by Graeme Kent
‘It’s like this, Grandfather,’ he said humbly. ‘There have been three deaths on Malaita over the past few days. The leader of the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark has been murdered and two converts to the sect have also been found dead. Whatever is happening seems to be connected to Papa Noah’s breakaway church. The two men murdered in the bush had nothing in common except that they belonged to Papa Noah’s sect, and they both drowned in an area in which there was no supply of water. It’s all very puzzling. Oh yes, and I’ve also lost a white woman, a neena who should have been under my protection.’
Kella looked hopefully at the rock, waiting for an answer. None was forthcoming. Perhaps the notoriously demanding and indecisive god of the ocean wall needed more information before making up his mind. Kella did not blame him
‘The third murder was that of Papa Noah,’ he went on. ‘He was drowned as well, but in a more straightforward manner. He was knocked on the back of the head and then his face was held under the surface of a rock pool until he died. Did the same man murder Papa Noah who also killed the two men in the bush? Although all three drowned, Papa’s death was different because it had no element of magic about it. It was almost certainly improvised on the spot.’ Kella paused again. Still there was no response from the reef. The aofia decided that he had better keep talking. ‘The storm was so bad at the time of Papa Noah’s death’, he went on, ‘that no one could really see what was happening. Sister Conchita thinks that she saw a Tikopian in the ark. Before he died, Papa Noah said that he was waiting for an important visitor, someone who was coming from a long way away. He also said something about becoming rich soon. Oh yes, and as well as that, I’ve run across a Japanese official called Mayotishi, who wants me to search Malaita in case the killman might be a surviving Japanese soldier.’
Put like that, it sounded even more confusing. Kella hoped that the shark god was making more sense of it all than he was. But he had started now, so he had better continue.
‘Shem, the second in command of the ark, who had most to inherit from the old man’s death, claims to have been busy guiding frightened women and children down to the safety of the village. The truth of the matter seems to be that almost anybody who wanted to could have crept up behind Papa Noah at the height of the storm and killed him. Oh, and I haven’t mentioned any of this to Superintendent Grice or the government authorities. They don’t even know about the killman yet. I’ve only just had time to tell you.’
The sergeant had to admit to himself that his actions over the past week did seem pretty amateurish, and definitely career-threatening. This time Kella gave the god of the reef several more minutes in which to cogitate and come up with an answer. The waves continued to lap lethargically. A breeze carried several small relaxed soaring birds out to sea, like shuttlecocks driven with long, lazy strokes through the air.
‘The person who worries me the most’, Kella ploughed on, ‘is the white woman, Dr Maddy. She seems ordinary enough, highly strung, single-minded, wrapped up in her research. She was at the feast, where she had a row with Papa Noah because he wouldn’t let the choir sing any more songs. What happened to her when the storm started is a bit confusing. She claims that she went straight down the hill to the village, but no one has been able to confirm that yet.’
Several bottlenose dolphins made their way languidly into the lagoon through a gap in the reef wall. They lifted their snouts and opened their mouths in their trademark inane grins. Kella sat still. He was a shark-worshipper, but dolphins also had their adherents, which made their presence in the shark lagoon puzzling. The two blue-grey mammals altered course and started nosing at Kella’s canoe. They withdrew and then launched themselves at him with greater force, like enormous torpedoes. The dugout rocked and almost went over.
Kella made no attempt to right it. He dared not pit his strength against the power of the spirits, even if these were ones he did not worship. All the same, he knew that one more attack from them would smash his flimsy craft. At last the dolphins seemed to sense that they were approaching a human domain. Banging their tails against the water, they turned and dived back to the comparative safety of the open sea. Kella did not follow their progress with his eyes. The last warning joust had spun his canoe completely around, so that he was facing the shore. A plump middle-aged islander with a sweet, innocent face and wearing only a loincloth was walking along the beach. He had a small woven bag suspended from one shoulder and was carrying a long pole. The man stopped for a few seconds, watching the dolphins cavorting out of the lagoon into the endless sea. Then he turned his attention to Kella and nodded. The aofia raised a hand. The plump man continued on his unhurried way, heading south. With a few strokes of his paddle, Kella turned the canoe back to face the shrine.
‘It’s Dr Maddy that I’ve really come to see you about,’ he said, returning to the reef god, shaken more than he cared to admit by his fleeting encounter with the walker on the shore. The place was getting positively crowded with spirits. ‘For some reason that I can’t fathom, she’s gone to Tikopia. She was helped on her way by a group of Tikopians who knocked me unconscious. When I came round, she was already on her way there.’ A large wave hurdled the top of the reef and churned in a foaming, disgusted mass in front of his dugout. Pieces of debris floated forward from it shyly, as if being offered at a market by a tentative salesman. ‘Yes, I know,’ muttered the shamefaced sergeant. ‘You don’t have to tell me. I should have been more alert. You don’t want your priests getting you a bad name because of their sloppiness. Is that why the dolphins have just been threatening me on your behalf? Anyway, it’s done now, and I’m sorry. What I want to know is what should I do next? Why has Dr Maddy gone to Tikopia? Will she be safe there? Above all, should I try to get down there to fetch her back? She is a neena and so under my sworn protection. But if I spend a long time getting to Tikopia, what might the killman get up to here on Malaita? Is it fair to persuade Mr Mayotishi to take me all the way down to Tikopia in the ship he’s hired? And there’s always the possibility that if I stay away too long, even the whiteys in their offices in Honiara will notice that something is wrong. They’ll come blundering over from Guadalcanal and stir up all sorts of trouble. Please, will you give me a sign as to whether I should try to get to Tikopia or not?’
For a long minute nothing happened. Then, although the surface of the water had returned to its former state of smoothness and Kella had made no movement, his canoe started to rock gently from side to side. The swaying continued for some time. Then the dugout was still again. Kella bowed his head. If the agalo geu, the spirit of journeys, did indeed wish him to travel so far, then he was assured of a certain amount of protection.
Unless, of course, the pagan gods of Tikopia were stronger than the Lau spirits, thought Kella as he paddled back to the main island. He wished that the ocean-reef god had been more forthcoming. The agalo geu had certainly given the sergeant permission to travel across the great sea, but it had displayed remarkably little enthusiasm for the whole venture, and the dolphins, on their unusual visit to the lagoon, had demonstrated outright hostility to him. Added to which was the appearance of the walker on the shore.
If there was one thing that worried Kella, it was the sponsorship of a silent and therefore presumably dubious god.
16
FORCE MAJEURE
It was quite late at night when Father Kuyper sent for Sister Conchita. She had been sitting with the sleeping Father Pierre in his room, occasionally mopping the perspiration from the old man’s brow and struggling not to fall asleep in her chair by his bed. Occasionally Father Pierre would mutter something incoherent. She would lean forward to try to hear him, but she could catch nothing but the odd meaningless word.
After she had been summoned by one of the local sisters, Conchita picked her way along the crowded corridors of the mission, stepping over the sleeping bodies of the islanders who had crept inside the building for warmth once darkness had fallen. She knew that outside in the compound, hundred
s of shadowy figures would still be moving around as the refugees prepared for the night.
When she entered the lounge, she was surprised to see Sergeant Kella sitting with the priest. The policeman seemed embarrassed at her presence and did not meet her eyes or return her nod of greeting.
‘Do we really need the sister here?’ he asked in a low tone. ‘This is a delicate situation. The fewer people involved the better at this stage. No offence, Sister Conchita.’
‘None taken,’ replied the nun impassively. She had not often seen Kella ill at ease like this. It was an oddly satisfying sight. It would do the normally omniscient policeman no harm to squirm, even if she could not yet discern the source of his mortification. She decided to turn the screw just a little
‘You’re quite a stranger, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘Will you be off on your overseas tours again soon?’
‘Alaska, they tell me,’ grunted Kella.
Sister Conchita widened her eyes theatrically. ‘Alaska?’ she repeated. ‘Very cold, I believe. Well, they say that travel broadens the mind.’
‘I have asked Sister Conchita to join us this evening because I need her input,’ said Father Kuyper, ignoring the interchange. He gestured the nun to an adjacent hard-backed chair. ‘I’m a stranger to this part of the Solomons, and poor Father Pierre is too ill to be of much use to anyone, despite his experience. He keeps drifting in and out of a coma. In the short time that I have been at Ruvabi, I have had time to see Sister Conchita at work and to get to know her a little. She has been here less than a year, but it’s evident that already she has immersed herself in the lives of the islanders in her pastoral care. In this case I have decided to rely upon her undoubted talent for observation.’
‘Force majeure,’ murmured Sister Conchita. Father Kuyper raised an impatient eyebrow. ‘In the country of the blind the one-eyed nun is queen,’ she elaborated hastily.
‘Thank you, Sister, but the repetition of several hackneyed shibboleths was not the sort of contribution I was hoping for on this occasion,’ Father Kuyper snapped.
The nun muttered an apology, then darted a dark glance at Kella when the police sergeant snorted in amusement in the stillness that ensued. She ordered herself to keep quiet. Father Kuyper’s recent grudging accolade had been about the only kind words she had received from the priest since his arrival. Perhaps that was because she had not yet deserved his praise, nor anyone else’s, she admonished herself.
‘Perhaps you would like to tell us the purpose of your visit this evening and give us your take on current circumstances, Sergeant Kella,’ said the priest. ‘You usually manage to surprise me. Why should tonight be any different?’
Kella nodded. He had been prepared for this, although he had hoped to avoid the involvement of Sister Conchita. She had a knack for getting to the crux of any problem with an objective directness that could be unsettling. Plus she usually managed to infiltrate herself into any situation she regarded as interesting, no matter what inherent dangers might be in the offing. He started to pick his words with care, aware of the calibre of Father Kuyper’s highly attuned antennae.
Kella was one of the few people outside the church hierarchy who was aware of the Dutch priest’s position in the local church. Kuyper had a honed intellect. He had worked for five years in the Vatican for the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith before coming to the Solomons. It had soon become common practice for him to be used by his South Pacific superiors for any complex task requiring mental dexterity and utter discretion. He was known to the irreverent, and indeed to many of the reverent, as the bishop’s fixer.
‘In the past week or so, three members of the Church of the Blessed Ark have been murdered,’ Kella said. ‘As you know, this has caused a great deal of upheaval in the Lau district and beyond. Many of the islanders are terrified at the prospect of a professional killman being on the rampage. One of the chiefs has even used the phrase vautuutuni oka.’
‘You must bear with me,’ said Father Kuyper coldly. ‘I don’t speak the local dialects.’
‘Vautuutuni oka means a religious war.’
Two tiny red spots glowed like hot coals on the priest’s pale cheeks. He grew tense. ‘I find that hard to believe, Sergeant Kella,’ he said. ‘Very hard indeed. Go on!’
Carefully Kella gave his now attentive audience an edited version of what he had discovered or assumed over the last few days. For some reason he did not mention his encounters with Mayotishi, the Japanese official. As a general rule he preferred to keep at least one card up his sleeve in any dealings with expatriates. He had learned that most of them had their own built-in forms of deviousness.
‘Hmm,’ said Father Kuyper non-committally when the policeman had finished. ‘It certainly looks very much as if everything is centred on this Blessed Ark cult. Sister Conchita, I understand that you were present at the feast at which Papa Noah was killed. You’d better tell the sergeant what you saw there.’
In as few words as possible, Sister Conchita recounted all that she could remember about the details of the bizarre afternoon in the storm at the feast by the waterfall. When she had finished, Kella leant forward.
‘The Tikopian you saw in the ark and again briefly in the mission grounds, could it have been Shem, Papa Noah’s assistant?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m sure it wasn’t. I only caught a couple of glimpses of the second man, but I’m sure that he was older and taller than Shem.’
‘Could you tell me about the knife he was carrying?’
The nun did her best to describe the fearsome-looking weapon she had glimpsed so briefly.
‘It could have been a Japanese bayonet, I suppose,’ Kella said.
‘It could have been practically anything,’ snorted Father Kuyper. ‘Please don’t twist the facts to fit in with any theories you may be developing, Sergeant. Do you have anything further for the sister?’
Kella shook his head. ‘No, I don’t, not at the moment,’ he said, sitting back.
‘There is one other thing,’ Sister Conchita said. ‘I don’t know if it’s relevant.’
Trying not to be intimidated by her two listeners, the nun described the incongruous joint efforts of Brother Baddeley and the custom priest to provide a joint burial service for the old man on the artificial island. As she spoke, Father Kuyper’s expression grew more and more sombre.
‘At last, something reasonably relevant,’ he said when she had finished. ‘What do you make of that, Kella?’
‘It seems pretty certain that the Church of the Blessed Ark is a bit of a mishmash of beliefs,’ said the sergeant slowly. ‘They’ve taken bits and bobs from a number of sects, including several pagan ones, as well as Christianity. As a result, it looks as if the Melanesian Mission and the custom people were both struggling to claim Papa Noah as one of their own at his funeral.’
‘Nothing unusual about that,’ commented Father Kuyper. ‘As I was telling Sister Conchita, Christianity and the pagan faiths have been competing in this area of Malaita for almost a hundred years.’
‘You’re right, there isn’t. But judging from the sister’s account, the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark is a flourishing concern. To be able to fill most of the lagoon with the canoes of the mourners, well, I’ve never seen anything like that. So we have a new, independent cult with a lot of adherents and quite a bit of money, from what I’ve heard. And suddenly it’s thrown out of balance because its leader has been murdered.’
‘And what do you think are the implications of that?’ asked the priest.
‘It depends on who the new sect leader is going to be. It looks as if Shem is making a bid, and there are probably others with the same ambition, including this mysterious visitor who was due to turn up at Papa Noah’s last feast, before the old man was murdered. Was he the same man Sister Conchita saw in the ark that afternoon? If there are a number of candidates wanting to become the next head of the Church of the Blessed Ark, they might be trying to outdo one another to impress the members. That may have bee
n why Papa Noah was murdered in the first place.’
‘Do you also think that this is why the would-be new high priest might have killed two other members of the sect recently?’
‘I don’t know what to think,’ Kella confessed. ‘It’s certainly a possibility. If you ask me, at least one of the candidates for the job is a zealot who is prepared to start a religious war between Christians and pagans in the Lau area. We’ve got to stop that before it gets out of hand.’
‘How do you propose to do that?’
Kella hesitated. ‘It seems to me that the answers to a lot of the questions we’re asking are to be found on the island of Tikopia,’ he said. ‘The Blessed Ark cult has a large number of Tikopians in it.’
‘That’s just what Father Pierre thinks!’ burst out Sister Conchita before she could stop herself. She was aware of Father Kuyper’s disapproving glance and clasped her hands demurely in her lap, determined again to say no more unless she was asked.
‘There isn’t much that the father doesn’t know about Lau,’ nodded Kella. ‘He probably understands more about the sect and its members than I do. From what I can see, the Church of the Blessed Ark has a number of connections with the island. There’s Shem, for a start, and the man that Sister Conchita caught a glimpse of before she discovered Papa Noah’s body. He was a Tikopian.’
‘And Shem ran away to hide in the bush outside the mission when he saw another Tikopian,’ said Sister Conchita, unable, despite all her efforts, to adhere to her self-imposed silence for more than a minute.
‘What about Dr Maddy?’ asked Father Kuyper. ‘Where does she come into this?’