Killman

by Graeme Kent

  He passed the outer circle of huts and emerged in the village square between two rows of thatched homes. Most of the villagers were looking on as a dozen young Melanesians surrounded the six men from the Commissioner. The four Polynesians and the two seamen from the government vessel were standing apprehensively shoulder to shoulder on the bank of the river where it widened and slowed down before disgorging its water into the lagoon.

  ‘Whichway now?’ Kella asked, using the standard pidgin form of initial police enquiry to ask what was going on. It was a long-held ambition of his to substitute this one day with the phrase ‘Hello, hello, hello’, which he had admired in the television reruns of Dixon of Dock Green on his visit to London.

  One of the Tikopians recognized Kella’s uniform and cried out unconvincingly in English: ‘Help us, Sergeant! They will not let us take water from the river.’

  ‘They are thieves! They will not pay!’ shouted one of the village men.

  ‘Guard us while we fill our barrels, policeman,’ demanded the Tikopian who had spoken first.

  Kella paused, while both groups looked at him waiting for his reaction. Finally the sergeant shrugged indifferently and turned away.

  ‘Beat the crap out of each other if you like,’ he said. ‘I don’t care.’

  One of the villagers who could speak English translated for the benefit of his companions. The men around him grunted indignantly and broke into a dozen separate conversations.

  ‘Are you going to allow these strangers to invade our village?’ demanded their spokesman.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ yawned Kella. ‘All you’re doing is biboimim. If I want to see play-acting, I’ll go to the Point Cruz cinema and watch John Wayne at work on the screen. Come with me, all of you.’

  He walked confidently back into the trees without looking round to see if he was being followed. When he reached the nest of overhanging creepers, he came to a halt. As he had hoped, the men from the ship and the villagers were all at his heels. Behind them most of the women and children from the village were also gathering hopefully, in case the latest visitor to their settlement was about to prove to be some sort of source of entertainment to break up the long, boring day for them.

  Kella indicated one of the darker strands cascading to the ground. ‘Pull hard on the end of that,’ he said in the Lau dialect to the nearest villager, a young, broad-shouldered man. The islander looked frightened and eyed his companions furtively for guidance. Kella transferred his attention to the nearest Tikopian. ‘All right,’ he sighed, switching to English. ‘You do it, then.’ The Polynesian shook his head sullenly, his downcast eyes studying the ground with sudden interest. Kella nodded.

  ‘I thought not,’ he said. ‘You’ve got some sort of precious cargo stored away up there, haven’t you? Something that could break if it was brought down too violently. Bottles of hooch, perhaps? My guess would be Australian whisky from a Chinese store in Honiara. Am I right?’

  No one answered. Kella reached out to give the strand a tug. There was a howl of anguished protest from the men in both groups. Kella let go of the creeper and stood back. He looked enquiringly at the group. One of the villagers shuffled forward.

  ‘Mefella fetchim,’ he muttered.

  For the next quarter of an hour, three of the younger villagers went up the tree from various sides, climbing agilely hand over hand. Each returned from every journey with three bottles of Australian Sullivan’s Cove malt whisky cradled compassionately in his arms. After four trips for each man, Kella counted more than thirty full bottles on the ground before him. The villagers and visitors from the ship looked at him like errant schoolboys.

  ‘Let me guess,’ said the sergeant. ‘You Tikopians came to the end of your contracts as labourers in the Roviana Lagoon or somewhere like that, and invested a chunk of your savings in this whisky in Honiara. You then had it transported by truck along the road to this village, while you travelled down on the government ship. Am I right so far?’

  ‘We have not broken the law,’ growled one of the Tikopians.

  ‘Not yet,’ agreed Kella. ‘That was to come next. You knew that the Commissioner would put in here at Tabuna, so you came to an arrangement with the men of the village. They would hide the bottles until you arrived, for a price, and then hand them over to you. You bribed these two seamen from the Commissioner and volunteered to come ashore with them, ostensibly to fill the water casks from the river. In fact, of course, you were going to hide the whisky bottles in some of the barrels and smuggle them ashore when you arrived at Tikopia. That would be against the law, because the four hereditary chiefs of Tikopia have banned the import of alcohol to their island.’

  ‘You forget,’ offered one of the Tikopians hopefully. ‘The men of the village threatened to attack us when we arrived.’

  ‘No they didn’t,’ scoffed Kella. ‘Even the peace-loving men of Tabuna would have made a better job of an ambush than the pathetic attempt I just had the misfortune to witness. What really happened was that one of the villagers saw me heading for the village in my uniform and you all hastily concocted the attack story in the hope that I would be fooled and maintain the peace and look on while you loaded the whisky on to the ship.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘How did you know about the whisky?’ asked the oldest villager.

  ‘Because your work was sloppy,’ said Kella. ‘You didn’t expect anyone in authority to turn up, so you just put the bottles in a fishing net and suspended it from the top branches of one of the trees. However, you had to make sure that you knew which was the right tree among all the others in this wilderness, so you dangled one of the strands of the net to the ground, among all the other creepers. As I walked through the bush, I saw that one of the strands was much darker than the other fronds. When I touched it, I could feel that it was manufactured from nylon, probably in Taiwan, and was not a real creeper. So I guessed that something was being hidden in a net above my head.’

  ‘Are you going to arrest us?’ asked one of the Tikopians uneasily.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Kella. ‘As I said, you haven’t broken any laws yet, and will not have done so until you attempt to smuggle these bottles on board the Commissioner.’

  Besides which, he thought, there could be another twenty bloody-minded Tikopians involved in the smuggling racket and spoiling for a fight waiting on board the government vessel outside the reef. There was no way in which a single policeman could assert any authority over such a potentially dangerous bunch.

  ‘What will happen to the whisky?’ asked a voice from the men from the ship.

  ‘That’s the first sensible question I’ve heard from you. I suggest that you leave it here in Tabuna until you sail back for your next logging job in six months’ time,’ Kella said. ‘You won’t make a fortune from it, but you can still have a hell of a party upon your return.’

  The Tikopians and the two Melanesian seamen who had rowed them ashore conferred in undertones. The man who had done most of the talking so far stepped forward.

  ‘How do we know that the men of this village will not drink it first?’ he asked.

  ‘For two reasons,’ said Kella. ‘The first is that they are afraid of you Tikopians.’

  ‘And what is the second reason?’

  ‘They’re afraid of me, too.’

  The Tikopian spoke quickly to the others again and then nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We trust you and will leave the matter with you, Sergeant.’

  ‘I’m glad that’s settled,’ Kella told them. ‘Now perhaps I can get on with my real work. I’m looking for the American woman who collects songs. Who can show me where she is?’

  The relieved islanders conducted him back to the centre of the village, where the Tikopians and the seamen resumed filling the casks, moving much more swiftly this time. Kella wondered what the villagers had made of the musicologist with her tape recorder. On the whole, the islanders were accustomed to the apparent eccentricities of the occasional touring e
xpatriates and paid little attention to them. In years past, one government geologist had been famed for his proclivity towards teaching bush schoolchildren to sing ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain’ in Esperanto, while a driven district administrator had spent years constructing a seaplane out of materials jettisoned by the Japanese. When after several attempts it had failed to take off in one of the bays, he had attacked it wildly with an axe and reduced it to matchwood.

  Florence Maddy, wiry and alert, permanently ready to go on to the defensive, was standing outside one of the huts with a number of the village women. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. She recognized the police sergeant without any obvious sign of warmth, brushing an errant strand of hair back from her face with a nervously trembling hand as she greeted him.

  ‘Sergeant Kella,’ she said with a slight nod. ‘I believe you’re looking for me again. What is it this time?’

  The emphasis on the last two words indicated that their last encounter on her artificial island still loomed in her mind. Taking his cue from her brusque greeting Kella got straight down to business.

  ‘I’m investigating the death of the islander known as Papa Noah last week,’ he said. ‘I believe that you were present at the church feast by the waterfall. Can you tell me what you saw there?’

  ‘Nothing of any help to you in your official capacity, I’m sure,’ Florence said stiffly. ‘I attended the feast because I heard that the choir would be singing songs of interest to me in my research project. In fact they only sang one such song. Then the storm blew up and some of the women present helped me down the slope to shelter in the village.’

  ‘Did you see anything of Papa Noah during this time?’

  ‘I had spoken briefly to him earlier to express my disappointment that only one pidgin song had been sung, but he seemed preoccupied over some visitor he was expecting. Then the storm came and everything became chaotic. I could hardly see an inch in front of my nose. As I told you, at this juncture some of the local women bundled me away to safety through the storm, and that’s all I know.’

  ‘But who invited you to the feast in the first place?’ persisted Kella.

  ‘I really can’t remember,’ said the musicologist. ‘Does it matter? Excuse me, I have work to do.’

  Reluctantly Kella turned aside. As he did so, he noticed a backpack and several suitcases inside the door of one of the adjacent huts. They were half hidden beneath a number of woven mats.

  ‘Are you going somewhere, Dr Maddy?’ he asked.

  The musicologist flushed. Too late Kella heard someone walking up behind him. He half turned, instinctively raising his hands to protect himself. Something very hard descended with force upon the back of his head, and suddenly he seemed to be falling forward helplessly into a very deep, very dark and apparently endless chasm. Before he was completely enclosed in darkness, the sergeant thought how misguided he had been ever to turn his back on a group as temperamental as the Tikopians.

  15

  THE KOROKORO BIRD

  Kella wondered how long he had been unconscious. The sun was almost directly overhead, which meant that about an hour had passed since he had been attacked from behind. He heaved himself to his feet and limped down to the water’s edge. As he had expected, the Commissioner was no longer in sight. The government vessel must have weighed anchor and sailed round the headland while he was lying senseless on the ground. Apart from a few stops to take on water, the ship would be out of touch for the best part of a week on its way to Tikopia.

  He turned back and searched the village. It was empty. The islanders would have fled to the safety of the bush after a police officer had been assaulted within its boundaries. It would be several days before they dared to return, if they came back at all. With rumours of the activities of the killman still percolating, many of them might choose the safety of one of the missions in the area. Kella bore them no animosity. None of them would have hit him. It would have been one of the irresponsible, heedless water-gathering Tikopians who would have struck the blow, before fleeing with the others for the safety of the ship, almost certainly taking Florence Maddy with them.

  Dazedly Kella wondered what was happening. The musicologist must have gone with the Tikopians of her own free will, or the captain of the Commissioner would never have allowed her on board when she arrived with the returning water-gathering party. Anyway, she had packed enough bags for a long voyage, so she must have been expecting to be taken on board the Commissioner.

  Why on earth would Dr Maddy have wanted to go to the remotest island in the group? The government vessel would not put in at any island containing a radio, so it would virtually be out of touch with the world until it reached its final destination. The ship would have a transceiver, but by the time Kella could get himself back to the police radio service in Auki, the Commissioner would have dropped its passengers off at Tikopia and would be making its way back to Honiara. There was no way in which he could get in contact with the ship or Florence Maddy in time to find out what was going on.

  Kella tried to go through things in his mind. He had been set up, he was sure of that. All the events leading up to the attack pointed to that conclusion. For some reason of her own, Florence Maddy had made her way to Tabuna to pick up the Commissioner and sail on to Tikopia. The Tikopia passengers refilling the water casks at the river had been sent ashore to pick up the musicologist and take her out to the waiting government vessel. But by whom and for what reason? As a subsidiary money-making venture they had also hidden away a cache of whisky to smuggle down to Tikopia from the village of Tabuna. When they had seen Kella approaching, they must have thought quickly and made sure that the strand leading to the net containing the bottles was easy to spot in order to divert him from Florence Maddy. Kella had fallen for the trick and assembled everyone under the trees, thus wasting more time.

  While he had been doing this, other islanders had been getting ready to smuggle Dr Maddy out to the waiting Commissioner. Unfortunately for them, and for himself as it had transpired, the sergeant had come back to the village too soon, before the musicologist had been able to leave. Someone, presumably one of the Tikopia, had knocked him unconscious, giving the others time to hurry the American academic out to the government vessel.

  Kella walked into the jungle. His mind was made up. It was bad enough being fooled in his capacity of policeman; it was much worse seeing the role of the aofia being scorned and challenged in the manner that had just occurred, even by a bunch of irresponsible larrikins like the Tikopia. He owed it to the gods and to himself to see that there was payback, and that it was made in full.

  He spent half an hour in a small glade, preparing for his next venture. First he said a prayer to the tree gods, before picking up a fallen branch to serve as his sacrificial offering. Then he smeared his face with white clay from the riverbank as a sign to any passers-by that he was about to commune with the spirits and must not be deflected from his purpose by anyone. When he was ready for his great encounter, he started to walk through the trees down to the beach.

  On his way down he heard a korokoro bird singing up in the higher branches. He took this as a good sign. A single croak from the tiny bird indicated that it would be a bad time to start new ventures, but continual chattering meant that a long and dangerous journey might profitably be undertaken. Close to the shore, a ring of coral stones taken from the beach had been placed around a tree as a sign that a holy shrine lay close at hand on the reef.

  Some women from the artificial islands who had climbed the slope to work in their gardens on the mainland had left their canoes on the beach when Kella emerged from the fringe of trees. With one hand he dragged one of the dugouts down to the water and started paddling out into the lagoon.

  Shore birds swooped around his dugout as he headed south – white cockatoos, black wagtails, sandpipers, fish hawks and others. They were sensible to spend so much of their time close to land, decided the sergeant. No sane animal or man would embark upon a long se
a voyage in the perilous island waters without a strong motive. There were too many things that he still did not know. He would have to take advice from the highest possible source. He did not like bothering the sleeping souls of his ancestors in this fashion, but if a priest could not appeal to the gods, who could?

  He paddled for half an hour, until he was approaching the southern end of the lagoon, away from the majority of the artificial islands. There were no other canoes in sight. This was a holy place. Unless an islander had urgent business here, he would pass the area as quickly as he could, averting his eyes from the rocks in the lagoon wall. Eventually Kella stopped paddling opposite a single jagged white rock protruding from the reef. He picked up the branch from the bottom of the dugout and threw it into the lagoon, and watched it float towards the white rock.

  ‘Lau ann e doo!’ he cried, begging the sacred spirits of the rock to catch his soul and nurture it. This was one of the Lau shrines to the shark gods. Tradition had it that beneath the surface of the water, on the seaward side of the shrine, there was a large cave where dwelt those famous ancestors of his clan who had been rewarded for their mighty deeds on earth by being turned into sharks when they died. No shark-worshipper had ever dared to dive beneath the waves to ascertain the truth of this belief, while any strangers who approached the reef would be killed at once, which was bad luck for anyone from other tribes whose canoes were overturned out at sea and who were swept ashore in the vicinity.

  Kella waited for the shark god who supervised deep-sea journeys to faraway places to be roused in order to listen to the aofia’s plea. Passively he sat while the god found time to put aside other matters with which he was dealing. Then he implored the spirit to tell him if the gods wished him to travel to Tikopia and save the white woman he had seen leaving on the Commissioner. Apologetically he gave the silent, lowering unseen god some background on the case that had brought him into contact with the American musicologist.