Andy,’ said Kella. ‘He is a VSO. I am told that he works here.’

‘Sometimes,’ said the islander. ‘He is not here today.’

‘How does he help you?’ asked Kella.

‘We are teaching him to become a canoe-maker,’ said the islander. ‘The whiteys give him nothing to do and he is bored.’

Kella nodded. ‘Is that the only way that he helps you?’ he asked.

The young islander did not answer. His brothers and father had stopped working and were looking on suspiciously. Kella
ignored them and walked past the canoes under construction to the line of logs just above the high-water mark on the beach. He examined the tree trunks, taking his time, aware of the gaze of the canoe-building family. The work on the canoes was of good quality. The men of the village were craftsmen and so would be doing very nicely for themselves at a time when the prices of canoes ranged from a few Australian dollars for a simple dugout to ten times that amount for one seating six people.

‘You do good work,’ he said, walking back to the group of men. ‘But you are lucky to find such fine-quality wood on an island like this.’

‘It is driftwood,’ said the young islander quickly. ‘We find it floating in the sea after storms and drag it ashore.’

‘Driftwood consisting of the finest kauri trees, ready-trimmed to be sent to factories in Australia?’ asked Kella, raising a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Truly the sea gods have been good to you and your line, canoe-maker. You do not need to pray when you are so well treated by the sacred ones.’

‘That’s just the way it happened,’ said the young islander sulkily.

‘I wish I could believe you,’ said Kella. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t. Nobody could be that lucky. Do you know what I think has happened? I think somebody has visited the logging camp at Alvaro when it was dark. That somebody removed the wooden boom from a pool of treated logs in the lagoon, waiting for the next transport ship to be sent overseas. With the boom gone, the logs floated out into the main lagoon. There were people waiting in canoes in the dark for that to happen, people from a family of canoe-builders, perhaps. These men steered as many logs as they could back to their village on Gizo island and pulled them ashore. Then, if anyone asked, they could say that the logs were driftwood, saved from the sea. But we know better, don’t we, brother? We also know that it’s
illegal. The whitey in charge at Alvaro will surely bring the police in if he finds out that someone has been stealing his best wood. Perhaps someone will tell him this.’

‘You would betray another islander to a whitey?’

‘I would do my duty as a police officer,’ said Kella.

Without another word, the young islander turned and walked back to his waiting father and brothers. He spoke urgently to them. They replied at length in undertones in their own language. He nodded and walked back to Kella. Kella guessed that he had received permission from his family to talk freely. After all, the canoe-builders owed no loyalty to the white youth. He was right.

‘What do you want to know?’ the young islander asked resignedly.

• • •

JOE DONTATE’S HOME
village was a series of hovels on one of the foothills behind Gizo. The hamlet was too close to the district centre to be more than a caricature of an island community. It looked as if most of the detritus from Gizo had been hurled contemptuously up the hill by giant hands and had come to rest among the squalid assemblage of thatched huts. Scattered about the village square were discarded iron baths, the chassis of an ancient truck, holed pots and saucepans and various items of shattered furniture, suitable only for firewood. Scrawny chickens pecked their way amid the rubbish, and dogs yapped mournfully. No wonder Joe Dontate had been willing to take up the hardest sport of all if it had presented the opportunity of fighting his way out of this squalor, thought Sister Conchita.

Some flustered young island sisters of the Roman Catholic church, in the district centre, surprised to see the white nun, had told her that Dontate’s pathway-sending was to be held in his village that morning, and that Mary Gui had announced
her intention of attending. It was a sign of the lack of character of the village that it did not even have a name. It had taken Conchita forty-five minutes to climb the hill. Behind her sprawled the dull vista of Gizo itself, and then the beautiful languid lagoon dotted with islets. On the far side of the village, the rate of ascent grew steeper. The central hills of the island suddenly rose starkly against the cloudless sky like alarmed sentinels called to arms.

Conchita could not help comparing the tawdry nature of her surroundings with the loveliness of the mission she had just left. She felt a sense of despair. Perhaps Marakosi was too beautiful. It represented a shelter, which its sisters were unwilling to leave. Had she done anything in the month she had been there to bring them closer to reality? Was she the right person to try? Had she failed in the project handed to her by the order? She had certainly made a complete muddle of her investigation into the death of Ed Blamire in the mission church. All that she had emerged with was a suspicion that a nice, apparently ingenuous young VSO had been deceiving her. Andy Russell could have been present at Marakosi at the mission open day, and if he had a canoe, he could also have made the attacks on the Alvaro logging camp at night and returned before dawn. But why would he do such things? It seemed out of character with his affable personality. Surely the boy was not a murderer?

The sound of ragged chanting came from one of the huts. A few minutes later a line of men and women straggled out into the cluttered village square. Sister Conchita saw that Mary Gui was among the twenty islanders who had been praying indoors. Conchita knew nothing about the pathway-sending ceremony except that it was designed to send the soul of a dead leader to the island he had chosen, where his spirit could roam freely during the everlasting afterlife. In reality, Dontate’s body was now mouldering on a leaf bed on a treetop on Skull Island. When the appropriate time came, it would be taken down and
buried, but not before his skull was added to the cache of great Roviana chiefs there.

The mourners stood in a straight line facing the custom priest. Only the women were singing, expressing their loss and asking the spirits what would happen to them now that their protector had gone. When they fell silent, an old man stepped forward and began talking in a reedy voice. No one had made any attempt to wear custom dress. Even the priest wore only a pair of shorts and a singlet.

‘On behalf of the village, that old man is asking the gods for protection, support and guidance now that Joe has gone,’ said a familiar voice at Conchita’s side. ‘These were all the things he gave to his line while he was alive.’ Mary Gui had slipped away from the line of mourners to join her. ‘Some of the men have gone into the bush to cut down an almond tree in his memory. Then there will be a feast. After that, Joe’s friends and relatives will stay in his hut for three nights, praying for his spirit. Will you stay for the feast, Sister? You are welcome to do so.’

‘No, I’m afraid that I must be leaving,’ said Conchita. ‘Actually, I came up here because I was hoping to find you. May I talk to you for a few minutes?’

Mary looked across at the village square. The islanders were making preparations for the feast. A pig had been killed and roasted on a spit. There were piles of fruit and vegetables on banana leaves on the ground. The rest of the villagers were beginning to assemble.

‘As long as I’m back in time for the three mourning nights,’ she said. ‘No one will miss me at the feast. I’m a stranger to most of the villagers anyway. I seldom came up here when Joe was alive. Between you and me, it’s a dirty, unhygienic place. Let’s walk down the hill and get away from it.’

‘I’d like to ask you about Andy Russell,’ said Conchita as they started strolling back down towards Gizo. ‘What can you tell me about him?’

‘The VSO?’ asked Mary. ‘I hardly knew him. I’ve only been back from Australia for a few weeks, if you remember. He seems quite nice.’

‘Didn’t he help you with the independence party?’ asked Conchita.

‘Not really,’ said Mary. ‘He might have come to one or two meetings. I don’t remember. He hardly ever said anything if he did come.’

‘That’s strange. I had an idea that he helped you with the administration, writing letters and so on. Didn’t he even have anything to say about the logging operations?’

‘I don’t know; I can’t remember if he did.’

‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ said Sister Conchita, ‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ asked Mary with a flash of anger.

‘I think,’ said Sister Conchita in neutral tones, ‘that you are a pretty and charming young lady who has discovered quite early on in life how to adapt these attributes to her own advantage. In short, Miss Gui, you know how to use people.’

‘That’s a dreadful thing for a nun to say,’ said Mary.

‘You used Joe Dontate because you thought he would have the power in the West to help you fulfil your own ambitions, whatever they may be, and I suspect that somehow or other you have also used Sergeant Kella because you thought he might also be of help to you one day.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘But most of all,’ said Sister Conchita inexorably, ‘you have seduced and used a young boy in Andy Russell, again for your own selfish ends.’

‘This is all rubbish,’ said Mary, stopping. ‘I won’t listen to any more!’

‘I’ve almost finished,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘You set up this spurious organisation called the Solomon Islands Independence Party and you persuaded a few of the disgruntled local islanders
to join it, but you have really been using it as a front for your own ends.’

‘What ends?’

‘I’m not sure yet, but you played on the enthusiasm of a credulous young man like Andy and persuaded him to make a couple of efforts to sabotage the logging company on Alvaro island, convincing him that it was in the interests of the people of the Solomons.’

‘How could I possibly do that?’ asked Mary.