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  ‘Ben was head boy at the school,’ said Sister Jean Francoise proudly. ‘We all thought that one day he would be the first Lau bishop of the islands.’

  ‘Then the custom priests took him away to the artificial islands to teach him the mysteries of the aofia,’ said Sister Brigid without rancour. ‘So naturally, we lost him.’

  ‘But he’s back now,’ beamed Sister Jean Francoise. She frowned and glanced reproachfully at Conchita. ‘But have you not been offered food and drink? For shame! Come up to the refectory at once.’

  ‘The very idea!’ said Sister Brigid with a frosty glare at Conchita, ‘Leaving you standing on the beach like a piece of spar wood that’s been washed ashore.’

  Chattering animatedly in the Lau dialect, the two old nuns flanked Kella and escorted him in the direction of the mission house.

  ‘I’ve come to ask you about something unpleasant,’ said Kella suddenly in English. ‘Crap, in fact—genuine human crap. What would it mean in Western traditional terms if you found a pile of it somewhere you wouldn’t normally expect to see it?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Sister Jean Francoise. ‘It’s an old Roviana custom. If a war party attacked another tribe’s island, before it withdrew, the leader of the invaders would defecate on the beach as a sign of contempt.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Kella, looking interested.

  ‘Come on,’ urged Sister Brigid. ‘We want to catch up with what you’ve been doing lately, Ben, not discussing caca.’

  She propelled the sergeant in the direction of the house, chattering almost vivaciously. Sister Jean Francoise fell into step with Conchita, a few steps behind the others.

  ‘I’m worried to see Ben here,’ she confided, when she had made sure that the sergeant was out of earshot. ‘He should never have left Malaita.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Conchita, trying to understand how the two old nuns could treat a pagan religion as if it was as real and meaningful as their own. She was also aware of a pang of jealousy. Kella had not been at the station five minutes, yet already the two sisters seemed to be eating out of his hand, while the sergeant had hardly said a word to her, except to dismiss her misgivings about the death of Ed Blamire.

  ‘Because his mana will not be as strong as it is in the Lau Lagoon, of course,’ said the elderly Frenchwoman. ‘That’s why the Japanese aren’t winning the war; the headhunters’ ghosts are stronger than theirs.’

  Sister Conchita wondered if she should tell the old nun that the Japanese had left the Solomons seventeen years ago, but Sister Jean Francoise had resumed talking.

  ‘It is very brave of Ben to come to the west,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ asked Conchita.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ asked Sister Jean Francoise. ‘It’s one of the legends of the Lau people, of course. If a period of fighting between Malaitans lasts too long, then the aofia will be deemed to have failed in his duty.’

  ‘And then what?’ asked Conchita, not really wanting to hear the answer, but impelled against all her instincts to ask it.

  ‘Why, then the spirits will call the aofia back to his rightful home,’ said the elderly nun sadly. ‘And Ben Kella will die. That is the custom.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘I’M AFRAID THAT the whole matter of the VSO, er, Russell, was just a regrettable accident,’ said the District Commissioner. ‘Poynter-Davies, the head of the Public Works Department, sent the lad over to Kasolo to build a leaf house as part of a training exercise. We also thought that he was making the wrong sort of friends among the natives. He was spending more time with them than he was with the expatriate community.’

  ‘So you wanted to get him off your hands,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘And then you forgot all about him and left him there without supplies for a month. The poor boy was almost dead when I found him.’

  ‘Oh, I think that’s stretching it a bit,’ said the District Commissioner uneasily. ‘The boy survived, didn’t he? You could almost regard it as a character-building exercise.’

  They were sitting in his office on the ground floor of the administrative offices on the wharf at Gizo, the district centre. Maclehose, the District Commissioner, was in his forties, a bald man wearing a spotless open-necked white shirt, pressed white shorts, long white socks drawn up to the knees and highly polished black shoes. With his coppery hue, he looked so crisp that he could have been freshly baked like a gingerbread man.

  ‘You could almost regard it as a case of blatant neglect,’ Sister Conchita said, not letting up.

  Maclehose pretended not to have heard her. ‘Anyway, all’s well that ends well,’ he said, not quite rubbing his hands together. ‘Perhaps you could send Andy back to us as soon as possible. We’re looking forward to seeing him again.’

  ‘He’s not ready to be moved yet,’ said Sister Conchita, stretching the truth a little. Once she returned the VSO to the official maw, she would have no chance of discovering what had really happened to him. In fact the youth was up and moving now; he had even been fishing with a rod and line from a reef when she had left Marakosi that morning. He had given her a cheerful wave as she had left in her canoe.

  ‘I don’t think you quite appreciate the true gravity of the situation,’ she said. It was a phrase that she had always wanted to use to an official, and she relished its delivery now. The words had their effect. Maclehose’s smooth, supercilious, baby-like face crumpled like a splintering window. The District Commissioner recovered his equanimity only with an effort. ‘After all,’ Conchita went on, ‘suppose Mr Russell decides to take legal action?’

  ‘Legal action?’ Maclehose said. ‘Surely not! We can’t wrap these young people in cotton wool.’

  ‘But you do have a duty of care to them. What you and your officials did to that young man could be construed as neglect of that duty.’

  Although the ceiling fan regulated the temperature of the room, the District Commissioner had started sweating. A genuine mix-up nothing more,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll have to see what the High Commissioner in Honiara has to say about it.’

  ‘There’s no necessity for that,’ Maclehose said. ‘Look, I’ll have a strong word with Poynter-Davies when he returns from leave. He might have been a little lacking in judgement on this occasion. Will that do?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Sister Conchita said, wondering for how long she could let the colonial official squirm before she got to the real point of her visit. ‘There is something else, while I’m here.’

  ‘Anything,’ Maclehose said. ‘I’m here to help,’ he added unconvincingly.

  ‘It’s about the death of Mr Blamire at the mission on Marakosi. I’d like to know what steps are being taken to investigate it.’

  The District Commissioner’s attitude changed with the rapidity of a wet sponge being drawn over a board. His manner of eager compliance vanished and he sat bolt upright behind his desk.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a simple enough question, Mr Maclehose. An American tourist died in highly unusual circumstances outside our church. There were signs of a struggle inside. Could this struggle have brought about Mr Blamire’s heart attack? As far as I can tell, nothing has been done to look into it. His body has been transported to the USA, and no one has been sent to investigate the events surrounding his death. What on earth is going on?’

  This time the District Commissioner did not give ground. ‘I don’t think you quite appreciate the difficulties involved in such an investigation,’ he said. ‘The sheer logistics of it baffle belief.’

  ‘I appreciate that it’s not easy,’ Conchita said. ‘But the government’s response to the death seems to be one of complete inertia. Considering that the victim was an American citizen, I find that surprising and reprehensible. At the very least, incidents like this could damage the tourist industry.’

  ‘Sister Conchita, you haven’t been in the Solomons for very long, and you’ve been here in the Western District for an even shorter per
iod of time—’

  ‘Mr Maclehose, I don’t need a long service and good conduct medal to know when something is wrong. In this instance, I might even suspect some sort of cover-up. Is the death an embarrassment to the administration?’

  ‘That’s absurd! Mr Blamire’s body was examined and the official finding was that he had suffered a heart attack.’

  ‘Yet no one visited the scene of his death. That sounds very strange to me.’

  ‘You simply don’t understand the complexities of the situation,’ the District Commissioner said. ‘This isn’t a death in the Bronx or Brooklyn, you know. Different conditions apply here in the islands.’

  ‘A man has died in what I, for one, regard as suspicious circumstances, and the authorities seem to be making no attempt to investigate his death. Do you deny that?’

  ‘Of course I deny it,’ Maclehose said. ‘You’re simply not in possession of all the relevant facts. Every possible avenue is being explored. You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes.’

  ‘And you seem determined not to tell me,’ Sister Conchita said, rising and heading for the door. ‘Very well, I shall just have to see what I can find out for myself.’

  She stopped and tried to regain her equanimity in the dusty main street running along the waterfront of the sleepy district centre. Copra boats and several visiting yachts were moored against the wharf. Along the waterfront was an open-air market selling bananas, corn, pineapples and tapioca. In the main street there were a few stores, and Quonset huts housing the government offices of the Public Works and the Post and Telecommunications departments. A Morris car and an Austin pickup truck were the only vehicles in sight. Scattered rusted wrecks of aircraft and vessels remaining from the war still had not been cleared from the beach running parallel to the street. Rising behind the village, the laterite hills, rich in iron and aluminium, were a red-brown in colour.

  Conchita started walking towards her canoe. What could have been the reason for the sudden stiffening of the District Commissioner’s spine? When she had pressed him over his culpability for Andy Russell’s neglect, he had responded like a frightened rabbit. Yet when she had tried to use his blatant panic to make him open up about the progress of any official inquiry into the death at her mission, the official had been uncharacteristically stubborn and intransigent. To Sister Conchita’s mind, there could only be one explanation. Maclehose was more afraid of the unseen influences restraining him than he had been of being exposed as an incompetent administrator. Somewhere he had been ordered to toe the official party line over the efficiency of the investigation, if indeed there was one, and he was going to do exactly as he had been ordered.

  That was not good enough, decided Sister Conchita. Ed Blamire might have been claiming sanctuary at the mission, yet all the same he had died soon afterwards. This might have been an accident, or it might not. There were things to find out, and it looked as if she might be the only person prepared to investigate.

  Ten minutes later, she was standing in the reception area of the medical centre at the end of the main street. It was a single-storey building consisting of a wooden frame covered with lath and plaster. It was divided into three sections: the reception area, a clinic for day patients and a small hospital ward. Serious cases were always sent on by ship or aircraft to Honiara. This morning, the centre did not seem busy. A slight, bespectacled Melanesian in his twenties, wearing a white tunic, came out of the clinic.

  ‘Good day, Sister,’ he said respectfully in English. ‘I am Benedict Waqamalo, the medical assistant. How may I help you?’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Waqamalo,’ Conchita said. ‘I have come to enquire about Mr Blamire, the tourist who was brought in here a few days ago.’

  The medical assistant looked apprehensive. ‘Mr Blamire’s body is no longer here,’ he said. ‘It was transported to Honiara.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that,’ said Conchita. ‘I was hoping that you could tell me a little more about Mr Blamire’s condition when he was brought here.’

  ‘He was dead,’ said Waqamalo.

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of that too,’ said Conchita, wondering for a moment if the imperturbable assistant was teasing her. A look at his anxiously attentive face reassured her. ‘Could you tell me about his injuries?’

  ‘I did not examine him,’ Waqamolo said. ‘The tourist was brought in by Mr Dontate and some white men. They told me that they would attend to everything.’

  ‘So you didn’t diagnose a heart attack?’

  ‘No, I told you. I was not permitted near the body. It was made clear that it was none of my affair.’

  ‘How long did Mr Blamire’s body remain in your clinic?’ Conchita asked.

  ‘A few hours; then it was flown to Honiara.’

  Sister Conchita performed some swift mental calculations. ‘It didn’t take them long to get hold of a charter plane,’ she said.

  ‘That is correct. A special aircraft was chartered within an hour of the tourist’s body being brought to the clinic. Mr Blamire’s body was then taken by government launch to Munda airstrip, and from there to the Central Hospital in Honiara.’

  ‘It all seems rather odd,’ said Conchita. ‘Was there any official involvement in all this?’

  ‘Oh yes. I telephoned Mr Maclehose, the District Commissioner. He said that he knew all about it and that I was to let Mr Dontate and the others get on with it. He seemed quite relieved that the matter was already in hand and that he did not need to become involved.’

  ‘Nothing new there then, thought Conchita. Aloud she said: ‘I see. You’ve been very helpful, Mr Waqamalo. Thank you.’

  Conchita paused in the morning sunlight on the dusty road outside the medical centre. Around her the scruffy district centre lay dormant, like a neglected frontier town between takes in a William S. Hart silent Western movie. Dontate had been lying to her. Ed Blamire had not been diagnosed with a heart attack at the centre; the assistant had not even examined him. There seemed to have been some sort of conspiracy between Joe Dontate and some of the tourists to get the corpse out of the district as soon as possible.

  ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you from the mission where that poor man died?’

  The voice was strident and insistent in the nun’s ear. Sister Conchita turned round. Standing at her elbow was a squat, heavyset middle-aged woman in a floral dress. She had a straw hat on her head and was clutching a locally made wicker shopping basket. Conchita recognized her as the American tourist who had been standing blocking the doorway of the reception room on the mission open day.

  ‘That’s right,’ she replied. ‘You’re the lady who bought a carving.’

  ‘Oh, I love carvings,’ enthused the woman. ‘That’s what I’m doing here now, shopping for them. My name’s Lucy Pargetter, by the way.’

  ‘I’m Sister Conchita. How do you do?’

  ‘Hi!’ Mrs Pargetter put a hand on the sister’s sleeve and lowered her voice. ‘In fact, that’s why I’ve stopped you. I’ve fallen in love with a simply darling carving in that store over there, but you simply never know when you’re being ripped off if you’re a foreigner. I wonder if you’d mind coming inside and letting me know if they’re asking a fair price for it?’

  Conchita had been away from the mission for far too long already. She was about to make some excuse, but restrained herself. She could start her enquiries by finding out as much as she could about the dead man from Mrs Pargetter.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I can’t stay too long, though.’

  ‘This won’t take any time at all,’ Mrs Pargetter said, guiding Conchita across the road to one of the Quonset hut stores. ‘And after that, we can have a coffee.’

  The store was the usual dark, Chinese-owned and run jumble of goods. Tins of food, wooden plates, enamel baths, fishing tackle and unopened sacks and boxes were piled high on the shelves and counters, and even on the floor. Mrs Pargetter steered a path through the confusion to a shelf against the wall where a number of carvings were arra
yed.

  ‘This one,’ she said, handing it to the sister and standing back with some anxiety to see her reaction. ‘What do you think?’

  Conchita weighed it in her hands. It was a modern kerosene-wood dolphin, probably from one of the villages of the Maravo Lagoon. It was adequately enough finished.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s see how much they want for it.’

  They went over to a Chinese girl standing silently behind one of the counters. ‘How much?’ asked Sister Conchita.

  ‘Forty Australian dollars.’

  ‘Hey, that’s not bad,’ said Mrs Pargetter, reaching for her purse.

  ‘Plenty too much,’ Conchita said, shaking her head. ‘Five dollars.’

  ‘No more,’ said the affronted shop girl. An older Chinese man, alerted by the sound of bargaining, appeared from the dark recesses of the store. He was wearing a yi, a traditional loose-fitting upper garment, baggy pants and a skull cap. He dismissed the girl with a shake of his head and took her place. He looked firmly at his visitors.

  ‘Forty dollars,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ said Conchita. ‘You win. Ten dollars. No more.’

  The Chinese man looked scandalized. He shook his head. Conchita put her hand under Mrs Pargetter’s elbow and started to guide her out of the store. The owner waited until they had reached the door. ‘Fifteen,’ he said.

  ‘Twelve,’ said the sister, not looking back.

  ‘Deal,’ said the Chinese man.

  Ten minutes later, Conchita and Mrs Pargetter were sitting in another Chinese store practically identical to the first, sipping coffee in an area marked off for refreshments. Apart from a bored Melanesian waiter, they were the only occupants of the section.

  ‘My, that was impressive,’ said the tourist, examining her purchase with pride.

  Sister Conchita smiled vaguely. How much would Mrs Pargetter know about Ed Blamire? There was only one way to find out.

  ‘Did you know Mr Blamire well?’ she asked, trying to sound casual.

  ‘Can’t say that I did, honey. He seemed a nice guy, but he kept himself to himself, if you know what I mean. He was an observant sort, though. I always got the impression that he was taking a lot in and not giving much out.’