Devil-Devil (16 page)

Kella did his best to fight back but the islander clinging to him was enormously strong and he held on tenaciously to the sergeant as the other two rained punches and kicks on their victim, grunting and sweating with the effort. Kella was aware that despite all his efforts consciousness was already beginning to drain from him under the onslaught. Summoning all his strength he struggled to his knees but, given fresh life by his unexpected reaction, the blows and kicks redoubled in their velocity and after a moment he toppled helplessly over on to his side, waiting for the inevitable finishing blows.

The onslaught ceased abruptly. Taking advantage of the unexpected lull Kella forced himself on to his feet through a haze of pain. One of the islanders was lying unconscious on the sand. The other two were backing away from Joe Dontate. As Kella looked on helplessly the two remaining Melanesians turned and ran, disappearing into the shroud of darkness provided by the beach. Kella started to thank his rescuer but turned away, doubled up and was sick.

‘Back in Sydney they used to call that the Technicolor yawn,' observed the bartender helpfully, sucking his bruised knuckles.

Kella raised his head. His body ached and his legs tottered like a colt's beneath him. Slowly he forced his limbs under control.

‘Thanks,' he heard himself croak.

‘It was nothing; I was just passing,' said the bartender.

‘Like hell you were,' said Kella, struggling hard. Every word he uttered made his bruised chest and stomach ache. ‘John Cho sent those guys after me and you followed them.' Dontate shrugged. ‘Why?' asked Kella. ‘I mean Cho sent his goons to beat me up because I wouldn't work for him, but why should you bother to get me out of trouble? You work for Cho as well.'

‘Not any more,' said the ex-boxer. He indicated the islander still lying prostrate on the sand. ‘That was my official resignation. I was going next week anyway. I've saved enough money to open a second store, in Gizo. Then I'll pass the word to my
wantoks
there that they're to use my places, not Cho's. David Cho's too old to do anything about it, and I'd like to see his boy come up against me on my own territory.'

‘Lucky for me you were about to make an upwards career move,' acknowledged Kella.

‘Nothing personal,' denied Dontate. ‘I didn't do it for you. It was the quickest way I could think of to get up John Cho's nose, that's all.'

‘Fair enough,' said Kella. ‘But thanks again all the same.' He turned to resume his journey towards the wharf. Dontate put a roughly restraining hand on his arm.

‘Where do you think you're going?' sighed the bartender, as if talking to a child.

‘Deacon's sailing out on the night tide,' Kella told him, pulling away. ‘He'll take me back to Malaita. Cho won't follow me over there.'

‘Maybe not,' explained the bartender, ‘but he's got twenty men strung out between here and the wharf to cut you off. You were wrong when you said he only wanted you beaten up. You'll never make it.'

‘Shit!' said Kella vehemently. He really had upset the Chinaman that evening. ‘Johnny Cho wants me killed?'

‘He's protecting something big,' Dontate told him, beginning to move away. ‘Don't take it to heart. You'll think of something. What's the point of being a witch doctor if you can't conjure up the odd miracle?'

‘Thanks a bunch,' said Kella bitterly. Dontate was several yards away now. ‘One more thing,' he said plaintively.

‘What?' asked the Roviana man.

‘You must have followed those three Guadalcanal men all the way from town. Couldn't you have interfered just a couple of minutes earlier and saved my ribs?'

A rare grin creased the Roviana man's battered face.

‘That's something you'll never know, Kella,' he chuckled. ‘Drop in and see me the next time you're in the Western District. We'll have a chat about it.' Dontate nodded and turned and walked away along the beach, back towards the lights of Chinatown.

Kella stood thinking hard. The recumbent islander shook his head dazedly, struggled to his feet and started to run in the direction taken earlier by his two companions. Absent-mindedly Kella aimed a vicious kick at the departing islander's backside. It connected and the man howled in agony as he hobbled quickly away to safety.

The sergeant wondered which group his attackers had come from. In the heat of the action he had been unable to make out any tribal markings on his assailants. They were probably representatives of a new breed of Melanesians, men who had come to the capital as children and had never gone home. They retained no island or clan allegiances and offered themselves for sale to the highest bidders.

And according to Dontante there were a lot more of them lurking in the darkness to prevent his reaching the security of John Deacon's trading vessel moored at the wharf.

Kella became aware of the sound of concerted feet thudding on the sand farther along the beach. A group of some thirty white-robed priests and sisters, both Melanesian and European, were marching eagerly along the shoreline, following a large cross being held aloft by one of their number. At the same time the sergeant could see the first of a fleet of fishing boats moving furtively out of the harbour on the night tide and sailing slowly parallel to the shore to pass the assembled clerics. Soon there were about twenty of the vessels in view on the water, bobbing up and down daintily. Most of them were small and dilapidated, powered ineffectually by ancient, much-repaired engines. They had fragile, whiplash masts of scarred timber, decorated tonight in honour of the occasion with coloured lanterns adorned by garlands of flowers. Each fishing vessel was crewed by only two or three islanders.

Kella remembered that Sister Conchita had reminded him that the annual blessing of the fishing fleet was due to take place tonight. A few bored islanders were walking along from the town to witness the ceremony, but the event was not attracting much attention. Commercial fishing for bonito and tuna had hardly got off the ground around the main island of Guadalcanal yet. Most of the fishing in the area was conducted with simple rods and lines from canoes by individual islanders putting out from the coastal villages. The Solomon Islands was one of the few areas in the world where most of the fish in its waters still died of old age.

The bishop, a burly, middle-aged German with cropped hair, was standing up to his knees in the water as he performed his blessing. His cassock and cape stirred in the off-shore breeze as he prayed in a loud guttural tone for safe voyages, strong nets and abundant catches to be the lot of the small trawlers assembled precariously out in the bay.

Unobtrusively Kella joined the knot of earnestly praying priests and sisters. He saw Sister Conchita standing on the edge of the small crowd. She looked up warily as the police sergeant approached.

‘Looking for salvation, sergeant?' she greeted him coolly in an undertone.

‘No, just help,' muttered Kella, straight to the point. ‘Is your van parked nearby?'

‘I dropped the sisters off on the road and left it there,' replied the sister guardedly, indicating the stationary vehicle a hundred yards away. ‘Why do you ask?'

‘Tell me,' said Kella, apparently at a tangent. ‘Do you still use it as the mission ambulance, picking up sick seamen from boats in the harbour and taking them out to the hospital?'

‘Sometimes when it's necessary,' agreed the sister. ‘What's this all about?'

‘So if anybody saw the van speeding to the wharf, they'd get out of the way and let it pass?'

‘They would if I was driving it.'

‘Hmm,' said Kella. ‘Could I borrow it?'

‘Certainly not!' replied Sister Conchita indignantly, returning her attention to her prayer book. ‘Immediately the service is over I have to drive the sisters back to the mission. The older dears will be more than ready for their cocoa by then.'

‘It's rather important,' persisted Kella.

The sister ignored him, intoning a prayer with determined piety.

‘You could almost say it was a matter of life and death,' Kella tried again. Still there was no response from the slight, devoted form in front of him.

‘I'm in trouble and I need help,' said Kella loudly.

Several of the praying nuns were now looking curiously at him. Sister Conchita slammed her missal shut with exasperation and dragged the sergeant away from the group, her face flushed and vexed.

‘What sort of trouble?' she demanded. ‘And why aren't I surprised?'

‘I need to get to the wharf but there are people who want to stop me.'

‘Then send for a policeman.'

‘I am a policeman,' Kella said, feeling like the straight man of a music-hall double act.

‘You could have fooled me,' rapped Sister Conchita with asperity. ‘What's so special about getting to the wharf tonight?'

‘John Deacon's cutter is casting off at any minute. He can take me home safely.'

‘Deacon?' asked the young nun sharply. ‘You want me to help you get to that man?'

‘Yes. What's so odd about that?'

‘Nothing,' said Sister Conchita, biting her lip. ‘Life is never dull around you, is it, Sergeant Kella?'

‘You've been known to stir things up yourself just occasionally. Look, this really is important. If you could let me have the keys of the van—'

‘No chance!' said the sister definitely.

‘Right,' nodded Kella, giving up helplessly and turning away. ‘Thank you for listening to me anyway.'

‘That vehicle is in my charge,' called Sister Conchita after him. She produced a key from the folds of her habit. ‘Where it goes, I go. I'll drive you to the wharf. Very much against my better judgement, if I may be permitted to say so.'

Now it was Kella's turn to be concerned. ‘I can't let you do that,' he protested. ‘It's dangerous.'

‘Sergeant Kella, over the last week I have found and unsuccessfully tried to bury a skeleton, been shot at by an unseen assailant, chased through a swamp, forced to climb the side of an unsafe vessel in high seas and condemned to share a journey with an uncouth and extremely unprepossessing Australian. Now you seem to expect me to defy my bishop, abandon my fellow sisters and put a mission vehicle to what is almost certainly a most secular, if not to say illegal use. Kindly do not lecture me about danger! Shall we go?'

As they walked along the beach towards the Ford van they could hear the soft chuckle of waves sneaking up the sand, overlaid by the booming voice of the bishop as he concluded his blessing:

‘May the peace and blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, descend upon these ships and upon all who shall be in them, and remain for ever.'

As his closing words were still reverberating across the beach the other nuns turned with alacrity and hurried away from the fishing vessels towards the town. One of them caught sight of the departing Kella and his companion and called out to them.

‘We're ready to go back now, my dear,' said the nun brightly, descending upon Sister Conchita.

In a moment all the sisters had caught up with them and were surrounding the couple, smiling with anticipation. Kella could not see one who was under sixty years of age. These were nuns who had spent many years of their lives in arduous work at isolated mission stations and only now were beginning to relax in various administrative tasks in the capital.

‘Actually, I've promised to drop Sergeant Kella at the wharf,' faltered Sister Conchita. In the presence of so many experienced nuns the usually dominating sister seemed positively chastened, noticed Kella, amused in spite of his predicament.

‘No problem,' said the nun who had first addressed them. ‘Why, it's practically on our way back to the mission house. It will be no trouble to take the sergeant to the harbour. In you get, sisters.'

Trilling and cooing like the latest recruits to a welcoming aviary, the sisters climbed skittishly into the back of the Ford van. Sister Conchita looked helplessly at Kella.

‘We can't take them,' hissed the sergeant. ‘It could be dangerous.'

‘Do you fancy telling them to get out again? No, I thought not. Get in the front with me, and try to keep quiet.'

In a moment the van was pulling away into Mendana Avenue. Kella noticed that the bishop and his priests were getting into a fleet of ancient and ill-matched cars. Sister Conchita drove past them without a sideways glance, studiously avoiding eye contact with any of the puzzled-looking white-robed men.

She steered the vehicle past the poinciana trees and hibiscus bushes bordering the main road. The sisters in the back were chattering together gaily. At the driver's side, slumped in his seat to avoid recognition, Kella kept a watchful eye for any figures lurking in the shadows on either side of Mendana Avenue. He did not expect an attack to be launched along the main thoroughfare. Any of Cho's men stationed there would be in the capacity of scouts, to alert the larger groups waiting for him down by the wharf.

At first he thought they were going to get away with it. After all, thought Kella hopefully, the Ford often came down here to pick up sick and injured seamen from incoming vessels. Dextrously Sister Conchita swung the vehicle off the avenue and started bumping down the unmade road towards the wharf at the bottom, a hundred yards away.

It was then that one of the men lurking by the waterside must have spotted the sergeant. His urgent warning yell alerted the others. Suddenly there seemed to be figures appearing from everywhere, racing towards the van.

Sister Conchita kept her nerve. With tightened lips but no change of expression she jammed her foot down on the accelerator. The Ford lurched forward, protesting mutinously at the unexpected turn of speed so unceremoniously demanded of it. The sudden difference in the tempo was enough to dislodge the two islanders who were already clinging to the side of the van. They dropped to the ground with cries of pain.