One Blood (25 page)

‘What does that mean?’ asked Sister Jean Francoise, who seemed to be enjoying one of her lucid intervals. The French nun was resting her chin on her hands on the long table and leaning forward eagerly.

‘I believe,’ said Kella, ‘that the turbulence of the last few days is all part of a much longer line of events, going back to 1943. The trouble in the lagoon didn’t end when the fighting finished, it just submerged for a couple of decades. Now it has come back to the surface because it is time to bring it all to an end, so that the spirits of the lagoon will be satisfied at last.’

‘Closure,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘And are we meant to bring that closure to the deaths and violence?’

‘I think so,’ said Kella. ‘But this is not my area. I have no power or authority here. I am only a policeman. I must do my duty, but I will need help.’

‘What sort of help?’ asked Conchita.

‘Yours,’ said Kella.

The nuns looked at one another uneasily.

‘What sort of help can we provide?’ asked Conchita. ‘We are foreigners here too,’

‘I need your faith,’ said Kella. ‘Sister Brigid has the key to these events, going back seventeen years, I am sure of that. She became involved in something that happened in the search for John F. Kennedy in 1943. She won’t tell us anything about it.
I think that is because at some time when she was searching for the crew of PT-109, her faith came into conflict with the spirits of the lagoon. There was a struggle and she has never been able to talk about it since. Her faith was vanquished by a stronger one. Unfortunately she will not talk about what happened.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Sister Johanna. ‘Sister Brigid was—is—a Christian nun!’

‘Operating on her own in a pagan area,’ said Kella. ‘She did not have enough help. Her
mana
was not strong enough.’ He looked at Sister Conchita. ‘You know that this can happen,’ he said. ‘You had experience of it yourself when you met the dream-maker on Mount Austen once.’

Conchita paid no attention to the looks directed at her by the other two sisters. She remembered the occasion when Father Pierre had sent her up into Mount Austen on Guadalcanal to test her faith against that of the dream-maker. It was only a few months before, but now it seemed so long ago,

‘What are you trying to say to us, Sergeant Kella?’ she asked.

‘The troubles of the war in the lagoon have not yet ended,’ he said. ‘But it will soon be time to put a finish to them, if we can find the truth.’

‘Whose truth?’ asked Sister Jean Francoise, and giggled.

‘What do you want of us?’ Conchita asked.

‘As I said, my spirits do not operate so far from Malaita, but yours do. Your mission has been in the West for most of the century. Sister Brigid did not have your strength of mind. She allowed herself to be defeated by the Roviana spirits. You might be more successful if you come with me, Sister Conchita.’

‘You want me to travel with you on your investigations?’

‘I must have someone with me who has power, to make up for my own lack of it outside my home island. There will be times when I will need someone with a strong faith to combat
the water spirits of the lagoon. Will you travel with me in search of the truth, Sister Conchita? It is a lot to ask, I know.’

‘It’s out of the question,’ said Conchita. ‘I have my own work here at Marakosi.’

‘Rubbish!’ said Sister Johanna. ‘You were sent here to call us to order. Well, you’ve done that. Now do something really useful. Go with the sergeant, put an end to the evil that has come to Roviana. Release Sister Brigid from the invisible bonds that have bound her for so many dreadful years.’

‘There must be a Christian missionary present in any attempt to restore good in the lagoon,’ agreed Sister Jean Francoise. ‘Johanna and Brigid are too old, and my mind is not attached firmly enough any more.’

‘You’re too old as well,’ Sister Johanna sniffed. ‘It has to be Conchita.’ She stood up and walked over to stand next to the young nun. ‘You were prepared to combat three old women at the mission,’ she said gently. ‘Are you not also ready to face the wild spirits out there, armed with your faith? After all, it’s only a matter of degree.’

Conchita tried to marshal her thoughts. On the face of it, what she was being asked to do seemed absurd. If the church authorities knew that she was even accepting the existence of the local spirits, they would order her back to Honiara at once. If they suspected that she was contemplating going out to match her faith against that of the lagoon devil-devils, she would be sent back to the USA immediately. Yet Ben Kella was asking her to do just that, and the police sergeant had never asked anything of her before, no matter how dangerous his situation. Another thought struck her. He was almost too openly anxious. Was it possible that he had another agenda altogether? Could it be that he had been alarmed at the attempt on her life when the boulder had been dislodged on Kolombangara? Was he taking her under his wing again, as he had done once before? Or was it part of his plan to strengthen
her position at Marakosi Mission? By publicly expressing his dependence upon Sister Conchita, he had impressed the other nuns with her importance in the scheme of things at the station. Was he only doing that to make her position in the mission more secure? She realized that the French nun was talking.

‘There comes a time,’ said Sister Jean Francoise, ‘when we have to learn to do what our heart tells us is right, even if our head thinks that it is foolhardy. Besides, it’s time somebody from the mission went out into the world again and made some sort of impression on it.’

‘Of course,’ warned Sister Johanna, ‘we’re not the best people to be advising you. Jean Francoise and I have been regarded as having gone native years ago—no offence, Ben. Sister Conchita, you might share that fate if you leave the mission with the sergeant. Sisters who spend too much time reacting to local conditions, or even recognising them, are labelled mavericks. On the other hand, if you are successful in this mission, you might be able to bring dear Sister Brigid back to us from the hell she has been living in all this time. Half a dozen bishops haven’t been able to do that.’ She paused and looked at Kella. ‘By the way, that rock that rolled down on us on Kolombangara, was that a deliberate attempt to kill us?’

‘It was a warning for you to keep away from the island,’ said Kella. ‘If they had wanted to kill you, they could have thought of a dozen better ways. If you go back, they will.’

‘So what does that tell us?’ asked Conchita.

‘That part of the answer to our problem probably lies on Kolombangara.’

Conchita had made her decision. She stood up. Whatever the reason for Kella’s request, she was being given a chance to play a part in the investigation of Ed Blamire’s death. ‘Very well, Sergeant Kella,’ she said, trying to expunge the nervousness from her voice. ‘Where do we start?’

‘
JUST HOW MANY
policemen are there in the Solomons?’ asked Sister Conchita of Sergeant Kella’s broad back.

‘Two hundred and seventeen,’ said Kella. He had studied the subject for his promotion-to-inspector examination, which he kept on putting off. ‘There are seven gazetted officers, five sub-inspectors and two hundred and five other ranks.’

‘That’s to cover almost a thousand islands occupying an area of ten thousand square miles, where over seventy different languages are spoken? No wonder you never seem to get any help when you need it.’

‘It involves a certain amount of multitasking,’ agreed Kella. ‘Anyway, I always have you. You seem to make a habit of popping up and getting in the way.’

He was in the prow of the mission canoe, steering it along the coast of Munda. They had left Marakosi Mission over an hour before in the late afternoon and were passing the village of Kia, a mile from the airstrip.

‘They call that the tin town,’ said Kella.

Kia consisted of a collection of huts a hundred yards back from the beach, sheltered by palm trees. Incongruously, a huge rusted assemblage of American and Japanese aircraft parts seemed to sprout from the ground amid the trees, towering over the village. Almost all the huts had utilized items of the wreckage for domestic use. An enormous shell casing suspended from a chain replaced the traditional drum to summon
villagers to meetings. Scrubbed petrol tins were in use to store water. Fishing nets sprawled across the beach to dry were attached to lengths of cable as sinkers. The wing of a Zero was hoisted on struts to provide shelter from the sun for the old men of the village. Primitive outdoor kitchen ranges had been constructed out of flat pieces of salvaged metal. A rusted Zero propeller was being utilized as a roasting spit. A copra-drying shed had been thrown together from the sides of a tank.

‘That’s the American Dump,’ said Kella, indicating the heap of wreckage. ‘It’s even in the tourist guides. The villagers are making good use of the junk on it, so they won’t let scrappers come ashore here to remove anything.’

He headed the canoe towards the airstrip. Ten minutes later, he cut out the engine. For some time he sat studying the coastline.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Sister Conchita.

‘It’s very quiet,’ said Kella.

‘If this was a movie, I could say “too quiet”,’ suggested the nun. ‘I’ve always wanted to play the part of a cowboy hero’s sidekick.’

‘Gabby Hayes or Andy Devine?’ asked Kella.

‘I was thinking more along the lines of Dale Evans,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘She inherited Roy Rogers’ fortune after he died.’

‘Whatever happened to your vows of poverty?’

‘Even a nun can dream! Mind, I don’t know what I’d do with the stuffed body of Trigger.’

Kella grunted. Sister Conchita seemed to know her Western movies. Why didn’t that surprise him? Not for the first time he wondered what she had done before she had become a nun. She never talked about that period of her life. He picked up a paddle and began steering the canoe towards the shore. Soon they were pulling the craft up on to the sand by the rest-house. There were still no signs of life. Presumably no charter flights
had been booked for the day. There was talk of a small local internal air service being established in the Solomons over the next eighteen months, linking the major islands, but until that should happen, there were no regular internal flights, which meant that the airstrip, over a mile in length, constructed during the war by the Japanese for bombing raids, often lay dormant for weeks at a time. Sister Conchita and Kella walked up to the sprawling rest-house.

‘Wait here,’ said Kella, and went inside.

There were a dozen small bedrooms leading off the corridor next to the lounge and kitchen. Only one of them showed any sign of being occupied. All the guests seemed to have moved out and taken their luggage with them. The only bedroom in use was larger than the others. It contained Mary Gui’s clothes and books. She had been sharing the room with a man. The bed was unmade. Kella went through the clothes discarded by the man and thrust into a brimming laundry basket. There were several T-shirts bearing the inscription
Sydney Stadium
. Kella had seen Joe Dontate wearing similar tops. He threw the T-shirts back into the wicker basket. He wondered how long Dontate and Mary had been sleeping together. Western girls had a reputation for cheerful promiscuity, which was why so many European seamen had deserted in the area during the nineteenth century. Why should Mary Gui be any different? Kella certainly had no claim to her. It looked as if his brief liaison with the rest-house keeper could definitely come under the heading of a one-night stand. Somehow the thought saddened him.

Sister Conchita was waiting for him outside when he returned. ‘The place seems deserted,’ she said. She saw the look on the sergeant’s face. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

Kella shook his head. ‘Stay close to me,’ he said. ‘Something’s wrong.’

They walked round to the back of the rest-house. A lean-to
kitchen was attached to the main building by a sloping thatched roof. They could hear the sound of sobbing before they turned the corner. Mary Gui was sitting on the ground, with her back to the wall. A large kitchen knife was in her hand. Tears coursed down her frightened face. She scrambled to her feet and raised the knife threateningly when the pair approached her. When she saw who the newcomers were, she dropped the knife to the ground with a groan of despair.

‘Joe’s gone!’ she sobbed. ‘I think something bad has happened to him.’

‘Joe Dontate?’ asked Kella. ‘What happened?’

‘He had a row with Imison and the other Americans this afternoon,’ said the girl breathlessly. ‘He went to tell them that he wasn’t going to help them any more. I was in our bedroom. I could hear them quarrelling, so I went to the door of the rest-house. Then Joe ran down the beach and jumped into a canoe and paddled away across the lagoon. Ten minutes later, the Americans left. They started up the launch and set out in the direction Joe had taken. I think they were looking for him. I’ve been waiting here for hours but he hasn’t come back.’

‘You poor girl,’ said Sister Conchita, putting an arm around Mary’s shoulders.

‘Why did Dontate tell the Americans he wasn’t going to help them any more?’ asked Kella.

‘You know why,’ sobbed the girl. ‘You talked him into it. You persuaded him to stop helping them. That made them angry.’

‘I never thought he’d pay any attention to me,’ said Kella, half to himself.

‘Joe thinks a lot of you. He would never let you know that, but he often said that you were the only policeman in the islands worth a damn. He never liked the Americans anyway; he was only helping them for the money. When you spoke to him in the shell house and told him that he shouldn’t get
mixed up with the foreigners, it made a big impression on him. Joe pretends to be very modern, but he’s as traditional as any other islander at heart. He pays a lot of attention to custom. When he came back to the rest-house after he had seen you in Gizo, he said that the Solomons didn’t need the Americans, and that it had been a mistake getting involved with them in the first place.’

‘And he tried to break away,’ said Kella. ‘Why didn’t he just wait until the Americans had left?’