My Island Homicide (12 page)

Chapter 20

The next day, Jack and I interviewed Tonny Gava, a massive simple-minded youth who led Dave Garland's behaviour management team, or BMT as it was known. Tonny's obesity was almost unbelievable and his limited intelligence made him a perfect choice for the BMT. He wouldn't question the integrity of Dave's cultural discipline of the children who had trouble controlling their anger.

‘Mr Dave told me to use culture, but not to go
overmark
,' said Tonny, with the naïve expression that comes with ignorance. He held out a balled fist. ‘See, I can't do that cos it's against the law, but I can do this.' He opened his hand and slapped his head. ‘Ouch.'

Tonny was paid a bonus in the form of an overtime payment if he kept the kids out of trouble for a week, even though he never worked overtime.

‘It means I get paid on the holidays if I do the overtime that I don't really do. It's cool.'

I suspected serious breaches of the Education Queensland code of conduct arose from Tonny's allegations.

‘I'm not gonna be in any trouble, am I?' he asked as he signed his statement.

‘You've only told the truth, Tonny,' I said.

‘S'pose so. Better go. Didn't tell anyone at school I was coming here. Brought a couple of the kids with me. Wasters, they are.'

Jack and I followed him as he shuffled to the foyer, his arms almost at right angles to his inflated sides. He roused at the two thin boys, aged about ten, waiting for him. One was holding a can of Red Bull and drinking from a 1.25-litre bottle of Coke and the other was eating Twisties.

‘Gimme my Bull,' said Tonny.

The Red Bull boy handed over the can and the last thing I heard was the hiss of escaping gas.

‘You should see his girlfriend,' said Jack.

‘Let me guess, is she as fat, as thick, or both?'

‘She is gorgeous. She's got green eyes and straight, light brown hair. Absolute stunner.' Jack crossed his heart. ‘She did some modelling down south, but came back to be with him.'

‘It must be his sexual prowess?'

‘No, no. It was
maydh.
His father got the
maydh
for him. He was
hardup
.'

I laughed. ‘That's hilarious.'

There was no trace of a smile on Jack's face. ‘I'm not joking. How else would he get a girl who looked so good?'

In the afternoon, Jack came in with a statement signed by Rachel Isaacs, one of the teacher aides who corroborated Robby's allegations. She alleged that the year-seven teacher gave the NAPLAN questions to the children as homework the night before the test last year. What's more, after the NAPLAN exam, Dave directed Rachel to change the children's multiple choice answers to the correct ones and he rewrote some of the short answer responses.

‘Do you think Dave killed Melissa because she was about to expose him?' Jack asked.

‘It's a possibility. I can't believe it can take so long to solve a murder on a small island.' A thought came to me. ‘Could we use
maydh
to solve it?'

‘No,' said Jack. ‘It's only used to make people sick or to get them a lover. Hey, if you want a man, I know someone who can—'

‘No thank you. I'm not that desperate.'

Sissy and I did one round of the island on foot and picked up a bottle of red on the way home to take to Maggie's for dinner. I left Sissy in the unit but before I'd knocked on Maggie's door, Sissy was howling.

‘Bring her over,' said Maggie, ‘but we'll have to make sure she doesn't eat kittens.'

Maggie had befriended a cat that lived in the drains outside her office. She won the creature's trust with food and eventually brought it home. A fortnight later, the cat produced four kittens, which were now five weeks old.

‘I named her Chook, after a childhood dog.'

‘Is there a vet on the island?'

‘One visits every three months, but one of the nurses, Kelly, is great. Her sister is a vet so Kelly follows her advice. She'll arrange for antibiotics, if need be. The only thing Kelly can't do is desexing.'

Sissy sniffed Chook and her kittens, who were running around, and then she wandered off to explore the unit. Maggie gave me a ginger drink she'd made with chopped mint that kept sticking to my throat making me cough. Maggie was 54 and single. Her soulmate of ten years was killed three years ago.

‘He was riding to work and got hit by a truck.' Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I miss him. Don't mind me. I'm not as bad as I was a year ago. At least I've got Chook now for company.'

I didn't know what to say, but I coughed and coughed and finally retched up the offending piece of green. After that, I stuck to wine.

We sat on lounge chairs around the coffee table and ate chickpea casserole with freshly baked bread and a dessert of homemade banana yoghurt. Her dining table was covered with paper cut-outs, pens, a couple of Stanley knives and a plastic cutting board.

‘I do screen-printing and sew the fabric onto clothes and bags. I get quite a few orders for them too. And sell them at the monthly markets uptown. They're on this Saturday. You should come.' I thought of suggesting to Jonah he might like to come to the markets.

So Maggie and I made a date for Saturday morning.

When I got back to my unit about nine, I'd received a lengthy text from Mark, saying he was deeply apologetic about his ‘indiscretion'. He admitted to not knowing what he was thinking and was ‘filled with remorse'. What timing! What a hoot! He might have been outlining a defendant's guilty plea. Delete.

I was getting carried away by fantasies of Jonah and me strolling arm in arm through the markets when my mother rang to see how I was going.

‘It's not as laid-back as I thought. I didn't expect a murder.'

‘You know murder like the back of your hand. How are you finding life on a small island?'

‘Fine. Having a better grasp of Broken English would help.'

‘You're lucky English is your first language. As a teacher, I know it's hard to learn English when you have Broken English as a first language.'

‘Mum, can I ask you a question?'

‘Tell me about the weather. It's the end of the wet season. Is the
sager
, south-easterly, blowing?'

I sighed. ‘No wind at all. The sea is like a pond.'

‘
Mut-thuru
. Do you know that word?'

I wanted to say how could I possibly know the word, but I'd get the usual quip about my sharp tongue cutting myself. She told me
mut-thuru
meant flat sea. She also asked if I had seen some Torres Strait pigeons. She talked about gardening on Warral at this time of year and how the root vegetables planted before the wet would be close to ripening now. Once Mum started reminiscing about her island life, I wasn't going to interrupt her by asking about Yenah. I'd wait a bit.

I'd worked out that Islanders don't ask questions the way Europeans do. Take my grandfather, Athe Willy,
athe
meaning grandfather. Mum and my aunt referred to him as Father, not Dad or Papa. Mum treated him with formality, like she would a priest or doctor, something I could not understand until I told her a few months ago that this job was up for grabs and she pressured me to apply. Not only did she start to talk about her childhood, more importantly, I started to understand what made her tick.

Her father, a pearl diver, had urged her to marry a white man, buy land and have a better life.

‘Why would he tell you to marry a white man?'

‘Because white people were seen as superior. They made decisions, they had power and the safe jobs like police, managers, business owners. The Islanders dived for pearl or worked on the cargo boats. If I could not marry a white man, the next option was to marry an Asian – at least they owned shops. White people and Asians weren't under the Act, you know, the Department of Native Affairs control. You would have heard about the DNA.'

I had because it had featured in the media, most recently when many Islanders received payments from the Queensland government acknowledging that for years in the late forties, fifties and sixties, Islanders had worked for the DNA for below award wages. It never occurred to me to ask Mum whether this affected her or her immediate family. As far as I knew, she had worked at the hospital till she married my father and they left the island. Only three months ago, Mum told me she and her sister received a 4,000 dollar payment as compensation. I was gobsmacked.

‘And after Father passed away, I started to wonder whether the white way was better than the Islander way, after all.'

‘Why didn't you just ask Athe Willy while he was alive?' I asked, thinking it was pretty obvious.

‘A daughter of my generation would never question her father.' She frowned. ‘Your generation thinks nothing of asking questions we would consider rude. When Father asked, no, advised, no,
told
me to marry a white man, I knew it was for the best.'

In 1960 Dad and Mum met at the Valentine's Ball she'd attended with her girlfriends, Lily and Iris, at the town hall. At the time, Dad was a teacher at the primary school.

Mum loved my father and the ‘better' life he offered. He encouraged her to do her senior certificate and later her teaching diploma, but she was an island girl who found herself raising three kids in the suburbs of Cairns. Her own mother led a traditional life on the family's island, but Mum's marriage was new territory, to her and to white suburbia, I suspect. I can't imagine how she coped in the sixties and seventies. As an adult, I saw Mum and Dad's relationship lacked laughter and passion and companionship. Whether that was because of their different backgrounds or whether they had fallen out of love after more than three decades, they were two strangers sharing a house, talking about nothing except the news and education.

So, after I moved home following my break-up with Mark, I learnt Mum had been questioning her life since her father died. She wondered whether she had done the right thing marrying a white man, pursuing education and buying land.

‘I feel separated from the life I started out living, like I was Islander and somehow I've become white. How is my life better than theirs?' she asked, not wanting me to answer. ‘Sometimes I just want to go home and live the simple life.'

The week before I left for TI, we were having a cup of tea before breakfast.

‘Did something happen to make you leave TI, something serious, and that's why you've cut yourself off from the place?'

‘Ebithea, don't be ridiculous. Your father got a transfer back to Cairns.' She stood up with her half-finished cup of tea and turned to me. ‘Think about what your life would have been like if we'd stayed. No, I'll tell you. You probably wouldn't have finished school. If you did, you wouldn't have a tertiary education. You would have several children to different fathers which, sadly, is what happens in small, welfare-reliant and uneducated communities. You can figure out the rest.'

I'd been told, but I was sure there was more history to Mum than she let on. From the little I knew, she'd seemed to have sacrificed her own life and culture for me and my brothers to get an education. I'd get to the bottom of it.

Chapter 21

First thing on Thursday, Lency said Mr and Mrs Tamala were in reception wanting to know why it was taking so long to bring Danny Soto to justice.

‘Tell them court is on next week and they'll be advised of the outcome.'

‘And they'll be in for a long wait,' said Lency. ‘Honestly, people expect things to happen overnight.'

I peeked through the one-way glass at the Tamalas. Mr Tamala was waving his arms in front of Lency. I noticed three aluminium foil-clad loaves and a jar next to a sign, Aunty Doreen's Best Ever Damper. Salome's mother's damper. I would buy a loaf when the Tamalas left.

Shay appeared in my office doorway to tell me the John Tonge Centre had called to advise the autopsy results had been emailed.

Deceased: Melissa Margaret Ramu. Time of death: Between midnight and 03:00 hours on Thursday 1 April. Cause of death: Blood loss caused by the severing of the carotid artery. Noted: Multiple lacerations to the face, and a fracture to the left temporal skull caused a non-fatal subdural haematoma. Semen and hair were present in the vagina.

Test results were pending on the carvings and the cap. An inquest would be held so a death certificate could be issued. Melissa. A wife and mother, gone. Mother's Days, Christmases and birthdays would now become torture for Robby and little Alby. Life is so fragile.

Later, Jack barged in, phone to his ear, saying something about a charter flight. His eyes were bright with excitement.

‘Going to Yam Island for a stabbing charge. The victim's in a bad way and about to arrive by chopper. The community policeman has got the offender in the council office.'

‘Restrained?'

‘No, asleep,' he said as if it was obvious. ‘It's all good.'

‘Since when is a stabbing all good?'

Jack checked his watch and sat down. ‘The victim, Sarky, and the offender, Pona, are cousins. They started drinking yesterday morning and daylighted. Today Pona stabbed Sarky with a fishing knife.'

‘How is that all good?'

‘Sarky is on his way to hospital, Pona is in custody and Pona's family reckon he'd been
maydh
to do it. That's just not like him to get violent. Not with his cousin-brother, his
bala
.'

‘Not even if he's been drinking for 36 hours?'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘Nothing. Nothing at all.' The sonorous whir of a helicopter descended at the hospital. ‘Hey, that would be Sarky now. You'd better go and sort the
maydh
stabbing, but you'll need to work out a way of using the criminal law that applies in Queensland. You know, the 729 sections of the Queensland Criminal Code we are employed to enforce?'

‘Yeah, yeah, I know.' Jack was already at the door, shaking his head. ‘Don't forget the Anzac Day Rotary raffle. Tickets are in the tearoom.'

I remembered the damper and went to the foyer. There was no damper, no jar of money and no sign. Bugger.

It was quarter to five. I couldn't wait to meet Jonah. But we hadn't discussed where and when we would meet. Would I go to his house, would he come to mine? I decided to walk home with Sissy and wait for him.

Although it was five, the sun burnt low on the horizon and basked everything in a shiny, blinding glow as I rounded the bend to Back Beach. I was thinking of what to wear and regretted not having a collection of whatever stylish women wear when they go night spearing on dinghies in the Torres Strait. I was conscious of the thin film of perspiration covering my skin and the wet patches under my armpits, and was grateful I could shower and get ready before Jonah saw and smelled me. I would blow-dry my hair again and use those combs and apply a bit of Captivate and Allure. A voice from across the road cut through the still heat and I jumped.

‘
San e wireless
.'

‘Sorry.'

‘That means you are thinking real hard.' Jonah was sitting at a barbecue table in the park across the road from my unit.

Buzarr and Sissy rushed at each other and I was dragged across to Jonah, almost tripping over the exposed root of a giant rain tree.

‘Hello, Jonah,' I said, using my in-control voice.

‘We didn't talk about when or where to meet so I've been waiting here for you. I've noticed things I've never noticed before. The tap is leaking, the wheel on that trailer has rusted off and the
kukwam
tree is flowering. Here.' He held out a large orange hibiscus. ‘In our culture, women wear
kukwam
in their hair to impress the men.'

‘How beautiful,' I said, taking the flower and letting it hover between us, not sure if I should put it in my hair because I did want to impress him but I didn't want him to know I was trying to impress him. My mind became confused by all this thinking and my cheeks flushed. I brought the flower to my nose even though everyone knows hibiscuses have no smell.

‘
Kukwam
have no smell. Don't you know that?' I couldn't think of anything to say. ‘Here.' He took the hibiscus and tucked it behind my ear and while I should have been thinking about my lank hair and sweaty skin, I found myself closing my eyes and inhaling him. I savoured the smell of soap and aftershave. ‘You can open your eyes now. Come on. The dinghy is packed. Grab something long-sleeved.'

‘Like a jumper or a rain jacket?'

‘No, Ebithea.' He smiled and sighed at the same time as we walked across to my unit. ‘I've got a hard job ahead of me with your island education. This is the tropics. There are mosquitoes everywhere so grab something long-sleeved but light.'

‘So when do I graduate?'

‘When you can think in Broken English.'

‘Um. Okay.'

‘Not “um”. You should say
uh
. That's the Broken English word for “um”.'

Jonah followed me upstairs and waited while I grabbed my backpack and an old business shirt that had belonged to my father. I also packed a camera, water bottle and a couple of muesli bars.

We stood at the top of the stairs, with both dogs at our feet.

‘The dogs can't come night spearing. Buzarr would love to stay with Sissy, hey,
bala
?'

Buzarr wagged his tail and I put them both in the backyard. I refilled Sissy's bowl with Krunchees but before we had left, Buzarr had already eaten the lot. Thanks to his company, Sissy wasn't howling.

Any floor space in the dinghy was filled with an esky, plastic drums of either fuel or water, prawn baskets and ropes. Two long bamboo spears were tucked along the side and protruded from the back on the left, which I remembered was called port. Jonah sat to the right of the engine, with me on the port side. He pulled the cord, which I suspected had a technical name, and the engine came to life. After motoring out a short distance, he rearranged some of the items for stability and then turned the throttle to full speed. The water was proper
mut-thuru
– nothing like my racing heart.

I had no idea where we were, but Jonah pointed out Prince of Wales Island, P.O.W., on our right.

‘You don't say right or left here,' he shouted over the tinny buzz of the engine. ‘You say to the east or the north-west.'

After half an hour, Jonah slowed and headed right, no, west, towards P.O.W. Where there had been dark indigo sea, there was now a patchwork of pale reef. Jonah cut the engine and threw out the anchor. The water was about a metre deep, maybe less, so I could make out different types of coral, dark green and fiery red, and blue fish darting across the pale sand.

‘We're waiting for the sun to set so we can spear in the dark on the falling tide. Let's have tea.' He passed me a flask and rested a plastic lunchbox on top of the prawn basket in front of me.

I made two cups of tea in large enamel mugs with stencilled designs. A tea towel was wrapped around a loaf of damper, not the white fluffy version cooked out west in a camp oven, but the dinky-di island type. I peeled back the banana leaves it had been cooked in and the smoky smell of the earth oven,
kapmauri
, filled my nostrils. I remembered when an aunty and uncle, whose names I have long forgotten, came to visit my family when I was perhaps ten. They made a
kapmauri
in our backyard and cooked turtle they'd brought down, as well as cassava and sweet potato they'd bought from Woolworths. I helped them prepare the feast. What I especially loved was the damper Aunty made of white flour, baking powder and powdered milk.

She wrapped the dough in banana leaves from the neighbour's yard plus a layer of aluminium foil. The cooked damper had a shiny silken crust from the banana leaves. I ate slice after slice with butter and Vegemite, not interested in the turtle or root vegetables. I took the leftover damper to school for days afterwards and was at first teased by my white friends until they tasted it and begged me to bring them some. They were even willing to trade cake and packets of chips for it. I asked Mum to make some, but she said she was too busy. Jonah's damper smelled exactly like the damper Aunty had made – heavenly!

‘
San e wireless
,' he said. ‘You're thinking hard again.'

I told him about Aunty's damper.

‘There's Vegemite in that basket,' he said. ‘And butter in the esky.'

While the sky changed from a pale cream to magenta to purple to gold, we drank sweet milky tea and ate slices of damper. I was completely content; alone with a handsome man and scoffing some delicious, albeit simple tucker.

Jonah had rigged a fluorescent light to the front, sorry, bow of the dinghy. When the first stars appeared, he sculled the last of his tea and clipped the leads to the battery. The fluorescent light came to life, illuminating an amazing reefscape. Jonah whooped with delight and pulled the anchor up. He grabbed one of the long bamboo sticks and jumped onto the bow, using the blunt end to push us through the shallow water.

‘When the water is
mut-thuru
like this, it's good for night spearing. We pole over the reef as the tide goes down and comes up slowly on the quarter moon, which makes the current slower than new or full moon.'

He was silent, concentrating, the spear poised. Suddenly he struck and cheered. Impaled on the five prongs was a large silvery-green crayfish, flapping a few of its free legs. ‘Pan-fried in a creamy garlic sauce with capers.'

Jonah pulled it off and threw it into an empty prawn basket.

‘Usually the
sager
, south-easterly wind, is blowing in April. It means the water is too rough. We probably won't be able to night spear again till November or December. I see
kibbim
, blackfish. You like them?'

‘I've never heard of them.'

He wasn't listening. He was poised to strike again and I was torn between gazing at the flexed muscles in his forearm and his serious, focused expression, accentuated by the ghostly light beneath him. Eventually I turned my attention back to the water. The dinghy pitched as he struck.

‘Did you say you liked
kibbim
?' He pulled off a small dark fish, patterned with flecks of white, and tossed it in with the crayfish.

Jonah spent the next couple of hours poling over the reef and thrusting the spear at fish, crayfish and squid, cheering or cursing. I was intrigued by his unfailing enthusiasm. It was like each throw was his first and he was able to relive the initial thrill, over and over.

We came upon a school of squid and Jonah challenged me to have a go. Just standing on the bow was an achievement in itself, let alone holding a piece of bamboo, perhaps seven feet long, which was much heavier than it looked. A long thick twine was attached from the end of the spear to my wrist. After what seemed like ages, I was finally balanced and ready to strike, the prongs close to the surface of the sea. Jonah touched my calf. ‘Now,' he whispered, so close I felt the soft spirals of his hair brush my leg.

I wavered, disoriented, but threw my might behind the spear. The water fractured like ice. Certain I was victorious, I retrieved the spear, but it was as clean as a whistle.

‘You'll need some practice.' He was laughing. ‘Better gut all this now. More tea?'

He started gutting the first fish, slicing along the belly, snipping here and there and somehow extracting the intestines. Then he leaned over the side of the dinghy and rinsed it in the
solwata
. He picked up another fish and attempted to explain the process to me. I was frowning.

‘You don't get any of that, do you?' He threw the fish to me and passed over a knife. ‘It's a snapper. Have a go.'

I copied what he did, almost shuddering at the touch of the cool, spongy flesh and squishy guts.

‘Tell me about the man you're running away from,' he said.

‘Um . . . er . . .
uh
,' I said, correcting myself, nearly slicing my hand.

‘Good Broken English.' He threw a gutted fish into the esky and it landed with a wet slap. ‘I'm waiting.'

‘Mark and I were together for three years and broke up six months ago.'

‘How come?'

I wasn't used to being interrogated.

‘I went home from work one day, sick. His car was there. I figured he had the same bug I had. Except he wasn't sick – he was in bed with his young secretary.'

‘
Ya gar
.'

‘Oh, well, the relationship had been over for a while. I figured I deserved it, because I should have left him two years earlier.'

‘Stop being so down, no, negative . . . there's a word.'

‘Critical.'

‘Yes, that's the word. Stop being so critical. Things happen for a reason.'

‘Like what, that I was meant to come to TI to learn how to gut fish?' I was trying to shove the point of the knife up a fish's bum so I could slit it to the gills, except its scales were bloody tough.

‘Maybe. And maybe you don't know yet. Things work out so you get to where you're meant to be and then you see the reason. You wait for the reason to come to you.'