Killman (7 page)

‘What do we do now?’ asked the headman.

‘Nothing; it is all done,’ Kella said. ‘You can send someone to the fishing nets if you like. They will find that the ghost has left the village.’

Two young men broke away from the throng, running hard.

‘Why did you say the
manatai burina?’
asked one of the islanders. ‘Why did we have to apologize to the gods? How had we offended them?’

‘What do you know about the old woman?’ asked Kella in return.

‘Nothing,’ said an ancient man. ‘She was very old. It seemed as if she had always been here.’

‘Not always,’ said Kella. ‘She was not even a Lau woman.’ He paused to let the information sink in. When he saw that he had their complete attention, he went on: ‘It was an understandable mistake. After you told me that the gods had rejected her, so that her spirit couldn’t leave your village, the most likely reason seemed to be that you had made her farewell ceremony to the wrong gods.’

‘We always perform the
alu
to our shark gods,’ protested the headman.

‘Exactly,’ said Kella. ‘And naturally they never reject the ghost of a Lau man or woman. If they would not accept the spirit of the old woman, perhaps secretly she did not worship them. When I looked at her body, I found the tattoo of her original clan on her back. It was small and had faded over the years, and was almost hidden by other tattoos she had had engraved over it, but her original clan totem was still there, obscure as it was, for those with eyes to see.’

‘What was it?’ asked the headman.

‘The wings of a bird in a small
w
formation,’ Kella said. ‘Your old woman worshipped the eagle gods. Originally she must have come from the Tolo clan in the bush hills. That is their sign. Many years ago she must have married a Lau man, moved down to one of the saltwater villages and had his children. By the time of her death here everyone who had known her had passed away, so it was assumed that she was a shark worshipper like the rest of us.’

‘But why did she keep it a secret that she came from Tolo?’ asked one of the islanders.

‘Wouldn’t you?’ asked Kella as his listeners nodded. ‘The Tolo people are supposed to be foolish and primitive. She had married into the Lau clan and so had taken a step up in the world. She and her husband kept quiet about her shameful background, but secretly all these years she still sacrificed to the eagles.’

‘And now that you have said the
lau agalo
, the eagle gods have sorted matters out and taken her ghost over to Momolu,’ marvelled the headman. ‘I wondered why you threw the sand into the air. It was a tribute to the eagles, wasn’t it?’

Kella nodded. Before he could answer, the two young men came running back from the direction of the pile of fishing nets. Their beatific expressions were enough to tell the waiting men that the ghost no longer rode in the fishing village. A ragged cheer went up from the assembly. The headman seized Kella’s hand and pumped it.

‘Thank you,
aofia,’
he said fervently. ‘Tonight we shall have a feast in celebration. Will you stay for it?’

Before Kella could answer, there was a cry from the crowd. One of the men pointed a tremulous finger at the sky over the island of Savo. Far away in the distance across Ironbottom Sound, the outline of a large bird soaring on a current of wind could just be made out.

‘An eagle!’ whispered the man. ‘It is carrying the ghost of the old woman over to Momolu!’

Cries of reverent acquiescence came from the others. Kella knew that the bird was too far away to be identified. It could be a hawk, or some other small bird of prey. Or just possibly it might be an eagle carrying another tired soul to the fabled delights of the heavenly island. In any case, it was time he was leaving. There was only one more task to perform before he went. He did not expect any great results from such a long shot, but all the same he summoned the compliant headman.

‘I must go,’ he told him.

‘Let us know if ever we can help you,’ said the other man.

‘Count on it,’ Kella said.

He shook the other man’s hand, waved farewell to him and climbed back on to the main road heading towards the town, mulling over this latest contribution. It was imperative that he get back to Malaita immediately, investigate the deaths of the two villagers and, most important of all, find out what Mayotishi had meant by a third killing.

He stopped and looked back at the village. Already life was proceeding normally. The shade of the old woman who had haunted it so recently no longer hovered over the huts. Some of the men were pushing their canoes out into the sea. Others had returned to the recently
tabu
site of the fishing nets and were starting to assess and repair them again. Older men were chattering cheerfully in groups, already embellishing and exaggerating the story of the
lau agalo
sending-off ceremony that had almost gone so badly wrong.

It was important not to have preconceptions and imperative to take nothing for granted, thought Kella. If there had only been one old villager remaining who knew the truth of the old woman’s antecedents and tribal loyalties, the villagers might have investigated the matter of the eagle gods for themselves. He had only been the catalyst, looking at things through fresh eyes. Yet there was no denying the importance of his brief contribution. Kella was a modest man and he always gave the spirits their full due. As a boy he had been shown the path granted to few others. The old custom priests who had trained him in their mountain recesses had taught him how to approach the Lau gods with confidence as a go-between. The success of his recent efforts at the fishing village only underlined the importance of his continuing to use his gifts as the
aofia
to bring peace and law to Malaita.

That meant that above all he must track down and apprehend this killman who was causing so much distress on his home territory. Furthermore, he must do so without taking Chief Superintendent Grice and the other white policemen into his confidence. If he was to be free to use his literally god-given gifts for the benefit of the islanders, he could not risk being restricted by the expatriates’ often inexplicable regulations, even if the results did not bode well for him in the carefully supervised and seldom deviating world of the old colonials.

‘Can I give you a lift?’ asked a voice.

Kella looked up. One of the capital’s small fleet of ancient taxis was waiting at a lopsided angle at the side of the road. It looked as if it had been retrieved intact from a junk heap. Mayotishi the Japanese tourist was standing invitingly by the open door. He smiled thinly.

‘Allow me to take you back to Malaita, Sergeant Kella,’ he said, as if by some divine intervention he knew what the policeman had just decided.

Kella climbed into the back of the taxi. What part, if any, was the already ubiquitous Japanese going to play in his ongoing investigation? The sergeant knew that he would have to be circumspect in his dealings with Mayotishi.

The frightened refugees had been drifting into Ruvabi mission station since early that morning. At first they had arrived mainly singly and in pairs. Then groups and whole families had started to appear, begging for shelter and protection from the killman. Now it was noon and there were over a hundred Melanesians scattered miserably over the formerly immaculate sward. Sister Conchita saw that they were from both saltwater and bush villages. There were even a few she recognized from the last feast of the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark, when Papa Noah had been murdered in such bizarre circumstances just a few days before. The islanders must have been terrified beyond belief to leave their homes to seek sanctuary in this manner. Sister Conchita wondered why that could be. The death of the cult leader had been a dreadful thing, but these islanders lived with sudden death every day of their hard, risk-filled lives. Why were they suddenly fleeing from their homes? Could it be the fear of the unknown?

She walked across the compound from the classroom in which she had been teaching, a brisk, tiny, urgent figure in a white habit reaching to her ankles, consulting the fob watch she carried attached to the belt around her waist, next to a string of rosary beads. At the vigorous tolling of the noon bell, children and teachers emerged hungrily from the other thatched bamboo classrooms of the boarding school on the bluff above the river, shortly before it emptied into the lagoon. They headed eagerly for lunch in the long dining hut. A hundred yards away, close to the ever-encroaching tangle of bush, lay the sprawling mission house and the neat, red-roofed stone church. Scattered haphazardly about the station were the huts of those Christian families who had abandoned their villages over the years and come to live closer to the source of their faith.

Sister Conchita walked over and checked that the young blue-robed local nuns were feeding the milling newcomers from the sacks of rice she had earlier carried over from the mission store. One of the nuns looked at the unhappy islanders.

‘They are frightened,’ she said sadly. She lapsed into pidgin for emphasis as she hurried away to fetch another sack of rice. ‘Frit too much!’

Sister Conchita nodded sympathetically. It had been a busy morning. She had risen at dawn and spent a period at silent prayer and meditation, trying to look deeply into herself, as she had promised the mother superior in Honiara. ‘Concentrate on your devotions,’ the old woman had warned. ‘Do not have too much contact with the outside world.’

Chance would be a fine thing, thought Sister Conchita. Already it had been her limited experience that the outside world had a habit of crowding in on her, despite all her good intentions to lead a withdrawn, contemplative and hopefully placid life. This morning alone her time had been fully occupied with teaching the children and looking after the refugees, without even starting to attend to any of her administrative duties.

She checked that the food for the visitors was being cooked in large simmering tureens on stone-clustered fires all over the grass. Earlier she had held an impromptu sick call in the hospital, attending to cuts and abrasions sustained by some of the islanders in their hasty flight from their villages. Later she would have to find shelter for them all and any later arrivals who might turn up. She decided that it was also time that she looked in on Father Pierre.

The old priest was lying on the iron bedstead beneath rough blankets in his tiny simple room when the nun took him in a glass of lemonade. There was a basketwork chair on the old woven carpet. A wooden cross was suspended on bush twine from a wall. An oil lamp with a trimmed wick stood on a small table. Termite-infested books were piled everywhere on the floor.

‘How are you feeling?’ asked Conchita, handing her patient the glass.

‘Better,’ whispered the old priest unconvincingly. He was a thin, wizened man in his eighties. A few wisps of white hair were drawn across his scalp. A pair of spectacles with bottle lenses balanced precariously on his nose. For such an aged man his face was curiously smooth and untroubled, like a river pebble worn smooth by the rushing water of time. He was wearing an old-fashioned white nightgown, buttoned at the neck despite the heat. He had arrived in the Solomons from Alsace-Lorraine more than fifty years before. Over the ensuing decades he had carved Ruvabi Mission almost single-handedly from the bush.

‘I wish you would let me take you to the hospital in Honiara,’ said Sister Conchita as she smoothed the old priest’s pillow.

‘Don’t fuss, girl,’ said Father Pierre calmly. ‘You’re merely witnessing the incipient ravages of old age. My end isn’t near yet. Have you heard anything more about the death of the so-called Papa Noah?’

Conchita shook her head and took the proffered half-empty glass from the old man. The best part of a week had passed since she had returned from the lethal feast at the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark. She had sent a radio message to the mission’s headquarters in Honiara recounting the events she had witnessed, but so far had heard nothing in return.

‘It’s a strange business,’ said Father Pierre, his voice growing weaker. ‘These breakaway churches are usually a bit of a joke, but when someone gets murdered, that’s a different matter.’

‘I suppose Shem, the Tikopian, will take over the sect now,’ said Sister Conchita idly.

‘Who?’ asked the old priest.

‘You remember I told you that there was a Tikopian claiming to be Papa Noah’s son? He even called himself Shem, like Noah’s son in the Bible.’

‘You never mentioned that he was a Tikopian,’ said Father Pierre, trying to sit up. ‘What did he look like?’

Sister Conchita tried to recall the features of the broad-shouldered, shambling Polynesian. She did her best to describe him to the old priest. Father Pierre listened in silence until she had finished.

‘I wish you had told me this earlier,’ was all he said.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think it was important,’ said Sister Conchita, gently easing the distracted man back on to his pillow. She was pretty sure that she had mentioned it, but Father Pierre tended to forget things

‘Of course it’s important,’ said Father Pierre weakly. ‘It’s probably the most important thing about this whole business. You must tell Ben Kella about it at once, if you haven’t already done so. And while you’re about it, tell that big Anglican Guadalcanal man, Brother John, too.’

‘Brother John already knows,’ said Sister Conchita soothingly. ‘He was asking Papa Noah all sorts of questions at the feast about the future of the sect.’

‘That makes it worse,’ breathed Father Pierre. ‘He’s a shrewd fellow. So is Sergeant Kella, fortunately. You’d better send for him. That’s it! Send for Ben. Tell him there’s a Tikopian connection. There’s trouble on Tikopia. The Anglicans thought that they’d converted the island to Christianity, but if you ask me, it didn’t quite take. That’s why there’s going to be trouble.’

His head fell to one side and soon he was asleep. Sister Conchita smoothed his pillows once more, and looked down at the sleeping man. She admired Father Pierre more than any other man she had ever known. She had first been sent to Ruvabi at the beginning of the year as a young novice, after four years’ postulant training in the USA, unsure of herself and her new vocation and already the subject of several inadvertent brushes with the church authorities. The wise and compassionate old priest had taken the impulsive new sister under his wing, treated her as an adult, allayed her fears and calmed her doubts. He had also worked her harder than she had ever been used in her life before.