Devil-Devil (4 page)

‘You will take care with Pazabosi, won't you?' he asked Kella, returning to his armchair. ‘He's a vindictive fellow. Weren't you friends once?'

‘In the war,' Kella replied. ‘We were in the same patrol boat.'

‘Oh yes,' chuckled the priest. ‘Deacon's pirates.'

‘As a matter of fact,' said Kella, ‘I ran into Pazabosi again this morning. He even placed a curse on me.'

He told the old man of his encounter with the magic man in the bush. Father Pierre rubbed his chin uneasily.

‘I don't like the sound of this,' he said. ‘Why has Pazabosi come down from the mountains? He hardly ever leaves his village these days.'

‘I can think of two possible reasons,' said Kella. ‘One is that he's putting another cargo cult uprising together.'

Sister Conchita was collecting their empty glasses. ‘Do you know what a cargo cult is, sister?' Father Pierre asked her.

‘They sometimes occur when a tribal society comes into contact with a more affluent one,' said the nun. ‘The local people become jealous of the possessions — the cargo — of their visitors. Sometimes they try to use custom magic to empower an uprising, believing that the cargo will then become theirs.' She paused. ‘There was something like that on Malaita after the war, wasn't there?'

‘Marching Rule,' said Kella.

The sister nodded and went out.

‘What other reason do you think that Pazabosi might have to leave his village?' asked Father Pierre.

‘He particularly doesn't want me on Malaita. I'm the
aofia
and maybe Pazabosi doesn't want a peacemaker on the island at the moment. I'll keep my eyes open when I go up after Mallory tomorrow.'

Father Pierre looked alarmed. ‘Do you really think you should go into the mountains?' he demurred. ‘After what happened last time—'

‘If that's where Mallory is, I don't have much choice,' said Kella.

‘No, I suppose not,' said the old man sadly. ‘But take care.'

Suddenly the priest looked tired. Within a few moments his chin was on his chest and he was breathing evenly as he slept.

Kella sat on in the living room, trying to put his thoughts in order. In the six months during which he had been banished from Malaita, too many things had been happening here for his liking. There was the strange custom death of Senda Iabuli, and the subsequent panic-stricken flight of Peter Oro to investigate. Were they linked to the sudden appearance of Pazabosi the magic man and his effort to deter Kella by placing a curse on him?

And there was something badly wrong at the mission too, he thought. He wondered why Sister Conchita was so uneasy. She was as jumpy as a three-week-old kitten, yet Kella could have sworn that normally the nun was a most self-composed young woman.

In fact, the whole area seemed in a state of disarray. His superior Chief Superintendent Grice might not like it, but Kella would have to stay and investigate.

5

THE BONES TABU

Kella had been lying for several hours in the dark behind the clump of ngali nut trees at the side of the graveyard. The oppressive night was humming with mosquitoes. Fireflies darted in vicious groups, like tracer bullets. He could hear the swelling chorus of cicadas and hunting owls. Squads of the fruit bats known as flying foxes headed aggressively through the air for their feeding grounds.

Kella prepared for a long stay. After he had left the sleeping priest that afternoon, he had made a tour of the huts on the station, pursuing the elders among his
wantoks
, those people on the mission who shared his language. Because the station was so close to Kella's home among the artificial islands, most of the local islanders were members of his clan and owed him both hospitality and the truth. Even so, there had been an unusual number of shifty silences and uncomfortable evasions from the old men and women he had encountered.

Kella suspected that most of the elders knew that something of moment was occurring but were not sure of the details. His feeling had been reinforced when he showed the islanders the carved bone he had found under the comfort stones in the neighbouring village. They admitted that it was a bones
tabu
, issued by a magic man to a potential victim, but claimed to have no knowledge of Senda Iabuli or the dead villager's grandson Peter Oro.

Of all people, Mendana Gau had taken him closest to a solution. Gau was a scruffy, middle-aged entrepreneur from the Santa Cruz island group. For a number of years he had lived by his wits on the mission station, mainly by acting as the local agent for a Chinese trader in the capital. Gau ran a small store on the edge of the station, selling tinned rice and meat. Sometimes he would go on mysterious and probably illegal trading trips into the interior of the island.

Kella had run Gau down in the back room of his store, first brushing by the truculent but suddenly circumspect islander who was serving behind the counter. The sergeant found Gau engaged in easing the metal casing of a wartime shell into a large sack of copra amid a pile awaiting collection by the next boat. The trader's instinctive malevolent glare changed to a look of worried servility when he recognized the policeman.

‘Sergeant Kella,' he said unconvincingly. ‘What a pleasant surprise!'

‘You really should move with the times,' Kella told him, indicating the reinforced sack of copra. ‘Even the Brits open the sacks and check the contents before they weigh them these days.'

‘Ballast for the boat,' muttered Gau. He was small and rat-like, wearing dirty khaki shorts and a tattered T-shirt revealing a substantial beer belly. A cigarette end dangled constantly from his lower lip. His flickering red-rimmed eyes met Kella's sceptical gaze. He shrugged. ‘If the Customs officials are busy they don't always open the sacks at the wharf,' he explained.

‘Gau, your whole career of petty robbery has been a triumph of optimism over bitter experience,' Kella told him, sitting on the edge of a rickety table. ‘I'm here because I want some information from you.'

‘I know nothing,' said the trader humbly. ‘I am a mere outcast here, a poor itinerant exile from the Eastern islands.'

‘And rightly so,' agreed Kella, ‘because without a doubt you are also the biggest thief and liar on the station. However, on this occasion you might be of use to me. What do you know of the bones
tabu
?' From his pocket he produced the carved and polished bone he had found among the heating stones.

‘Nothing,' whined Gau. ‘These things are of the Lau culture.'

Kella stood up. The trader flinched and cringed away. Ignoring him, Kella walked over to the rusty weighing scales in a corner. He picked up four of the heavy metal counterweights lying on the floor.

‘I wonder what would happen if I took these back to Honiara to be checked?' he mused aloud. ‘If they proved to be wrong you would lose your licence.'

A spasm of fury contorted Gau's unshaven face. As if by accident he knocked a tin of corned beef off the table. It fell to the floor with a clatter.

‘If that's supposed to be a signal to your hard man out there, don't bother,' said Kella mildly. ‘He'll be long gone by now. He is of the Afena Kwai tribe on the foothills above Gwau Rate. Good enough for bullying women and children who complain about your prices, but I doubt if he'll stand up to a Sulufou man.'

‘There would be no question of opposing the law in this establishment,' Gau said hastily. ‘Especially when that law is also the
aofia.
'

‘Don't you dare talk about the
aofia
, you miserable little man,' Kella told the trader. ‘That name is for the Lau people only. You degrade it even by breathing its name.'

Gau looked genuinely frightened at the sudden change in the other man's attitude. He scuttled as far away from Kella as he could, throwing up his thin arms in supplication.

‘Just ask me what you want to know,' he snivelled. ‘Ask and get out!'

‘Bones,' said Kella, half-ashamed of losing his temper. ‘That's all I've been hearing today. What do you know about them?'

‘There's a bones
tabu
on the station,' said Gau cautiously. ‘So the old people say. It came about two days ago.'

‘Who is it from?'

‘I don't know.'

Kella looked hard at the trader. Gau capitulated. ‘They say it is from Pazabosi, the old magic man,' he said with a rush.

‘Is this bones
tabu
over yet?'

‘I don't think so. Soon. Very soon.'

‘Who is mixed up in it?'

‘I don't know. You can hit me if you like, but I still can't tell you. Business bilong whitefella.'

Kella questioned the other man closely for another ten minutes, but it was evident that the resentful trader knew no more.

‘Very well,' he said finally, walking towards the door. ‘Thank you for your help, Mr Gau.' Kella nodded at the weights he had discarded. ‘I'll be checking those before I leave. If they still give false weight tomorrow I'll tear your store down plank by plank.'

Afterwards he had dined on a roast chicken prepared by Bulko in his hut by the light of a battery-operated lamp over a substantial stove. They had eaten the meal in comfortable basket chairs while they listened to a Hank Williams LP on a portable record player. He had not bothered to question the headmaster. The Roviana man would never be told anything by the local islanders. Nor, with his attitude of benevolent self-interest, would Bulko want to know what was happening, unless it threatened his comfort or well-being.

Instead Kella had inquired about Peter Oro, the missing schoolboy. Bulko had been typically vague. Yes, the boy was away on personal leave to arrange the funeral of his grandfather. No, he did not know much about the pupil, except that he was both bright and rebellious, but who wasn't at that age? Wearily the headmaster promised to make inquiries among the teachers who knew the boy.

Bulko was plainly less than enchanted with his charges. As he poured a beer for the sergeant he embarked upon a litany of complaints.

‘Just because they've been selected for higher education they think they need never get their hands dirty again,' he grumbled. ‘They'll do anything to avoid working in the gardens. They slope off into the trees and go walkabout, make up sob stories, go sick. Why, last week some of them even broke into the tool store and scattered the gardening equipment all over the place, just to avoid working on the land. We're still looking for some of the missing stuff.'

‘What a shame,' sympathized Kella. ‘Especially after the example of unrelenting manual work you set them.'

‘That's different,' said Bulko firmly. ‘They only think they're special. I
am
special.'

After the meal, under the cover of darkness, Kella had gone to work, making his way by a circuitous route to the graveyard on the northern boundary of the station. Several hundred white wooden crosses extended over the well-tended ground leading into the trees. Kella crouched behind a bush. For several hours no one approached the cemetery. Even the converted islanders shared the Lau religion's fear of death. Few would willingly come near the bone-yard after dark.

It was past midnight before Kella heard approaching footsteps and the creaking of wheels coming from the direction of the mission house. The sergeant shifted his position. He was feeling so stiff that he was sure that some of the corpses around him would be able to give him a start and beat him over a twenty yards sprint.

Three figures approached through the gloom. One was undoubtedly Sister Conchita in her white robes. She was accompanied by two frightened young island sisters wearing the blue habits of the Daughters of Melanesia. With some difficulty, the American nun was carrying three spades. The two island girls were pushing a wheelbarrow carrying something long and bulky encased in woven mats.

Kella looked on as the three women started inexpertly to dig a grave. For fifteen minutes they worked doggedly at their task. Maliciously Kella let them get a couple of feet down into the ground. He did not move until the sisters had lowered their spades and were lifting the bundle from the wheelbarrow. Then he stood up and walked quietly towards them. The Melanesians saw him first. They screamed, dropping the mats and their burden. The mats separated, dispersing their contents of darkened bones on the ground.

‘Place im e fall down no good too mas,' said Kella, making one of his infrequent forays into pidgin. He translated for the benefit of the astounded Sister Conchita. ‘This is a bad place for a man to fall down.'

The American recovered her self-possession quickly. ‘What is the meaning of this, Sergeant Kella?' she demanded, in a voice that, for all her visible efforts, she was unable to prevent quavering. ‘You do realize that this is consecrated ground?'

‘An appropriate enough place for a skeleton,' agreed Kella. He was on his hands and knees, reassembling the framework in some sort of rough order. Sister Conchita was silent for a moment.

‘How . . .' she began uncertainly. ‘I mean . . .'

‘Bones,' said Kella, not looking up, his fingers working busily. ‘Ever since I landed on the island two days ago I've been hearing nothing but bones. There was a suspicious death at a village near here after a bones curse had been placed on the dead man. A magic man came down from the high bush just to frighten me off with a bones
tabu.
When I reach the station I find that there are rumours that a bones curse has been put on something here as well. There's only one place where a bones curse could really operate and that's in a graveyard. So I decided to keep watch here for a couple of nights.' He paused and then added, ‘Then there was the way you were behaving this afternoon.'

‘Me?' asked Sister Conchita, startled.

‘You were apprehensive about something. You knocked over a glass when Father Pierre said that the priest was responsible for the safety of everyone on his station. When the father at the Santa Isabel mission spoke over the sked asking permission to bury a non-Christian in his cemetery, you looked really upset. That made me wonder whether you knew something about what was going on here.'

‘You've been very observant,' said the nun in a small voice.

‘Believe me,' said Kella grimly, ‘I haven't even started yet.'

His groping hands had found the skull. Quickly he turned it in his hands. At the back of the cranium there was the unmistakable indentation of a bullet hole.