Solomons Seal (38 page)

Never having fought in a war, or seen a man in total defeat before, I had no yardstick with which to gauge Hans Holland's state of mind. The fact that he had mixed blood, some of it, like Perenna's, of Melanesian origin, did that make him more, or less, fatalistic? And to be worrying about a letter written in 1910 when the Papua New Guinea government would almost certainly blame him for what had happened and seek some form of retribution, a public trial, an execution even … I watched him as the Mortlock islander rowed us ashore. He was bareheaded, his red hair gleaming in the sun. Even his bare arms had a reddish glow. He didn't talk, sitting silent in the bows, a small canvas grip at his feet and his eyes staring into space. What was he thinking? I wondered.

What the hell was he thinking?

The bows touched the landing pontoon where the oil drums on which it floated were still intact, and he stepped out of the boat, the painter in one hand, his canvas holdall in the other. It was then that I got the
letter out of my hip pocket and slipped it into a side pocket where I could get at it easily. He held the boat for me, and as soon as I had joined him on the pontoon, he tossed the painter back on board, and the boat headed for the tug. I should have called the man back, told him to wait, but I was afraid that might be taken as provocation. I was treading warily, as though dealing with a psychopath, and I was very conscious that Hans was aware of my unease. He seemed to be smiling to himself as we reached the shore and started up the path together.

The houseboy appeared as mysteriously as before. Hans said something to him, and he fell in behind us, a silent shadow. I saw no sign of the woman. ‘Have you remembered where it is?' Hans asked abruptly.

‘In the safe, probably.'

‘That isn't what McAvoy said. He seemed to think you'd taken it with you.'

It was very hot, the air humid despite the sparkle. ‘It'll be there somewhere,' I said. And then I asked him what he was planning to do now. ‘Where will you go?'

He turned his head, a hard, angry stare. ‘D'you think I'd tell you, even if I knew?' His tone was hostile as though he thought I was gloating. It was a sharp reminder of the delicateness of my position, alone with an armed man whose mind might well be unhinged, and only his own houseboy, a native of Buka, witness to anything that happened. We walked in silence the rest of the way to the house, passing the little flyblown summerhouse, the houseboy drawing level and plucking at Hans Holland's shirt. But before he could
make his ritual offer of coffee or Coke, he had been silenced by the coldness of his master's gaze.

We reached the entrance porch with its unswept pile of winged insects. Hans trod them underfoot, not apparently noticing, pushed open the door and then stood back, motioning me to enter. From that moment he contrived always to have me in sight as though he were afraid I'd try to rush him. The sun was streaming in through the cobwebbed windows high above the halfway landing of the double staircase, dust motes shimmering in the air, and there was a lazy buzz of trapped insects. Where it had been gloomy before, it was now positively macabre, the stuffed crocodile, the carving, the panelling, everything brilliantly illuminated like a stage set. Hans closed the door. Then, watchful now and still keeping behind me, he pointed to one of the chairs against the wall at the foot of the staircase. ‘You sit there,' he said.

Now that we were alone in this dreadful room his voice had an edge to it that I didn't like. ‘You'll need some help—' I began.

‘Sit down.'

‘If you don't mind—'

‘Sit down, damn you – where I can see you. I told you you were lying, remember? Go on, pull that chair out and sit down.' His voice was calmer now, the chair he had indicated was by the table with the old newspapers. I dropped the letter on top of them as I picked up the chair. He was already standing at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sit down.' He watched me until I was seated, then he bent down, felt for the catch
and, with both hands under the outer edge of the bottom tread, gave a quick heave and raised all four treads, folding them back in one easy movement. ‘Did you take anything else?' He was already bending over the safe, his fingers turning the combination lock.

‘Nothing,' I said. ‘Everything was put back just—'

‘What about McAvoy?' He glanced up at me. ‘Are you saying he put it all back, neither of you took anything?'

‘Yes, it was all put back, money, gold, everything.'

‘Except that letter.' He straightened up. The door of the safe was opening slowly to the leverage of his body. Quickly he checked the contents, finally pulling out the envelope marked LEWIS, taking a quick look at the Solomons Seal sheets, then putting it back and turning to me. ‘All except the letter,' he said, the sunlight glinting off a cracked wall mirror making patterns on his face. ‘Where is it? What've you done with it?' And when I started to tell him I couldn't remember, he laughed a little wildly and said, ‘Don't give me that crap. You took it with you and showed it to Perenna. I told you you were lying. I saw you on the tug this morning. But why did you take it? What made you think it so bloody important that you had to show it to Perenna?'

‘I don't know,' I said, conscious of my tongue on my lips, moistening them nervously. And then I thought, No point in not telling him what puzzled me. ‘It started off
Dear Red
, so I took it to be addressed to your father, and it's dated July 1910. In it Lewis says he's coming to get his share of the ships that were
purchased with the gold from the Dog Weary mine. That's what I didn't understand.'

‘Because Red Holland didn't inherit the Line until over a year later?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did Perenna know what it meant?'

‘No, she didn't understand it either.' Looking at him, so tense, so wary, a thought suddenly occurred to me. ‘Did Timothy Holland know?'

He didn't answer.

I got to my feet. ‘Well, did he?'

‘Sit down,' he shouted, his voice suddenly out of control and the gun in his hand, a heavy revolver, the muzzle pointed straight at my stomach.

‘So it wasn't an accident. And at Aldeburgh, after months of nursing … ' I had said too much. At that moment I expected him to fire, and every muscle in my body was tensed in expectation of the bullet's slam. But then he said in a quieter, more reasonable voice. ‘And McAvoy. What did McAvoy think?'

‘About the letter?'

‘Of course, yes. The letter. What else?'

I hesitated, wondering what he was after. ‘He was just as puzzled as I was,' I said carefully.

‘But you told me he came ashore here yesterday for the specific purpose of opening the safe and reading the letter. Why? What made him think it that important?' And when I told him about the wartime raid on Madehas and how Mac had described Colonel Holland as being shattered when he had opened the safe and found the letter, he said in a slow, almost
unbelieving voice, ‘So that's why he attacked Carola and murdered my father. He burned him alive. Did you know that?'

I nodded. ‘But it wasn't quite like that, not according to Mac.' I wanted to mitigate the horror of it for a man already under great mental strain. ‘There was a shot, from inside the house. He killed himself before the flames reached him.'

‘Shot himself? My father shot himself.' He said it reflectively as though the idea were new to him. ‘Yes, of course. He would have had a gun, and outside they would have been waiting for him, like a bunch of hunters round a foxhole.' He was silent for a moment, thinking about it, his head bent slightly, staring at the gun in his hand. And then slowly he seemed to relax, a conscious, deliberate unwinding of nervous tension. ‘So he doesn't know. That little drunken bastard doesn't know. And now …' He hesitated, seeming to give the matter careful thought. ‘Now nobody knows.'

‘Knows what?' I asked, wondering if this were a form of madness, his mind wandering.

He shrugged, the gun forgotten, staring into space. I think I could have rushed him then, but I didn't; I was held in my chair by the look on his face, the way his whole body seemed frozen into immobility. ‘Doesn't matter now, does it?' he said slowly. ‘Doesn't matter how it all started, or what happened to the
Holland Trader.
Tim knew. Old Colonel Holland knew. Now nobody knows but me and—' He gave a little laugh. ‘This morning it mattered. Now it doesn't.'

There was a rattling sound from beyond the
windows leading to the veranda, and he crossed the room to stand staring out towards the cove. ‘That's the LCT just arrived.' He looked at me, slowly putting the gun back into the waistband of his trousers, his mood altered. Suddenly he seemed in need of companionship. ‘I don't remember my father, you know. Not really. I was only three when that old bastard moved on Queen Carola and fired burning arrows into the palm thatch of his house. His death didn't mean anything to me, not then.'

‘But it does now?' He had fallen silent, pacing slowly.

He stopped and looked straight at me. ‘You thought about death, about what it really means, or've you been too busy trying to make something of your life?'

‘You sound like Mac,' I said. ‘He started thinking about death.'

‘So he should. But I'm not talking about drink and cirrhosis of the liver. That's something you bring on yourself. I'm talking about external forces, things you can't control and what it's like when it all blows up in your face.' He shook his head, muttering to himself, and then stood quite still, staring at nothing. ‘We destroy people, like Red Holland going off and leaving that poor bugger to die of thirst, without giving a thought to what it means. Bombings, famines, executions – it's other people, isn't it? Never ourselves. And life – the fight to exist, the struggle for power – and then suddenly you've had it. That's what I mean by it all blowing up in your face. That's when you
suddenly start wondering what the hell it's all in aid of. A mine collapses, a ship goes down, somebody shoots somebody, they're all expendable, all except oneself. That's right, isn't it? We form alliances, live in groups, get married, anything to conceal from ourselves the one terrible truth – that we're alone in this life.'

I got to my feet. ‘You're being morbid,' I said, alarmed that in this sort of mood he might be capable of anything. ‘You'd better start thinking about how you're going to get yourself out of the mess you're in.' I couldn't make up my mind whether his mood was suicidal or if he was now intent on destroying others. ‘Are you staying here or coming back to the ship with me?' I couldn't imagine anybody wanting to stay in this empty, abandoned house.

He didn't answer, pacing slowly.

‘I'll go back, then.' I picked up the letter. ‘You wanted this.'

He stared at it, frowning, as I held it out to him. He seemed to have forgotten its existence. Then he suddenly laughed. ‘He's dead, too, isn't he? They're all dead now, just Perenna and Jonathan left.' He nodded. ‘Okay. You go back. The LCT is right there, waiting to take you to Anewa, where you'll make long statements to satisfy government officials. But I tell you this, Slingsby.' He was suddenly leaning forward, the red hair blazing in the slanting sunlight, his eyes staring into mine. ‘You marry Perenna, you marry the Holland Line.' He came towards me, smiling. ‘You do that, and you marry a curse. It was built on hate and fear
and disaster, and it's done for every one of us – every man that has tried to make his fortune out of it. My father started it, and he died an unnatural death. So did the old Colonel and Perenna's mother; now Tim's dying, he's given up and he'll die hating me, hating his sister, hating everyone, the whole world.' He pointed his finger at me. ‘You, too. You try and succeed where I failed, and you'll never know a minute's peace. I'll haunt you, Slingsby. Even as my father has haunted me, I'll haunt you.'

He was silent a moment, breathing heavily, his eyes almost popping out of his head. ‘Okay,' he said. ‘Get out now. Go back to the world of trucks and ships and transistors. I'm taking a different road.' He walked with me to the door almost in the manner of a host in his own home. ‘But just remember what I said. There's enough evil in the world without you going looking for it.'

He didn't say goodbye. He didn't offer me his hand or say anything more. He just stared at me, his face set in harsh lines, the hair no more than a dull reddish brown in the gloom of the passageway, but the freckles visible against the dark leather of his skin.

The last I saw of him was when I reached the summer house and some compulsion made me turn my head. The house was in shadow, and he was standing in the main entrance, just his face picked out in a shaft of sunlight striking through one of the tall palms so that I saw it as a disembodied face staring after me, the bones picked out in sharp crease shadows so that he looked suddenly older, the skin stretched
taut like parchment, a death's head almost, except for the hair, which shone bright red as though it had been dyed.

The tug was already fetching her anchor as I started down the slope to the cove. The Mortlock islander was leaning over the blunt bows, and framed in the open window of the caboose was the bearded face of the Australian. There was no sign of Perenna. Beyond the tug, looking unnaturally large by comparison, was the rusty boxlike hulk of the LCT. The sun was already falling towards the west so that the two ships and their shadows seemed to fill the tiny cove. The water lay placid between the reefs, and everything wilted in the hot humidity that lay like a haze over the Buka shore. It was enervating but nevertheless comfortingly real after the house with its strange atmosphere, its sense of being entirely remote from the world outside Madehas.

Walking slowly, I tried to recall exactly what he had said. But though I can remember the words, it is not so easy to convey the impression they made on me. It wasn't only that I was surprised at his need to unburden himself, but at the same time I was conscious of a deep sense of uneasiness, and this uneasiness remained with me all the way down to the half-submerged pontoon. By then the tug was under way, steaming carefully past the LCT's stern out round the end of the reef. I watched her till she was lost in the haze of the Buka Passage beyond Minon, still thinking about Hans Holland, remembering the words he had used and wondering at their meaning,
wondering whether Perenna would be able to make more sense of them than I did.