Devil-Devil (6 page)

8

THAT'S WHERE ALL THE DANGER IS!

Kella met Sister Conchita outside the mission house. He noticed without surprise that she was looking at him with renewed curiosity. Father Pierre would have been telling her about him.

He wondered how much the priest knew about what was going on. The old man was losing his grip on the station, there was no doubt about that, but he was still held in high regard by the islanders.

Doggedly Kella had questioned one or two of his
wantoks
about the discovery of the skeleton. All they knew was that the earthquake had driven the bones to the surface. The older men had remembered that this was supposed to be an act of custom magic, said to presage some great happening. They had persuaded the new white sister to rebury the body secretly, so that the bones
tabu
on the area would be lifted and life could go back to normal.

They had told her that Father Pierre would be upset should he be informed of the situation. This had only been a ruse on their part to get the body safely under ground again. The old priest, even in his present distracted state, would have insisted on making inquiries about Lofty Herman. This would have entailed the continued presence of the skeleton above the ground and the prolonging of the bones curse.

Sister Conchita led the way through the station to the school compound.

‘I'm sure that Father Pierre will be all right,' Kella started to say.

‘If you don't mind, Sergeant Kella, I'd just as soon you didn't patronize me,' said the nun, staring ahead. ‘I know when I've screwed up big-time.'

They passed the trading store. Mendana Gau and several villainous-looking Santa Cruz men were stacking crates of Australian 4X beer against the side of the ramshackle building. The trader directed a malevolent glare at the police sergeant and snarled something in low tones to one of his helpers. The labourer sneered briefly and spat on the ground when he saw Kella looking at him.

Sister Conchita and Kella scrambled down the steep path leading to the broad, fast-flowing river cutting its way through the densely packed trees below the mission. Half a dozen canoes belonging to staff and pupils were stored on one bank in an
obala
, four poles supporting a thatched roof with no sides.

Most of the canoes were simple dugouts, but one was more substantial. It had been carefully constructed, with two long twelve-foot planks forming the bottom, and two more for the sides. The planks had been waterproofed with gum from the putty-nut tree and lashed together securely with pliable bamboo. Smaller pieces of wood had been used for the panels in the raised bow and stern. Fitted cross-planes reinforced the body of the craft. The exterior was decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl shell, shaped into outlines of frigate birds.

‘Just who was this Lofty Herman anyway?' Sister Conchita asked. She spoke unwillingly, as if the words were being chiselled out of her, syllable by syllable.

‘He was an Australian beachcomber who lived here before the war,' Kella told her. ‘I was only a boy then, and I don't remember much about him, apart from his height. He went missing before the Japanese landed in 1942. Everyone assumed he must have been killed by a Japanese patrol in the bush.'

‘Perhaps he was,' said the nun, a breath of hope stirring in her dejected tone.

Kella shook his head, not wanting to give the nun false hopes. Lofty Herman had been murdered, he was certain of that. ‘I doubt it,' he said. ‘For one thing, why would the Japanese have bothered to bury him? And if any of the islanders had found his body, they would have brought it back to Father Pierre for a proper burial.'

‘You think someone killed him and hid the body?'

‘That's the way it looks.'

Sister Conchita fell silent again. She led him inland from the river, through the trees to the foot of the bluff. Part of the base of the cliff had split away and was lying in a pile of scattered rubble among the trunks of the towering trees. Some of the fallen rocks had cracked; their distorted shapes sprawled across the ground. A few were smooth and round, others were oddly scratched and pitted, like great scarred termites.

‘Mr Herman must have been buried right up against the foot of the cliff,' she indicated. ‘The earthquake broke some of the cliff away and churned up the ground immediately in front of it. One of the women saw Herman's arm poking through the rocks and fetched the men to dig his skeleton out. I had them carry it to an empty hut after dark, and then I wrapped it in some mats.'

Kella thought that it would have taken courage on the expatriate sister's part to have dealt in such a way with the bones and then disobey all the tenets of her faith, merely in order to prevent the mission priest from being upset by an unexplained incident from the past. She must be fond of the old man to risk the wrath of the church authorities in this way. Plainly Sister Conchita could be a very determined young woman.

Kella decided not to say so. The nun also had an acerbic tongue when she wanted to use it. He stared at the scene. It was quiet here among the trees. No islander would approach until the bones curse placed on it by Pazabosi had worn off.

Kella was about to turn away, when there was a loud crack. For a moment he thought it was a coconut plummeting to the ground. Next he heard a soft thud as something embedded itself in one of the trees. Then there was yet another report. This time a clod of earth and a whirl of leaves spun up into the air, less than a foot away.

Sister Conchita looked at Kella in bewilderment. Her expression changed to one of puzzled annoyance when the police sergeant seized her urgently by the wrist.

‘Run!' shouted Kella, dragging the startled and protesting nun after him. ‘Somebody's shooting at us!'

The two of them ran out of the trees and scrambled across the grass towards the bank of the river. No more shots were fired. Kella tried to listen for the sound of following footsteps. He could not be sure if anyone was behind them.

If he had been on his own he would have drifted through the trees at an angle and taken a chance on outflanking the other man. He dared not risk that with Sister Conchita at his side. Instead he concentrated on getting the young nun safely across to the water's edge.

When they reached the river Sister Conchita automatically turned to run towards the path leading up the bluff to the school buildings. Kella tightened his grip on her wrist.

‘Not that way!' he shouted, expecting at any moment to hear the report of another shot as the marksman cleared the trees behind them and got a clear view of them both. He pushed the largest canoe out into the water with one hand, dragging Sister Conchita after it with the other.

‘Get in!' he urged, steadying the side of the rocking craft.

Sister Conchita looked uncertain. ‘Surely we'll be safer back at the mission,' she faltered.

‘Haven't you got it into your head yet?' snarled Kella. ‘That's where all the danger is. Move!'

Startled by the authority in the police sergeant's voice, the sister scrambled unwillingly into the canoe and crouched at the back. Kella pushed the craft farther out into the main current and leapt into the front. He picked up one of the two paddles lying on the floor and began to propel the canoe rapidly down the centre of the river in the direction of the sea. With deft, practised strokes he thrust the paddle into the water, first on one side and then the other.

The canoe began to buck unsteadily. Alarmed, Kella glanced over his shoulder. Sister Conchita had picked up the other paddle and was digging it unsteadily into the water. Her tongue was protruding with the effort of the unaccustomed exercise.

‘Put that down!' Kella yelled. ‘You'll unbalance us!'

‘I was only', called the nun acidly, ‘trying to help.'

‘Do me a big favour. Don't!'

Kella turned back and ignored her, watching the river ahead. If the man with the rifle should still be behind them, he would not get an easy shot at them through the overgrown foliage on the bank. If the shooter had appropriated one of the smaller dugout canoes it would not keep pace with the custom-built craft they were now in. Kella estimated that they had at least a twenty-minute start over any pursuer.

He discarded the idea of confronting the marksman. He was unarmed and the other man had a rifle of some sort. Judging by the length of the intervals between shots and the fact that they had been so wide of the mark, Kella guessed that the weapon was probably an antiquated .303 of the type carried by the Armed Constabulary in the islands before the war and still in use among the villagers for hunting. At their best they had been notoriously difficult to use. Anything more modern would have released the shots much more quickly and accurately.

He skimmed the canoe over the water, taking care to keep it in the centre of the river. The trees growing along the bank were even thicker here, their branches forming an interlaced canopy overhead, blotting out the sun.

As they made progress along its length, the river was growing wider and more desultory, its colour a dirty brown from floods caused by heavy rain breaking down its banks up in the mountains of the interior. Kella looked for a suitable place to land. He saw a fairly clear area of bank and steered towards it.

‘Where are we going?' demanded Sister Conchita.

Kella did not reply. He brought the canoe up against the bank and signalled to the nun to get out. Unwillingly she did so and stood tottering mutinously beneath a mangrove tree growing crookedly out of the slime of the river bank at the edge of the jungle. She wrinkled her nose at the all-pervading, sickly sweet, putrid smell, as heavy as incense. Lizards crawled sluggishly out of the mud, hunting for worms and insects. A turtle slithered unexpectedly out of the trees, its head bobbing and thrusting erratically out of its shell, before cascading softly into the river. Frogs grunted and exploded out of the mud like dirty brown and green corks propelled from buried bottles. The huge tortured roots of mangrove trees protruded across the water.

Kella dragged the canoe out of the water and into the trees, covering it quickly with leaves and brushwood so that the craft could not be visible from the river. He picked up several large fallen palm fronds and whisked them up and down the stretch of muddy bank where they had come ashore, obliterating all traces of their footprints. When he was satisfied that that there was no apparent trace of their landing he started forward into the trees.

‘Pardon me if I've got this wrong, sergeant,' came Sister Conchita's sarcastic voice from behind him, ‘but aren't you supposed to be the cop? Shouldn't you be chasing the bad guys, not running away from them?'

She had a point, acknowledged Kella, but he was in no mood to debate it with the nun at this particular moment. Their feet were sinking inexorably into the mud as they moved, making progress through the trees and over the all-pervading roots difficult. Kella made for the ridge of firm land to his right that he knew led out of the mangrove swamp to the higher, safer ground of the jungle of the interior. He remembered that the hidden path rose to a height of six feet above this morass around it. Once they were on this track they would be able to make faster time.

After half an hour Sister Conchita started to complain. Kella paid no attention to her. He waited until another thirty minutes had passed and they had reached the outskirts of the relatively dry forested land before he allowed her to stop.

The sister sank breathlessly to the ground. Kella walked over to a coconut palm and scaled the slender, swaying tree. He detached two green young coconuts and dropped them to the ground, thirty feet below. Descending from the tree he picked up a thick bough and sharpened both ends with a few strokes of his penknife. He stuck one pointed end of the branch into the ground and then impaled a coconut on the other end, boring a hole in it. He handed the husk to Sister Conchita, who drank the liquid eagerly.

Kella smashed the other coconut against the bole of a tree, breaking the nut in half. With the blade of his penknife he scooped out the soft white meat and gave it to the nun to eat. When she had finished she gave a satisfied sigh.

‘However, don't think that I'm going to stop asking questions just because you've wined and dined me, Sergeant Kella,' she warned him.

‘I wouldn't dream of it,' said Kella. ‘What do you want to know?'

The sister gestured around her at the matted undergrowth choking the ground beneath the trees. ‘What we're doing here, for a start,' she said.

‘Where did you expect me to take you?' asked Kella. He recalled a hectic six-month attachment he had undertaken a few years ago. ‘The East 67th Street station house in Manhattan, maybe?'

‘If only,' said the sister with feeling.

‘This is Malaita, not New York. The nearest police sub-station is at Auki. That's three days' walk across the central mountain range. The safest place for us at the moment is at the edge of a mangrove swamp.'

‘And there was I thinking you were just trying to show me a good time. Couldn't we have gone back to the mission house instead of trying the white-water surfing stuff on the river?'

‘No. The mission is where all the trouble started.'

‘How can you possibly know that?'

‘I just do,' said Kella. He paused and then added reluctantly, ‘The spirits told me so.'

‘Oh, fine!' burst out Sister Conchita. ‘I'm dragged down a river and across a marsh because, I'm informed — me, a Christian sister, mind you — you're getting messages across the ether from trolls?'

‘This is my island and they're my spirits,' said Kella. ‘Just bear with me. We'll wait here until it gets dark and then I'll take you down to the lagoon. My village is there and we'll be safe.'

‘Why can't we go there now?' asked Sister Conchita rebelliously. ‘You got something against daytime travel?'

‘The man who fired at us may still be looking for us. If he finds our track he'll have to approach us through the swamp. Only a local man could get to us from any other direction; the going's too hard.'