One Blood

by Graeme Kent

  Conchita tried to marshal her thoughts. On the face of it, what she was being asked to do seemed absurd. If the church authorities knew that she was even accepting the existence of the local spirits, they would order her back to Honiara at once. If they suspected that she was contemplating going out to match her faith against that of the lagoon devil-devils, she would be sent back to the USA immediately. Yet Ben Kella was asking her to do just that, and the police sergeant had never asked anything of her before, no matter how dangerous his situation. Another thought struck her. He was almost too openly anxious. Was it possible that he had another agenda altogether? Could it be that he had been alarmed at the attempt on her life when the boulder had been dislodged on Kolombangara? Was he taking her under his wing again, as he had done once before? Or was it part of his plan to strengthen her position at Marakosi Mission? By publicly expressing his dependence upon Sister Conchita, he had impressed the other nuns with her importance in the scheme of things at the station. Was he only doing that to make her position in the mission more secure? She realized that the French nun was talking.

  ‘There comes a time,’ said Sister Jean Francoise, ‘when we have to learn to do what our heart tells us is right, even if our head thinks that it is foolhardy. Besides, it’s time somebody from the mission went out into the world again and made some sort of impression on it.’

  ‘Of course,’ warned Sister Johanna, ‘we’re not the best people to be advising you. Jean Francoise and I have been regarded as having gone native years ago—no offence, Ben. Sister Conchita, you might share that fate if you leave the mission with the sergeant. Sisters who spend too much time reacting to local conditions, or even recognising them, are labelled mavericks. On the other hand, if you are successful in this mission, you might be able to bring dear Sister Brigid back to us from the hell she has been living in all this time. Half a dozen bishops haven’t been able to do that.’ She paused and looked at Kella. ‘By the way, that rock that rolled down on us on Kolombangara, was that a deliberate attempt to kill us?’

  ‘It was a warning for you to keep away from the island,’ said Kella. ‘If they had wanted to kill you, they could have thought of a dozen better ways. If you go back, they will.’

  ‘So what does that tell us?’ asked Conchita.

  ‘That part of the answer to our problem probably lies on Kolombangara.’

  Conchita had made her decision. She stood up. Whatever the reason for Kella’s request, she was being given a chance to play a part in the investigation of Ed Blamire’s death. ‘Very well, Sergeant Kella,’ she said, trying to expunge the nervousness from her voice. ‘Where do we start?’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘JUST HOW MANY policemen are there in the Solomons?’ asked Sister Conchita of Sergeant Kella’s broad back.

  ‘Two hundred and seventeen,’ said Kella. He had studied the subject for his promotion-to-inspector examination, which he kept on putting off. ‘There are seven gazetted officers, five sub-inspectors and two hundred and five other ranks.’

  ‘That’s to cover almost a thousand islands occupying an area of ten thousand square miles, where over seventy different languages are spoken? No wonder you never seem to get any help when you need it.’

  ‘It involves a certain amount of multitasking,’ agreed Kella. ‘Anyway, I always have you. You seem to make a habit of popping up and getting in the way.’

  He was in the prow of the mission canoe, steering it along the coast of Munda. They had left Marakosi Mission over an hour before in the late afternoon and were passing the village of Kia, a mile from the airstrip.

  ‘They call that the tin town,’ said Kella.

  Kia consisted of a collection of huts a hundred yards back from the beach, sheltered by palm trees. Incongruously, a huge rusted assemblage of American and Japanese aircraft parts seemed to sprout from the ground amid the trees, towering over the village. Almost all the huts had utilized items of the wreckage for domestic use. An enormous shell casing suspended from a chain replaced the traditional drum to summon villagers to meetings. Scrubbed petrol tins were in use to store water. Fishing nets sprawled across the beach to dry were attached to lengths of cable as sinkers. The wing of a Zero was hoisted on struts to provide shelter from the sun for the old men of the village. Primitive outdoor kitchen ranges had been constructed out of flat pieces of salvaged metal. A rusted Zero propeller was being utilized as a roasting spit. A copra-drying shed had been thrown together from the sides of a tank.

  ‘That’s the American Dump,’ said Kella, indicating the heap of wreckage. ‘It’s even in the tourist guides. The villagers are making good use of the junk on it, so they won’t let scrappers come ashore here to remove anything.’

  He headed the canoe towards the airstrip. Ten minutes later, he cut out the engine. For some time he sat studying the coastline.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Sister Conchita.

  ‘It’s very quiet,’ said Kella.

  ‘If this was a movie, I could say “too quiet”,’ suggested the nun. ‘I’ve always wanted to play the part of a cowboy hero’s sidekick.’

  ‘Gabby Hayes or Andy Devine?’ asked Kella.

  ‘I was thinking more along the lines of Dale Evans,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘She inherited Roy Rogers’ fortune after he died.’

  ‘Whatever happened to your vows of poverty?’

  ‘Even a nun can dream! Mind, I don’t know what I’d do with the stuffed body of Trigger.’

  Kella grunted. Sister Conchita seemed to know her Western movies. Why didn’t that surprise him? Not for the first time he wondered what she had done before she had become a nun. She never talked about that period of her life. He picked up a paddle and began steering the canoe towards the shore. Soon they were pulling the craft up on to the sand by the rest-house. There were still no signs of life. Presumably no charter flights had been booked for the day. There was talk of a small local internal air service being established in the Solomons over the next eighteen months, linking the major islands, but until that should happen, there were no regular internal flights, which meant that the airstrip, over a mile in length, constructed during the war by the Japanese for bombing raids, often lay dormant for weeks at a time. Sister Conchita and Kella walked up to the sprawling rest-house.

  ‘Wait here,’ said Kella, and went inside.

  There were a dozen small bedrooms leading off the corridor next to the lounge and kitchen. Only one of them showed any sign of being occupied. All the guests seemed to have moved out and taken their luggage with them. The only bedroom in use was larger than the others. It contained Mary Gui’s clothes and books. She had been sharing the room with a man. The bed was unmade. Kella went through the clothes discarded by the man and thrust into a brimming laundry basket. There were several T-shirts bearing the inscription Sydney Stadium. Kella had seen Joe Dontate wearing similar tops. He threw the T-shirts back into the wicker basket. He wondered how long Dontate and Mary had been sleeping together. Western girls had a reputation for cheerful promiscuity, which was why so many European seamen had deserted in the area during the nineteenth century. Why should Mary Gui be any different? Kella certainly had no claim to her. It looked as if his brief liaison with the rest-house keeper could definitely come under the heading of a one-night stand. Somehow the thought saddened him.

  Sister Conchita was waiting for him outside when he returned. ‘The place seems deserted,’ she said. She saw the look on the sergeant’s face. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  Kella shook his head. ‘Stay close to me,’ he said. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  They walked round to the back of the rest-house. A lean-to kitchen was attached to the main building by a sloping thatched roof. They could hear the sound of sobbing before they turned the corner. Mary Gui was sitting on the ground, with her back to the wall. A large kitchen knife was in her hand. Tears coursed down her frightened face. She scrambled to her feet and raised the knife threateningly when the pair approached her. W
hen she saw who the newcomers were, she dropped the knife to the ground with a groan of despair.

  ‘Joe’s gone!’ she sobbed. ‘I think something bad has happened to him.’

  ‘Joe Dontate?’ asked Kella. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He had a row with Imison and the other Americans this afternoon,’ said the girl breathlessly. ‘He went to tell them that he wasn’t going to help them any more. I was in our bedroom. I could hear them quarrelling, so I went to the door of the rest-house. Then Joe ran down the beach and jumped into a canoe and paddled away across the lagoon. Ten minutes later, the Americans left. They started up the launch and set out in the direction Joe had taken. I think they were looking for him. I’ve been waiting here for hours but he hasn’t come back.’

  ‘You poor girl,’ said Sister Conchita, putting an arm around Mary’s shoulders.

  ‘Why did Dontate tell the Americans he wasn’t going to help them any more?’ asked Kella.

  ‘You know why,’ sobbed the girl. ‘You talked him into it. You persuaded him to stop helping them. That made them angry.’

  ‘I never thought he’d pay any attention to me,’ said Kella, half to himself.

  ‘Joe thinks a lot of you. He would never let you know that, but he often said that you were the only policeman in the islands worth a damn. He never liked the Americans anyway; he was only helping them for the money. When you spoke to him in the shell house and told him that he shouldn’t get mixed up with the foreigners, it made a big impression on him. Joe pretends to be very modern, but he’s as traditional as any other islander at heart. He pays a lot of attention to custom. When he came back to the rest-house after he had seen you in Gizo, he said that the Solomons didn’t need the Americans, and that it had been a mistake getting involved with them in the first place.’

  ‘And he tried to break away,’ said Kella. ‘Why didn’t he just wait until the Americans had left?’

  ‘That isn’t Joe’s way. He had to tell them to their faces.’ The girl sniffed. ‘He even gave them their money back.’

  ‘Perhaps he paddled away to fetch help,’ suggested Sister Conchita.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Kella. ‘Tell me, did he go straight to his canoe after he had left the Americans, or did he go somewhere else first?’

  Mary frowned in concentration. ‘He stopped off at the kitchen,’ she said. ‘Then he ran down to the canoe.’

  ‘Was he carrying anything?’ asked Kella.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Mary.

  Kella started looking round the small kitchen. He picked up a basket of clams. ‘Could he have taken some of these?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mary. ‘It’s possible.’

  Kella started to move away. ‘I think I may know where he went,’ he said. ‘Look after Mary for me, will you, Sister Conchita? When she feels better, take her over to Gizo. Tell the District Commissioner what happened here this afternoon. Get him to radio Police Headquarters in Honiara to send a launch and half a dozen armed policemen to the lagoon to pick Imison and the others up.’ He looked at the still shaking Mary. ‘Have you any idea where the Americans might have gone?’

  ‘Olasana,’ said Mary Gui. ‘They kept talking about Olasana. They visited Kasolo but they said that it was too small. They wanted a bigger island visited by the survivors of PT-109.’

  ‘They will have stopped off somewhere else first,’ said Kella. ‘Do as I ask, Sister. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Sister Conchita.

  ‘To find Dontate,’ Kella said. A thought struck him and he turned back. ‘I suppose it was Dontate who knocked me out in the bush village on Kolombangara?’

  Mary nodded guiltily, biting her lip. ‘He said that you were getting too close,’ she confessed. ‘He’d come up to the village to keep me company when I had the custom tattoos.’

  ‘How did he get me back down to the coast?’

  ‘Some of the bushmen helped him carry you down. Joe didn’t want to hurt you, honestly he didn’t. He just wanted you out of the way for a week.’

  ‘But I didn’t know anything! I still don’t.’

  ‘Joe thought you did. He was sure that you’d seen something in the village. He wouldn’t tell me what.’

  Kella shook his head in exasperation. He left the two women and went back to the mission canoe on the beach. He filled the tank from a tin of diesel kept in a shed on the sand. Then he pulled the canoe back into the water, started the engine and set off across the lagoon. It was a fine, cloudless morning. On his way he passed fishing canoes out searching for shoals of the multicoloured crayfish, tuna, kingfish and bonito that abounded in the local waters. Dolphins swam lazily alongside him before getting bored and veering off.

  Kella thought of the first time he had met Joe Dontate. It had been ten years ago on Malaita. He had been a young constable accompanying a district officer on a tour of the saltwater villages. At one fetid, evil-smelling spot among the mangrove swamps, a headman had arrested a young villager for murder. The district officer had held a preliminary court in the village square, to determine whether the accused should be taken back to Tulagi to stand trial.

  The accused was plainly guilty; he had stabbed to death in plain sight a man from another family in the village, as payback for a long-running blood feud. The district officer had decreed that the killer would be dispatched to the administrative centre as soon as a government vessel visited the area. Kella had been standing next to the young villager, guarding him in the witness place, when the islander had produced a knife, smuggled into the court hearing by a wantok, and attempted to stab the policeman before escaping into the bush.

  Fortunately for the young constable, a Chinese trading vessel had put in at the village earlier that day, and its crew had seized the rare opportunity for a little relaxation and entertainment by sitting in with the villagers at the open-air adjudication. One of the deck hands had been Joe Dontate. Although he was only about twenty, he already bore the facial scars of the successful amateur boxer he was becoming. His reflexes had been better than anyone else’s present as well. As the accused man swung the knife at an unprepared Kella, Dontate, sitting in the front row of the crowd, had swayed to his feet, caught the islander’s knife arm with one hand and thudded his free fist into the villager’s kidneys, sending the man choking and writhing to the ground.

  Afterwards a sheepish Kella had tried to thank the western deck hand. Dontate had waved aside his attempts at gratitude.

  ‘Do me a favour and don’t ever tell anyone that I helped one of whitey’s policemen,’ he had growled.

  Their paths had crossed on a number of other occasions in the decade that had passed since that day. On several occasions Kella had arrested Dontate for drunkenness and other minor offences, but soon the islander had become much too shrewd to attract official notice. He had never taken offence on any of the occasions that Kella had closed in on him, and over the years the policeman had developed a considerable unofficial liking for the taciturn, straightforward and extremely brave miscreant. He was not looking forward to what he thought he might see before the morning was over.

  Half an hour after leaving Munda, Kella steered past the island of Parara. He cut out his engine as he approached a much smaller island a few yards away. He jumped out and pulled the canoe up on to a narrow strip of coral.

  The island was flat, less than fifty yards long and not as wide. Trees grew right down to the water’s edge, leaving no room for a beach. A well-trodden track led into the trees. Kella began to walk down it. He exercised care. He was on the notorious Kundu Hite, more commonly known as Skull Island. For centuries it had been used as a shrine for the skulls of priests and the leaders of the headhunting expeditions that had flourished in the adjoining lagoons of Roviana and Vonovana. The bodies of prisoners taken on such raids were buried beneath the ground and blessed by the priests, called hiamas, who prayed that the accumulated mana of the dead warriors would be transferred to their conquerors. Not only
might there be guards stationed on the island, but there would be the spirits of the dead headhunters to contend with as well. He almost wished that he had brought Sister Conchita with him. It would have been interesting to see how strong her mana was among the dreaded malevolent ghosts that haunted the island.

  A few minutes’ walk took him to a sandy mound in the centre of the islet. Triangular open-fronted stone and wooden shrines revealed hundreds of human skulls piled high in gruesome towers. Offerings of shell money on long strings of vine decorated some of the shrines. Decaying stone axes, some of great age, had been discarded on the ground as a reminder of the place’s bloody past.

  Carefully Kella trod among the shrines until he saw what he had come for. Lying in front of one of the larger stone monuments was the body of Joe Dontate. There were three bullet wounds in the front of his bloodstained shirt. Kella bent over to examine the body. Four or five empty clam shells lay on the ground. Stones had been placed over the dead man’s eyes. The ex-boxer had not been dead long. Presumably the Americans in the launch had tracked him down and killed him. They would have had no trouble in making him out across the flat, open waters. In any case, Dontate would not have been trying to avoid being seen. The islander would have made no attempt at concealment or even resistance. Knowing that his death was inevitable once he had spurned the Americans’ offer, he had come to Skull Island for two reasons: to draw the Americans away from Mary Gui, and to reach the traditional resting place of western chiefs, so that he would at least die among his peers.

  Kella heard someone moving behind him and turned, clenching his fists. Three islanders in loincloths were standing on the path. Two were young and had picked up axes from the ground. Standing in front of them was a tall, dignified islander in his fifties.