My Island Homicide

by Catherine Titasey

  Jonah’s cries were muffled by the wind, but as I walked to the cottage, I saw why he was yelling. Smoke filled the small confines and every so often, his dark shape materialised, waving a cushion from the lounge chairs to disperse the grey cloud. I opened all the doors and windows so the wind blew the rest of the smoke away. As Jonah rinsed the blackened pot at the sink, Buzarr sat at his feet, gazing at his master. ‘Okay, I said sorry. I should have listened to you. What else do you want from me?’

  I smiled as I picked the last of the seaweed and twigs from my hair, choosing to forget about my indiscretion.

  ‘I’ve changed the menu,’ said Jonah. ‘We’re having tinned meat with onion, bread and tomato sauce. It’s what crayfishermen eat when they camp on islands. It’s not good, but it’s food.’

  I couldn’t taste a thing. I was smitten.

  After dinner, he washed up and I dried. He talked about how he went fishing every day as a kid, before and after school or how he roamed Greenhill making cubby houses and shanghai-ing birds to roast on open fires. Jonah’s childhood was as carefree as mine was structured and supervised. My brothers and I were always trailing my mother to work and into her classroom after school. We had Saturday morning sports, hockey or cricket training, or swimming lessons during the week, depending on the time of year and the dreaded piano lessons. Jonah had the childhood I’d want for my own children. Well, if I had had children.

  ‘Have you ever lived down south?’ I asked. Jonah leaned against the bench and I became conscious of the silence. I stacked the plates in the cupboard, feeling his gaze on me.

  ‘That was great,’ he said.

  ‘It was delicious.’ I wiped up the last enamel plate.

  ‘Not the food. I mean we were great, on the beach.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that all? Yes?’ He took the plate from me and put it on the bench. ‘I have to try more harder to impress you.’ He took my hand and led me to the bed, extinguishing the lights. Then he took his time. Through the windows, I could see only stars. And in the morning, there were streaks of pale pink in the east.

  The weekend passed in a blur of endless conversations, kisses, soft touches, naked swims and long slow walks. I really did feel like his beautiful island princess. And as part of my island education, I learnt how to identify fish (not yet competent) and how to make a fire in a 20-knot wind. I succeeded in fixing a hook and sinker to a line and catching a fish and then another (and I decided I’d give both to Chook). Jonah was very impressed and I beamed.

  ‘Now, you must gut and gill them,’ he said and my smile vanished. I started slicing.

  ‘That’s it, keep going, all the way to the gills.’ When I ended up cutting almost to the spine, he took it from me to finish. ‘Practice makes perfect.’

  On Sunday night, Jonah held me and said there wasn’t enough time to catch up on all the kisses we’d missed out on.

  ‘And caresses and gazes and whispers,’ I said in a feeble attempt at poetic romance.

  ‘What was that first one, car . . . caras?’

  ‘Caresses.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means the tender touches that lovers give each other.’

  ‘Why not just say that? English. Always different words for the same thing.’

  He was right but I loved that word, caresses, the soft sibilant sound for the silkiness of a lover’s touch. I loved that word all the more because I had experienced it with Jonah.

  Chapter 24

  On Monday morning, Jonah and I arrived at Back Beach just before seven. I expected him and Buzarr to walk to his mother’s house and Sissy and I to cross the road to our unit. Perhaps he would suggest meeting for lunch or invite me to Friday Island next weekend. After all, I needed to learn Broken English and how to gut a fish properly.

  To my surprise Jonah and Buzarr followed Sissy and me. Jonah said he would lock the dogs out the back, so I went upstairs to shower. Minutes later, Jonah slipped into the shower with me. I was tempted to chuck a sickie and spend more time in the shower with him except I needed to be in court today. Too many others were depending on that.

  While I was ironing my uniform, Jonah made toast and coffee and called me to join him. ‘Breakfast is the most important meal. You can’t drink only coffee. Now, dinner tonight?’

  It was as if I was in a dream. We were going to be together, again, tonight! I found myself eagerly accepting his offer to make a chicken stir-fry for dinner. As he washed and wiped our cups and plates, he said he would call into the butcher’s on the way home and grab some vegetables from IBIS.

  ‘Perfect,’ I said.

  I remembered the fish for Chook so I raced next door. Maggie was in her pyjamas, holding a mug.

  ‘Two fish for Chook.’ I gave a small curtsey.

  ‘On behalf of Chook, thank you. And?’ She gave the thumbs up with a questioning look.

  I gave her the thumbs up.

  Jonah walked me to the station and he kissed me. ‘I’ll be here at 5.30 to take my island princess home.’

  I shivered with delight.

  The highlight of the morning was a call from Karen Jane Wakeham who, in her own words, ‘cuts up bodies’. Officially, she is a forensic pathologist and determines causes of unnatural death. I’ve never met her but we have a great phone friendship that has flourished since we worked on our first case together five years ago: a happily married mother of three whose mutilated body was found in bushland the day after she went missing. It transpired that she was moonlighting as a prostitute, with her husband’s consent, and her income relieved the burden of a large mortgage . . . until a client murdered her.

  I can’t help but think of my friend by her full name, Karen Jane Wakeham. That’s how she signs affidavits, which are used as evidence in court and outline the tests she’s conducted on the deceased, what time they died and how.

  ‘Guess who I’m having coffee with?’ she asked. I couldn’t think of a single mutual colleague or friend. ‘Give up? Melissa Margaret Ramu. Well, her paperwork is on my desk while I’m having a coffee. I opened her up early last week.’

  ‘Karen Jane Wakeham, you’re terrible.’

  ‘When I saw she was from Thursday Island I had to ring you. You could be in an episode of Death in Paradise.’

  ‘You’re right, especially since people reckon sorcery is involved.’

  ‘Are you kidding? There was even an episode about voodoo. Anyway, I had my own drama with your deceased. One of the forensics students fainted when she saw her. When she came to I told her to snap out of it and she burst into tears. Oh, God, I’m hopeless with people. Live ones, that is. But on a good note, this is a textbook murder with traces of semen and hair, both pubic and head, bruising to indicate a struggle and skin under her fingernails. It’d be a hole in one if there was a DNA match. If there’s no match, we’ll need samples.’

  ‘You make it sound so simple, Karen Jane Wakeham.’

  After that phone call, I headed to the courthouse. Part of my job as an operational OIC was to act as prosecutor during the monthly court week on Thursday Island. In cities, court operates daily, but in remote areas magistrates attend once a month or every two months. On Thursday Island a magistrate flies in (via Horn Island, of course) on the morning flight and court sits from Monday afternoon till Thursday or Friday morning, depending on the number of matters to be addressed.

  The prosecutor is the police officer who presents complaints about a defendant’s offending to the magistrate. The defence lawyer represents the defendant. A defendant might plead guilty and the magistrate fines him or her or orders community service or probation, even imprisonment. If the defendant pleads not guilty, there is a hearing by the magistrate, who listens to the evidence and determines guilt or innocence. Serious matters like grievous bodily harm and sexual assaults are transferred to the District Court. Murder and serious
drug matters go to the Supreme Court.

  On the Monday afternoon of my first court week, I spent an hour and a half, standing, submitting paperwork, all so the magistrate could adjourn six applications for domestic violence orders until next month and make four orders final for two years.

  Jonah caught up with me as I was walking back from the courthouse. He had bought ingredients for a chicken stir-fry and some bones for the dogs. I dropped the files at work and we walked home. Just as we entered the bottom door to the internal staircase, Jonah locked the screen door, which I’d never done, and closed the main door, which I’d also never done. Then he locked it.

  He dropped the shopping bags, pushed himself against me and whispered, his voice soft and thick like melted chocolate, ‘I want to fuck you all night.’

  I was both shocked and exhilarated and couldn’t think of any reason to object. We didn’t make it up the stairs for some time and when we did, I had a throbbing ache in my thoracic spine.

  Tuesday was call-over day, when the magistrate presides over a dull six to eight hours of guilty pleas and adjournments and also determines what to do with those defendants who have failed to appear at court, usually because they forgot or didn’t have the ferry fare from Horn Island or had to babysit a niece or cousin. Most court matters confirmed what I’d learnt before applying for the position: alcohol and anger were often factors in the offending and disputes were between people known to each other. I presented hours upon hours of DUIs and drunken assaults.

  Danny Soto, the man accused by Mr and Mrs Tamala of using maydh to kill people, pleaded not guilty to assaulting Mr Tamala. The matter was set down for a hearing and the magistrate also ordered cultural mediation with the community justice group in an attempt to resolve it. I suspected the mediation would fail. Mr and Mrs Tamala would want Danny punished for the assault. And Danny would want his day in court to argue he was not guilty of assault because he was provoked by Mr Tamala’s persistent accusations of using maydh. Oh, I did not want to do that hearing.

  During the lunch break, I checked my messages. Salome wanted me to call her. ‘How did Gavin de Costa go?’

  The name rang a bell. ‘Was he the public nuisance or the assault?’

  ‘A DUI. ’Cept he was disqualified. He’s one of Bertie the builder’s boys.’

  ‘I have no idea. There were too many alcohol-related offences. Is he your boyfriend?’

  ‘Yeah. He really is a nice bloke.’

  And so the day went on. I welcomed, with open arms, the few non-alcohol-related matters, such as possession of small amounts of marijuana; a couple of traffic offences; unlicensed driving of a dinghy and one charge of lighting an unauthorised fire. The four charges of possession of stolen property and three of stealing rang my gentle alarm bells, but they involved five different defendants, all young males.

  One matter, although serious, provided me with some light relief. Five people were charged with conspiring to import 100 kilograms of marijuana in February, following a search and rescue east of Mabuiag in bad conditions due to a cyclone in the Coral Sea. The wife of one of the men alerted police that her husband had not returned from a fishing trip. Everyone involved in the search wondered why anyone would go fishing in such bad weather. When a chopper located the dinghy, the volunteer marine rescue, VMR, was dispatched. When the men had been hauled onboard the VMR, one of them was so relieved to be rescued he told a crew member they had travelled from the PNG coast with 100 kilograms of marijuana, which they planned to sell. But they ran out of fuel (a minor detail overlooked) and had to ditch the dope. The defendants did not enter a plea at this stage and the matter was adjourned for me to provide the brief to the defence.

  On Wednesday court finished early after two hearings fell through because Shay and Jack could not locate the complainants. Without the complainants to give evidence we had no case. Hopefully by next month we’d be able to track them down.

  When I got back into the station, Jenny followed me into my office and thrust a witness statement into my hands. ‘Read this. Maybe you’re right about Dave Garland. I’ll be back.’

  When Dave attended the Easter principals’ conference at Darnley Island the day after Melissa’s death, Veronica Heard, principal of the Darnley Island primary school, observed Dave was distracted. He was trembling, drinking cup after cup of coffee, and cut his leadership talk short to go back to his room. He even failed to show up for the dinner held in his honour. She’d known him in a professional capacity for two years and had never seen him behave in that manner. Veronica asked him how he was feeling and he said he had received some bad news the night before.

  ‘Where are you up to?’ asked Jenny, using a celery stick to scoop white slop from a container.

  ‘The bit where he says he got some bad news. What are you eating?’

  ‘Cottage cheese. I’m serious about losing my flab.’ She was talking with her mouth full. ‘So you’re up to the sorry business. It doesn’t help him that she practised as a social worker specialising in grief counselling for three years before she did her Dip Ed ten years ago.’

  ‘So you reckon she knows the signs of someone stressing out?’

  ‘Exactly. He probably didn’t have that gastro bug. He may have been stressing because he killed Melissa in a fit of rage when she wanted to break if off and then had to dump her body. Wanna try some?’ She held out what looked like a snotty glob on the end of the celery stick.

  ‘I’m right, thanks. But what if he was only stressing out because Melissa told him she wanted to end the relationship, which he reckons she did.’

  ‘I’m considering the evidence and trying not to let my favourable impression of Dave influence my work as an officer of the law.’

  I started laughing, but then, through the one-way glass, I spotted Jonah in reception. ‘Shit.’

  ‘What? You’ve had a brainwave and you know who killed Melissa?’

  ‘No. I’ve got to go. Jonah’s here,’ I said, my voice light and lovely.

  Chapter 25

  Love is a grand thing especially when it involves a handsome man collecting me from my workplace. As soon as I saw him through the glass, I forgot about everything. The most bizarre part was that my heart was expanding with a delicious energy and everything – the room, my work, Jenny, Jonah, the police force, the world, the universe – was pure love.

  ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you all day,’ he said in my ear, when he pulled me to him as we were walking.

  ‘And I couldn’t stop thinking about what you might do with me tonight.’ He whispered his intentions. ‘No?’ I said in mock delight. ‘All night?’

  ‘After dinner. We’re going to Mum’s for simur.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘That’s not necessary,’ I said.

  An expression of confusion and deep hurt crossed his face and he put his hand on my arm. ‘Don’t you want to meet Mum? She’s made chicken simur, you know, simur?’

  Mum made simur when relatives came to stay, a traditional Malay dish adopted by Islanders during the pearling era when Malays migrated to dive for pearl.

  ‘I know simur,’ I said.

  ‘But why not meet Mum and have simur? I thought you’d like to meet her. She’s been wondering where I’ve been lately.’

  ‘Jonah, don’t you think we should wait and see how things go? I mean, we’ve just got together. And I’m sure your mother doesn’t want to meet another one of your women.’

  ‘She has never met any of the women I’ve been with. She’d love to meet you and she’s made simur and fried scone. I’d like you to meet her. But only if you want to.’

  She has never met any of the women I’ve been with. We had reached the driveway. I was thrown off guard. He saw it because he raised his eyebrows and stared me down. ‘I’m sorry. Of course I’ll go.’

  Jonah smiled and lavished
me with kisses, cooling my face that burnt with shame. ‘You know, you should just chill out and go with the current.’

  ‘Go with the flow?’

  ‘Yeah, I know that one, but current sort of fits up here. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I do need to go with the current. Just remind me, hey?’

  It was dark when Jonah took my hand and we walked with the dogs the short distance to his mother’s house, following the rich fatty aroma of chicken simmering in sweet soy sauce. I had imagined Yenah to be tall and solid, but she was short, very short, and slim. She was stirring the contents of a cauldron on the stove, but as soon as she saw us, she rushed over, wiping her brow with a pastel sweater. She slung it over her left shoulder as she stood on her toes to kiss my cheek. Her skin was lighter than Jonah’s and her almond-shaped eyes and fine features told of an Asian heritage. As I hugged her, I felt her wiry frame beneath her baggy island dress. She paused and regarded me with a serious expression. ‘You proper look like your daddy. Only mina kind pretty.’

  My cheeks simmered as I followed her to the dining table. ‘How well did you know my mother and father?’

  After scattering cutlery onto the table, she was already on her way back to the kitchen. ‘Come.’

  I glanced at Jonah, who was sculling water from a bottle, and I wondered why she didn’t answer me. Perhaps she was a bit deaf.

  ‘My boy, set the table. Ebithea, you here for work, uh?’

  ‘Yes, it was a great chance to get to TI.’

  Yenah lifted the cauldron onto the table. ‘Come. Kai kai. Eat.’

  As she served the food, she proudly recounted the details of Jonah’s birth, the first son after three daughters. Jonah’s father, Kaigus, wanted a son to pass on the family tradition of naming the first boy after a fish. I became confused when Yenah said Jonah’s father named him Kibbim. Jonah had caught a fish called kibbim the other night. ‘So, your real name is Kibbim?’ I asked.