Authors: Graeme Kent
Of all the words that Kella had heard that evening, these were the ones that struck the greatest chill into his heart and over the next few weeks were to prove the most unwelcomingly prophetic.
Sister Conchita approached the ark slowly. Several days had passed since the death of Papa Noah. She had not wanted to come back, but something had told her that amid all the disorder after the events of the big feast there would be one task remaining, and that she must accomplish it. She had come back from Ruvabi Mission in her lunch hour to take care of the matter.
As she walked across the plateau through the spray of the waterfall, the scene looked calm and almost pastoral. It was daylight, ‘time long sun’ in pidgin, and there were no obvious reminders of the dreadful events of a few days ago. The trees whispered softly, seeming to call all the creatures of the bush to their shelter. Papa Noah’s body had been removed for burial and there were no signs of any police investigation. Presumably Ben Kella had not yet had time to visit the scene of the crime. Not that there would have been much to see. The rain from the storm had churned up the ground and then washed it clean. Soon the sun would compact it into new shapes.
Sister Conchita could hear the despairing cries of the animals imprisoned within the ark. She increased her pace. As she had feared, these were not the protests of birds and beasts merely denied natural light and fresh air. She was hearing the frantic protests of neglected animals that had not been fed or watered for days.
She opened the door of the ark and went in. The stench from the cages in the darkened building was almost indescribable. No one could have been near the imprisoned creatures since the death of Papa Noah. Shem and the other members of the Church of the Blessed Ark must have been too busy or too frightened to think about the care of the poor beasts in their charge.
Sister Conchita knew that she had no right to do what she was about to attempt. At the very least she should have asked the permission of the local headman. However, on her way through the village below the plateau, she had not seen a single human being. She had no idea how long it would be before people started returning to their homes. In the meantime, Papa Noah’s carefully selected retinue of beasts was suffering.
The nun started walking up and down the main row housing the cages. One by one she opened them. As she did so, the incarcerated birds and beasts tumbled awkwardly out of their stinking enclosures and stumbled and fluttered in a confused mass to the open door of the ark. Their cries of relief reverberated from wall to wall. Within a couple of minutes the deck was almost empty. Sister Conchita could hear the running feet and beating wings of the released animals as they struggled to the welcoming pools and sustaining fruit and nut trees of the jungle.
Only one cage had not yet disgorged its occupants. Sister Conchita walked up to the far end of the deck towards it. Snuffling disconsolately behind the wire mesh were two small wild bush pigs. They squealed ferociously as the nun approached. She tried to lift the cumbersome wooden bar that kept the door closed. It was too heavy for her and remained obdurately in its socket. Calling upon all her strength, she tried again. Still it would not shift. Sister Conchita took a backwards pace, wondering what she could do next. Even if she could lift the bar, and after her earlier failures that seemed a most unlikely outcome, the small but heavy pigs would probably bowl her over and perhaps savage her in their hunger pangs.
Nevertheless, she approached the cage again. As she did so, a large brown hand clasped her shoulder gently from behind. Sister Conchita screamed convulsively and pivoted round. A tan-skinned islander had entered the ark and walked along the deck without her hearing his approach. Sister Conchita cringed away for a moment. Then she recovered her equilibrium and surged forward again, determined to sell her life as dearly as someone of her diminutive stature and generally pacific views could hope to do. The big man half-smiled in approval and placed a finger to his lips to indicate silence. Then he squeezed past the nun and clasped the large bar on the door of the cage. He lifted the wooden plank effortlessly and opened the door. The pigs stood in stupefied silence, and then raced along the deck, disappearing through the door of the ark.
Sister Conchita gazed at the empty cage. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know . . .’
She saw that she was talking to herself. The man had followed the pigs out of the ark at a pace resembling their own, leaving her alone in the gloom. Sister Conchita walked to the door and stared out of the ark. As she had expected, the man was no longer in sight. She stepped out into the warm sunlight, wondering what she had just witnessed. Of one thing she was certain. The large light-brown islander was the same man she had seen in the ark on the day of Papa Noah’s death.
‘One more question, Sergeant Kella,’ said the overweight middle-aged white woman from the Ministry of Overseas Development. ‘In what ways do you think this proposed secondment will add to your professional development?’
It won’t! Kella wanted to scream. It will be a complete waste of time! I’ll be sent to a country that has nothing in common with the Solomons to spend another three mind-rotting, boring months watching other people do their jobs while I should be back on Malaita trying to do mine.
‘I suppose it will provide me with more experience,’ he said.
Surreptitiously he scanned the faces of his three interlocutors, hoping that in some way by sheer force of personality he had managed to antagonize them to such an extent that they would dismiss him ignominiously from the conference room in the Secretariat building. To his dismay, he saw that they were all nodding benign approval. As so often before on these dreary occasions, he had been served a lob and had returned it innocuously to the baseline in the approved manner. It was becoming a frightening habit. If he was not careful, it might develop into a skill.
‘Quite so,’ said Chief Superintendent Grice, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, attempting without success to contain his satisfaction. ‘We shall of course be sorry to see you off on your travels again so soon after your recent return from Hong Kong, but it is essential at this stage in your career that you get as broad and objective an overview of policing in general as possible.’
And the more often I’m kicked into touch somewhere thousands of miles away, the less chance I’ll have of getting up your nose here in the Solomons, thought Kella. He and Grice were old adversaries, but these days his colonial superior officer was beginning to defeat him with monotonous regularity by the simple dint of approving the frequent courses on which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office mandarins in London were so keen to send Kella and other educated islanders in the long run-up to independence for the Protectorate. This time Kella had been tempted to ignore the invitation to visit Honiara, the capital, but at the same time he had received an urgent but ambivalent invitation for the
aofia
to look in at the fishing village just outside the town that afternoon to discuss a possible exorcism, so the interview could serve as an excuse for his journey across from Malaita.
‘Any more questions?’ asked Welchman Buna, the appointed member of the Legislative Council for the Roviana Lagoon, who was chairing the meeting. He was a tall, greying, dignified man from the western Solomons who, not long before, had saved Kella’s life when three rogue FBI agents had menaced the sergeant and Sister Conchita on the island of Olasana, where a young John F. Kennedy and the fugitive survivors of the crew of PT-109 had once taken refuge. Buna was one of the quietest but most influential of the local politicians and widely tipped to become the first indigenous prime minister of the Solomon Islands when the British could finally be persuaded to hand over the reins.
‘There is one more thing,’ said the woman from London. ‘It has to do with this peacemaker business.’
There was an explosion of silence in the room. Even the insensitive and suddenly panic-stricken Chief Superintendent Grice knew that expatriates never discussed the spiritual beliefs of Malaitans in public.
‘I hardly think—’ began Buna, but the plump woman interrupted him.
‘I know that I’ve only been in the Solomon Islands for a few days,’ she ploughed on, leaning forward eagerly. ‘But I’ve already heard a great deal about you, Sergeant Kella. I understand that you are some sort of spiritual leader of your people. Do tell me about it.’
Kella wanted to inform her to mind her own business, but restrained himself. Aloud he said quietly: ‘The
aofia
is the hereditary law-enforcer of the Lau Lagoon area and of most of the rest of Malaita. The tradition goes back hundreds of years. When I was a boy, the custom priests of the island selected me for the position. They anointed me, took me from my home for some years, brought me up and trained me in the old traditional ways.’
‘And then you came back to civilization and became a policeman,’ marvelled the woman. ‘Fascinating!’ She consulted a typed sheet of paper on the table before her. ‘You even went on to take degrees from the London School of Economics and Sydney University. Tell me, how do you become involved in these peacemaking activities on Malaita?’
‘If the chieftains on the islands decide that my services are needed, they send for me,’ Kella said. And a lot of good it does them sometimes, he thought, remembering the recent disastrous
kibung
of the high chiefs at Sulufou that he had only just survived.
‘When you have the time,’ said Chief Superintendent Grice nastily. ‘Sergeant Kella’s more mundane official position, madam, is as a police officer in charge of the sub-station at Auki on Malaita. That’s what he’s paid for.’
‘The day job, as it were,’ beamed the woman, apparently oblivious to the note of censure in the senior police officer’s tone. ‘I see! So you can combine both functions?’
‘Kella thinks he can,’ growled Grice.
There was another pause. Kella and Grice glowered at one another.
‘If there are no more questions, it’s almost lunchtime, so I think we can bring the meeting to a close,’ said Welchman Buna hastily. ‘Thank you for attending, Sergeant Kella. We shall contact you with our decision as soon as possible.’
‘But I don’t think you need have any concerns,’ beamed the woman from London, rising in creaking sections. ‘It has been fascinating meeting you, Sergeant Kella. Such a reminder of the continuing strength of links with the primitive past in this remote part of the world.’
She allowed herself to be swept away by the attentive chief superintendent to lunch at the capital’s Guadalcanal Club. When the chattering pair had left the room, Buna shrugged apologetically. ‘Sorry about that,’ the council member said. ‘Her ministry controls the purse strings back in Britain. We have to keep in with her and a few other glorified tourists, just as long as they’re signing the cheques.’
‘I need another overseas course like I need a hole in the head,’ Kella told the politician.
‘Of course you do,’ said Buna. ‘I know that. All the same, you’ll take what you’re given and like it.’ He expanded on the subject. ‘For a hundred years we’ve been one of the most neglected colonies in the world. A succession of expatriate high commissioners sent to govern us regarded this Protectorate as the arse-end of the world. Now that they’re beginning to think about independence for us, the whiteys are realizing that we occupy a position of strategic importance in the Pacific, and one that will be infiltrated by the Japanese if they don’t watch out. That means that for the first time, the Brits, Yanks and Aussies are starting to pump money into the islands. It’s part of my job to hold one hand out in supplication and touch my forelock with the other. In short, I’m here to keep our benefactors sweet. And if that involves ordering an ungrateful
kanaka
like you to have his suitcase permanently packed, so be it.’
‘There’s no answer to that,’ said Kella. ‘But Alaska! What the hell will I do there?’
Buna shrugged. ‘Shiver?’ he suggested. ‘Take up harpoon lessons? Watch reruns of
Nanook of the North?
How the hell should I know? I’ve got a country to run, if possible without letting the white African retreads clinging on to their positions here like frightened crayfish on a slippery rock know that I’m doing it.’ He regarded the sergeant suspiciously. ‘You’re putting up even more of a stubborn fight to stay at home than usual. Why? Have you got another of your private
aofia
projects tucked away that you’re not telling anyone about? I looked up your file at police headquarters, and you seem to have Malaita nicely in hand as always. You’re not sitting on top of another smoking volcano over there that you’re not telling us about, are you?’
‘No, of course not,’ lied Kella. He liked Buna but did not trust him. The Western District man was a politician. In the last analysis he would sacrifice anything in what he regarded as the best interests of his political prospects, especially with rumours circulating that the first national elections for the Legislative Council would be held any day soon. Buna hoped to be returned unopposed to his western islands constituency. Kella started to edge, he hoped unobtrusively, towards the door.
‘Am I keeping you from something important?’ asked Buna, not looking up.
‘No, of course not,’ said Kella guiltily, stopping. ‘I’ve arranged to meet some
wantoks
before I go back to Malaita, that’s all.’
‘Your
wantoks
will be the death of you one day, perhaps literally’ said Buna. ‘Everybody who speaks your Lau dialect thinks he is entitled to favours from you.’
‘This will be just a social gathering,’ said Kella hastily if inaccurately.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Buna, moving towards the door in his turn. ‘You’re a first-rate policeman, Ben, but you’ve got too much of a varied agenda for my liking. Are you going to help us drag the Solomons into the twentieth century, or are you going to live on some rock in your forsaken lagoon, chanting magic incantations? One day you’re going to have to make up your tiny mind which you’d rather do, otherwise we may have to make it up for you.’