by Graeme Kent
The killman decided that the time had come. In his mind he went over the three main duties of a lone infantry raider: to surprise and confuse the enemy, to ransack the location and to destroy goods. He wished, as he always did on such occasions, that he possessed the luxury of the firepower and personnel of a typical Japanese squad at its peak: the machine-gunner, the sniper and the light mortar carrier. He remembered the final instructions to any infantryman: to close with and destroy the enemy.
He muttered the mantra of the survivor – ‘You must leave your farms and become soldiers’ – then picked up his rifle and ran across the intervening ground towards his destination. He reached the building and kicked open the door. He paused, took out a torch, switched it on and placed his rifle against the wall. Then he removed the four sticks of dynamite from his backpack and deposited them along the length of the construction. He had visited it several weeks ago and knew exactly where to place them. He lit the fuses, retrieved his rifle and ran back towards the shelter of the trees.
The dynamite exploded as he reached the edge of the jungle. From some distance away he could hear the shouts of startled men and women in the village below. The killman leant his rifle against a tree and scooped up the first of the percussion-initiated grenades he had left there on the ground. He tapped it on the trunk of the tree and lobbed it across the intervening ground into the heart of the blazing construction. He followed it with the three remaining grenades, each delivered accurately and exploding with a yellow flash, adding to the general conflagration. Then he turned and hurried away through the trees.
19
THE MONKEY ISLAND
Kella was waiting as darkness began to fall over the endless sea. He had been biding his time for the entire five days of the voyage, ever since The Spirit of the Islands had left Malaita. Casually he made a play of checking the fishing line he had cast over the bow of the cargo vessel, while his eyes raked the deck. He accepted that there were a few qualities that applied to both the aofia and a twentieth-century policeman. One of them was the ability to wait and then, at the right moment, to move, hopefully in the right direction. All his instincts, developed in both the worlds he inhabited, told him that the time to act decisively was almost upon him. His eyes searched for the sacred areca nut he had secured to the deck with gum at the beginning of the voyage. It was still in place and should guarantee them a safe landing. When the vessel returned to Malaita, Kella would retrieve the nut, give thanks and place it in the sacred beu aabu on his home island of Sulufou, as an offering to the gods.
Mayotishi had made no demur to taking his chartered vessel to Tikopia, once Kella had assured him that the origins of the killman’s activities might be found on the tiny island. The sergeant suspected that the Japanese was as much in thrall to his fates as Kella was to his. He had promised the fatalistic official that as soon as they returned to Malaita he would devote all his energies to tracking down the murderer and, in the process, ascertaining whether or not the man was a Japanese soldier.
After the attack on the track outside the mission, neither Brother John nor Shem had made any further objections to travelling to the relative safety of the remote eastern island. Indeed both men seemed quite relieved for the time being to be in a comparative limbo away from Malaita.
Earlier in the week, the vessel had put in at the islands of Utupua and Vanikoro to take on water and fresh fruit and vegetables. For the past three days it had been shuddering briskly across the open sea. So far the weather had been fine, except for a few refreshing squalls of rain. Mayotishi had recruited only a skeleton crew of half a dozen seamen, in addition to the bosun commanding the vessel, the engineer and a Chinese cook. Kella had approved. When he had supported Tottenham Hotspur during his sojourn at the London School of Economics, he had subscribed to the theory that in the same way that any good First Division side needed a spine of a striker, a centre half and a goalkeeper, so an inter-islands vessel in order to thrive required a steersman, a mechanic and a hash-slinger.
He had been further heartened to discover that the bosun, a grizzled, uncommunicative middle-aged man, was a wantok from the Lau district, as was the young, cheerful and decidedly friskier engineer.
The vessel, without a cargo and with only a few tons of rusted pig iron as ballast, bobbed easily enough on the surface of the water. Below deck, one of the two small, airless cabins was occupied by Mayotishi, and the other by Sister Conchita. Kella and Brother John were sleeping on mattresses on the deck, moving into the stateroom when it rained. Shem was sleeping in the crew’s quarters. That evening they had dined off bonito fish and taro in the stateroom, and now most of the passengers and crew were scattered about the vessel, enjoying the serene night air before it was time to sleep.
Mayotishi was sitting under a canvas awning, reading a book by the light of a hurricane lamp placed on a small table next to him. Rimless spectacles perched on his nose gave him the appearance of a studious weasel. The last Kella had seen of Sister Conchita, she had been saying her evening prayers in her cabin. Brother John was performing effortless push-ups next to the enclosed wheelhouse. At the wheel, the bosun was peering anxiously at the magnetic compass. This was situated on the roof above his head, free from the influence of any magnetic materials on the ship. Its location was commonly referred to as the monkey island. The helmsman was able to study the compass through a twisted periscope coiling up before him. Like all Melanesian navigators, he would much rather steer towards a fixed secure point close to the horizon, but this far out at sea, such an option was denied him. If the vessel should overshoot the tiny speck of an island they were heading for, the next landfall would not be until the coast of the New Hebrides group was reached, by which time The Spirit of the Islands’ supplies of water and fuel would have been used up long ago and its crew and passengers would almost certainly have died of thirst.
Kella studied the sea with a wary eye. There were signs of an approaching black squall. The waves breaking against the bows of the vessel were growing more and more phosphorescent, and he could see in the sky six of the togo o ni, the group of maidens that the white people called the Pleiades cluster. He caught the helmsman’s eye. The bosun shook his head resignedly.
Not far from Kella, most of the crew members had been gambling and squabbling noisily for the last hour over an oilskin crown-and-anchor chart on the deck. Shem, the Tikopian, was prominent among them. So far he had kept to himself on the voyage, but tonight he had joined the Melanesians in their gaming, like an indolent, lazily smiling shark that had been following a shoal of small fish hungrily for days. The seamen around him cursed and cheered alternately as the dice were propelled from the shaker and the stakeholder raked in the money and paid out the winners. As Kella watched, the game broke up in some dissension. He was at Shem’s side almost before the Polynesian had got to his feet.
‘Did you win?’ asked the sergeant.
‘Against Melanesians? What do you think?’ grinned Shem evilly, opening and closing a callused fist to reveal a fleeting glimpse of a wad of crumpled Australian dollars.
‘Congratulations! Have you thought any more about the time when Papa Noah was killed?’
Shem sighed, but answered readily enough. ‘Oh, that! I’ve told you all I know. There was a big storm. Everything grew so dark and the rain came down so hard that you could hardly see anything. I did what I could to get people away from the exposed feast ground and down to the shelter of the village. By the time I came back up again, Sister Conchita was trying to revive Papa Noah. I helped her, but it was too late. Papa was dead.’ The Tikopian stared defiantly at the policeman. ‘Are you satisfied now?’ he asked truculently.
‘Not yet,’ said Kella. ‘Now I want to go back a while. Tell me about the feast. What was it being held for?’
The Tikopian sighed, but surprised Kella by giving a fairly comprehensive answer to his question. The feast had been Papa Noah’s idea from the start, to mark the first anniversary of the dream in which he had been to
ld to build his ark. The old man had left the actual organization of the celebration to his acolytes, but had personally invited the guests by walking many miles into the bush and along the shore and reefs to summon the converts to his cult living in the villages along his route. He had also invited Sister Conchita and Brother John, although Shem did not know why. Neither did the Tikopian have any idea who the mysterious guest referred to by the old man could have been.
‘What about Dr Maddy, the white professor?’ asked Kella. ‘Did Papa Noah invite her as well?’
Shem looked embarrassed. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘Wainoni the Gammon Man came to see me about her. He told me that the white woman was upset because she could not find enough pidgin songs about the war. Wainoni was afraid that she might leave without paying him all the money she had left. He wanted to keep her among the artificial islands for a little longer. He knew that the church choir would be singing at the tra-la-la, so he asked me if it would be possible to include “Japani Ha Ha!” and maybe a couple of other war songs for her to record on her machine. Papa Noah had been rehearsing these with the girls’ choir for days, so he had no objection, and he included her in the invitation.’
‘At a price, I fancy,’ said Kella.
‘The Gammon Man was prepared to make a contribution to church funds,’ said Shem.
‘I bet he was,’ said Kella. ‘Dr Maddy was his milch cow. Wainoni didn’t want her drying up on him. Talking of money, what happened to Papa Noah’s?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said the Tikopian. ‘What money?’
‘Come on,’ said Kella. ‘Everybody knows that anyone wanting to join the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark had to pay an entrance fee of two strings of custom shell money. The church had over a thousand adherents. Where are all those shells now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Shem. ‘Papa Noah took care of the finances.’
As far as Kella could tell, the Tikopian was telling the truth. Papa Noah and Shem had both lived in ordinary leaf houses in the village below the ark. They did not appear to own even a canoe between them. Neither had ever shown any sign of being wealthy. That meant that a lot of valuable custom money was lying around somewhere. Could that have been a motive for the murder of Papa Noah?
‘What about the others?’ Shem demanded, suddenly going on the attack.
‘What others?’ asked Kella.
‘The killman has now murdered three members of the Church of the Blessed Ark on Malaita. He killed Papa Noah, a young man hunting for wild pigs, and another man preparing a new garden.’
Kella remembered the details given to him by the tribal chiefs meeting on the artificial island of Sulufou. He had noted that the killings had taken place many miles apart. Was the fact that three members of the Ark cult had been murdered an important link, or just a coincidence?
He doubted that it could have been the latter, but he said nothing. It was obvious that Shem was frightened of something. At the same time Kella noticed that the seamen on deck were beginning to cast apprehensive glances at the lowering sky. The ship started to buck irritably, like a pawing horse preparing to unseat its rider. One of the Melanesians shouted an abrupt warning. The others started running for the companionway leading below.
‘Big rain!’ cried one of the deckhands, pushing the sergeant towards the steps.
Kella followed the others down to the narrow passage below. Shem and Brother John were just ahead of him. They stopped in the ship’s corridor and glowered at one another. There was no love lost between these two, thought the sergeant. Then Shem stepped back and shouldered his way along to the crew’s quarters. Attracted by the disturbance, Sister Conchita opened the door of her cabin and looked out enquiringly.
‘We’re running into a squall,’ Kella told her. ‘I should stay where you are if I were you.’
‘Come in,’ said the nun, retreating into the cabin. She sat on the single bunk and indicated that the sergeant should take a narrow bench attached to the wall beneath the porthole. Gingerly Kella lowered himself on to the flimsy seat.
‘I haven’t seen much of you on the voyage so far,’ he said. It was true. The sister had hardly left her cabin.
‘There were things I wanted to think and pray about,’ Sister Conchita replied.
‘Snap!’ said Kella.
The nun smiled weakly. She and the sergeant rarely discussed the divergences in their faiths and beliefs. Their skills complemented one another and both of them were content to leave it at that. There were some subjects a pagan priest did not discuss with a Christian nun, even one who had become a close friend like Sister Conchita.
‘While I’m here, may I ask you some questions about the death of Papa Noah?’ he asked. ‘They’re mainly background ones.’ Sister Conchita nodded. She was composed now, her hands folded in her lap. ‘Basically I’m interested in why you went to the feast in the first place,’ he went on. ‘The Church of the Blessed Ark is a very new arrival on Malaita. It hasn’t had time to get established yet, so it hardly presents itself as a rival to the Catholic missions. Why did someone as busy as you bother to attend a ceremony of such a minor sect?’
‘That’s what I said. It was Father Pierre’s idea. For some reason he was particularly interested in Papa Noah and his church. He thought it was becoming an important one. He asked me to attend and keep my eyes open.’
‘Who better?’ said Kella. Outside, the rain was coming down hard now, hammering down on the deck above them like thousands of tiny tacks being driven relentlessly into the weather-beaten planks by a phalanx of industrious gods. More rain rattled interrogatively against the glass of the porthole. The Spirit of the Islands was suddenly making hard work of its passage, running breathlessly up waves and then plunging recklessly down the far side of them like a frolicsome elderly aunt paddling at the seaside.
‘Thank you, Ben,’ said the nun composedly. ‘I’m aware of my reputation for being a nosy young biddy. However, I really can lay most of the blame at Father Pierre’s door on this occasion. I’d hardly heard of Papa Noah and his church, but the father seemed really worried about it.’
‘I wonder why,’ said Kella lightly. ‘The old boy’s seen off a fair few sects on Malaita in his time. What was so different about this one?’
‘I don’t know; he wouldn’t tell me.’ The nun hesitated. ‘I got the impression that Father Pierre wasn’t so much worried about what the ark church was. He seemed more concerned about what it might become.’
‘What do you mean?’
Sister Conchita selected her words with precision. ‘Once when we were discussing my trip to the feast, he said something to the effect that he wished that Papa Noah had chosen almost anything but an ark as the symbol for his cult. He said that it had too many connotations with the great canoe. In the wrong hands it could lead to dreadful trouble.’
Kella leant forward. ‘Can you remember his exact words?’ he asked.
The nun closed her eyes in concentration. ‘I believe’, she said slowly, ‘that he said: the ark and the great canoe; there’s very little difference between them.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Yes, that’s right, the great canoe. Is that of any help to you, Ben?’
‘Not much,’ admitted Kella.
The two sat in puzzled silence. What sort of sect was the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark? pondered the sergeant. He had assumed that it was just another unimportant minor cult, like dozens of others that had sprung up and then withered on the vine in the course of his lifetime on Malaita. Most of them had been founded by zealots who claimed to have had a dream or a vision in which they were commanded to establish a new church. The resulting conglomerations had usually consisted of a few bewildered adherents following a haphazard mixture of Christian and pagan practices. Their average lifespans were usually less than twelve months.
It was beginning to look as if the ark church was going to be different. For a start, the venerable Father Pierre had expressed his misgivings about it. The priest had once been Kella’s headmaster
at Ruvabi mission school. Even then he had been noted for his tolerance and acceptance of the diverse pagan faiths often being followed in tandem with the Catholic religion in his far-flung parish. When the young schoolboy had informed him that he was leaving the mission to take up the arduous training of the aofia, Father Pierre had made little attempt to deter him. ‘Follow your path as it has been appointed,’ was all the sad priest had said. They had remained friends ever since. If Father Pierre was concerned about the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark, then almost certainly there was a great deal to be worried about. But what? It was time to bring Sister Conchita into the equation. Her opinion was always worth having. Kella opened his mouth, but the nun’s thoughts seemed to be running on parallel lines and she forestalled him with a sympathetic smile.
‘It’s a matter of symbols, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Papa Noah selected the ark as the icon for his cult. It must resemble the symbol of some other sort of religion. Somehow Father Pierre is afraid that the two icons will merge in one dangerous faith.’
‘I was hoping that the father would have explained more about that before you left Ruvabi,’ said Kella.
Sister Conchita did not answer. Her silence only intensified the noise of the squall gathering outside. Father Pierre had been too ill to tell her anything. She wondered if he would ever be fit enough to run his mission again. The drumming of the rain was now being reinforced by the screaming of the wind and the monotonous thud of waves slapping against the sides of the ship. Sister Conchita guessed that by the standards of the Solomons, this would not be considered a major storm. Certainly Kella was not reacting to it in any visible form. He was sitting impassively on the bench, not even squirming round to glance out of the porthole behind him. Not for the first time, Sister Conchita thought that he looked like a deeply tanned and even more battered version of the film star Jack Palance in urgent need of a haircut. He must have sensed her unease.