Killman (23 page)

The great mammals were being held in a small, clouded stream running down to the open sea. The water had been dammed with a series of logs piled on top of one another to form a small lake six feet deep in which the creatures were lying inert. The top pole was about fifteen feet high, too tall for even the most agile dolphin to surmount. Kella was incensed. Who could make such beautiful creatures suffer in this way? He increased his pace.

Two men were waiting for him at the foot of the hill in front of half a dozen tents pitched on a level patch of land on the coastal strip. They looked uncertain but determined not to budge. Kella recognized one of them.

‘Hello, Schuman,’ he said.

‘Kella,’ nodded the other man.

Ralph Schuman was a light brown half-caste in his late thirties, tall and broad-shouldered. He was a good-looking, arrogant man, with high cheekbones and a discontented expression. His father had been German, a veteran of the First World War who had married a local girl and bought a plantation on Choiseul in the western islands when land had still been cheap. Although the Japanese had overrun the area in 1942, Schuman senior had been allowed to continue to run his plantation, partly, it had been rumoured, because he had secretly declared his allegiance to the Axis cause. When the conflict ended, the occupying Americans had tried him for treason but the case had been dismissed due to insufficient evidence. The older Schuman had died soon afterwards. Eventually Ralph had returned from Australia, where he had been educated at a series of private schools, being expelled from most of them. After several years as a professional gambler on Australian racecourses, he had started to work his inheritance.

The plantation had not done well in the post-war years, due to the worldwide slump in copra prices. Ralph Schuman had been unable to find alternative employment in the colonial government’s service because of the general antipathy towards his family’s reputation, and had drifted from one ill-fated project to another. As a half-breed his mother’s clan distrusted him, especially those who had risked their lives scouting and fighting for the Allies. Kella knew him to be both tough and clever, a bad combination for an unsuccessful but ambitious man, and one tending to result in considerable bitterness and self-pity. Lately Schuman had been suspected of hiring himself out as an intelligent and resourceful strong-arm man and enforcer for a number of Chinese businessmen in Honiara, but so far he had been too wily to establish a criminal record.

The sergeant turned his attention to Schuman’s companion. He was a slight, erect white man in his fifties who looked as if he was accustomed to issuing orders and expecting them to be carried out. There was an undeniable power to the man, but he seemed oddly unfinished in appearance His arms hung loosely from his hard frame and his head was cocked interrogatively to one side at an angle. His face was a strange shade of grey. He reminded Kella of roughly finished carvings he had seen in Papua New Guinea, which revealed the original stone rather than resembling the humans they were supposed to portray.

‘This is Sergeant Kella, the local policeman,’ said Schuman. ‘Kella, this is my employer, Herr Boehrs.’

Boehrs extended a hand with watchful affability. ‘How do you do, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I hope there’s nothing wrong.’

‘I was interested in the dolphins you seem to have trapped,’ said Kella.

‘Ah, the project is still in its infancy,’ said the German. ‘All the same, we’re rather proud of our set-up here. Allow me to display it to you.’

The three men started walking towards the pool. Boehrs, who seemed to have well-developed antennae, had already detected the atmosphere of constraint between Kella and Schuman. ‘I take it you two have met before,’ he said.

‘We used to be in the Solomons rugby team together some years ago,’ Schuman said. ‘Kella went on to greater things and played professional rugby league in Australia. Maybe I should have followed his example.’

‘You were good enough,’ said Kella, ‘but you had one fault. You could never control your temper.’

‘For that matter I’ve seen you clear a Honiara bar on your own once or twice when you were sufficiently aroused,’ said Schuman. ‘Perhaps we have something in common – something something allsame.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Kella. ‘I hope not.’

‘Rapid action is not always a bad characteristic under certain supervised circumstances,’ said Boehrs placatingly. ‘I find docile people rather boring and lacking in character. They are also predictable.’ He changed the subject adroitly. ‘Actually I spent a few years in Australia myself. I found it a most interesting country.’

‘Which part – Loveday or Katarapko?’ Kella asked.

A brief smile of acknowledgement alighted on Boehrs’ chipped granite face like a passing insect, to be brushed aside automatically. ‘Dhurringile, actually,’ he murmured, ‘but still perceptive of you, Sergeant.’

Of all the Australian prisoner-of-war camps occupied by captured German officers during the war, Dhurringile Mansion, north of Melbourne in Victoria, had been reserved for the highest-ranking, the most dangerous and those considered highly likely to try to escape. After the war, a number of those now rootless German nationals with little inclination or incentive to return to their shattered country had opted to remain in the South Pacific. There was one small colony of former servicemen in Honiara and another in Auki. They were hard-working, reserved and as clannish as a group of high-bush
kanakas
.

The three men stopped by the dolphin pen. Kella hoped that he was not displaying his feelings of utter revulsion. The dolphins were floating listlessly on top of the water. They looked like poorly modelled facsimiles of the lively, energetic and affable mammals he was accustomed to seeing sporting in the waters of the islands.

‘May I ask the point of imprisoning them?’ he asked.

‘I note an expression of disapproval in your voice, Sergeant. You surprise me. I wouldn’t have taken you for a sentimentalist. This could be a breakthrough in the economy of Malaita.’ The hitherto sedate Boehrs could not keep the enthusiasm from his voice.

‘And presumably for your bank balance,’ said Kella.

‘The labourer is worthy of his hire,’ Boehrs said, the friendliness expunged from his tone at once. Here was a man who did not like to be contradicted, thought Kella, presumably because he was not accustomed to it. He seemed the sort who preferred to conduct his affairs from the bridge of a U-boat.

‘Actually, this is something completely new,’ Boehrs continued. ‘I am starting to export bottlenose dolphins to the USA, specifically to hotels in Florida.’

‘Hotels?’ asked Kella. ‘Do they get a special rate for their rooms there? I hadn’t thought of that, a tourist company for dolphins. They probably make much more considerate and entertaining guests than rich American tourists.’

‘Very funny,’ said Boehrs without interest. ‘Actually, it’s the latest craze in the States, so I’m not surprised that you are sceptical. In fact, in my opinion it’s going to be the next big market for South Pacific exports. Most big tourist hotels in the area of Miami are installing special pools, called dolphinariums. There the creatures are taught to perform tricks – leaping through hoops, jumping for food, that sort of thing. Believe me, such displays are attracting huge crowds. The hotel people can’t get enough dolphins of the right sort. I’m hoping to rectify that. Bottlenoses are in particular demand.’

Once again Kella felt physically sick. To think of the graceful, soaring creatures languishing so pitifully in the water before him being forced to perform circus tricks was enough to offend even the meanest of the bad spirits that abounded in the dark places of the islands.

‘You see,’ Boehrs went on, ‘it is an established fact that bottlenose dolphins are the most intelligent of all non-human species, cleverer among the animal kingdom even than gorillas and chimpanzees. A good trainer who stands no nonsense from them can whip them into shape in no time at all.’

‘
Whip
being the operative verb, I suppose,’ said Kella.

Boehrs shrugged. ‘I have no idea,’ he said indifferently. ‘I take no interest in that side of the affair. My main concern lies in getting the wretched creatures to the USA in one piece; well, a reasonable percentage of them, anyway. Naturally there is an acceptable amount of wastage.’

‘What do you consider acceptable, Mr Boehrs?’

‘At the moment, about fifty per cent,’ said the German.

‘And just how do you export them?’ asked Kella, trying not to dwell on the German’s chilling answer.

‘Once a month a Chinese vessel picks up the ones we have caught and transports them on wet rubber mattresses to Honiara, with Mr Schuman supervising their inter-island transit by sea. In fact, the ones you see in the pen in front of us now will be collected tomorrow. From there my American contacts have them flown in hammocks on cargo aircraft to the west coast of the USA. I can assure you, it’s a growth industry. What do you think of it? I truly believe that in a few years’ time, a tractable dolphin will be fetching ten thousand dollars in the open market.’

‘I think it’s obscene!’ said Kella, stung out of his usual good manners. ‘Your whole tawdry money-making racket is immoral!’ He forced himself to lower his voice. ‘To many islanders the dolphin is a sacred animal.’

‘And other clans hunt them down and kill them just for their teeth, to make necklaces,’ Schuman pointed out. ‘The bride-price for a virgin in some villages on Malaita is twenty thousand teeth. That represents a lot of dead dolphins.’

‘There are only three dolphin-calling villages on the island: Fanalai, Walande and Fourau,’ said Kella. ‘That is their custom, and has been for centuries.’

‘And mine is making money,’ said Boehrs. ‘More to the point, my company is operating a perfectly legal enterprise. If you don’t believe me, check with your superiors in the capital. I even have an export licence.’

Kella was sure that the man was right. Some glorified expatriate clerk in the Secretariat who had never left the capital would not have the remotest idea of the harm he was doing by giving Boehrs’ wicked project the go-ahead.

‘Please, Mr Boehrs,’ he said. ‘I beg you to reconsider. Your operation would be distasteful anywhere in the islands. Here in the Kwaio district it is positively dangerous. Some of the islanders on this part of the coastal strip worship dolphins and regard them as holy. There is even some affinity in their faith between the blood of Jesus and the blood of the dolphins they sacrifice from time to time. That’s why you’ve found it so easy to trap them. They’re half-tame. They come into certain lagoons regularly to be fed by the priests. Word will have got out about what you are doing. I’m sure that the locals will already be making plans to retrieve the animals.’

‘I would regret it exceedingly if that were to occur,’ Boehrs said. ‘But naturally I have taken precautions against such an eventuality.’ He indicated a group of islanders lounging on the beach. ‘They’re hardly storm troopers, I agree, but Mr Schuman here assures me that they are eminently fit for purpose should they be required.’

Kella had already noticed the men. Their tribal markings denoted that they were from the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal, a notoriously violent area. The ones watching him from the shore seemed typical of their kind: dispossessed villagers tired of trying to extract a living from thin soil, who had drifted over to Honiara in a quest for a better life. They had soon found conditions in the capital to be even less attractive than their previous rural subsistence existence. Forced to hire themselves out as casual labourers at one Australian dollar a day, when they could get it, increasing numbers of them were resorting to petty crime or working as bodyguards for dubious petty would-be entrepreneurs like Boehrs.

‘I am convinced that my men over there will be able to withstand any local pressure,’ went on the German. ‘And should opposition come from other sources, such as your good self, Sergeant, well in that case I shall just have to rely on Mr Schuman, my head of security, to deal with any such eventuality, within the law, of course; always within the law. Do you think you are up to the task, Schuman?’ he asked with forced joviality.

‘If that is what you wish, Herr Boehrs,’ said Schuman stolidly, looking at Kella for the first time. ‘It might take some time and cause a little damage to your property, but it could certainly be done.’

Kella edged round so that he was facing Schuman head-on. The half-caste regarded him impassively. Professional brawlers to a man and quick to recognize trouble when they saw it, the Guadalcanal men began drifting over towards the group by the pen. Boehrs swivelled his head from side to side, looking on with evident gratification. After a moment, with excellent timing, he broke the tension with a casual wave of his hand.

‘But of course there would be no question of such unpleasantness,’ he said. ‘We’re all friends here. Sergeant Kella, I am sorry that you object to my venture, but I have assured you that I am operating within the law. I have taken out a lease on this land. I am breaking no regulations. On the other hand, technically, I’m afraid that you are trespassing. I must ask you to leave now. I’m sure that you will appreciate that we are very busy.’

At the top of the slope leading away from the camp, Kella paused and looked back. Boehrs and Schuman were still watching him. Schuman raised a hand in mock salute. Kella did not respond. He walked on until the camp was out of sight and he was in an outer ring of trees on a track running parallel to the coast far below. Out at sea he could see the cluster of grey rocks known as the Ten Crocodiles. These were what Giosa, the tree shouter, had been referring to so cryptically the previous day.

The whole conversation at the tree felling had been a triumph of the Melanesian delight in wrapping a few salient points inside a mess of verbiage. Giosa had given the sergeant a precise geographical location when he had made his pointed reference to expatriates finding waves daunting. A few years ago a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary approaching in his canoe had been drowned while misjudging the currents swirling around the Ten Crocodiles, leaving the rocks with the irreverent and terse sobriquet of Whitey’s Folly. Giosa had thus been informing Kella, although not in so many words, that an expatriate was up to something in this area.