by Ian Cook
“Are they the people being killed?” she asked.
“There are lots of people here with reddish hair. Even the short-ears and long-ears had relationships. The strange thing is, the people being murdered are those with the reddest hair. So far, anyway.” He glanced at Rebecca’s striking hair, before quickly looking away.
Rebecca asked a question she didn’t really want to ask. “How were they killed?”
The answer was not what she wanted to hear.
“Nasty. They were all knifed in the chest. And all the bodies have been found near moai.”
Rebecca turned to Pablo. “Moai. Aren’t they the statues we were looking at, Pablo?”
“That’s right,” said Pablo. “Our ancestors used to make sacrifices by them,” he added, to Garcia’s irritation.
“Sacrifices?” queried Rebecca.
As Pablo opened his mouth to comment, Garcia answered quickly. “Si. But that was all over two hundred years ago. There’s no reason I can think of why it should start again.”
“Are there any witnesses?” asked Rebecca.
“Well, if there are, they’re not coming forward.”
“The problem is,” Pablo interjected, “the island is covered in caves, so people can hide and wait for their chance. After, they can quickly disappear again. Sometimes a cave is known only to one family, maybe only to one person. They used to put dead bodies in them. They’re still used for storing moai maea.”
“Moai what? Sorry…” Rebecca interrupted.
“Carved stones of animal-like figures,” Garcia explained. “They are household idols used by the families. Sometimes they have been owned by a single family for hundreds of years.”
“It’s all making our red-haired people very nervous. They are frightened to go out,” said Pablo. “When they do go out, they go around in groups.”
Garcia ended the interview abruptly. “Pablo says you have a friend working with Professor Burton on the archaeological dig at Orongo. Professor Burton knows a lot about Rapa Nui, probably more than me. Perhaps you should talk to him.”
He stood up and showed them to the door. “But, please señorita – ¡Tenga cuidad! – Take care!” With that, he turned back to his pile of papers.
CHAPTER 23
The deserted village of Orongo lay at the highest point on the island. It consisted of a group of ancient abandoned stone huts, some of which were still intact and inhabitable. Built so that they were set into the rocks, and with low roofs, they would have provided protection against the worst extremes of weather. Close by, there were some rocks covered in strange, sculpted markings.
The village itself was perched to one side on the rim of an extinct volcano, Rano Kao, its gigantic bowl-shaped crater stretching over a mile across. One step too far towards the crater and one would have plunged helplessly to the bottom. Pools of water, lit up by the sunlight and scattered among patches of vegetation stretching to the far side, concealed a treacherous quagmire.
Walking a short distance in the opposite direction to the crater, one reached the edge of the cliffs, which dropped vertically a thousand feet to the crashing sea below.
Rebecca was grateful to dismount from the pillion of Pablo’s motorbike, the novelty value long since replaced by discomfort and a constant fear of an accident.
Pablo beckoned her to admire the view. She followed him, although she was now growing impatient to see Jim again.
The view inland revealed the town of Hanga-roa, laid out below them in its entirety. Beyond, they could see virtually the whole island, stretching out to the blue-hazed horizon. At Pablo’s insistence, she crept to the very brink of the cliffs. The vastness of the Pacific Ocean shimmered under an azure-domed heaven. The wind gusted lightly and, shivering with a mixture of elation and vertigo, she stumbled back to rest against the firmness of a large boulder.
A short distance away, the few tents of the archaeological camp were pitched in the shadow of the stone huts. A trestle-table had been set up and was littered with pieces of flat rock of various sizes. A small team of local workers was cleaning some large rocks. Three of the workers, who looked like a father and two sons, were instantly distinguishable from their colleagues by their reddish hair. Rebecca noticed them immediately.
Patches of soil had been removed at the base of several of the boulders which had carvings on them, and on the bare rock beneath, one could already make out the faint patterns still to be cleaned up.
A sound of scraping came from within one of the huts. It stopped, and a man emerged from the low entrance, knees-bent and clutching a large slab of stone.
Professor Laurence Burton, known to his friends and colleagues as Larry, carefully carried the slab to the table. He studied it for a few seconds and gently and quickly began to remove the grime with a brush. That completed, he examined it closely, his clear blue eyes gleaming with interest.
At sixty-four, with a full head of almost white hair, he was still upright, slim and moved like a fit man. Even in his khaki work trousers, dirty and well-worn at the knees, and an old denim shirt frayed at the collar, he still had the air of a distinguished academic.
Seeing Larry’s find, Jim stopped scraping soil away from a boulder and bounded over to see what he had discovered.
“Another bird-man petroglyph. And what a beauty!” he exclaimed. “Dammit, where did I leave my camera?” He thought for a second and went into one of the stone huts.
Catching sight of the visitors arriving, Larry tore himself away from the find. “It’s that man from the Tourist Office again, with a visitor,” he called out to Jim. “I’d better find out what they want.”
Pablo held out his hand. “Good afternoon, Professor. Please meet Señorita Burns from the Metropolitan in London. She is here to write about the murders. We were hoping that perhaps you could help us.”
Rebecca cringed and cut in quickly. “Hello. You must be Professor Burton. I’m Rebecca Burns. A friend of Jim Cavendish? He might have mentioned I was coming?”
“Ah, yes, so he did,” he said, shaking hands with her. “Larry Burton. Yes, it’s a nasty business – bit of a mystery. But, er, to be perfectly candid, it’s nothing to do with what we’re doing here. We try to keep out of that sort of thing, you know. It’s a small place. And people here don’t really bother us.” He turned towards the hut. “Jim!”
As he emerged from the hut and caught sight of Rebecca, Jim’s face broke into a broad smile.
“Rebecca! Welcome to Orongo!” He hugged her, warmly shook Pablo’s hand and turned to Larry. “Larry, time for a tea-break, don’t you think?”
“Well… okay,” Larry replied.
Jim disappeared into a tent and produced a battered Thermos flask and four mugs. He pointed to some low rocks towards the cliff-edge, high over the sea, where they could sit. Larry poured out the tea silently and passed the cups around. The tea looked evil; dark brown and over-brewed. Rebecca took a sip. It tasted as bad as it looked. She continued to drink but noticed that Pablo had quickly put his mug to one side.
“So, how can we help you?” Larry asked, stirring his tea.
“I’d be interested to know what you are doing here?”
“We’re looking for petroglyphs,” Larry said.
“Petroglyphs?” Rebecca fumbled to find her notebook.
“Carvings on rocks. There are thousands of these all over the island,” Larry said, now visibly relaxing at the thought of talking about a favourite subject. “Ancestor figures, weird mythical creatures. You name it.”
“Most people don’t know much about these. They are only interested in the statues,” said Pablo.
“The carvings have attracted far less attention, but are just as fascinating,” interjected Jim. “We’re really looking for the older ones, which have been covered up for years.”
Larry took a gulp of tea and stood up. “Come over here,” he said, and led the way to a large rock. It was about the height of a man and almost completely covered in carvings. Because of the l
ichen, it took Rebecca a while to spot the strange figure that only became evident when Larry outlined it with his finger.
It was half-man, half-bird. A large eye was carved on the head, and an enormous curved beak protruded in front of it. The body, though, bore little resemblance to that of a bird. It had crude human legs and a long spindly arm with a large hand, holding what appeared to be an egg.
“This figure here. He’s a bird-man,” Larry said, stroking the rock. “According to the people here, the bird-man is the representative on Earth of Make-Make, the god of creation. This place, Orongo, used to be a ceremonial village dedicated to the bird-man cult.”
Larry pointed out to sea in the direction of a small rocky island about a quarter of a mile away. “You see that island there? It’s called Moto Nui.”
The sea was high, and powerful waves were crashing well up the cliffs at the island’s edge.
“Look at those waves!” Larry exclaimed. “And yet, once a year, each clan on Easter Island chooses somebody to take part in the traditional race to Moto Nui. They have to climb down these cliffs, brave the rough sea and swim to the island. Then they have to find the egg of a sea-gull and bring it back here. First one back means that the chief of his clan gets to be bird-man for the next year. And it’s a great privilege to be bird-man.”
“This happens every year as part of our festival,” Pablo cut in. But Jim took over. “The winner’s clan is known as the Ao. Ao is also the name of a special, ceremonial canoe paddle. It is doubleheaded with a strange face painted on each end.”
Larry pointed towards the huts. “The funny thing is, yesterday we found a stone with the same face painted on it. It was in one of the ceremonial houses. I’ll show it to you later. Anyway, in the end, the bird-man cult took over from the worship of the statues of the ancestors – the moai.”
“Does this have anything to do with the redhead murders?” asked Rebecca, trying to steer the conversation back to her main interest.
Larry gazed out over the vastness of the ocean, as if collecting his thoughts together. If he had looked upwards, he might have seen a stationary dot, high in the sky above them. A sudden gust of wind blew his hair over his forehead. Brushing his hair back, he turned round again to face Rebecca.
“When the first Europeans arrived here – a Dutch boat in 1722 – they noted that there were a lot of red-haired natives. Then, more recently, Thor Heyerdahl – the Kon Tiki man – had this theory that a redheaded race had travelled to Easter Island from Egypt and the Middle East, via South America.” He paused. “Almost as if they were being driven out of whatever place they landed in.”
“What do you think? Do you believe Heyerdahl was right?” asked Rebecca.
“Heyerdahl’s a bit out of fashion now,” said Jim, before Larry could answer. “From the latest DNA analysis, it looks as if the islanders originally came from Polynesia.”
“But no one has proven anything yet,” Larry said emphatically.
“So it is possible that the redheads could have sailed here from South America?” asked Rebecca.
“Yes, it is possible, I suppose,” said Jim. “And all these places have a history of sun-worship, too. The extraordinary thing is that, with all the great distance between Easter Island and Egypt, they both had the same word for the sun – Ra. Same goes for monoliths – stone structures like the Egyptian obelisks – and these moai statues here. They’re found all over the world where sun-worship was practised. And they are often about commemorating the dead – a form of ancestor worship. You remember the standing stones we saw at Stenness and Brodgar? Well, some people believe that they, too, are representations of important ancestors.”
“You could say it was the sun that brought Jim to Easter Island,” Larry said. “The site here at Orongo was once an ancient sun observatory.”
Jim laughed. “Rebecca must have the impression I think about nothing else.”
As he stood by the sculpted rock, the sunlight shone through his brown hair. His hair is exactly the same colour as his eyes, thought Rebecca.
“I suppose it’s partly true that the sun brought me here,” he said, smiling at her. “But it was just as much in the hope of finding something new, something unexpected.” He unconsciously ran his hand over the curved surface of the rock, as if caressing it.
Rebecca smiled back, and for a moment he seemed to lose his thread.
“The whole site here at Orongo is aligned to the sun,” he then went on. “We think it was built to mark the solstices and the equinoxes. There’s another site on the island that’s aligned to the moon, as well as the sun. These places could have been used to mark the seasons of the year. The right time to plant crops, that sort of thing.”
“Or quite possibly something more sinister,” said Larry. “I’m afraid sun-worship was often associated with blood-thirsty sacrifices.”
Larry glanced at the local men, who had now stopped working and were sitting down. “Listen. I’m sorry, but we have to press on right now. Why not join us for a meal tonight?” He nodded in the direction of the three redheaded men who were talking together. “Señor Nata and his family over there are cooking a meal for us. We could talk more then.”
“Thank you, Professor Burton. I’d like that.” Rebecca turned to her new colleague. “What about you, Pablo?”
Pablo looked happy. “Sure. At your service, Rebecca.”
“Just one more thing, Professor,” she said. “You were going to show me the strange painted face you found yesterday.”
“Call me Larry,” he said. “Come and have a look. These are actually ceremonial houses.”
He led them over towards the stone huts. They were squat and made of flat, closely inter-fitting stones, with a flat roof covered in grass.
Jim turned to Rebecca. “You know, it’s a funny thing, but there are some prehistoric houses in Orkney remarkably like these, quite near where we were. It makes you wonder who built them. Some people say the Phoenicians were there too, a long time ago.”
“Phoenicians? In Scotland?”
“Well, it seems incredible, but they did get around,” said Jim. “They were brilliant sea-farers. Even the ancient Egyptians employed them for their long distance exploration journeys. Red hair link as well, Rebecca.”
“Really?”
“Sure,” said Jim. “The Phoenicians originally came from what is now Lebanon. And that is perhaps how redheaded people spread throughout the world, because Lebanon, even now, has one of the highest percentages of red-haired people in the world. The Phoenicians are well known for the trail of red-haired descendants they left behind wherever they travelled.”
“So are you saying the Phoenicians could have taken red hair to Scotland?” asked Rebecca.
“You never know,” said Jim.
“But I thought red hair in Scotland came from invading Vikings?”
“Perhaps the Phoenicians – or even their ancestors – went to Scandinavia as well.”
Larry stopped outside a hut. “This is the one, but you will have to crawl in on your knees – the entrance is very low.”
Inside, there were no windows and the only light inside came through the doorway. It took a while for Rebecca’s eyes to adjust to the gloom.
Larry switched on a torch and shone the beam over the wall. “Just take a look,” he said, lighting up a painting.
It was difficult to decipher at first, a cross between a Stone Age cave-painting and a piece of modern abstract art. She was able to pick out the eyes on the face first, then the eyebrows and finally the hair, which was represented by a few vertical lines.
“Funny hair-style,” she said.
“It’s probably stylised feathers,” said Larry. “It’s rather like the headdresses the Incas used to wear. And the Sea Peoples as well – the Peleset. The Sea Peoples date back to even before the Phoenicians in the Levant, and could be the original long-distance seafarers.”
“This is just mind-boggling,” said Rebecca.
Larry looked
pleased. “If you like all this, you should come to Aberdeen next week. We’ll be doing a whole presentation on it there.”
“I’d love that. Will you let me have the details?”
Outside the hut, Larry took a pen and notebook from his shirt pocket and wrote down a website address. He also added his email address and mobile number.
“Thanks,” said Rebecca. “Perhaps you could tell me all about it at the dinner?”
“Yes, and you will be able to meet Dr Neferatu as well. He’s a bit of a mystery. Apparently he arrived a couple of days ago – but we haven’t seen him yet. Jim says he knows him, and that he could be a good source of funding. I hear he’s an expert on sun-worship, but I’ve never come across him myself.”
Jim smiled at Rebecca. “He could be very useful to you with your story.” He walked with Rebecca and Pablo to the motorbike. “See you tonight then. It should be fun.”
CHAPTER 24
Rebecca swung her bag on to her back and checked her watch as Pablo got on his motorbike. It was just gone four o’clock.
“Pablo – would you mind taking me back to the statues we saw this morning? I’ve got my watercolours with me, and we’ve got a couple of hours to spare. I’d quite like to do a quick painting.”
“You paint?” he said, surprised.
“Nothing very ambitious – just small postcards, really. They don’t take too long.”
“Why not take a photo instead?”
“I do that as well, of course. But I like to send paintings to friends. When you paint, it sort of fixes the scene in your mind, better than a photo. It’s something my mother taught me – she was a real artist.”
“I’m not sure I should be leaving you alone,” he said. “There’ll probably be some more tourists there. Anyway, I can always get you on your phone.”
Pablo didn’t look happy. “Okay. I need to go to the Tourist Office, but I could drop you off and pick you up later?”
“Lovely.”
His motorbike spluttered into life. She clambered on to the pillion and waved goodbye to Jim and Larry.
Pablo drove carefully down the slope, trying to avoid the worst of the rocky bumps. They pulled up a short time later by the statues. By this time, it was late afternoon and only a group of four tourists remained.