One Blood (20 page)

The second man was taller than his partner. A faded, mottled scar ran down one side of his face, and his front teeth were broken and discoloured. Like his companion, he spoke with an Australian accent.

‘We’ve got our orders,’ said the bald man. He had been unable to dislodge Kella, so he had stopped shoving. He looked annoyed about the fact. ‘No unauthorized visitors are allowed on the island. Things have changed since we arrived. We run a tight ship here these days. So go back where you came from.’

‘Why should I? Have you thought that it might be nicer here?’ said Kella mildly. ‘Perhaps I prefer it.’

Both men looked disconcerted. They did not seem easily able to handle people who answered them back. The bald man put a hand on Kella’s shoulder and pushed him. Kella sighed. Normally he was an equable man, but over the past few days he had been sandbagged from behind and press-ganged on to one of the most evil-looking and smelling cargo boats in the South Pacific. He had also met a girl who puzzled him, and Kella did not like being puzzled. He did not want such cavalier treatment to become a habit. Keeping his eyes innocently on the bald man’s face, he jerked his elbow viciously into the stomach of the scarred man. The scarred man grunted and doubled up. At the same time, Kella took a step backwards and kicked the bald man in the groin. The bald man fell to his knees in the water with a splash. The scarred man straightened up and threw a roundhouse swing at the sergeant. Kella ducked beneath it and hit the scarred man in the stomach again, this time with a right-hand uppercut. The scarred man sat down abruptly in the lagoon and bent forward, retching. The bald man started to struggle to his feet. Kella let him move into a crouched position, and then brought his knee up in a parabola under the bald man’s jaw. The man grunted, fell backwards and lay motionless, blood trickling down his chin. Kella looked down at the two men.

‘When you get sent back home,’ he said, ‘and judging by
your performance just now, that will be sooner rather than later, I should seek work in tougher pubs. You need the workout. You guys have got soft.’

The bald man lay where he was, moaning softly, but the scarred man started groping in the air and trying to drag himself to his feet. There was a rush of oncoming feet, and a dozen or so Malaitans who had been dragging tree trunks across the beach charged over. Some were bearing sticks. At the sight of them the scarred man groaned and dropped back into the water. Kella waved the islanders off.

‘Leave them alone,’ he told them in dialect. ‘Just make sure that no one disturbs me while I’m in with the boss.’

Michie was waiting for him in his office. The Australian was looking defiant, but he had backed off to the furthest wall.

‘No more arsing around,’ Kella told him. ‘What’s been happening? Why have you beefed up security, if that’s the right phrase?’

‘Orders from head office,’ Michie said sullenly. ‘I knew those two cowboys weren’t worth a shit as soon as they arrived.’

‘You just can’t get the right sort of hired muscle these days,’ said Kella unfeelingly. ‘They’re all too busy entering bodybuilding contests. But why did your head office in Japan decide that you needed more protection?’

Michie did not answer. Kella dropped into a chair. He was hungry. His plane had landed at Munda airstrip only an hour ago, and he had paddled straight over to the logging island.

‘If I tell the Malaitans on this island to stop work for a week and to prevent your technicians from working as well, they’ll do it. You know that, don’t you?’ he asked.

For a moment Michie looked defiant. Then his shoulders sagged and he sat down behind his desk. ‘You’d do it, too, wouldn’t you?’ he asked. ‘What sort of a copper are you?’

‘Unusual,’ said Kella. ‘What’s happened since I was last here to make you pull up the drawbridge?’

‘There was a radio message from head office,’ said Michie. ‘They were afraid that local activists might be stepping up their operations against the island. So they sent those two so-called hard men over from one of their operations in Papua New Guinea to keep the place secure. A waste of space, the pair of them.’

‘And?’ prompted Kella.

‘They said they were taking additional precautions at a higher level. They wouldn’t tell me what that meant. That’s all I know. You can tear the camp to pieces, I still wouldn’t be able to tell you any more. Now will you kindly sod off? As if I haven’t got enough on my plate, I’ve had orders to show a bunch of visitors round the place.’

Reflectively Kella walked back down to the water’s edge. He had the feeling that many things at the logging camp had changed since his last visit to Alvaro. Fifty yards offshore, a launch was coming to a halt. Its distinctive appearance marked it as the fifty-two-foot-long vessel with a steel hull and an aluminium superstructure belonging to the Australian tourist company.

A dozen canoes propelled by Malaitan labourers were heading out to the ship. The Malaitans remaining on the beach had allowed the two big Australians out of the water to sit on one of the logs littering the beach. The bald man’s jaw was swollen. The scarred man was hunched forward, holding his stomach. Kella paid no attention to them. He saw Zoloveke, the older Malaitan who had taken him to the temple in the bush on his previous visit, and beckoned him over. Zoloveke came forward grinning, followed by a few more islanders. He jerked his head in the direction of the two stricken white men.

‘The next time you do that, tell me first so that I can come and watch,’ he said happily.

‘Have there been any other visitors here since I last came?’ Kella asked.

‘You think I spend all day on the beach like a Chinaman waiting for customers?’ asked Zoloveke. ‘How would I know? I’m a working man.’

‘I saw someone a few days ago,’ said a younger islander in Lau, coming forward. ‘I was working here on the beach when he arrived.’

‘What were you doing on the beach?’ asked Zoloveke. ‘Were you licking whitey’s arse again?’

The young man ignored the older one. There was an undercurrent of animosity between them. Perhaps Zoloveke suspected that the younger islander had ambitions to challenge his leadership among the Malaitan labourers on the island.

‘What did you see?’ Kella asked, before a quarrel could develop between the two men.

‘Boss Michie came down to the beach to meet him. This made me think that he was a big man. He spent much time in Boss Michie’s office.’

‘What was this visitor like?’

The young islander bit his lip with the effort of concentrating. Zoloveke jostled him impatiently to hurry the young man up. The islander refused to be rushed. ‘Blackfella,’ he said after a while. ‘A Roviana man, but I see him often in Honiara as well.’ He abandoned his native language which did not contain the words he was seeking, and broke into pidgin. ‘Plenty talk-talk long bigfella house. Himi luluai.’

‘Luluai,’ Kella said. ‘He was a talk-talk man, a politician?’

‘Him now,’ said the young islander triumphantly. ‘Politisen!’

‘What did he look like?’

The young islander was in full flow now. He seemed eager to display his knowledge of pidgin, while Zoloveke stood frowning disapprovingly in the background.

‘Hair bilong himi grey. Himi gottim mouthgrass. No catchim tuhat,’ he said.

‘A politician with grey hair and a beard, who did not sweat,’ said Kella. There was no doubt about it, the young islander had just described Welchman Buna.

The canoes were returning from the launch. Each one contained a white man or woman sitting behind the islander paddling. When they reached the shallow water, the Malaitan jumped out and signalled to his passenger to climb on to his back. Galloping through the spray, the islanders carried their white passengers piggyback and deposited them gently on the warm sand. Kella noticed Joe Dontate following behind the others, walking unhurriedly through the water. This must be the American tour party from Munda that he had heard about, he thought.

‘Welcome to Alvaro logging camp,’ boomed Michie, walking down the beach. ‘If you folks will just follow me to the company store, refreshments will be waiting for you, and then I’ll give you a conducted tour of the island. This way, everyone.’

Chattering animatedly, the tourists straggled up the beach after the logging boss. Most of them cast curious glances at the battered security guards slumped on the log. Michie ignored the two Australians.

‘I see that you’ve been doing your bit for community policing again,’ said Joe Dontate, stopping and indicating the two guards.

‘It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it,’ said Kella.

Michie was ushering the tourists into the company store. The Malaitans were dragging their canoes up on to the beach and dispersing to their jobs. Dontate did not move. He was wearing shorts and flip-flops. The long, smooth muscles of a professional athlete rippled effortlessly across his bare torso.

‘When are you going to stop picking on amateurs and see what you can do against me?’ Dontate asked.

‘Whenever you can fit me into your busy schedule,’ said Kella. ‘They tell me you’re too concerned with getting rich at the moment.’

Dontate grunted and turned away. He followed the tourists into the store. Kella watched the former boxer go. Dontate was right. One day the pair of them would clash. In the meantime, like Dontate, he had more important things to do. What had Welchman Buna been doing at the logging station? There were no votes to be garnered here. Kella also wondered about the tour party. It seemed to be turning up all over the lagoon. The visitors would have an excuse for being almost anywhere. There were still too many loose ends to be put together.

He pushed his canoe down the beach into the lagoon. Next he would look for Welchman Buna and ask the politician what he had been doing at the logging camp just before Jake Michie had increased the security arrangements there.

THE AIRSTRIP AT
Munda was crowded for so early in the morning when Conchita tied up her canoe at the wharf and walked up the slope. Eight or nine American tourists were waiting for the flight to take them back to Honiara. Joe Dontate was helping a couple of islanders to bring their luggage from the rest-house and take it down to the beach. Later it would be rowed out to a launch to follow the tourists to the capital. Clark Imison and his two partners were sitting on the ground in a semicircle apart from the other Americans, talking earnestly and ignoring the bustle. An attractive, self-assured Melanesian girl in a white dress walked across to Conchita with a welcoming smile.

‘Good morning, Sister,’ she said. ‘I’m Mary Gui, I supervise the rest-house. Were you looking for a room?’

‘No, thank you,’ said the nun. ‘I’ve just come over from Marakosi to pick up a consignment of quinine for our clinic on the morning flight. You look busy. Is everyone leaving?’

‘Most of the Americans are flying back to Honiara,’ said the girl. ‘Just a few are staying on for a couple more days.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Conchita. ‘Mr Imison and his two friends are remaining in the West.’

‘That’s right; how did you know?’ said Mary. ‘They must like it here. They’ve hired Joe Dontate to give them a special tour of the lagoon for the rest of the week. They want to go to Kasolo and Olasana in particular. I can’t think why. There’s
nothing at either place, not even a village.’

The too offhand way in which she pronounced the islander’s name made Conchita wonder if the girl’s feelings for the former boxer were more than casual.

‘I believe that they are two of the islands where John F. Kennedy was stranded in the war,’ she said.

‘Really?’ asked Mary, in a tone that expressed her lack of interest in the subject.

‘The war’s been over a long time.’

‘The past is important to some people,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘The time before can mean a great deal.’

‘Not to me,’ said Mary. ‘That’s the trouble with this place. Too many people are living in the past. Still, it’s good business for Joe, running his tours.’

That should be fun, thought Conchita, remembering how Dontate had expressed his low opinion of the three Americans the last time she had visited the rest-house. Still, the islander would do almost anything for money, and presumably Imison and the others would have a plentiful supply of dollars.

‘I’m sorry about your open day,’ Mary said. ‘It was going really well until that dreadful accident.’

‘Were you there?’ asked Sister Conchita.

‘Sure, who wasn’t? We don’t get many social events in the lagoon.’

‘You’ve been busy this week,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘This can’t be an easy place for a woman to run.’

‘It’s hard enough being a woman anywhere in the world,’ said Mary. ‘In the Solomon Islands it’s like pushing a pea uphill with your nose.’ She stopped, as if she had said too much. She looked at her watch. ‘I’d better go and make sure our guests haven’t left anything in their rooms,’ she said. ‘Excuse me.’

The girl walked back into the rest-house. She was tough-minded and independent to a degree far beyond that of the usual Solomons woman, thought the nun. She could not make
up her mind if she liked Mary Gui on such short acquaintance. She certainly had a strong personality. It would probably depend upon whether she was on your side or not. Glancing through the open door of the rest-house, the nun took in the layers of dust everywhere and the frayed and stained woven mats on the floor. Whatever her other qualities, Mary Gui did not seem to rate good housekeeping highly among them.

Conchita stood unobtrusively in the shelter of the eaves, looking on at the bustle of events around her and missing little. Mrs Pargetter, the plump tourist, saw her and waved. The nun waved back but did not walk over.

‘Good morning, Sister Conchita,’ said a voice in her ear.

Conchita turned. Welchman Buna had stepped out of the rest-house. As usual the politician was immaculately dressed. His khaki drill trousers were pressed to a knife-edge and he was wearing a white shirt that refused to wilt in the sun.

‘I’m beginning to think that if I stay here long enough I’ll meet everyone I’ve ever known,’ said Sister Conchita, shaking the man’s offered hand.