One Blood

by Graeme Kent

  ‘Murdered, you mean?’ asked Grice.

  ‘Oh yes, no doubt about that, no doubt at all.’

  ‘Good God!’ said Grice, aghast at the thought. ‘A white man murdered in the Solomons.’

  ‘I don’t wish to appear too mercenary about this, but the cost must have been horrendous,’ said the Secretary for Internal Affairs uneasily. ‘Private chartered flights, autopsies, and all the rest of it.’

  ‘I can set your mind at rest there, Mr Robinson,’ said Sanders. ‘The tab has been picked up by Mr Blamire’s employers.’

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Grice.

  ‘I’m afraid that has to remain classified for the moment,’ Sanders said. ‘What I can tell you is that their identity came as a bit of a surprise to my department. We weren’t expecting intervention from that quarter.’

  ‘What quarter?’ asked Grice.

  ‘Shall we say the private sector,’ said Sanders. ‘Still, we’ve been in touch with them and everyone seems happy. Or as happy as possible under the circumstances.’

  ‘Please carry on, Mr Sanders,’ said Robinson. ‘We are anxious to ascertain whether there might be any repercussions from the death of this man Blamire.’

  ‘I think we’re fairly safe there,’ said the official. ‘He was a freelance. Ed Blamire had no official connections whatsoever, absolutely none. Nothing can be traced back to any of our sources.’

  ‘That’s a bit of luck,’ said Robinson, brightening.

  ‘But do you know who he was working for?’ asked Grice.

  ‘Oh yes, once we had his body, we were able to trace his background.’ Sanders looked rueful. ‘We may not have been able to keep Batista in power in Cuba last year, but we’re still good for some things. We tracked down his employers and had a long and in the end satisfactory talk with them. As a result, we have a clearer idea of what is going on in the Roviana Lagoon at the moment. Again, I can’t go into details.’

  ‘Are you going to share any information with us?’ asked Grice

  ‘I’m afraid that for the time being we have to proceed on a need-to-know basis,’ said Sanders. ‘I can assure you that this has been cleared at the highest levels between our respective governments, is that not so, Mr Robinson?’

  The Secretary for Internal Affairs nodded but said nothing. Sanders continued.

  ‘Of course, the people who sent Blamire to the Solomons will have to pour a few buckets of cash over his dependents, but they’ve done that in a number of similar cases in different parts of the world and can well afford it.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Robinson.

  Grice looked at the other two men and tried to nod sagely. He had heard of the phrase parallel universe and he wondered if he could be groping his way through one at the moment. Robinson and Sanders seemed to be having a perfectly normal conversation, yet he could hardly understand a word of what they were saying. He tried to think of an intervention that would give the impression that he was in touch, without betraying his complete ignorance of the situation.

  ‘So where does that leave us at the moment?’ he heard himself saying.

  ‘That’s a very good point, Chief Superintendent Grice,’ said Sanders approvingly, with no trace of irony in his voice. ‘As you have just correctly implied, matters are still very much in the air in the Roviana Lagoon. There are some dangerous and ruthless characters floating around down there at the moment. We know from experience that they will kill without compunction, and we don’t want that to happen.’

  ‘Why don’t we just deport the lot of them?’ exploded Grice.

  ‘If we did that, the political fallout would be drastic,’ said Robinson, sounding shocked. ‘It would be like knocking down the first in a row of dominoes. That’s why we expedited the departure of Mr Blamire’s body, to avoid any such reaction.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sanders. ‘If it’s any consolation, if anything’s going to happen, it will occur in the next week or two.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ asked Grice.

  ‘Because of the date of the elections, of course,’ said Sanders. ‘Back home we go to the polls on the eighth of November. That’s ten days away. If the people we’re watching are going to come up with anything, it will almost certainly be in the next week.’

  ‘What elections?’ asked Grice.

  ‘Why, the US presidential ones, of course,’ said Sanders, looking hard at the police officer as if wondering if he was serious, while Robinson squirmed. ‘JFK against Dick Nixon is going to be a close one. Both sides are going to come up with all the dirty tricks they can muster. It’s just unfortunate that they seem to have spread as far as the Solomon Islands.’

  ‘It’s difficult to comprehend that something as important as that might be influenced by what goes on in such a remote spot in the Pacific,’ said the Secretary for Internal Affairs, shaking his head.

  ‘Are you trying to tell me,’ asked Grice, beginning to understand, ‘that we have a bunch of murderers roving about in the Western District and we’ve done nothing to apprehend them?’

  ‘That’s the last thing we want to do,’ said Sanders vehemently. ‘We’ve got to find out what they’re up to first and then stop them.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Robinson.

  Chief Superintendent Grice shook his head and closed his eyes, at a loss for words.

  ‘That’s why we’ve got to keep a close eye on things,’ said Sanders a little more calmly. ‘We think we’ve got a guy in place down there, but we can’t be sure how effective he’s going to be. We’ve had him there in readiness for a contingency like this one, but we’ve never had to use him before.’

  ‘What about the native fellow, Dontate?’ asked Robinson. ‘By all accounts he’s very close to Imison and the others.’

  ‘Best we can figure it out, Joe Dontate’s just a hired gun,’ said Sanders. ‘He’s linked up with the others because they’re paying him.’

  ‘We could arrest him and take him out of circulation,’ offered Chief Superintendent Grice.

  ‘No!’ said Sanders sharply. ‘Our man down there has investigated him. Dontate’s not just an opportunistic thug. He’s what they call a Big Man in the Roviana area. He comes from a long line of warrior chiefs and headhunters, both matriarchal and patriarchal. If you move in on him, you could have an armed uprising among the locals.’

  ‘You think?’ asked Robinson in alarm.

  ‘That’s our best information. I suggest you watch Dontate but leave him alone,’ said Sanders. ‘It’s complicated, I know. By the way, who have you got down there?’

  ‘Where?’ asked Grice.

  ‘In the Roviana Lagoon, of course,’ said Sanders. ‘That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Robinson quickly. ‘We’ve had someone in place for a few days. Don’t you remember, Chief Superintendent Grice? You gave Sergeant Kella his briefing in this very office?’

  ‘Kella? Yes, of course,’ mumbled Grice.

  ‘You’ve only got a sergeant on the job?’ frowned Sanders. ‘This operation will take more weight than that, believe me.’

  ‘He’s our top Solomon Islands policeman,’ Robinson assured him. ‘He’s unorthodox, but he can infiltrate places where no white officer would dare set foot. Isn’t that right, Mr Grice?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Grice, speaking with conviction for the first time that afternoon. ‘It never ceases to surprise me where Kella gets to and what he does when he gets there.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘HAS ANYONE SEEN Sister Brigid?’ asked Conchita.

  She was sitting at the evening meal in the refectory with Sister Johanna and Sister Jean Francoise. Brigid had not joined them at the table, a most unusual occurrence for her. So far the simple meal had been conducted in silence, with each nun occupied with her own thoughts. Earlier that evening they had listened to the local news programme on the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. That had been followed by a recorded episode of a Paul Temple thriller supplied by
the BBC Transcription Service. Unfortunately the series had been supplied on half a dozen separate discs, an occurrence almost guaranteed to confuse the various local announcers on duty each night. Over the last five weeks the episodes had been played in the order of one, four, two, one again and three, a pattern which so far had rendered a fairly simplistic story positively labyrinthine, and had even led to a number of Honiara’s expatriate community sending a delegate to the studios to request that the serial be started again from the first episode.

  ‘I thought I saw her on the beach looking out at the lagoon earlier,’ said Sister Jean Francoise.

  Conchita folded her napkin and stood up. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’ll just make sure she’s all right.’

  It was a cool, refreshing night out on the beach. Earlier in the day it had rained, and the leaves of the trees and bushes gleamed like unsheathed swords in the half-light.

  Sister Brigid was standing on a small escarpment of rocks with the placid water lapping at her bare feet. She nodded as Conchita joined her.

  ‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said. ‘Who would think that the lagoon has suffered so much bloodshed and misery?’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Conchita asked.

  ‘Why should I be anything else?’

  ‘I was hoping that you would tell me that,’ Conchita said.

  Brigid looked away. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I know that that doesn’t make me a good nun, or even a good woman, but I can’t talk about it.’

  ‘It must be something very painful,’ said Conchita.

  ‘You don’t know how painful,’ Brigid said.

  ‘Suppose I tell you what I have put together about what happened seventeen years ago,’ said Conchita. ‘Mr Evans, the coast-watcher on Kolombangara, put out an all-points radio message that an American patrol boat, the PT-109, had been sunk in a collision with a Japanese destroyer in the Roviana Lagoon. No one knew if there were any survivors. In fact, Lieutenant John F. Kennedy and ten of his crew, some of them wounded, had managed to swim to the island of Kasolo. Later they swam across to a larger neighbouring island called Olasana, which had more food. Evans asked for all available coast-watchers and their helpers to scour the area to find Kennedy and his men, before the Japanese got to them. Soon the area was buzzing with activity. At that time, the Japanese occupied Gizo, Munda and Kolambangara, while the US forces were preparing to launch a campaign to dislodge them. In the middle of all this, eleven American seamen were trying to hide from the Japanese and contact the Americans.’

  ‘It was chaos,’ said Sister Brigid. ‘There were ships and aeroplanes everywhere, and you couldn’t be sure which were American and which belonged to the Japanese.’

  ‘You had been taking incredible risks helping to smuggle crashed American airmen back to the Allied lines ever since you had arrived at Marakosi mission.’

  ‘Wasn’t I the feisty one?’ said Sister Brigid.

  ‘You heard over the mission radio schedule that Coast-watcher Evans was recruiting everyone he could get his hands on to rescue Kennedy and his men, and you wanted to join in.’

  ‘I’d left it a bit late,’ said the Irish nun. ‘I’d only been at Marakosi for a year or so, and I didn’t know the lagoon too well. By the time I got myself organized, most of the islanders I’d worked with before had scattered all over the place in their search. I needed a guide, and I was told that the only ones left who knew the area were on Kolombangara.’ The nun shuddered. ‘It was a dreadful place. I knew as soon as I got there that I’d made a terrible mistake. That island was evil incarnate.’

  ‘But you found an islander willing to guide you.’

  ‘Kakaihe, yes. He was very young, but he seemed keen. He begged me to let him paddle us both across to Olasana. That was the first island in the area that we chose at random.

  ‘So you actually landed on Olasana while Lieutenant Kennedy and the others were there?’ asked Conchita.

  The other nun ignored her question. ‘I was in such a hurry to get away from Kolombangara. You see, when I arrived there, I discovered that a detachment of Japanese soldiers had been stationed on the other side of the island. I think the islanders had invited them; I wouldn’t put it past that treacherous lot. So I picked up Kakaihe and we paddled away for dear life.’

  ‘And three days later you brought his dead body back home.’

  ‘The Japanese had left by then, recalled to defend Gizo. I helped with the poor boy’s burial service and came back to Marakosi.’

  ‘You were in a pretty awful state by then,’ said Conchita. ‘What happened during the three days that you were away looking for Mr Kennedy?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘You mean you won’t tell me.’

  ‘Put it that way, if you like. Things were told to me during those three days, and I made promises myself. I shall keep those promises until my death, no matter what.’

  ‘You’re protecting someone, aren’t you?’ asked Sister Conchita.

  ‘If it were only that, I wouldn’t give a damn!’ said Sister Brigid with a flash of feeling. ‘But it’s much more. I have been charged with saving a man’s soul!’

  Chapter Sixteen

  MICHIE, THE LOGGING boss, had done something to improve security at the camp since Kella had last visited the island of Alvaro. Two of the improvements were heading in his direction now. As he stepped out of his canoe in the shallow waters of the lagoon, two large middle-aged white men strolled down the beach to meet him. They were wearing shorts and shirts and were unshaven. They walked with the confidence of men who hit other people for a living and did not get hit back very often.

  ‘Hold it right there, mate,’ said the leading man. He was distinguished from his partner mainly by the fact that he was the balder of the pair. He was probably balder than any man in the Roviana Lagoon, thought Kella, studying the expanse of naked skull drawing ever nearer like a polished battering ram. The man did not stop walking until he was very close to Kella. His breath stank.

  ‘I’d like to see Mr Michie,’ Kella said.

  ‘No chance,’ said the bald man. He started to edge forward, thrusting out his ample belly, in an attempt to force Kella back towards his canoe by sheer momentum.

  ‘You don’t understand. I’m Sergeant Kella, of the Solomon Islands Police Force. I’m here on official business.’

  ‘No, it’s you who doesn’t understand, mate. We don’t care if you’re the fairy on top of the birthday cake,’ said the other man, approaching Kella from the side.

  The second man was taller than his partner. A faded, mottled scar ran down one side of his face, and his front teeth were broken and discoloured. Like his companion, he spoke with an Australian accent.

  ‘We’ve got our orders,’ said the bald man. He had been unable to dislodge Kella, so he had stopped shoving. He looked annoyed about the fact. ‘No unauthorized visitors are allowed on the island. Things have changed since we arrived. We run a tight ship here these days. So go back where you came from.’

  ‘Why should I? Have you thought that it might be nicer here?’ said Kella mildly. ‘Perhaps I prefer it.’

  Both men looked disconcerted. They did not seem easily able to handle people who answered them back. The bald man put a hand on Kella’s shoulder and pushed him. Kella sighed. Normally he was an equable man, but over the past few days he had been sandbagged from behind and press-ganged on to one of the most evil-looking and smelling cargo boats in the South Pacific. He had also met a girl who puzzled him, and Kella did not like being puzzled. He did not want such cavalier treatment to become a habit. Keeping his eyes innocently on the bald man’s face, he jerked his elbow viciously into the stomach of the scarred man. The scarred man grunted and doubled up. At the same time, Kella took a step backwards and kicked the bald man in the groin. The bald man fell to his knees in the water with a splash. The scarred man straightened up and threw a roundhouse swing at the sergeant. Kella ducked beneath it and hit the scarred man in the stomach again,
this time with a right-hand uppercut. The scarred man sat down abruptly in the lagoon and bent forward, retching. The bald man started to struggle to his feet. Kella let him move into a crouched position, and then brought his knee up in a parabola under the bald man’s jaw. The man grunted, fell backwards and lay motionless, blood trickling down his chin. Kella looked down at the two men.

  ‘When you get sent back home,’ he said, ‘and judging by your performance just now, that will be sooner rather than later, I should seek work in tougher pubs. You need the workout. You guys have got soft.’

  The bald man lay where he was, moaning softly, but the scarred man started groping in the air and trying to drag himself to his feet. There was a rush of oncoming feet, and a dozen or so Malaitans who had been dragging tree trunks across the beach charged over. Some were bearing sticks. At the sight of them the scarred man groaned and dropped back into the water. Kella waved the islanders off.

  ‘Leave them alone,’ he told them in dialect. ‘Just make sure that no one disturbs me while I’m in with the boss.’

  Michie was waiting for him in his office. The Australian was looking defiant, but he had backed off to the furthest wall.

  ‘No more arsing around,’ Kella told him. ‘What’s been happening? Why have you beefed up security, if that’s the right phrase?’

  ‘Orders from head office,’ Michie said sullenly. ‘I knew those two cowboys weren’t worth a shit as soon as they arrived.’

  ‘You just can’t get the right sort of hired muscle these days,’ said Kella unfeelingly. ‘They’re all too busy entering bodybuilding contests. But why did your head office in Japan decide that you needed more protection?’

  Michie did not answer. Kella dropped into a chair. He was hungry. His plane had landed at Munda airstrip only an hour ago, and he had paddled straight over to the logging island.