Devil-Devil (13 page)

‘What a mess,' said Lorrimer feelingly.

‘Don't worry, it gets worse. There's also the matter of Lofty Herman's shooting, all those years ago at the mission station. As far as I can work it out, the whole thing — the two deaths and the subsequent attack on Sister Conchita — was sparked off when the beachcomber's body was uncovered.'

‘I shouldn't bother too much about that one at the moment,' said Lorrimer, suddenly formal.

‘Why not?'

‘I can't tell you that. Just take my advice and leave the Lofty Herman killing alone.' The inspector turned on the ignition and let in the clutch. ‘Suffice it to say that matters are in hand. You've got two other murders on your plate, and you aren't allowed to leave Honiara. That should be challenge enough, even for you.'

18

THE CUSTOM WAY

Thirty minutes later they reached the huts of Doma, a small village scattered around a creek on the Guadalcanal coast. Kella got out of the jeep and waited until Lorrimer had spun the vehicle around and, with a fatalistic wave of his hand, had headed back in the direction of Honiara. Then the sergeant walked down the sandy beach fringed by palms.

Half a dozen tough-looking Guadalcanal men were sitting on the sand in the shade of a tree, staring apathetically out to sea at a rusting landing barge anchored half a mile off the shore. They appeared totally unimpressed by the arrival of a police officer.

‘Where-im now thisfella Sam Beni?' Kella asked.

The men took their time in replying. Finally one of them removed a clay pipe from his mouth and jabbed the stem in the direction of the barge.

‘Me wannem for talk-talk long thisfella,' said Kella. ‘Spose you wannem, you take me out long barge?'

The Guadalcanal men did not exactly laugh but it was plain from their attitude that the last thing any of them was going to do was to convey Kella to the barge and its dangerous cargo. Kella did not blame them. They had risked their lives a dozen times filling the tethered craft in the first place.

He indicated a small canoe drawn up under a palm tree. He asked whose it was. One of the labourers indicated possession by raisingan eyebrow. Kella asked if he could borrow it. The owner's scornful expression told him that if the police sergeant was foolish enough to want to approach the barge, he did not object.

‘Side bilong you,' he yawned.

Kella thanked him and pushed the dugout down to the water's edge. He found that he was soon paddling even more slowly than the chopping water necessitated. When he was a few yards from the barge, he stopped, steadying the canoe with occasional thrusts of his paddle against the tide.

As usual the barge now looming above him was loaded with hundreds of discoloured, mildewed armament shells of all sizes, both American and Japanese. Among the heaving lethal piles Kella could discern small two-pound mortar shells, hand grenades, stick bombs, howitzer, armour-piercing and highexplosive anti-tank shells, all jumbled together in a tortured, constantly shifting, deadly parody of metal sculpture.

On top of the heap stood a sinewy islander in his mid-forties. He was clad only in a pair of tattered shorts. One by one he was throwing the shells carelessly into the sea. When he saw the sergeant he nodded, without pausing in his work.

‘
Tua futa
,' Kella said respectfully, using the Lau term for a member of the artificial islands' extended family. By the use of the phrase, implicitly he was asking his
wantok
for help.

‘Hello, Kella,' said the other man indifferently, continuing the use of the Lau dialect. ‘What do you want?'

‘I'd like to talk to you, Beni.'

‘You do, do you? Come up here then.'

‘I can hear you fine from here,' Kella said quickly.

Sam Beni shook his head. ‘Oh, no,' he said. ‘If any policeman wants to talk to me he can come aboard.'

Still steadying his canoe, Kella considered the situation. It was typical of Beni's caustic sense of humour that he would want to face down any representative of the law. The barge was a floating death trap, liable to explode at any moment. Beni's employer, a New Zealander, had a contract to find and dispose of the thousands of live shells and grenades left behind in the bush after the war on Guadalcanal. In order to do so, he had recruited the hardest and most reckless men on the island. They combed the bush, collecting the long-neglected and volatile ammunition, and loading the shells and grenades on to the barge. The New Zealander then towed it out to sea behind his powerful motor boat, and anchored it, before returning to the safety of the shore. Only Beni would remain on the barge, with the suicidal task of dumping the shells into the sea.

‘Well, are you coming up?' taunted his
wantok.

Kella took a deep breath. Gingerly he tied his canoe to a rusted projection on the side of the barge and clambered gingerly aboard. He stood balancing uneasily on the shells groaning and shifting ceaselessly beneath his feet. The barge creaked and swayed against its anchors.

Kella could see the small volcanic island of Savo on the far side of Ironbottom Sound. He knew that if he made the wrong movement, or if his luck ran out, two of the live shells could crash into one another, sending the barge and its occupants up in a sudden eruption of flame and smoke.

Beni waited, enjoying every moment, as Kella tiptoed across the ammunition to him. Then he sat on the side of the barge, lighting his pipe with a careless scrape of a match on one of the casings. His cold eyes surveyed the other man without a flicker of liking or emotion of any kind.

‘Well?' he grunted.

‘I want to ask you about Marching Rule,' Kella said.

‘I don't give history lessons.'

‘After that I need to find Pazabosi and arrest him.'

Beni bowed his head in reflection. When he raised it there was an unidentifiable glint in his usually dead eyes.

‘That's different,' he acknowledged. ‘I don't owe Pazabosi anything. What do you want to know?'

‘What part did he play in the uprising?'

‘Not as much as he'd like you to think. He was one of us at the beginning, but when the Brits started sending in armed policemen in 1948, he went off back to his mountain-top.'

‘That doesn't sound like Pazabosi,' frowned Kella. ‘I fought with him in the war. He was as brave as they come then.'

‘Oh, the old man was never a coward,' acknowledged Beni disdainfully. ‘He just wasn't interested in losing, and he knew by then that Marching Rule was doomed. While the rest of us went to prison, he stayed up in the bush, waiting for a better moment to arrive. He's making his move at last, is he? I'm surprised. I would have thought that by now he would be preparing for his long journey to the spirit world.'

‘I'm not sure what's happening, but he's in the thick of something,' said the police sergeant. ‘That's why I have to find him. Only you can help me. You were one of the big men in Marching Rule. The people on Malaita still respect you for that. If anything against the government is happening on the island, you will still be told about it.'

‘How do you know I'm not still involved with Pazabosi?'

Kella shook his head. ‘That's not your style. You think he ran away to fight another day. That's not good enough for you. You had one chance ten years ago, and you put everything you had into it. When you lost it took too much out of you.'

‘Thanks,' said Beni bitterly.

‘Well, look at you, perched on top of a rubbish heap, like a wounded eagle. This is no place for a warrior
ramo.
You won't try again. You may frighten me and your friends shitless with your recklessness with these shells out here, but really these days, Beni, you're one of the
neena
, the unprotected.'

Beni roared with incandescent rage and jumped to his feet. Without taking his eyes off the sergeant he lifted a shell at random from the pile. He raised it above his head with a surge of muscle and suddenly hurled it back down on to the rest of the ammunition.

Kella leapt backwards, raising his hands instinctively to protect his face. He went sprawling on the shells. Involuntarily he closed his eyes and waited for the explosion. Nothing happened. When he opened his eyes again everything was as it had been. The precarious cargo was still grunting and shifting, the sea lapped against the side of the barge. Across the bay the volcano on Savo remained calm. Kella was only aware of the pumping of his heart.

‘I do that most days,' said Beni, his anger replaced by melancholy. ‘None of them have gone off yet.'

‘Keep trying,' panted Kella, scrambling to his feet and trying to control the trembling of his arms and legs. ‘You never know your luck. Are you going to tell me about Pazabosi?'

‘Why should I? You're the white man's policeman. What did you ever do for the Marching Rule movement? I don't suppose you were even in the Solomons when we tried to throw the Brits out.'

‘That's right,' said Kella. As soon as the war was over he had been sent back to a secondary school in Fiji and then on to the Australian university. By the time he had returned in 1952, the movement had collapsed and the ringleaders like Beni had been sentenced to prison terms.

The revolt had been based on the premise of cargo. It was rumoured among the people that the black GIs, who had so impressed everyone with their wealth and generosity during the war, had never really left the Solomons. They were said to be hiding in the bush with their vehicles and equipment. If the islanders rose against British colonial rule, the rebels declared, the GIs would emerge and aid them in their struggle against oppression. When that had been accomplished, shiploads of cargo would arrive from overseas for all the islanders.

‘I spent three years in the white man's jail,' Beni went on. ‘When I came out no expat would give me a job, except this crap one. The Lau fool who did it before me lasted three months until he made his final explosion. My land has been confiscated, and I won't go home as a cringing
neena
, begging for food. And you expect me to help the colonials!'

‘I'm not doing it for the white man,' said Kella. ‘I want to stop Pazabosi from tearing Malaita in half. Marching Rule didn't work, neither will Pazabozi's uprising. All we've got to do is to wait a few more years and we'll gain independence. If Malaita belongs to Pazabosi by then, the Lau people won't have a chance.'

‘Do you believe everything the white sugar-lips tell you?' jeered Beni.

‘I think for myself,' said Kella doggedly. ‘Remember, I am the
aofia.
'

It was a card he disliked playing, but he had discovered over the years that sometimes there was no alternative.

Beni shrugged. After a time he nodded reluctantly. When he spoke again his tone had softened a little. ‘I was present at your
maoma
feast, when you were anointed as
aofia
,' he said quietly. ‘You must have been about ten then. The custom priests had already picked you out and started training you. There were thousands there. All the Lau people, from Suu down as far as Ataa Cove, came to witness it. They dedicated you out on the reef and gave you the areca nut to carry with you always, as a sign of peace. I hoped for a time that this might be the start of something important for Malaita, but then the war came, and when it ended, you had gone. So I decided to do something for myself.'

Abruptly Beni started tossing the shells into the sea again. Sparks and shards of rust flew as the ammunition collided noisily on its perilous descent over the side of the barge.

‘You should have waited,' Kella told him. ‘You should still be waiting. When the time comes, I shall do something. I promise. Now,' he persisted, ‘when I get back to Malaita, where will I find Pazabosi?'

Beni stopped, the sweat rolling down his lean face and body. Kella reached into his pocket and produced something. He could not remember the last time he had been forced to use it. He handed it to Beni, who stared reflectively at the object in the palm of his hand. Beni studied the nut expressionlessly before handing it back.

‘Nikona village, in the Kwaio high bush,' he said briefly. ‘Whatever Pazabosi's doing, and I'm not saying he's plotting an uprising, he's doing it there. Now go away and let me get on with my work. And never pretend that we have anything in common.'

‘There's certainly one big difference between us,' said Kella, climbing with stomach-churning relief back down into the comparative safety of his canoe.

‘What's that?' asked Beni from the barge.

‘I care whether I live or die,' shouted Kella, picking up his paddle.

Kella hitched a ride back into Honiara in a lorry taking a load of yams to market from Visale at the far end of the road. He was dropped off outside the Mendana Hotel. He looked at his watch. It was only four o'clock. He realized that he did not want to go back to his office and the company of the expatriate police officers.

Instead he walked up a quiet sloping side-street to the Roman Catholic headquarters building. It was an old, sprawling wooden edifice, which doubled as an administrative centre for the mission and a hostel for priests and nuns visiting the capital from the outlying districts.

In the hall, cooled by a ceiling fan, he asked the shy local Daughter of Mary Immaculate novice behind the desk where he could find Sister Conchita. The novice stood up and led him in silence through the building to a large back yard. In one corner stood an old, decrepit van. From beneath the vehicle projected a pair of slim ankles. The novice tapped the ankles with her foot. There was a whirling noise and a mechanic's flat trolley was propelled at speed from beneath the Bedford. Sister Conchita was lying on it, blinking up at him in surprise and some discomposure, a spanner in her hand. Her habit was flecked with oil and there were smudges of grease on her nose and cheeks. She scrambled to her feet.

‘They soon put you to work then,' said Kella, indicating the sagging vehicle.

‘Just running repairs,' said the sister. ‘There's the blessing of the fishing boats tomorrow night. We'll need this to drive the sisters down to the wharf.'

Belatedly Kella extended a hand in greeting. Sister Conchita hesitated and took it reluctantly, releasing her grip almost at once. Kella wondered what was wrong. On his island of Sulufou he had thought that they had become almost friends. Now they were strangers again. Perhaps it was the black and white thing, once they were back in so-called civilization.

‘I thought I'd see how you were,' he explained. ‘John Deacon got you back here all right then? I must see him before he goes back to his plantation. How did you get on with John?'

‘All right,' said the sister expressionlessly.