by Graeme Kent
‘You could say that I’m exploring my options,’ said the girl evasively.
The drunken female voice that Kella had been half expecting since their arrival cut through the dining room imperiously.
‘They’re getting everywhere these days. The bloody people will be fox-hunting next,’ it said, icy with condemnation. There was a peal of forced laughter from the others in the party.
Impassively Kella glanced across the room. He recognized a group of six at the next table. There were three administrators from the Education Department, stick-thin men, their faces a jaundiced yellow from the persistent injections against tropical diseases they had taken over the years in a variety of depressing dependent tropical territories. Their bored, upholstered wives were uniformly over-bosomed and fat-bottomed. Mary looked expectantly, almost gleefully, at Kella. He sighed, pushed back his chair and walked over to the table. With surprise and obvious alarm, the six expatriates saw him coming and sat up, stiff-backed. Two of the Western waiters began to shuffle forward reluctantly. The Lau waiter sent them back effortlessly with one sweep of his arm. The room fell silent again as everyone waited and listened for what was to come.
Arriving unhurriedly at the table, Kella surveyed the occupants in silence. When he spoke, he pitched his voice so that everyone in the dining room could hear what he said.
‘If you lot get on my tits again, I shall climb down from my tree in the jungle and come and live next door to you,’ he said. ‘So watch it!’
The six expatriates stared fixedly at the tablecloth before them. No one met Kella’s eye. The policeman waited for a minute or two, and then nodded pleasantly and returned to his table. Mary Gui lifted her glass to him in a silent toast. The administrators and their wives started conducting a vehement conversation in hissed undertones. One of the wives stood up and stalked in an offended manner to the lavatories by the reception desk.
‘Excuse me,’ said Mary, standing up and slipping after the large woman.
The hotel manager, a lugubrious middle-aged Scot apparently beaten into a permanent state of submission by decades of dealing with arrogant colonial administrators around the world, appeared in the entrance, apparently summoned by the waiters. For years he had refereed the international rugby union matches regularly held on Lawson Tarma outside the capital. He wore a shiny dinner jacket and a permanently dejected expression, like a man who quite enjoyed and almost relished his secret sorrows. Kella wondered if he was going to be asked to leave. He saw that the Lau waiter was following the manager across the room. The manager noticed him and waved him away.
‘I’m hoping that the rest of the customers will think I’m reprimanding you,’ said the Scot, sinking into Mary’s chair. ‘So if you don’t mind, I’ll remain here a minute looking stern and exasperated. Is that all right with you, Sergeant Kella?’
‘Be my guest,’ said Kella.
‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about that time you played wing forward for the Solomons against the New Hebrides. If you remember, on that occasion I sent you off for unnecessary violence to their French scrum-half. Since then we have had the honour of entertaining three separate French trade delegations in this establishment. I’ve changed my mind. How the hell can you be unnecessarily violent to a Frenchman?’
‘A fair point,’ said Kella. ‘Vive l’entente cordiale!’
The manager turned to the Lau waiter. ‘Phillip, give the sergeant and his guest a drink on the house.’
‘I won’t, if you don’t mind,’ said Kella. ‘I have a feeling that we might be leaving quite rapidly at any moment.’
‘Point taken,’ said the manager, rising. ‘In that case, I shall withdraw to the sanctity of my office while I still have the chance. Phillip, call me when it’s over.’
The Scot walked away, nodding affably to the rest of his patrons. The Lau waiter winked conspiratorially in Kella’s general direction and went back to the suddenly agog group of waiters. Kella waited patiently, finishing his beer and draining Mary’s glass for good measure. He might be leaving in a hurry.
There was a scream from the direction of the lavatories. The woman who had left the neighbouring table rushed out and stood, distraught and gibbering, at the entrance of the dining room. There was a large wet stain across the lower half of the back of her expensive dress. The other two wives at the table hurried over to her in clucking consternation. Once again the diners lost all interest in their meals and stared across in fascination at the tableau. The first woman was panting for breath and in a state of some shock, pointing back in the direction of the lavatories. When she could finally speak, she gasped:
‘Someone leant across from the next stall while I was sitting down, and pulled the chain! My dress is soaked!’
The slim, demure form of Mary Gui slipped past the big woman, frowning concernedly. Kella stood up and walked across the room. He met Mary in front of the bewildered but appreciative waiters.
‘Into each life a little rain must fall,’ she said composedly.
‘Sometimes quite unexpectedly,’ agreed Kella.
On their way out of the hotel, they walked past the scandalized women, who had now been joined by their dithering husbands. None of them looked at Kella and Mary as the couple left.
‘I should send for a policeman,’ Kella advised them sympathetically, without stopping. Mary nodded her agreement.
The manager erupted from his office like an overstuffed bird popping out of a cuckoo clock. He bowed gravely to the departing couple.
‘Sir, madam,’ he said, straight-faced. Then he winked. ‘If you keep coming here, they’ll be charging me entertainment tax soon,’ he said.
• • •
THEY UNDRESSED BY the light of the oil lamp in Kella’s hut in the fishing village just outside Honiara.
‘This has been one of my more interesting evenings since I got back from Australia,’ said the girl, pulling her dress over her head. ‘Thank you for taking me to the Mendana. I’ve always wanted to go there, but you were the first islander with the guts to take me. I hope I didn’t shock you.’
‘I’m recovering,’ said Kella.
Her dark, beautiful and unadorned figure ghosted past Kella. She lay naked on the bed, legs apart, staring up at him with anticipation.
‘Let’s hear it for a full and total recovery, Big Man,’ she said.
‘Flattery will get you anywhere,’ Kella said, lowering his rigid body on top of her.
Mary moaned in grateful acquiescence. Then she gave a sharp scream and sat up abruptly.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Kella.
‘I’d forgotten how sore my bloody back was,’ groaned the girl, squirming from beneath him. ‘Roll over; you’d better let me get on top.’
• • •
KELLA ROSE EARLY the following morning and washed and shaved. He dimly remembered Mary Gui getting up and leaving while it was still dark. It was a sign of her independence that she had probably walked all the way back to her relatives at Matanikau. He thought about the curious events of the previous night. Somehow he felt that both at the hotel and in bed afterwards, Mary Gui had been testing him. He ate a plate of taro and drank a bottle of water before putting on a change of uniform. Then he set out to hitch a lift to the airport at Henderson field.
After a few minutes on the almost empty road, a battered Ford stopped to pick him up. He climbed into the front seat with a word of thanks, to discover that the driver was the council member Welchman Buna, as smartly dressed as usual, this time in a tan safari suit.
‘Well met, Sergeant,’ said the politician. ‘You can give me your preliminary report as we drive.’
Kella tried to give the other man a concise account of the events of the past few days. Buna listened in silence as they passed the Central Hospital on one side and the playing fields and the open-sided Anglican Melanesian mission cathedral on the other, until they reached the almost deserted wartime airstrip built by the Japanese. The two men walked into the departure lounge
of the single-storey building in time to check with the Australian charter pilot that there was room for them on the waiting Piper Apache, and that they were scheduled to take off on time. The pilot left them with a wave to make his last-minute checks on the engine. Buna and Kella sat on one of the benches in the almost empty lounge. Next door, the transit lounge for incoming and waiting passengers housed only a solitary bored customs official.
‘You’ve had a busy couple of days,’ commented Buna.
‘Frustrating mostly,’ said Kella. ‘And slightly embarrassing.’
‘I go back to Roviana every month,’ Buna said, as if the other man was due an explanation for his presence. ‘The Legislative Council elections will be held in a few months; I have to canvas for votes.’
‘Not easy to do when most of your constituency is water,’ said Kella. ‘How do you work that out?’
‘Feasts,’ said the politician simply. ‘I go to every feast being held in the district. That’s the Roviana custom. Being visible during kinship events is very important. How else would people get to know me? It may get me the votes, at least I hope it will, but it plays hell with my digestion.’
Kella wondered if the other man was joking, but Buna was not a humorous man.
‘You’ll walk in,’ he said. ‘You haven’t got any opposition worthy of the name.’
Buna shrugged. ‘I hope to be successful,’ he said, ‘but it’s a long time since I lived in the west. I came to Honiara fifteen years ago. At least I don’t think I’ve offended anyone back home yet. That’s my best hope. I’m not a charismatic man. I just work hard for my district.’
Even in the heat of the noon sun the council member looked cool and composed. He sat very erect, not relaxing.
‘May I ask you a few questions?’ asked Kella.
‘Certainly, Sergeant.’
‘What do you know about the Solomon Islands Independence Party?’
‘Not very much,’ said Buna. ‘It is based in my district, mainly at Munda and Gizo. It’s comparatively new and not very influential yet. It consists mainly of local graduates returning from overseas universities, usually teachers and junior administrators. They sit around and have debates, pass motions, that sort of thing. They’re not into direct action, if that’s what you’re thinking. I suppose that one day they will run a candidate to oppose me. A modern, educated progressive against an ignorant old bushman, you know the sort of thing.’
‘Their candidate will have to eat a lot of pig at a lot of feasts before he whittles down your lead. And Mary Gui is their leader?’
‘I believe so.’ Buna smiled thinly. ‘She is something of a firebrand, but she would never lead a raid on the logging camp, nor indeed leave a pile of excreta behind. At least I hope not. She has her principles, though. She refuses to take a post in government service. She earns a living by running the rest-house at Munda for Joe Dontate. Do you think she had a hand in knocking you unconscious on Kolombangara?’
‘I’m not sure. It happened outside her hut. Her back had just been slashed to pieces by the tattooists, so she wouldn’t have been in any state to attack me, or drag me back down to the beach. She might know who did it, though. I haven’t made up my mind.’
‘Doubtless you intend to get together with her?’
‘I’ve already started work in that area,’ said Kella.
‘And you’re going back to Munda to complete your investigations?’
‘By rather a roundabout route, as it happens,’ said Kella with feeling.
‘I suppose one day Mary Gui and others like her will present a problem to me at the elections,’ Buna said. ‘Not yet, though. They are regarded as too callow and inexperienced. Whereas I lived in a saltwater village for the first twenty years of my life. I wouldn’t have left even then if I hadn’t been forced out by the war.’
‘Did you fight in the West?’ Kella asked.
‘Not to your level of distinction, Sergeant Kella,’ Buna said vaguely. ‘I did my best to help out locally. Incidentally, I’m concerned about the part played in all this by the white man Ferraby. That man is a throwback to the 1930s when expatriates expected us to call them all master. He belongs in a museum. Will you arrest him?’
‘What for? I can’t prove anything.’
‘Hmm, that’s a pity. After the next elections, the elected members are going to have a lot more influence. I think as a matter of urgency we ought to look into the status of expatriates like Ferraby. They’ve outstayed their welcome in the islands. So you haven’t made much progress with your investigations at the logging camp? That’s disappointing—and not like you.’
‘I’m going back there tomorrow to try again,’ said Kella, shaking his head.
‘You’re persistent, Sergeant Kella; that’s an admirable trait in a police officer.’ Buna hesitated. ‘That’s another change we must make in the near future. We must fast-track the better men we already have in government service. If you handle this logging business efficiently and tactfully, it will be remembered in the right quarters, I can promise you. And I don’t mean in Whitehall; I’m referring to here in the islands where all the decisions will be made before long. Find out who’s launched this campaign against the loggers, and do so without upsetting anyone influential.’
‘Would you like me to form a silver band to entertain the loggers at the same time?’ asked Kella.
Buna showed no sign of recognising the levity in the other man’s tone. ‘And the attack on you at Kolombangara,’ he asked, ‘could it have been carried out by one of the islanders with a grudge against the police?’
‘I doubt it,’ Kella said. ‘I was attacked by either a European or an islander with plenty of money.’
‘What makes you think that?’ asked Buna.
‘Whoever knocked me out paid Ferraby in cash to hold me on his ship for a few weeks. None of the islanders on Kolombangara could have afforded that. I was taken down to the beach by someone with ready cash on him—or her.’
‘Of course,’ said Buna slowly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Are there many expatriates in the West at the moment, apart from the government workers at Gizo?’
‘There’s only an American tourist party stopping at Munda. I’m going to question them too, and Mary Gui, if she’s come back.’
As he spoke, the girl entered the departure lounge. She was wearing a white blouse and a long floral skirt. Kella made as if to get up and walk over to her, but she shook her head almost imperceptibly and took a seat on the other side of the lounge, where she stared composedly ahead.
A voice over the loudspeaker announced the imminent arrival of the Fiji Airways flight from the New Hebrides. At the same time an official police car driven by a local officer pulled up outside the arrival and departure lounge. To Kella’s horror, Superintendent Grice, dapper in full uniform, got out of the back of the car and started walking towards the single-storey building. Presumably the superintendent was about to meet some dignitary from another police force. If he saw the sergeant, he would be sure to demand an explanation as to why Kella was setting off for Munda for the second time in just over a week. Like Buna, he would also ask for a progress report, which Kella, true to form, would be unable to provide.
‘Excuse me,’ said Kella, and dived for the Gents’.
He lurked inside for ten minutes until he had heard the two-turbo-prop-engined Fokker Friendship from Fiji land and discharge its maximum of forty-four passengers. He gave it another ten minutes for luck, and then emerged cautiously from the toilets. Chief Superintendent Grice and a uniformed chief inspector from the New Hebrides police force carrying a suitcase were walking talking animatedly towards the exit. Grice saw his sergeant. He stopped talking and his eyes widened. Providentially, the loudspeaker then announced the departure of the local flight to Munda. Kella sketched a desperate salute in the general direction of his superior officer and ran for the charter aeroplane waiting on the tarmac. As he did so, he noticed that Mary Gui had left her seat and was now sitting next to Wel
chman Buna and talking sedately to the Advisory Council member.
Chapter Fourteen
THERE WERE THREE men sitting in the office of the Secretary for Internal Affairs in Honiara. Robinson, the Secretary, was sipping a cup of tea behind his desk. Chief Superintendent Grice was sitting bolt upright in front of him. Occupying the third chair was a tall, stooped, grey-haired man in a lightweight suit.
‘The Chief Secretary has asked me to convene this meeting,’ said Robinson, ‘while the Police Commissioner has designated Chief Superintendent Grice as his representative. I am also delighted to welcome Mr Sanders of the US State Department to Honiara.’
The grey-haired man bowed slightly. There was a sympathetic glint in his eye, as if he could recognize an example of the buck being passed when he saw it.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘It’s good to be here.’
‘The purpose of the meeting,’ went on the Secretary for Internal Affairs, ‘is to correlate certain activities taking place in the Western Solomons and to ensure that we have covered our bases, if that is the expression, Mr Sanders.’
‘Covered our arses, more like,’ said Chief Superintendent Grice.
The Secretary for Internal Affairs winced. Sanders ignored the interjection.
‘Exactly right, sir,’ he said in a courtly fashion. ‘As you both know, the whole affair is a delicate one and we need to make sure that we are on top of it at all times.’
‘Buggered if I know what’s going on at all,’ said Grice. ‘My department has been left pretty much in the dark.’
‘Then I hope that matters will become clearer to you as the meeting proceeds,’ said Robinson acidly. He nodded to Sanders to continue.
‘I must apologize to you, Chief Superintendent Grice; there was no intention to leave you out of the loop,’ said the American official. ‘It was just that events started moving very quickly in the Roviana Lagoon and we had to react to them with equal rapidity before we all went to hell in a hand-basket. Anyway, I shall try to bring you up to date now. The body of Ed Blamire has been examined at an autopsy in Washington and it has been confirmed that he was killed by a blow to the head with a blunt instrument.’
