Killman

by Graeme Kent

  He wondered if Mayotishi had been right in his accusation of prejudice. Was Kella biased against the Japanese? He did not think so, but after all, they had killed many of his friends, and had had a good go at killing him.

  The policeman tried to concentrate his mind on his impending problem at the fishing village. At the same time, he could not help worrying how Mayotishi could possibly have heard about the murders on Malaita, when Kella had told no one in Honiara about them. And what had the Japanese meant by three deaths? So far, Kella had heard of only two.

  8

  INCANTATIONS

  It took Kella half an hour to walk through the town and over Matanikau Bridge to the Malaitan fishing village on the beach opposite the labour lines. As he passed the road leading down to the stores of Chinatown, two drunken middle-aged expatriates reeled out of one of the all-day bars and staggered convivially arm-in-arm in the direction of the Mendana hotel. Kella stood aside to let them pass. He recognized them both. One was Maywood, a forty-five-year-old New Zealander who owned a small business collecting and preparing the sea slugs known as bech-de-mer and selling them on to the Chinese to be turned into soup essence and herbs.

  The other man was ten years older and English. He was a broad-shouldered, pot-bellied, dishevelled former government officer called Ebury. Before the war he had served as an administrator in the districts and the government offices at Tulagi. He had stayed on during the fighting and served with some distinction as a coast-watcher on Vella Lavella in the western islands, where he was rumoured to have conducted a brave solitary vigil. Always a drinker, in the later years of his career, with the return of peace, he had taken to the bottle with so much enthusiasm that even the other expatriates had noticed. Five years earlier, after a number of public indiscretions, his contract had not been renewed. Having nowhere better to go, he had stayed on aimlessly in the islands, buying a shack on the beach near Visale ten miles outside the capital, where he existed in a state of semi-exile, shunned by his previous colleagues, ignored by the islanders and forced to seek the undiscriminating company of fellow topers like Maywood.

  The Englishman glanced up as the two revellers passed Kella, but showed no signs of recognition. The sergeant continued on his way. A section of the main road to Henderson Field airport lay between the lines of dormitories housing government manual workers from various islands on one side of the road, and the collection of thatched huts on the shore. The village comprised emigrants from the Lau area who now earned their living by supplying fish to the market in Honiara. Kella had lived there with his wantoks for six months at the beginning of the year when he had been confined to a desk job in the capital after narrowly surviving a court of enquiry into his alleged misconduct concerning the murder of a missionary by the bushmen led by the old chief Pazabozi.

  Most of the male adults of the village were already lined up apprehensively to greet him in the sara, the village square. The headman came forward to shake Kella’s hand. He was a worried-looking middle-aged man wearing a pair of old blue shorts. Kella knew that the man was a conscientious, fair-minded leader who took his duties seriously but could be easily overwhelmed by unexpected occurrences. From behind the closed doors of the huts emerged the constant monotonous shrieks of the unseen women and girls of the village. They would continue to keen in this fashion until all the mourners from afar had arrived to pay their respects to an old woman who had died a few days ago.

  ‘Aofia,’ said the headman respectfully, using the Lau dialect. ‘We want to thank you for coming back to help us. We need you to say the sacred words taught to you by the custom priests to clear us of this dreadful visitation.’

  ‘Show me where you said your first prayers for the old woman’s soul,’ said Kella.

  Obediently the other man conducted the sergeant through the huts to the shore, where the waves lapped indulgently against the pebbles. The other islanders followed them at a careful distance and formed a nervous semicircle on the beach as they regarded the uniformed police sergeant with awe and trepidation.

  ‘You’d better me all about it,’ said Kella.

  The headman took a deep breath and embarked upon his story. As he spoke, the other men gathered ever closer around them. The tale took some time in the recounting because the leader took care to include the customary Melanesian ramblings, digressions and tenuous links with Lau legends and custom law. He also stopped every so often to argue with and then threaten some of the other men, who were inching forward with the intention of turning his monologue into the general village discussion with which they were all more familiar and comfortable. By dint of much concentration Kella emerged from the process with a headache and some sort of grasp of an outline of what had been happening among the exiles around him.

  An old woman of the village, without any family remaining, had died. Everything that needed to be done had been carried out meticulously, according to custom. The body of the septuagenarian had been laid out in the women’s beu and after a few days would have been transported inland, to be buried secretly in the hills beyond the residential ridges. A shark priest had been called over from Malaita at considerable expense in cherished shell money to conduct the official farewell ceremony at the stone shrine, close to them now on the shore, known as the bae’ana baekwa, where sharks were known to bask, even among the busy shipping lanes off the shore of Honiara. The priest had come highly recommended and had presented an impressive appearance, with his hair falling down to his waist as, by virtue of his high office, no mortal was allowed to touch his head or cut his tresses.

  After the priest had roasted a pig and buried it, he had said the usual dignified prayers of the lau agalo for the dead before departing. That should have been an end to the subject. Soon afterwards, however, matters started to go wrong in the fishing village. Before the body could be smuggled out by night for its surreptitious inland burial on someone else’s land, various villagers had started meeting the ghost of the old woman around the village. She had been seen walking silently along the shore and coming out of her hut, among other places. Finally she seemed to have settled her domicile on a pile of torn and discarded fishing nets on a patch of sand several hundred yards from where they were now standing. Apart from a slight ethereal haziness around the edges of her body and an obdurate refusal to answer any greetings or even look up when addressed, she had appeared remarkably lifelike, perhaps even more so than during the closing years of her existence on earth.

  Greatly daring, the headman and some of the elders had broken tribal law and peered into the women’s beu to see if, by some miraculous happenstance, the corpse had either recovered consciousness or come to life and departed. Unfortunately for their peace of mind, the old woman’s body had still been resting there on a pile of pandanus leaves. So, as a last resort, the village had sent for the aofia.

  ‘Do you want to see where the ghost walks?’ asked the headman when he had finished.

  Kella shook his head. To have asked for proof in this matter would have been discourteous, implying that he had doubts about the veracity and judgement of his hosts. ‘Show me her body,’ he asked instead.

  They walked back through the village to the long, low thatched hut that had been erected according to tradition for the domicile of women during their menstrual periods or before giving birth. As a priest of the highest rank, Kella alone among the men present had the undisputed right to enter this beu.

  While the others waited outside, he bent over the body of the old woman. She was now lying on a bed of sago palm leaves replacing the old sun-bleached pandanus fronds, and was wearing a faded blue dress. Her face was calm and peaceful, the lines of seven decades almost entirely smoothed out in easeful death. Carefully the sergeant turned her over. In the Lau culture corpses were neither sacred nor tabu, so he was able to examine the woman closely without offending her gods or village decorum. He pulled down the back of her dress gently at the neck to reveal a whorl of ancient tattoos on her wrinkled flesh. They would have bee
n incised with a bamboo splinter dipped in coconut juice and lime when she was very young and unlikely to feel the pain so much. There were circles representing the sun, chevrons indicating the tracks of the crab and many other time-encrypted impressions, all running into one another.

  It took him some time to find what he had been looking for. The mark had almost been obscured by age and a pattern of a large star with a circle of rays emanating from it on the old woman’s skin. It was almost as if the constellation had been deliberately superimposed over a small inverted w shape. Kella grunted in triumph at the sight and knelt to examine the ancient scratch more closely. Then, satisfied, he pulled up the back of the dress and turned the old woman’s body back respectfully.

  ‘All right, Mother,’ he said gently. ‘I tell you, you will soon be free to leave us and travel to the island of Momolu, where the spirits of the dead assemble, to live happily among good gardens and be sheltered for ever in cool shade from the heat of the sun. I, Kella, the aofia, promise you this.’

  The headman and the other men were waiting for him outside the beu. Kella nodded. ‘Let us release her spirit and send it on its journey,’ he said.

  There was a murmur of relief and appreciation from the group. The headman turned to lead the way to the shark altar on the shore, but Kella restrained him. ‘Not by the sea,’ he said. ‘That’s where you made your mistake.’

  He led the men inland a few yards until they were among the palm trees sheltering the village from the constant traffic on the main road.

  ‘I’m going to say the manatai burina here,’ he announced briefly.

  A puzzled hum spread through the group of islanders, like a riff being played lightly on a guitar. The manatai burina was a general prayer of apology offered to the gods when they had been wronged or slighted. It was performed rarely, and then only by the most learned among the priests. Only a few of the oldest men present had even heard of it. Kella ignored them and threw back his head so that he was facing the white clouds scudding across the sky. He called upon all the gods of ancient Malaita to hear him. He begged them to accept the spirit of the old woman on Momolu. He chanted the lau agalo, asking the gods to forgive the people of the village for their earlier mistake, which had been made out of ignorance, not spite. He promised to slaughter another pig when he returned to the Lau Lagoon, one he had first blessed, making it special, and then offer it to all the gods in their retreats, as an appeasing faamola to make things right again. Finally he picked up a handful of sand and threw it into the air. It was all accomplished in a few minutes, a sign that the gods were listening on the wind.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked the headman.

  ‘Nothing; it is all done,’ Kella said. ‘You can send someone to the fishing nets if you like. They will find that the ghost has left the village.’

  Two young men broke away from the throng, running hard.

  ‘Why did you say the manatai burina?’ asked one of the islanders. ‘Why did we have to apologize to the gods? How had we offended them?’

  ‘What do you know about the old woman?’ asked Kella in return.

  ‘Nothing,’ said an ancient man. ‘She was very old. It seemed as if she had always been here.’

  ‘Not always,’ said Kella. ‘She was not even a Lau woman.’ He paused to let the information sink in. When he saw that he had their complete attention, he went on: ‘It was an understandable mistake. After you told me that the gods had rejected her, so that her spirit couldn’t leave your village, the most likely reason seemed to be that you had made her farewell ceremony to the wrong gods.’

  ‘We always perform the alu to our shark gods,’ protested the headman.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Kella. ‘And naturally they never reject the ghost of a Lau man or woman. If they would not accept the spirit of the old woman, perhaps secretly she did not worship them. When I looked at her body, I found the tattoo of her original clan on her back. It was small and had faded over the years, and was almost hidden by other tattoos she had had engraved over it, but her original clan totem was still there, obscure as it was, for those with eyes to see.’

  ‘What was it?’ asked the headman.

  ‘The wings of a bird in a small w formation,’ Kella said. ‘Your old woman worshipped the eagle gods. Originally she must have come from the Tolo clan in the bush hills. That is their sign. Many years ago she must have married a Lau man, moved down to one of the saltwater villages and had his children. By the time of her death here everyone who had known her had passed away, so it was assumed that she was a shark worshipper like the rest of us.’

  ‘But why did she keep it a secret that she came from Tolo?’ asked one of the islanders.

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ asked Kella as his listeners nodded. ‘The Tolo people are supposed to be foolish and primitive. She had married into the Lau clan and so had taken a step up in the world. She and her husband kept quiet about her shameful background, but secretly all these years she still sacrificed to the eagles.’

  ‘And now that you have said the lau agalo, the eagle gods have sorted matters out and taken her ghost over to Momolu,’ marvelled the headman. ‘I wondered why you threw the sand into the air. It was a tribute to the eagles, wasn’t it?’

  Kella nodded. Before he could answer, the two young men came running back from the direction of the pile of fishing nets. Their beatific expressions were enough to tell the waiting men that the ghost no longer rode in the fishing village. A ragged cheer went up from the assembly. The headman seized Kella’s hand and pumped it.

  ‘Thank you, aofia,’ he said fervently. ‘Tonight we shall have a feast in celebration. Will you stay for it?’

  Before Kella could answer, there was a cry from the crowd. One of the men pointed a tremulous finger at the sky over the island of Savo. Far away in the distance across Ironbottom Sound, the outline of a large bird soaring on a current of wind could just be made out.

  ‘An eagle!’ whispered the man. ‘It is carrying the ghost of the old woman over to Momolu!’

  Cries of reverent acquiescence came from the others. Kella knew that the bird was too far away to be identified. It could be a hawk, or some other small bird of prey. Or just possibly it might be an eagle carrying another tired soul to the fabled delights of the heavenly island. In any case, it was time he was leaving. There was only one more task to perform before he went. He did not expect any great results from such a long shot, but all the same he summoned the compliant headman.

  ‘I must go,’ he told him.

  ‘Let us know if ever we can help you,’ said the other man.

  ‘Count on it,’ Kella said.

  He shook the other man’s hand, waved farewell to him and climbed back on to the main road heading towards the town, mulling over this latest contribution. It was imperative that he get back to Malaita immediately, investigate the deaths of the two villagers and, most important of all, find out what Mayotishi had meant by a third killing.

  He stopped and looked back at the village. Already life was proceeding normally. The shade of the old woman who had haunted it so recently no longer hovered over the huts. Some of the men were pushing their canoes out into the sea. Others had returned to the recently tabu site of the fishing nets and were starting to assess and repair them again. Older men were chattering cheerfully in groups, already embellishing and exaggerating the story of the lau agalo sending-off ceremony that had almost gone so badly wrong.

  It was important not to have preconceptions and imperative to take nothing for granted, thought Kella. If there had only been one old villager remaining who knew the truth of the old woman’s antecedents and tribal loyalties, the villagers might have investigated the matter of the eagle gods for themselves. He had only been the catalyst, looking at things through fresh eyes. Yet there was no denying the importance of his brief contribution. Kella was a modest man and he always gave the spirits their full due. As a boy he had been shown the path granted to few others. The old custom priests who had trained him in
their mountain recesses had taught him how to approach the Lau gods with confidence as a go-between. The success of his recent efforts at the fishing village only underlined the importance of his continuing to use his gifts as the aofia to bring peace and law to Malaita.

  That meant that above all he must track down and apprehend this killman who was causing so much distress on his home territory. Furthermore, he must do so without taking Chief Superintendent Grice and the other white policemen into his confidence. If he was to be free to use his literally god-given gifts for the benefit of the islanders, he could not risk being restricted by the expatriates’ often inexplicable regulations, even if the results did not bode well for him in the carefully supervised and seldom deviating world of the old colonials.

  ‘Can I give you a lift?’ asked a voice.

  Kella looked up. One of the capital’s small fleet of ancient taxis was waiting at a lopsided angle at the side of the road. It looked as if it had been retrieved intact from a junk heap. Mayotishi the Japanese tourist was standing invitingly by the open door. He smiled thinly.

  ‘Allow me to take you back to Malaita, Sergeant Kella,’ he said, as if by some divine intervention he knew what the policeman had just decided.

  Kella climbed into the back of the taxi. What part, if any, was the already ubiquitous Japanese going to play in his ongoing investigation? The sergeant knew that he would have to be circumspect in his dealings with Mayotishi.

  9

  RIFTS AND SCHISMS

  The frightened refugees had been drifting into Ruvabi mission station since early that morning. At first they had arrived mainly singly and in pairs. Then groups and whole families had started to appear, begging for shelter and protection from the killman. Now it was noon and there were over a hundred Melanesians scattered miserably over the formerly immaculate sward. Sister Conchita saw that they were from both saltwater and bush villages. There were even a few she recognized from the last feast of the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark, when Papa Noah had been murdered in such bizarre circumstances just a few days before. The islanders must have been terrified beyond belief to leave their homes to seek sanctuary in this manner. Sister Conchita wondered why that could be. The death of the cult leader had been a dreadful thing, but these islanders lived with sudden death every day of their hard, risk-filled lives. Why were they suddenly fleeing from their homes? Could it be the fear of the unknown?