Warrior in the Shadows (7 page)

He looked at her, then slid the manila folder across the desk at Kativa. "I'd be careful with them. They're quite ugly."

Kativa looked through the photographs and felt herself go pale when she came to the overview photograph that showed the body of Madison Simmons hanging upside down. She forced herself to look at the photograph again and noted how the body was staged. She put the photographs down and made herself stack them neatly end to end, before she placed them on top of the manila folder and pushed it away with only her fingertips.

"I've seen enough, thank you."

"What do you think?" Charley said.

"I've seen something much like the body as well."

"Tell me," Charley said, leaning forward in his chair.

"The body, the way it was set… were there parts… missing?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"In the puri-puri ritual, in the ritual killing, some parts of the person's body are taken, sometimes eaten by the sorcerer."

Charley sat back in his chair. "The killer trimmed out portions of abdominal fat and ate it along with the victim's kidneys."

"Oh, my God," Mara said. She sat down heavily. "You didn't tell me that."

"That's another part of the ritual," Kativa said.

"You said that before. What ritual?" Charley said.

"Do you know anything at all about Australian Aboriginal culture?" Kativa said.

"If I did, I wouldn't be sitting here," Charley said.

"What I mean is the background," Kativa said.

"No."

"Australian Aboriginal culture has a very unique mythos, the Dreamtime it's called. They believe that the entire world was created by the Rainbow Serpent who made the world and everything that lives in it. Part of their belief system is what they call the Dreamtime, a reality and a time that exists concurrently with the day-to-day reality we know. Aboriginals believe they can go back and forth between the Dreamtime and the day-to-day reality through magic rituals. When in the Dreamtime, they can see the future and the past, and they can commune directly with their ancestral spirits, or the elemental forces of nature. This is a very simple explanation of a complex subject, are you following me?"

"I'm with you," Charley said.

"For your purposes, there are four kinds of magic. There's hunting magic, to help the hunter find the prey, to join his spirit to the spirit of the animal they hunt. There's improvement magic, magic to improve circumstances, to call down rain, to improve health, so on. There's love magic, powerful magic to influence a young man or woman to come together with the person who wants them. And then there's puri-puri, the black magic of death. It's meant to kill someone who has wronged or alienated someone within the tribe. That's what the inversion of the body is about… puri-puri drawings to inflict the ritual magic always show the target of the magic upside down, an inversion or reversal of the normal order of things."

"So this image is supposed to kill the victim?"

"No, this image is not strictly speaking a puri-puri drawing," Kativa said. She took out the first book and flipped to a page, held out a drawing. "See this," she said, pointing to an image of a long black figure upside down in a gallery of right-sided red-brown figures. "That's a puri-puri drawing, meant to kill the person represented by that upside-down figure. The drawing you have is of a particular Quinkin."

"What is a Quinkin?" Charley said.

Mara set her mug down, opened her mouth as though to speak, then closed it.

"A Quinkin," Kativa began, "is a spirit being. To the Aboriginals, there were many different types of spirit and ancestral beings. Some beings were spirits of animals that inhabited certain rock shapes, some were ancestors, family members who had died in the physical realm, others were spirits that inhabited rocks but weren't of the animal world. And there were others, both malevolent and good ones. The Quinkins are particular to the Aboriginal people of the Cape York Peninsula, which is quite close to Papua, New Guinea. There in fact was a land bridge between those islands and the northernmost part of Cape York, which is the far north of Queensland.

"The Quinkins were, or are, spirit beings that live there. There are two distinct tribes, who look different and have different agendas when it comes to dealing with the Aboriginal clans of the area. I'm most familiar with those, as the Laura area was a holy area for a number of reasons, and the Quinkins were said to be especially numerous there.

"The two tribes, if you will, of Quinkins are the Timara and the Imjin. The Timara Quinkins were like the tricksters of American Indian tradition: they were generally helpful to humans, but they enjoyed playing tricks on them. They might tip you into the water, lead you astray, tease you, but they would generally not hurt a human. They were tall and thin, black stick figures that were said to live in the cracks and crevices of the rock outcroppings in the Laura area."

She took the book back from Charley, flipped it to another page, and said, "Here. See?" She offered the book, open to a page where black stick figures hid behind thin trees. "At night, in the bush, the trees all look like this. You can see how to an Aboriginal it might seem that those thin trees moved with intention at night.

"The other tribe were the Imjin Quinkins, and they were held to be evil. They looked different, they looked like that drawing, and they traveled mostly by bouncing on those knobbed penises, even though there were female Imjin, who bounced on oversized breasts. The Imjin actively hunted humans. They would snatch children, and small parties or people traveling alone. They would ambush them, or lure them away by calling out their name. That's why even today an Aboriginal in this area, especially in the Ang-Gnarra tribal region which encompasses the Laura River area, will not answer to anyone calling their name that they can't see. The Imjin Quinkin would stalk humans, sometimes drive them like animals by making sounds and herding them into an ambush.

"And the Imjin Quinkins would eat human beings." Kativa sat back. "Or so the stories are told."

"That's interesting, and maybe it's useful," Charley said. "What could you tell from this painting? The person who drew it must know all about this stuff, or have seen that drawing."

"They'd have to be fairly knowledgeable," Kativa said. "The image, they may have seen that in a book somewhere, but it's not something that is widely circulated… the actual ritual of ritual cannibalism, that's something that most definitely is not common knowledge. The Aboriginals don't like to mention that, as the taboo against human flesh eaters is felt today still, and it was not a common practice, only among warriors and sorcerers. I… I'd think that anyone practicing this would have to be quite knowledgeable about it. A student of ethnography, someone fascinated by it, maybe an artist who'd read about it somewhere…"

"Who would read up on that? We're a long way from Australia," Charley said.

"I don't know, Charley. The art department at the university might have some classes in Australian art, I'm sure they would have at least a section on primitive and native arts… the anthropology department may have someone who specializes in researching those sorts of rituals. No one here, other than me, has much interest in the primitive Australian Aboriginal work. Most of the museum and modern art critical interest is in the new work done by Aboriginal artists which derives from their ancestral customs. And you never see anything like this."

"Is there anything like an Australian expatriate community here in the Cities, like the Russians or the Asians have?" Charley said.

"No," Kativa said. "Aussies aren't clannish in that way. They'd chum around if they met someone, but it's a point of their traveling, their walkabout, to meet and mingle with as many other people as they can. They're very outgoing, very sociable, very democratic when it comes to meeting people. I'm sure I'd know if there was one in the Cities."

Charley nodded, looked back at the photograph. "A Quinkin? A spirit being. A sorcerer?"

"Yes," Kativa said. "This was done by someone who knows about and is trying to practice an ancient black magic ritual. The action of taking their kidney fat is meant to rob them in this world and the next of their ability to survive a lean time. That's one of the major time distinctions the Aboriginals use— the dry time, and the wet— the time between the monsoon rains and the monsoon rain itself. Then there are the lean times and the fat— lean times when there wasn't much food, and you lived on your body fat, and the fat times when you stored up your body fat. Taking their body fat is robbing them of the very means of survival both spiritual and physical. Hanging the body, posing it like this, is a ritual to kill the spirit body in the next world as well as to warn others, maybe others of the same tribe, that this was someone who offended and broke the tribal rules, or was an enemy of the tribe."

"So the painting is part of the ritual?" Mara asked.

"Normally, if you can apply that word to this or to the original intent of the magic, the painting
is
the ritual. The sorcerer, who might be hired by someone else, or be assigned the task by the head of the clan, would go and meditate and contact the spirit beings through his ritual while he stayed alone to concentrate on his task. Then he would draw the drawings on a rock, create an image that he would infuse with his energy, provide a gateway if you will into the Dreamtime where that magic was most potent, and use it to focus the killing energy onto that person who might be far distant. The drawing itself was the ritual.

"Killing someone in that fashion… that would be something after the fact, or it could be a stand-alone action itself. It could be part of the ritual, or it could be a complete ritual in and of itself, without the drawing happening concurrently at all. After the fact, the killer might draw a depiction of the act so as to cleanse himself spiritually, but no, the drawing normally came first."

"This definitely came after the fact," Charley said. "The victim was dead. His blood and body fluids were used along with some ochre paint we found to put this image up on the wall."

"Ochre paint?" Kativa said.

"Yes."

"That was most commonly used on the walls for the rock paintings as well as on the body of the shaman and initiated males. They would draw figures on themselves, similar to what you see on the Imjin's torso."

"That's a possible lead. We could check with art stores on that," Charley said.

"I don't think this painting was meant to be part of the ritual," Kativa said. "I think the ritual was in the killing. Do you know how he died?"

"His head was fractured with a blunt object," Charley said.

Kativa nodded, took back the big picture book, and flipped through it. "Here," she said. She pointed to a photograph of several clubs. One had an especially large bulbous end. "This is called a nulla-nulla. It's a war club, it also looks very much like a penis, deliberately so. One of the theories about the enlarged penis the Imjin traveled on was that it was a graphic representation of a hostile tribe that used the nulla-nulla to kill."

"I'll need a copy of that," Charley said.

"You may take the book, just return it when you're through," Kativa said.

"What is the painting for, then?" Mara asked.

Kativa said, "I think it's a signature. Or it's meant to be."

"A signature?"

"Of the Quinkin, or the person who is doing this."

Charley looked at the picture, then looked at his own photograph. "Does this Quinkin have a name?"

"Yes," Kativa said. "Anurra. He's the most evil Quinkin of all."

Part 2

2.1

Alfie Woodard, fettered by the sheets in Susan's narrow bed, tossed and turned with his dreams. His eyes sealed with deep sleep, his body slick with sweat, he kicked at the thin blanket and worn sheets as he went back in his dreams, went back…

… to when he was a boy, naked and thin, a hard and lean mass of seven-year-old muscle running as fast as he could to escape the tribal policeman chasing him when he was suddenly brought to a halt by the hard hand gripping his tangled mane of kinky hair.

"No humbug with you!" the policeman said. His broad Aboriginal face seemed alien under the bush hat he wore as part of his khaki uniform, the same as the white policemen wore. "You're going now!"

And off he went with all the other part-white children taken from their Aboriginal parents. The new laws allowed for the removal of part-white children from their Aboriginal mothers, who were thought to be habitual drunks, idle layabouts, or general scum in the tribal lands, to be fostered with white families who out of the goodness of their Christian hearts had expressed their willingness to take in the poor heathen children of unfortunates and raise them in God's way. It was better for all parties involved, the policemen who came for the children said.

Or so that was how it was explained.

On his first night in his first home, Alfie had thrown his dinner plate to the floor and stripped off the clothes they'd forced him into and run out the door laughing while the embarrassed father chased him down and dragged him screaming back to the house. He took the first of many beatings, but he only lasted a few weeks there.

The next home was sterner yet; the father was a barber who used a razor strop from his shop with a free hand, leaving Alfie with scars that in later years he used, with an artist's precision, as starting points for his own ritual scarification. It wasn't long before that family too pled with the authorities for Alfie to be settled with someone who could handle him better.

The third home was the best. The old stockman didn't insist that Alfie be perfectly dressed.

"The boy's never worn clothes before and it'll be taking some time before he's used to it," Mr. Tokely, the head of the house, said.

He let the boy run free as long as he kept near. There were other Aboriginals working the station, herding the sheep and riding horses, who made a point of coming to the boy and telling him he was lucky with Mr. Tokely, that he was a good man and it was just the way of things how the government had taken him from his mother and sent him here.

"Make the best of a poor lot, boy," they said.

And slowly, with the caution of a wounded animal, Alfie did. He learned to wear clothes and shoes; he learned how to eat with a knife and fork. He learned how to ride a horse, under Mr. Tokely's gentle tutelage and with the help of Billy Williams, the Aboriginal foreman. He worked in the shearing house, handling sheep larger than himself, and he rode herd on the range. He took his meals in the big house with Mr. Tokely and his quiet wife. They had no children of their own, but they treated Alfie and the offspring of the station hands as though they were of their own blood. There were presents at Christmas, Easter egg hunts for the small ones, and church every Sunday. Alfie enjoyed going to church. He didn't understand why someone would let himself be crucified to save all the others, but the priest and Mr. Tokely promised him that someday he would understand.

He passed three idyllic years there. When he was eleven years old, disaster struck the station: disease wiped out much of the sheep flock, and the remaining animals had to be killed to prevent the spread of the virus. But worst of all was the fatal car accident that took Mr. and Mrs. Tokely. When the bank sent its men out to repossess the station, the buildings and the vehicles, Alfie found himself without a home and still under the control of the resettlement program.

His friends among the Aboriginal workers had offered to take him in, but that wasn't part of the resettlement program. He'd fought back tears as he stared out the back window of the beat-up government Land Rover at his friends standing, hats in hand, in the dust outside Tokely Station. That was his final memory of the good years, watching his friends fade away in the dust trail as the silent white man and woman in the front seats took him away from all that he'd learned to love to yet another new home.

The Edwards household was a way station to hell.

Their primary interest was the state stipend they received for the expenses of fostering a half white, half Aboriginal child. Their other interest was the income they could get from farming out a healthy eleven-year-old who knew his way around a sheep station to other families. Mr. Edwards had contempt for everything and everyone, including his own family. He'd especially abused his boy, Roy, who at fourteen was the oldest. But at least Roy got to sleep in the bedroom with his younger brother and his sister, while Alfie slept in a dank corner of the basement on a pile of tarps and blankets.

The first time Alfie ran off, he caught a professional beating from Mr. Edwards. Edwards had boxed in the Merchant Marine and was still handy with his fists, as the men who drank at the Quinkin Bar in Laura were quick to affirm. Edwards had spent more than his share of nights in the primitive barred enclosure that served as the Laura jail. The first night Edwards beat Alfie into unconsciousness, then dragged him into the basement and chained his leg to a support beam and left him there without water, food, or a toilet for three days.

"That'll teach you to run off," Mr. Edwards said. "Next time I'll break your bloody legs."

And the next time he did.

The doctor wasn't sympathetic or enthusiastic about patching up an Aboriginal child, but the state paid the bills, and the doctor and Edwards had a wink and nod agreement over how the billing should be presented to the proper authorities.

Over time they worked out a system that worked to both their benefits.

Worse than the beatings was Mr. Edwards taste for some sexual activity that his wife wanted no part of. A young Aboriginal boy provided an outlet for those tensions, something that Edwards found convenient and enjoyable. Roy Edwards, who'd been the recipient of some of those attentions from his father, was relieved; he welcomed the opportunity to direct some of his own deep-seated anger onto the defenseless target that Alfie provided.

Six years it went like that, until Alfie was seventeen by the state's count. The duly timed paperwork had him reporting to a bureaucrat who informed him that he would be on his own in a year. Alfie left the office, his hat in his hand, studying the floor in a state of confusion, looking round for Mr. Edwards who'd dropped him off for the meeting. In the lobby of the courthouse a military recruiter had set up a table. He was a staff sergeant in the Airborne Regiment, his maroon beret set at a cocky angle, and he hid his distaste for the bushy-headed young man in ragged clothing who stood before him but would not meet his eyes.

The recruiter looked Alfie up and down and said, "It's a fine life for the ones who can take it, mate. Think you got what it takes?"

"What does it take?" Alfie said.

"Got to be able to take punishment, go without sleep or eating and still be able to fight, do all that lot and then some, take it all with a grin."

Alfie looked up from his battered boots to meet the Airborne sergeant's eyes for just a moment, then lowered his eyes and felt a thin smile come onto his mouth.

"That's the lot, then?" Alfie said.

"Easier said than done, son."

"Show me the paperwork."

Later at home, when Alfie showed him the papers, Mr. Edwards laughed out loud and cuffed him. Alfie took the blow, but said, "Will you sign or not?"

Both Edwards and his oldest boy laughed at the thought of Alfie as a paratrooper. The rest of the family carefully ignored the exchange, careful not to draw fire in the unending battle that had played out for years in the house.

"Oh, I'll be signing these papers… one of these days," Edwards said. He threw the early enlistment papers down on the table. "One of these days. In the meantime it's back to work for you."

Alfie went back to work.

Later that night, he signed the papers himself in a fair approximation of Edwards hand, gained after long practice on canceled checks. He took a check from the ledger checkbook for himself as well and lay down early to sleep. He had work to do.

Early the next morning, when Mr. Edwards went out to the pens for his morning look around, he stumbled and fell and hit his head against a shovel so hard it cracked his skull.

Or that was how Alfie told it to the constable and the doctor. Roy Edwards thought differently, but he choked to death while drinking alone the day of his father's funeral. People commented on the double tragedy and noted how the young Aborigine foster rose to the occasion and helped set things right around the station before he took off for the Army.

And Alfie Woodard showed up at the Army recruiter's office in the first set of new clothes he'd ever owned with a signed early enlistment form in his hand.