by Graeme Kent
‘Or perhaps the Mae adopted her as a forsaken one and shared their secrets with her,’ suggested Abalolo seriously. ‘The evil spirits can take on great power when events are thrown out of balance. I saw that for myself on Tikopia.’
‘I still don’t get it,’ said Brother John. ‘Are you trying to tell me that after her husband died, his widow took the form of an evil spirit and continued fighting on his behalf? She killed Papa Noah and the two islanders?’
Kella shook his head. His eyes were fixed on the backs of the two seamen, who were struggling with their precious load as they carried the long and heavy box through the trees. He hoped that Mayotishi was paying them well for their work.
‘No,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t like that at all. Even if she had been possessed of magical powers, Toiliu would not have had the strength to overpower men. Because she was an outcast living in a tabu area, no one would have helped her with such attacks. Anyway, after the death of her husband, her quarrel would not have been with the islanders. Shimadu’s enemies were the Americans and the British. Believe me, there is no way that Toiliu could be the killman.’
While he was tidying matters up in his mind, there was one more box that he needed to tick. He took Mayotishi to one side and lowered his voice. ‘You were the guest expected by Papa Noah at his last feast, weren’t you?’ he asked.
The Japanese nodded, showing no surprise. ‘How do you know that?’ he asked. ‘Have you been conferring with your spirits again?’
‘Not for something as simple as that. There were a couple of indications. Why would the choir sing “Japani Ha Ha!” unless it was to remind a Japanese visitor of the war? I’m afraid that Papa Noah had rather a warped sense of humour. After all, who else would greet a visiting nun with a chorus of naked dancing girls? To the best of my knowledge you were the only Japanese on Malaita at that time. And according to eyewitnesses, Papa Noah announced at the feast that he was about to become rich. Hardly anyone’s got any money in that region. As an expatriate, you would be considered truly wealthy. What did you do, offer to make a contribution to his church funds if he set his adherents to look for a Japanese soldier in the bush?’ Mayotishi nodded without speaking. ‘So what happens next?’
‘I shall inform the authorities and make arrangements to transport Lieutenant Shimadu’s ashes back to Japan, where they will be buried with full honours.’
And as sure as fate, you will keep the contents of the lieutenant’s diary a matter between yourself and your superiors in Tokyo, thought Kella. The book had been a thick one and the Japanese official had given them only a perfunctory summary of what had befallen Shimadu and the woman in their years on the banana plantation. How thorough an account might the dead officer have given of the withdrawal from Guadalcanal seventeen years ago, and the subsequent sinking of the vessel upon which he and the others had been embarked? Almost certainly the contents of the diary were destined to remain for a long time in the secret archives of the Japanese intelligence service. That still left the problem of Mayotishi. If the Japanese had been lurking in the area of the ark when Papa Noah had been killed, could he have been the killman?
‘We’ll start back in an hour,’ Kella said. ‘I have something to do first.’
Sister Conchita walked across the field to fetch Kella. She found him sitting a few feet into the banana plantation. He was holding a bush knife and was surrounded by the decapitated sodden stubble of half a dozen bushes. It looked as if he had run amok.
‘Letting off steam?’ suggested the nun.
‘I was wondering how the grass on top of the grave was kept so green,’ said Kella. ‘Also, I’ve been thinking about the killman.’
‘What’s to think about?’ said Sister Conchita. ‘We don’t know anything.’
‘It’s not quite as bad as that,’ Kella said. ‘We know that he’s big and strong. All right, so Papa Noah was an old man, but the two islanders who were killed were young and tough. Even if they were attacked from behind, the killman would have to be prepared for a struggle. He was confident enough to go for them. He is a strong man.’
‘What else?’ asked Sister Conchita.
‘He seems to know his way about Malaita. The two islanders he killed lived a long way apart. The killman got from one district to another without trouble.’
‘Perhaps he had a guide.’
Kella shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘This killer delights in setting puzzles and making people guess what he’s going to do next. He’s a solitary ramo. He wouldn’t risk an accomplice giving him away.’
‘You’ve forgotten something,’ said Sister Conchita.
‘What’s that?’
‘He also has magical properties. He can drown people where there isn’t any water.’
‘There’s nothing magical about that,’ said Kella, standing up.
‘How does he do it, then?’
‘Think about it,’ Kella said. If he made things too easy for the nun she might stop working things out for herself, and she had a great natural talent for that. ‘I just have.’
They followed the bush track back down to the coast for about a quarter of an hour. The trees around them were still as scrawny as witches and spaced irregularly, allowing plenty of light to percolate. Then they heard the crackling of flames. They turned and looked back in the direction from which they had just come. Smoke was drifting into the sky.
‘The plantation is on fire,’ said Brother John.
Without a word Kella got the others moving again, pushing them roughly down the sloping track. Only Sister Conchita tried to resist, but Brother John and Mayotishi took their cue from the sergeant and closed in on the nun, urging her forward. Kella stood looking back, and then hurried to catch up with the rest. There was nothing left among the banana bushes for the lieutenant’s wife now that even her husband’s bones had been taken from her. As the group hurried in subdued silence along the track, Kella, whose hearing was keener than that of the others, could just distinguish a woman’s screams being carried over the smoke-filled air.
35
STAYING ON
Kella left the Honiara police headquarters building on Guadalcanal early in the morning and started walking in the direction of the Roman Catholic mission at Visale,
He was lucky and picked up a lift on an empty truck returning from the town market. He sat in the back with a few other villagers as the vehicle jolted along the coastal road on the ten-mile trip on one of the few made-up thoroughfares on the island. As the sun rose in the sky, they passed the villages of Kakanbona and Tanavasa and then skirted Bonegi Creek, where two Japanese troop carriers had sunk at the beginning of 1943. It was said that both vessels, partially submerged beneath the surface only twenty metres from the shore, provided ample opportunities for tourists wishing to dive and snorkel, but in common with most veterans of the war, Kella had never attempted to visit either ship.
He thought about the interview he had conducted the previous day at police headquarters with Abalolo, the Tikopian pastor. The man had been of little help. Yes, he had been driven to despair by the revival of the pagan faith on his island, reinforced by a stream of Tikopians who had joined the Church of the Blessed Ark on Malaita. Yes, he had travelled to Malaita in an effort to stop this, but had been unable to do anything about it. He had been reduced to lurking in the bush, relying on supplies of food from Brother John. One night, almost demented with loneliness, he had accosted Shem and fought him, to no good purpose. Kella did not think that the shy, inarticulate Tikopian was a killer, but he was still not sure where Brother John fitted into the equation.
The truck dropped the sergeant off at the village of Tambea, with its distinctive beaches of black and gold sand, before carrying on to its destination at Lambi Bay at the very end of the road. Kella walked along the beach, avoiding the village, which was a little way inland. From this makeshift natural harbour the Japanese had secretly evacuated ten thousand sick and wounded men under cover of darkness when finally they had abandoned
their campaign on Guadalcanal at the beginning of 1943. He wondered whether Lieutenant Shimadu had been one of them. Perhaps he had hoped that his war was almost over and that he would be returned home. Instead he had spent the rest of his life as an exile on a tabu site in the high bush of Malaita, with only a former slave girl for company. The pair of them had tried to form some sort of life together, thought Kella; according to the lieutenant’s diary entries they had even achieved a modicum of happiness. He hoped that had been true.
A hundred yards past the village he turned inland and walked along a track through a copse of palm trees. At the end of the path a small house had been erected on stilts. It was more substantial than a typical village house but in a bad state of repair. It had a galvanized-iron tin roof and large windows across which shutters could be folded at night. A lopsided veranda with holes gaping dangerously in the floor leaned precariously at an angle in front of the house. It was the sort of dwelling once found all over the islands when expatriates defied the climate and disease to scrape a living as planters and traders. Kella climbed a couple of steps on to the veranda and tapped on the open front door of the house. There was no answer. He entered the main room.
The shutters on the window had been closed, leaving the room in semi-darkness. One door led to a bedroom and another to a small kitchen. The room was cluttered with heavy, old-fashioned chairs and settees that looked as if they had been in place for a long time. There were framed sepia photographs on the walls. The floor was covered with empty whisky bottles and half-eaten tins of food. A man lay asleep on a settee in the gloom, breathing stertorously. Kella tiptoed over to him and saw that it was Ebury, the retired government officer. He was unshaven and reeked of alcohol and cigar smoke.
Ebury stirred in his sleep and opened his eyes unwillingly. He saw Kella and scrabbled for a shotgun lying amid the debris by the settee. He swung his feet to the floor and sat up unsteadily, the shotgun cradled on his lap.
‘Who the hell are you, and what do you want?’ he demanded in a husky but cultured voice. ‘How dare you enter my house uninvited!’
‘I’m Sergeant Kella of the Solomon Islands Police Force,’ said Kella.
‘I don’t care who you are. You’re still a kanaka and you’re trespassing on my property. Get the hell off it!’
Kella recalled an episode on a government boat taking him back to Malaita immediately after the war. The vessel had been crowded. Ebury had been the only white man on board. As of right he had occupied the solitary cabin, below decks. After a few hours he had complained petulantly about the noise being made by the feet of the women and children deck passengers above his head. Acting on the expatriate’s instructions the bosun had crowded the passengers uncomfortably together at the rear of the ship, so that the district officer’s sleep had not been further impeded.
‘I need your help,’ Kella persisted.
‘Well you’re not going to get it. Clear off now!’
‘It’s like this,’ said Kella. ‘Most of the government records were destroyed when Tulagi was evacuated in 1942. There are no colonial officers still serving who were in office before the war. That’s why I’ve come to you.’
‘You’ve come to the wrong place, Sergeant. In case you don’t know, I was dismissed from my job for incompetent and drunken behaviour. I don’t remember a bloody thing, and I don’t want to. Now will you go?’
Ebury bent forward and felt on the floor for a bottle. He unscrewed the top and drank deeply. ‘Are you still here?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know if you’ve heard about them,’ Kella said, ‘but there have been a series of murders on Malaita.’
‘So what? You guys have been killing one another since God was a little boy.’
‘That may be true,’ said Kella, ‘but I don’t think this is a case of internecine tribal warfare. The killings have been planned carefully and approached with subtlety. I think that either an expatriate is involved or that the reason for the killings is something much more important than a bush quarrel. That’s why I’ve come to you. You were an administrator before the war. Can you think of any court case or local appeal anywhere in the islands at that time that might cause someone to bear such a grudge that he would want to achieve payback on a really large scale? Something that would be enough to make a man or woman want to kill and, if necessary, be prepared to spend years planning revenge against the administration?’
For a moment Ebury almost looked interested. Then he shook his head abruptly and drank from the bottle again.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.
‘For a time we thought that perhaps a surviving Japanese soldier was conducting a one-man private war in the bush,’ said Kella, almost talking to himself. ‘That would be motive enough for the killings, if someone thought he was still fighting for his country.’
‘He knew how to fight, Johnny Jap.’ The cue sparked Ebury into life for a moment. ‘Got to give him that. Never knew when he was defeated. I had a lot of time for the bloody sons of Nippon. I had a good war, as a matter of fact. It was the peace that buggered me up.’
The expatriate’s head rolled back and his eyes closed. Kella gave up. ‘I’ll be at Police Headquarters in Honiara until Thursday,’ he said, without much hope. ‘I’m staying on for the farewell ceremony at Henderson Field for a Japanese soldier whose body we found on Malaita. If you do think of anything, try to get a message through to me.’
Heedless, Ebury started snoring. Kella walked to the door.
36
DEPARTURE
There was a brief lull in the ceremony on the airstrip at Henderson Field outside Honiara. The police band had played a selection from Gilbert and Sullivan and the students’ choir from the British Solomons Training College had sung ‘Abide with Me’. Now, just outside the small one-storey departure lounge that doubled as a customs reception area, the senior members of the administration were getting into arthritic position for the farewell ceremony to mark the departure of the ashes of Lieutenant Shimadu from the Solomon Islands to Tokyo.
The High Commissioner, resplendent in his white uniform, referred to by his wife in one of her more disenchanted moods as his ice-cream seller’s suit, topped precariously by a plumed hat, was standing with the Chief Justice in his more subdued but equally sweat-inducing robes of office. A little to one side of them, the expatriate heads of the various government departments were lining up in three ranks with the practised ease of permanent and pensionable officers who had been jostling for position in the cruel heat of the sun for most of their careers. They were uniformly middle-aged, most of them wearing rather shabby suits that were a little too tight for them. Their hand-stitched artificial sharkskin jackets and trousers had originally been purchased in happier times during overnight stops in Hong Kong on their way home on leave, from the celebrated twenty-four-hour tailors of the crown colony. Unfortunately, with no one quite certain when the cold hand of localization might start sending them on a more permanent departure, few had invested lately in new suits, which at best might be worn only several times a year at official receptions at Government House.
Perspiring in the early afternoon heat, the Accountant General squeezed in between the Director of Agriculture and the Registrar of Co-operative Societies. Next to them the Comptroller of Customs and Excise stood gloomily with the Conservator of Forests, the Commissioner of Income Tax, the Superintendent of Marine and the Director of Medical Services. Behind them the Commissioner of Police and the Government Statistician fell into line with the Financial Secretary, several district commissioners and a dozen chief executive officers.
Behind them on hard-backed chairs under a slanting awning affixed to the roof of the airport building sat the wives of the officials, upright, uncomfortable and rigidly resigned to whatever boredom the afternoon might bring, in print dresses, stockings, long gloves and large hats. They resembled a slightly ageing but carefully preserved chorus line from an amateur production of Floradora. At the back stood s
everal hundred islanders, headmen and government office workers bussed out to the airstrip for the occasion. There was even a press section, a roped-off square next to the wives. The Chief Information Officer had hoped for an influx of newsreel companies for the occasion, perhaps even several cameramen from television stations, but he had had to be content with half a dozen reporters from Australasian newspapers and the wife of a Chinese merchant who worked part-time as a stringer for an American press agency.
A small fence separated the crowd from the landing strip upon which waited a thirty-nine-seater turboprop Fokker F-27 Friendship aircaft in the orange livery of Trans-Australia Airlines, waiting to take its passengers to Papua New Guinea and connections on to Hong Kong and Tokyo. Crates of cargo had already been loaded into the hatches and the pilot was awaiting the signal to take off as soon as the guest of honour arrived and the other passengers were released from the airport waiting room.
The only relics remaining of the war years lay a couple of hundred yards to the west of the airstrip. These were a few crumbling sheds and an abandoned open-air steel control tower consisting of a winding staircase leading to a platform forty feet high surrounded by a knee-high rail.
Sister Conchita stood at the back of the crowd on tiptoe, in an effort to see what was going on on the tarmac. She had been invited to the ceremony at the insistence of Mayotishi but had been too shy to claim the reserved seat she knew awaited her up front among the great and the good. She could not see any of her companions on the last trek up to the banana plantation of the Kwaio bush, though as she scanned the crowd she noticed Florence Maddy talking vivaciously to Sergeant Ha’a. The musicologist was wearing a white suit and carrying a bag. Presumably she was travelling on the Fokker Friendship and was saying a temporary goodbye to the sergeant. She was looking almost animated, her hand on Ha’a’s sleeve as she stared into his rolling, rather embarrassed eyes, reinforcing Sister Conchita’s opinion that Florence Maddy, although a perfectly pleasant and inoffensive woman, was a throwback to a previous age in which some females preferred to defer to a man, any man. The thought gave her an idea. She waited a few minutes for them to complete their farewells and then walked towards the couple.
