Killman

by Graeme Kent

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Sister Conchita, the young nun with a flair for detection, is immersed in another Solomon Islands investigation when an islander who claims to be a reincarnation of Noah is drowned outside his ark. To make matters worse, Conchita suspects that the murderer might be a Japanese soldier, still prowling the jungle fifteen years after the end of World War II. Once again she enlists the aid of her friend Sergeant Ben Kella of the Solomon Islands Police Force. Together they try and track down the malevolent Killman, a professional assassin who is introducing a reign of terror to the beautiful but dangerous island of Malaita that they both love so much. This time their perilous quest takes them as far as the wild Polynesian island of Tikopia, the almost legendary tiny island of the four kingdoms.

Release date: May 2, 2013

Publisher: C & R Crime

Print pages: 198

Sample

The twenty naked young virgins undulated slowly in front of Sister Conchita and the morose visiting female academic on the plateau next to the waterfall above the saltwater village. Beneath the enervating afternoon sun they were dancing the tue tue, the traditional Lau fishing song. Their fluttering hands raised above their heads depicted the graceful movement of frigate birds soaring over the canoes. Their sinuous, kicking legs represented the movement of fish leaping from the water to snap at bait dangling on hooks from kites attached to the imaginary gently rocking craft.

Sister Conchita wondered how the American researcher was reacting to the titillating entertainment on offer. At first glance she had seemed a little on the prissy side. From where she was sitting, Sister Conchita could no longer see the woman. Earlier she had caught a brief glimpse through the crowd of visitors of a thin white girl of about thirty in a nondescript blue dress. She had a pinched, discontented face and seemed uncertain of herself and uncomfortable in her exotic surroundings.

The pan-pipe music ended and the virgins stopped dancing with a flurry of smooth bare brown arms and legs. They stood giggling and revelling in their voluptuous nudity before their guests from all parts of the island. The entertainment was not yet over. Papa Noah, the custodian of the ark, clapped his hands. He was a fragile, grey-haired, almost fey man in his sixties, light on his capering feet and wearing a much-washed calico lap-lap extending from his waist to his knees.

A drum formed from a tree trunk with a hole gouged in the side started beating on the sidelines. The girls stopped undulating and stood to attention, composing themselves. In true, clear voices they began singing in pidgin, the lingua franca of the Solomons:

Me fulae olobauti, longo isti, longo westi.

Me sendere olo rouni keepim Solomoni

Me worka luka luka longo landi long sea

Ha ha! Ha ha! Japani ha ha!

Papa Noah clapped his hands again gleefully as he stood up. ‘No more tra-la-la! Time for our feast,’ he announced.

The virgins, glistening with perspiration in the hostile sun, broke ranks and ran back skittishly down the slope to the women’s house in the village below to dress. The hundred or so islanders who had been watching the dancing at the side of the waterfall scrambled to their feet and waited respectfully for the food to be carried across the clearing and placed on pandanus leaves on the ground. Some of them had walked for several days to attend the ceremony and were hungry. They showed no impatience; to do so would be regarded as impolite.

A raucous group of a dozen larger, lighter-skinned men sat a little to the left of the main gathering of guests, keeping a well-judged distance from them. Sister Conchita was sure that they came from the remote outlying Polynesian island of Tikopia. They had probably been working on one of the local plantations and were now waiting for a boat to take them home. They were ignoring the Melanesians at the ceremony but were chattering happily enough among themselves. There was a carelessly swaggering air to their posture. To fit the occasion they were determined to be happy, but they carried menace like a club and were capable of changing in an instant to something more dangerous but for them equally enjoyable.

It had been raining monotonously for several weeks, but there was a temporary lull in the downpour. The sun had eased through the clouds, causing a haze of steam to rise in tired exhalations from the wet grass. It was apparent that despite the threatening weather, the meal was going to be a sumptuous one. It was being prepared on the treeless plateau next to the waterfall, halfway down its leaping descent before the frothing, roaring water plummeted further down the rocks to the river a hundred feet below. At the far end of the plateau, trees and undergrowth grew thickly in almost impenetrable plenitude. This was where the jungle began. A steep, winding path led to the village below, built on the banks of the river where it ran out into the calm blue waters of the Lau Lagoon.

A dozen pigs had been slaughtered and quartered in advance. The grease-laden quarters were now being roasted over log fires on spits before being immersed in a sauce of grated coconut and milk. Chickens smothered in grated manioc were cooking in ovens scooped with clamshells out of the earth and covered with red-hot stones. A savoury vegetable broth was simmering in an iron cooking pot. There were piles of yams, taro and sweet potatoes, baskets of shellfish and bunches of bananas. As it was the pineapple season, pyramids of the fruit were scattered about.

Brother John, the gigantic Melanesian Mission travelling preacher, bullocked out of the trees and approached Sister Conchita, muttering an apology to Papa Noah for his tardiness as he passed him.

‘Did I miss anything?’ he asked the nun in low tones, surveying the scene before him. He was about thirty, six and a half feet tall and wide in proportion. His skin was a deep brown in colour. His face was broad and friendly, giving him the appearance of an affable bear, but one capable of being roused to rib-breaking retaliation by injustice or too much unnecessary torment. He wore the distinctive costume of his order, a black shirt and lap-lap and a broad black and white belt. The Melanesian Brotherhood was an Anglican sect, formed before the war by Ini Kopuria, a former policeman, who had adapted the then current police uniform for his evangelical order. Only Melanesians were permitted to join. Each volunteer brother spent a few years dedicated to poverty, celibacy and obedience, sometimes touring the islands, preaching and living off the land. The calm and imperturbable Brother John, Conchita knew, had been proselytizing in the Lau area of Malaita for almost two years, and should be coming towards the end of his tour of duty.

‘Just a couple of dances and a pidgin song,’ Sister Conchita told him, falling into step with Brother John as they walked towards the heaps of food.

‘I bet the song was the tue tue, the maidens’ fishing song,’ chuckled the big missionary. ‘It gives the girls a chance to get their kit off, and they like that, though not half as much as the boys do, of course. I’ve seen it performed all over Malaita.’ He paused. ‘Except on Sikaiana,’ he added.

‘Why not there?’ asked Sister Conchita. As soon as the words passed her lips she regretted them. She had given Brother John an opening, and she knew from experience that the big, rough-hewn man delighted in teasing young and inexperienced nuns from other orders, especially Roman Catholic ones.

‘They can never round up enough virgins on that island,’ said the Anglican pastor with a guffaw.

Sister Conchita resisted the temptation to laugh out loud. She struggled to maintain her habitual reserved expression. In the eleven months she had been at her mission station in the Solomon Islands, she had learned that if she could not seem old and wise, she could at least try to appear serene and above the fray, even if her current fate seemed to be acting as a straight woman to an overexuberant comic.

‘Which song did they sing?’ asked Brother John.

‘It was called “Japani Ha Ha!”. What’s it all about?’

‘It was a pidgin song of defiance that the Solomon scouts used to sing in the war when they were ambushing the Japanese troops in the bush,’ explained the huge Melanesian missionary in his deep operatic bass as the nun hurried to keep up with his raking strides. ‘It means I keep watch everywhere, to the east and west, all over the Solomons. My duty is to guard the land and the sea against the invaders. I am not afraid. I laugh in scorn at the Japanese.’

‘Japani ha ha!’ nodded the nun. ‘But why sing that particular song here today? The war’s been over for fifteen years. There aren’t any Japanese left in the islands now, except for a few tourists now and again.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Brother John. ‘But I’m sure we’re going to find out. Just as I expect we’ll discover why Papa Noah has invited that American woman here with her recording device. The old man doesn’t do anything without a reason.’ He glanced at the dark clouds assembling threateningly over the sacred hill called Matakwalao. ‘Even if it means organizing a feast in the middle of the rainy season.’

Before Conchita could reply, she heard the scrawny woman’s voice complaining in petulant disappointment. She seemed to be arguing with Papa Noah on the far side of the clearing. Sensing trouble, Sister Conchita hurried over to try to defuse the situation. There was never any telling how easily an obtuse or arrogant visiting expatriate scholar might unwittingly offend against local protocol and upset the host tribe.

The white woman was plainly upset about something. The nun arrived in time to hear the tail end of her breathless protest, delivered in a New York whine. Sister Conchita noticed that the other woman was carrying a portable battery-operated Uher recording machine.

‘You promised me that there would be more songs,’ the thin woman was complaining. ‘That’s the only reason I agreed to come here today.’

‘I’m sorry, but there has been a change of plan,’ said Papa Noah placidly. ‘I know that you are particularly interested in pidgin songs of this island. Indeed, I particularly chose the one you have just heard to represent the unity showed by Solomon Islanders and your fellow countrymen from the USA when we fought the Japanese together here fifteen years ago. But I’m afraid there is no time for more music. We have a crowded timetable this afternoon.’

The woman turned away in obvious disappointment but said nothing else. She was not a fighter, decided the nun. Sister Conchita did not know what was going on, but she would have thought more highly of the other woman if she had stood her ground. She moved forward.

‘Papa Noah has a point,’ said the nun smilingly. ‘We’re here this afternoon to celebrate the success of his church, not to pursue individual agendas, however important they may seem to us.’ She extended a hand. ‘By the way, I’m Sister Conchita, from Ruvabi Mission on the coast.’

She did not ask the other woman her name. It would have been a breach of Lau etiquette to do so. A third person would have to introduce two strangers.

‘Sister Conchita, this is Professor Florence Maddy,’ beamed Papa Noah. ‘She is here to study the music of the Solomon Islands. Sister Conchita works at the Catholic mission station a few miles away. There are those who say that she runs it, now that Father Pierre is no longer a young man. But then neither am I, and the gods have seen fit to keep me in good health, despite the threats issued daily against me. Don’t worry, Professor Maddy. Later there will be another visitor you might be interested in meeting, someone who may be able to help you with your doubtless fascinating research. I shall have something of a surprise for you all afterwards. But let us go and eat first, before I make my announcement.’

‘Which university are you from?’ asked Sister Conchita, in an effort at small talk as they walked towards the feast.

‘Juneau,’ muttered the other woman, not looking at her. ‘You won’t have heard of it.’

The reassuring form of Brother John appeared, as it did so often at awkward moments. Smilingly the Melanesian put a protective tree trunk of an arm around the small woman’s shoulders and guided her shrinking, reluctant form towards the waiting food, talking reassuringly in undertones as they went.

‘Come, Praying Mary,’ said Father Noah to Sister Conchita, giggling and performing a sprightly but incongruous little jig in a grotesque parody of the tue tue. He seemed to appreciate the fact that the nun had not been fazed by the blatant nudity of the village girls. ‘Let us break bread together.’

A discreet cough of thunder reverberated over the central mountain range. As if on cue, a man clad in a loincloth loped out of the trees of the tangled bush area skirting the plateau. He differed greatly in appearance from the squat, dark Melanesian islanders on the plateau. He was about thirty, six feet tall, and broad-shouldered. He was not heavily muscled, but his smooth arms and legs were thick with power. His skin was a light tan in colour. He had high cheekbones and a straight nose. He moved clumsily, like an affable puppy capable of causing considerable upheaval without really meaning to. This was a cheerful man, thought Sister Conchita, and probably a good and caring one as well. He would be a Polynesian from one of the outlying islands, probably from Tikopia like the others in the separate group.

He was carrying a large wooden cage. Father Noah raised an eyebrow in an exaggerated blend of surprise and censure at the sight of its contents.

‘Shem, my dear son!’ he said in a carefully guarded neutral tone. ‘What have you brought this time?’

‘A pair of bird-wings,’ said the other islander happily, speaking English in deference to the expatriate sister’s presence. ‘Assuredly they were on the way to the ark by themselves, but the noise of the singing bothered them and made them stop on a nearby bush, so I put them in the cage for the last part of their journey and brought them here for you.’

Papa Noah frowned. ‘But you had to carry them,’ he pointed out disapprovingly. ‘You know that I only take animals that make their own way to my ark. They must come of their own free will.’

‘These two had almost finished their journey,’ argued the islander called Shem. ‘I just helped the poor tired creatures at the end of their flight. Look, aren’t they beautiful?’ He turned appealingly to Sister Conchita, lifting the cage so that she could see its contents. The nun could not help smiling in response to the man’s ingenuous enthusiasm. Inside, behind the slatted rails, were two enormous butterflies. The bigger of the pair had a cream-coloured body and brown wings with white markings. As Sister Conchita watched, the glorious insect spread its wings. They must have been twelve inches in diameter. The other butterfly, cowering on the same perch, presumably its mate, was smaller, with blue and green markings.

Papa Noah shook his head stubbornly. ‘The Bible has told us,’ he said. ‘And there went in unto Noah, into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. It does not say that they were carried into the ark in boxes. No, Shem, I am sorry, but I cannot take your bird-wings.’

‘We’re never going to fill the ark,’ said Shem, sadly, but still smiling hopefully. ‘Every time I bring you a fresh pair of animals, you tell me that they must come of their own free will! At this rate we won’t be ready to sail away when the flood comes.’

‘Oh yes we will,’ said the old Malaitan confidently. ‘I have had another of my visions. Someone is coming from far away to help us. I shall tell everyone about it after we have eaten.’

‘Surely we don’t need any more help,’ said Shem, looking alarmed. ‘You and I are together in this, Papa Noah. You told me that the gods had given the two of us the task of filling the ark and sailing away when it is full. That’s why I joined you and became your son.’

Papa Noah did not speak. The younger man hesitated, and then shrugged and opened the front of the cage with a gentle twist of his powerful wrists. The two magnificent butterflies vibrated their wings expectantly and then flapped regally back towards the trees, climbing steadily. Shem watched them go, and then moved on towards the waterfall, muttering disconsolately to himself like a good-tempered but disappointed child.

The centrepiece of the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark lay ahead of him on the edge of the cliff. This was the vessel still being assembled lovingly, section by section, by Papa Noah. To an outsider it might appear to be a crudely constructed assemblage of brushwood, tree trunks and aggressively bristling thatch hammered and slotted together into a listing caricature of an ark, but to the hundreds of adherents of the cult it represented nirvana. It was thirty feet long and half as wide, constructed roughly in the shape of a cutter boat and rising to twice the height of the average islander. A deck constructed of weather-beaten planks of various shapes salvaged from the lagoon and the ocean beyond covered a hull extending the length and breadth of the landlocked craft. A spindly tree trunk formed a rough approximation of a mast rising from the centre of the deck. Piles of creepers had been thrust into gaps in the sides. Two doors, one at each end of the static vessel, had been roughly hewn and fitted into the hull. About fifty yards away from the ark was a scattered deposit of mildewed planks, spars, salvaged rusted nails and indefinable hunks of metal, all ready to be pressed into service for the next stage of the building process.

‘Please take your places,’ cried Papa Noah to the crowd back at the feast, gesturing expansively towards the food.

The islanders surged forward eagerly. Within minutes, most of the men, women and children were eating without inhibition. Papa Noah sat on the mat at the head of the feast, beaming in an avuncular fashion on his guests. At his invitation Sister Conchita sat on his right. Brother John occupied the mat next to the patriarch on his other side. Florence Maddy sat farther down, next to the large Melanesian missionary, still simmering mutinously and only picking sulkily at her food.

As she ate, her eyes cast down modestly, Sister Conchita observed the situation around her without seeming to do so. She had consulted Father Pierre, the elderly priest in charge of her mission at Ruvabi, at some length before deciding to accept the invitation from the Church of the Blessed Ark.

‘It’s a breakaway cult, there’s no doubt about that,’ the old man had said. ‘However, it claims to be at least semi-Christian. We don’t want to close the doors on it too quickly. Go along and see what you can find out.’ Then Father Pierre had smiled, an increasingly uncommon event these days. ‘With your genius for investigation and getting to the heart of matters, that should be an easy task for you.’

Almost certainly the priest had overestimated her capabilities on this occasion, and probably on many others, thought the nun. So far she had discovered relatively little. She would have been better employed back at the mission. It needed a thorough spring-clean. She had heard several rumours over the past few weeks that Ruvabi was due for a visit from the bishop’s inspector, an ominous augury.

There seemed to be nothing here worthy of report to Father Pierre. Papa Noah appeared to be an innocuous, almost saintly man, concerned only with the stocking of his embryonic ark in an appropriate fashion. His followers were all ordinary Melanesians and Polynesians, with no obvious extremists among them. The Tikopian called Shem had seemed mildly resentful when Noah had ordered him to free the butterflies, but he had done as he had been told.

The only real problem lay in the looming presence of Brother John. Why had he bothered to attend the ceremony? Sister Conchita was there because her mission was situated in the area and her superiors needed to study and analyse the newly founded Church of the Blessed Ark in case it might impinge upon the work and numbers of the established church. But Brother John was an itinerant preacher, covering the whole northern section of Malaita, from coast to coast. What interest could such a shrewd, busy and knowledgeable man have in an insignificant splinter group like Papa Noah’s?

Conchita developed the line of thought in her mind. Not only had Brother John attended the feast; the normally taciturn missionary was actually at this moment attempting to initiate a conversation, a rare occurrence in her experience. He leant forward, almost anxiously, and addressed the still beaming Papa Noah.

‘You said that someone was coming from a distance to help you with your duties,’ said the big man. ‘I wonder who that might be.’

‘Can’t you guess?’ asked Papa Noah playfully, obviously enjoying the moment. ‘I thought you might be able to work it out from the subject of the entertainment just provided.’

‘Which part?’ asked Sister Conchita caustically, unable to restrain herself. ‘The naked girls or the war chant?’

Papa Noah laughed. He was teasing whitey and getting away with it, an event that would have been unheard of among the islands of his youth fifty years ago. ‘A little of both, Praying Mary,’ he chuckled, ‘a little of both.’

‘This visitor,’ persisted Brother John. ‘Who is it to be?’

‘A surprise,’ said Noah archly. ‘You must be patient, Brother John, like Job in the Bible. Soon we will be rich.’

The long-threatened storm arrived like a flustered overdue guest. Warm drops of rain the size of leaves began to fall. In a moment clouds screened the sky, sucking all the light from it. It grew steadily darker on the plateau. In the background, thunder roared sonorously, calling the always alert evil spirits of the area out of their hiding places behind the rocks and at the bottoms of the streams. Lightning crackled and sparked spasmodically over the trees and waterfall. As if to make up for lost time, the rain began to fall seriously and steadily. It came down first in jerking spasms and then in solid, stinging rods, and finally as an inescapable seamless, soaking sheet. A snarling wind toyed with the trees at the edge of the clearing. The food on the ground was scattered, hurtling across the plateau. The guests screamed in alarm at the unexpected velocity of the attack. Only Papa Noah was not cowed. It was almost as if he had been expecting such a hurricane. The old man staggered joyously to his feet, his frail body tottering a few paces forward at an angle into the wind. He raised his stems of arms.

‘Ala tagalangaini dafa fasui fasui fulas!’ he cried to his adherents.

‘The old fool’s telling them that it’s all over,’ Brother John shouted to Conchita. ‘He’s saying that the great flood is coming and they are all doomed! He even seems happy about it! Look at him!’

Sister Conchita was already contemplating the old islander with concern. Papa Noah’s eyes were closed in concentration. He was dancing again, like a poorly carved marionette. His thin legs whirled maladroitly through the air as he performed a series of pirouettes. He looked like a man vindicated in a course of action he had followed for too long. He performed one particularly towering final leap and fell to the ground in a clumsy concatenation of flurrying limbs. He lay still for a moment and then scrambled to his feet and scampered off into the driving rain as if late for an appointment.

By now most of the guests at the feast were on their feet and running screaming in terror down the slope towards the shelter of the village below. The rain clouds had obscured the sun and it was difficult to see what was happening in the sudden incongruous mid-afternoon gloom. Sister Conchita, standing up, was aware of the emaciated shape of Papa Noah disappearing in the distance, cantering awkwardly in the direction of his ark. She started to hurry after the old islander. Brother John loomed out of the darkness, seized her by the shoulder and shook his head.

‘Tabu!’ he shouted. ‘Women aren’t allowed in the ark.’

Obstinately Sister Conchita squirmed out of the big missionary’s grip and ran towards the vague distant outline of the simulat. . .