The Voice of the Spirits

by Xavier-Marie Bonnot, Justin Phipps

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

Commandant Michel de Palma follows an anonymous tip-off to a gated mansion by the coast and finds a body whose face is obscured by a fearsome tribal mask. Beneath it is a mysterious wound that could not have been caused by a bullet. Surrounded by scores of masks and painted skulls, de Palma hears the haunting strains of a primal flute from the floors above. With few leads to go on, de Palma delves into an account of the murdered doctor's voyage to Papua New Guinea seventy years earlier. But when his chief suspect is found dead, killed by the same method as Delorme, he begins to wonder whether the bodies on his hands are not the victims of spirits intent on revenge.

Release date: March 1, 2012

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 335

Sample

Sepik region, New Guinea – 1936

“Almost there now,” Kaïngara said.

Robert Ballancourt nodded and let his eyes drift across the surface of the greasy water. The long dugout canoe slid along noiselessly.

“Just a few more minutes, Robert.”

The grey, meandering waters of the River Sepik coiled away into the dense, clammy bush. The warm air was thick with the sweet smell of water hyacinth and decaying dead weed. From time to time, the shrill cry of a cockatoo escaped from the great forest.

“The river is dangerous just here. The current’s too strong.”

Kaïngara knew the channels through the clawed fingers of the mangroves and the clumps of reeds. With each stroke of the paddle his chest grew taut from the steady movement and the hard muscles tensed beneath his copper-coloured skin.

“You see those whirlpools,” he said pointing out eddies in the yellow water, “that’s where the spirits of the Elders lie.”

As a rule Kaïngara spoke little. Instead he had an open smile that revealed his large ivory teeth.

“The spirits of the ancestors?” Ballancourt asked.

“Yes. Those who have not yet found their home. You need to be careful, there are many whirlpools round here. You must never see a spirit or know where its voice comes from.”

“Why’s that?”

“It means death . . .”

Kaïngara cast a worried glance towards the clay banks. Hidden archers lying in wait might shower them with arrows. In the front Robert Ballancourt kept his hands clenched on the long, slender sides of the boat. His beige, canvas hat was clamped down over his watery blue eyes. His trousers and rough cotton shirt were spattered with mud and starting to rot. For three days he had been sleeping in the depths of the disease-ridden rain forest, under the heavy, canopied sky, with bats for company. The highland region had furrowed his feverish brow.

“Yuarimo’s in that direction,” Kaïngara exclaimed, straightening up, his eyes alert. “Over there. We’ll be there tomorrow.”

They had come to the mouth of Yuat River. On the bank of the river, partly concealed by some Betel palm trees, a strangely pointed roof appeared. Beyond lay the Men’s House, with its huge tutelary mask above the entrance casting ferocious looks in all directions. Ballancourt had never seen such a beautiful one.

“These villagers have come across white men,” Kaïngara said.

His face had softened, he seemed less anxious. Some warriors armed with spears, bows and arrows watched the visitors in silence. They were naked, with kotekas – long penis gourds – across their stomachs. One stepped forward, his skin wizened like old hide.

“It seems they were expecting us,” Ballancourt said.

“Yes, news travels fast in the bush.”

The dugout landed, grounding on a spit of red mud. Children who had been splashing around in the water clambered back on to the bank and ran towards the village houses. The black pigs rooting among the palm trees were sent scuttling.

The man with the wrinkled skin stepped forward.

“That’s the Big Man,” Kaïngara warned, looking anxious. “He’s the one you have to deal with.”

The old man had sparse white curls. Beneath his veined forehead his eyes did not miss the smallest detail of the scene being played out before him. A boar’s tusk had been driven through the cartilage of his nasal septum, and it drooped downwards like a thick white moustache. The other men all held back. They had rather wild expressions, curious and suspicious at the same time. Their muscular torsos bore numerous battle scars: thin star-shaped wounds left by barbed arrows and long stripes caused by slashing blades.

The Big Man turned to Kaïngara and questioned him. There was a frightening glint in the old man’s eyes and he had the commanding voice of a military leader.

“They are happy you have come to buy things. They say they have much to sell.”

“Ask them if it’s possible to see the Men’s House . . .”

Kaïngara paused to reflect before translating. He knew this was a sensitive area. The Men’s House was a restricted place; only the initiated could enter. After an interminable wait, the old man signalled to them to follow.

The Men’s House was a huge rectangular construction on stilts. The posts were carved like totem poles; one for each clan. A curtain of dried grass hung from the ceiling, closing off the entrance. Inside the house each pillar, beam, or cross-section of the roof structure was decorated with fantastic figures, or intertwined bodies.

The men remained silent. Some of them were sitting on the ground, others on benches. The Big Man detached himself from the group. He held broad green leaves in his left hand and he pointed to a stool. His gaze was fixed on Ballancourt. He wanted to show them something.

“What’s that?” the explorer asked.

Hesitantly, Kaïngara translated: “That’s the orator’s stool. It represents our first ancestor. We use it to discuss problems in the village or to give out clan names. It is very important. An oath made at the stool can never be broken.”

The Big Man uttered some words that seemed to be prescribed by ritual. As he modulated his thin, reedy voice it was as though he was reciting verse. From time to time he whipped the seat with a sharp, powerful gesture.

“When the village had to decide whether to declare war on another village, the stool was consulted,” Kaingara nodded as he translated, listening to the Big Man’s every word.

The Big Man stared at Ballancourt for a moment then placed three leaves on the seat.

“The first ancestor would command us to go headhunting. In the Men’s House everyone would rise to their feet and take their spears from the raised benches. There was great excitement. The headhunting could begin.”

The carved face on the stool seemed mysteriously closed. Two cowrie shells split across the middle formed small, almond-shaped eyes that peered into the world of the living. On top of the head was a crown made of marsupial fur. The nose and mouth ended in a long beak; the feet were carved in the shape of birds’ feet. They represented the body of the first ancestor. The stool itself was also decorated with shells, pigs’ teeth, hair and leaves.

With a swipe of his hat Ballancourt dusted off the back of his trousers. The gesture provoked smiles among the men watching.

“Sell me that stool!”

“I cannot do that,” the old man replied, “I’m happy to explain what it is used for, but I can’t sell it to you. Never.”

“I’ll give you all these shillings. There’s over twenty here.”

“No, stranger.”

With a flourish Ballancourt produced some large, shiny coins, “That’s a lot of money.”

The Big Man’s expression lit up. A smile hovered over his toothless mouth which then closed in a hostile pout once more. “No.”

The Big Man turned his hands, his palms facing the heavens. He avoided looking in Ballancourt’s eyes and repeated, “No.”

“It’s a sacrilege,” Kaïngara added in a low voice, “but if you want there are other things.”

Since entering the Men’s House Ballancourt had noticed some skulls hanging from ritual hooks. The explorer was captivated by the funereal beauty of one of them. The bone was exposed, smooth like varnish. The eye sockets had been filled with a brown paste in which two round, asymmetrical eyes had been fashioned. Coarse features adorned the skull.

“That one is not from this village,” Kaïngara added, “it belonged to one of the enemy. A trophy skull, cut off in battle.”

The eyes of the explorer must have betrayed his emotions because the Big Man went up and examined him with an attentive smile.

“And this one?” Ballancourt asked pointing to a more elaborate skull.

“That’s an ancestral skull,” Kaïngara replied, without translating, “it probably belonged to someone important, like the Big Man here. It’s much more beautiful.”

One eye flowered from a spiral; the other formed a perfectly round hole. Features in blackish paint like fine tattoos ran in large meandering patterns, from the base of the nose and the corners of the lips, to the top of the forehead. Kaïngara explained that these features recalled the whirlpools of the River Sepik, the place where the spirits resided. The back of the skull was adorned with thick, black curly hair.

“I’ve never seen anything so evocative of the great mystery of Death,” said Ballancourt bending his tall frame slightly towards the Big Man. “It’s magnificent. How much does he want for it?”

“He says he needs tobacco for the whole village, glasses like the ones you have in your canoe and some iron tools. It’s very expensive.”

The old man made a gesture that Ballancourt did not understand. He repeated the same word several times, while letting forth a strange sound from the back of his throat.

“He says that for three iron axes, he will give you the other skull as well.”

It was a skull with a shiny forehead, decorated with feathers and white shells. On the nose some small red pearls were set in brown resin.

“It’s very beautiful. Tell him I agree. I’ll be very proud to show it to people back in France. Tell him it’s for a great museum . . .”

“A museum?” Kaïngara asked, surprised.

“Yes. It’s a bit like a large Men’s House, a place where everyone can come to admire the treasures of the world.”

Ballancourt frowned. These skulls were supposed to remain in their sacred resting place in the Men’s House, watching over the warriors and their harvests. They had been taken out so the explorers might buy them.

“Where is this head from?” he asked.

The Big Man had understood. He looked away.

“From another village. He doesn’t want to say where,” Kaïngara whispered.

“Why’s that?”

“It’s difficult to say. It’s taboo, you see. The spirits of the ancestors continue to live in those skulls.”

Ballancourt took a skull in his hands that a younger man held out to him. As he felt the jaw in his palms, he sensed he was crossing a sacred boundary.

“Tell me how you go headhunting,” he said.

Kaïngara smiled at the question then translated straightaway.

The Big Man disappeared for a moment and returned with a long dagger, which he brandished in Ballancourt’s direction.

“We used to use bamboo knives,” he said in a voice that had suddenly become high-pitched.

He circled round Ballancourt, miming the gestures, “See: I stab you like this, again and again, right round your head. That’s how I cut it off.”

The Big Man tucked the large knife between his legs and grabbed hold of Ballancourt’s head. He shook it from right to left with small, jerky movements then pulled it towards him. The explorer’s hair was all out of place. He smiled, a bit disoriented by the amused looks directed at him and the giggling coming from groups of children.

“That’s how you cut off a head. It’s very easy. Then I hang it round my neck and take it back to the village. For three days we dance and celebrate.”

Ballancourt imagined the bloody head hanging from the Big Man’s chest. He could hear the furious battle cries; the wailing of women; the whistle of arrows.

“Have you cut off many heads?”

As Kaïngara translated, the Big Man gave a small cry and slapped his knees, “Several dozen.”

A murmur of admiration and fear ran through the men who were sitting on the ground, beating themselves with plaited straw in a vain attempt to drive away the flies and voracious mosquitoes. Ballancourt pointed at the ancestral skull.

“Does a head that’s been cut off have special powers?”

The Big Man closed his red-rimmed eyes and breathed deeply.

“For them, yes, it does,” Kaïngara said. “Because of it the spirit ceases to wander. It regains human form. The Big Man says he will sell it to you because the missionaries forbid us to own these things and they want us to destroy them.”

An inquisitive woman came forward. Her little boy had snuggled up against her leg and was staring at Ballancourt with wide eyes. The Big Man was standing in the middle of a group of Elders, a large bow and long reed arrows in his hand. He had stopped smiling. His face was solemn and his tone grave.

“Here,” he said, “this belonged to the man whose skull and bows and arrows you have. Everyone here praised his skills as a warrior. He was the best among us. His weapons are for you.”

“What was this warrior called?” Ballancourt asked.

The men seemed embarrassed and looked away. In the distance, between the houses raised on skeletal stilts, a strange cry came through the curtain of birdsong. The sound of women wailing. A clan in mourning. An important man had died.

“Should we leave now?”

“Yes,” Kaïngara said in a dark voice.

That night two warriors would take over from the women, playing sacred flutes, those long wooden pipes that produce a spellbinding, thin sound. The voice of the spirits.

They left the River Yuat and went off down the Sepik, which was more turbulent. The canoe slipped quickly through the evening shadows. Silhouettes moved along the earth banks, disappearing into the already dark recesses. Faces appeared in the eddies and whirlpools, before immediately disappearing again into the depths of the river.

On the bank a warrior observed the strangers. His headdress of paradise bird feathers, carmine and gold, fluttered in the breeze. He had painted his face with dazzling yellow and red strokes; the rest of his body was coated in pig fat blackened by smoke. He raised his spear in their direction and hurled curses at them.

“What’s he shouting?” Ballancourt asked.

“Who do you mean?” Kaïngara returned the question.

“That man on the bank, between those two large sago palms. He’s wearing a big, white cowrie-shell necklace. Can’t you hear him?”

“No.”

The guide scoured the bank. Nothing could escape his hunter’s eyes.

“I don’t see anyone.”

“Look more carefully. He’s running along the bank.”

“There’s nobody there, Robert. Nobody.”

Kaïngara dug his paddle into the dark water and pushed with all his might, as though he wanted to escape.

“Keep your eyes shut, Robert. Great misfortune strikes anyone who sees a spirit.”

Ballancourt closed his eyes. In spite of the heat he shuddered.

A hand jutted out from the jacket sleeve. A clawed, cold hand; slowly wizened by old age.

Shaken, Michel de Palma took two steps back. The man had died in his armchair. A mask made out of vegetable fibres covered his face, shaped in the form of a red heart. The colour had faded. Two fantastic white eyes bulged, open wide and separated by a black septum. White filaments dangled from an oval mouth.

“How do doctors die?” de Palma wondered out loud.

A huge display cabinet spanned the entire length of one wall. A line of other masks: figures drawn with sharp patterns, slanting eyes, narrow as buttonholes. There was now a gap where the mask covering the deceased’s face had been. Some weapons; daggers apparently made out of bone; about a dozen statuettes; a round stain in the dust.

“One of the pieces is missing,” de Palma told himself.

Facing the corpse, a book lay open on the desk: Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo.* On page 213 a passage had been underlined:

One day the brothers who had been driven out came together, killed and devoured their father and so made an end to the patriarchal horde. United, they had the courage to do and succeeded in doing what would have been impossible for them individually. (Some cultural advance, perhaps, command over some new weapon, had given them a sense of superior strength.) Cannibal savages as they were, it goes without saying that they devoured their victim as well as killing him. The violent primal father had doubtless been the feared and envied model of each one of the company of brothers: and in the act of devouring him they accomplished their identification with him, and each one of them acquired a portion of his strength. The totem meal, which is perhaps mankind’s earliest festival, would thus be a repetition and a commemoration of this memorable and criminal deed, which was the beginning of so many things – of social organization, of moral restrictions and of religion.

The underlining was not recent. The ink, probably from a quill, had turned a sepia colour. It was a 1920 edition.

De Palma replayed the night’s events. The duty team on the second floor of Évêché police station in Marseille; a call to the divisional branch.

“I want to speak to the Murder Squad.”

The call was from a phone box. A man’s voice, with a strong Marseille accent.

“I’m putting you through to the Central Commissariat,” the operator replied frostily.

“I don’t want that lot! I want the Murder Squad, the C.I.D.! Put me through to the Murder Squad, do you understand?”

The operator hesitated.

“Come on, move it. Pull your finger out, you bitch!”

The telephone played “A Little Night Music”, a string of high-pitched notes churned out by a digital horn. With both feet up on his desk, de Palma was finishing a slice of pizza. It was a warm, peaceful night. He was relishing the chance of a quiet shift, his nose in a sailing manual and Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder” in his ears.

In this weather, in this downpour,I would never have sent the children out.They have been carried away!I wasn’t able to warn them!

He was between the channel markers, green to starboard, red on the port side. If he was ever going to sail he had to learn all that stuff by heart. He had always dreamed of faraway lands. The brutal ocean, the wind roaring in the rigging.

The squad telephone rang.

“I’ve got someone on the line. Sounds like it could be something serious.”

“O.K., take a note of the number if it comes up.”

“I’ve done that.”

Then came the beeping sound of the call being transferred, and a sound of breathing. Every so often, cars raced by. The person must be standing next to a busy road.

“Murder Squad, Commandant de Palma speaking.”

“About time, boss,” the words came out in a splutter; a fragile tone, denoting panic.

De Palma stood up and reached for a phone pad, “Who are you?”

“Bugger that! Now you listen to me. There’s a bloke down his place, and he’s all mashed up. Stiff as a poker.”

“Hang on, can you give me . . .”

“Rue Notre-Dame-des-Grâces. I’ve forgotten the number. The gate’s open. You can’t miss it. It’s the big house with green shutters, right at the end, facing the sea.”

“Can you say that again?”

“No, I can’t! I’ve had it with you lot. It’s got nothing to do with me. Do you understand, the bloke calling you’s done nothing. All I done was discover stuff. I’m a robber, not a murderer!”

The voice of the night hung up. De Palma had a nasty feeling. He knew the road that ended by the rocks near a cove. He got up and wanted to have a slow stretch, but he felt jumpy. He had slept for a while in his chair. No dreams or nightmares, just the emptiness of the night. The refrain from “Kindertotenlieder” had been bouncing around in his head.

In this weather, in this storm,They rest as in their mother’s house.No storm will threaten them,They are protected by God’s hand.

De Palma parked the squad’s Renault Clio at the end of rue Notre-Dame-des-Grâces. Death was lurking there, muzzling him in the back. It was all too familiar, so he put off the encounter for a few minutes, his gaze straying across the Anse des Cuivres.

The day had been a warm one. A late autumnal sun; soft as a ball of saffron. The air loaded with sweat from the sea. Down below the lapping of water against the fragmented rocks, a spreading smell of salt and dried seaweed. Beyond the bay it was dark along the coast as far as the faint lights of La Madrague and Les Goudes.

The house had the appearance of a colonial villa. It could not be seen from the road, or from the coastal path. Above a maze of alleyways and secrets; tiny gardens created from local stone; a three-star Michelin restaurant, and villas surrounded by fishermen’s huts with walls of sand. This labyrinth of cobbled streets and terraces ran down towards the sea.

De Palma fetched a torch from the boot of his car. The gate of number thirty-eight was open. The brass numbers in the wall glinted softly. De Palma stroked them with the end of his fingers as though to reassure himself. He took out his Bodyguard. His heart pumped the blood faster through his arteries.

“I hope there isn’t an alarm,” he said to himself, “I can’t stand those things.”

“That burglar of yours has already taken care of it,” an inner voice said.

The small grounds surrounding the house looked over the sea. By a kidney-shaped swimming pool an enormous rhododendron gave off a rotting smell of peat. De Palma shone his torch up at the front of the house. The beam lit up a windowpane on the ground floor like two piercing eyes shooting fiery glances. The policeman shuddered, overcome by fear. Normally he dealt with this by reciting his multiplication tables or by singing something lively and combative from “Il Trovatore.”

The horrible blaze of that pyre burns . . .

A grey stone flight of steps; a metal and glass double door ajar; and on the right a plaque that shone in the beam of his Maglite torch.

DR FERNAND DELORME

NEUROSURGEON

MEMBER OF

THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR NEUROSURGERY

“Rather unusual to hang a plaque inside,” de Palma said aloud, in an attempt to convince himself he was not alone.

“It was outside before,” the inner voice replied.

“How do you know that? Did you know Dr Delorme?”

“He was a top specialist in epilepsy and a very distinguished man. Respected throughout the world.”

The entrance hall was laid with large vermilion hexagonal floor tiles, featuring a rosette pattern in the middle. Two stone staircases met on the floor above, between two sets of banisters and a double door. De Palma cocked the hammer on his weapon and pushed open one of the doors.

A panelled hallway led to a door set between rows of books. De Palma turned the handle, his hand wrapped in a handkerchief. He felt around for the switch then flooded the room with light. The dead man lay in his office chair, shoulders slumped.

De Palma looked once again at the book by Freud. Was it sheer chance, or had it been stage-managed? The reference to early cannibalism was perhaps not fortuitous. He had had to deal with this sort of thing in the past; such events were extremely rare.

“Totem and Taboo,” he said.

He tried to work out the significance of those two words. For him the first one conjured up a picture of a mythical being and a guardian spirit, the second denoted something absolutely forbidden. Something sacred.

“Anyone who violates the taboo is punished by death,” the small voice said, “You know that.”

“Yes, the person or animal that no-one may touch because their power is so great and dangerous.”

A deep, very soft, sound like a note only just formed, rose up from nowhere. The mask covering the dead man’s head had moved. The figures arranged in the display cabinet had darkened.

A whistling sound broke through the silence once again. De Palma froze. He raised his gun to eye level, left the study, and slowly headed towards the source of the sound.

A large drawing room occupied the left wing of the house. Masks of every size, with large, dark, round eyes ran along walls that were lined with ochre-coloured paper. Three large pictures depicted faces blurred by a thin veil of grey paint. De Palma put down his torch on one of the bookshelves and listened to the night for a long time. Nothing; only the distant sound of waves lashing on the rocks of the Anse des Cuivres.

On a small piece of walnut furniture there was a black-and-white photograph in a silver frame: a schooner, with all sails set, her jibs bellying out.

In the grounds the early morning wind rustled in the shrubs. Dead leaves had been piled up against the trunk of a large cedar tree; and then turned back as though someone had wanted to search inside. De Palma was on the point of leaving when once again he heard a strange sound a few steps behind him. Not a noise, but a sound of breathing concealed behind a partition or a piece of furniture. A presence. The smirking, sleeping statues awoke.

Nobody could be there. Nobody. He had been round the entire room.

The breathing became more distinct, like the plaintive timbre of panpipes. The shrill notes seemed to come from higher up, from one of the floors above.

De Palma slowly climbed the stone staircase, keeping his back to the wall, and his revolver pointed at the landing above. The sound of the flute grew louder. It was primal music that whined; thin and repetitive.

At the top of the stairs there was a door immediately on the left. De Palma kicked the door open, and then shone his torch inside. The sound of the flute stopped. A collection of old toys was lying on a long shelf: china dolls with pale faces and die-cast steel cars in garish colours. A teddy bear with glassy eyes stared at the ceiling.

“No-one can have slept in this room since the 1930s,” de Palma said aloud.

The tune began again, faster this time, as though the player were panting down a long pipe. De Palma moved towards the second door and slowly turned the handle. The music stopped abruptly.

In his head he tried to imagine where he was in relation to the garden. This room overlooked the large cedar; its main branch passed a few inches from the window. The last sound he had heard came from inside the room, he was almost sure of it. He opened the door sharply. The tiny room was empty. A window shutter banged in the wind. The windowpane had been smashed and splinters were strewn across the floor. De Palma ran over and leaned outside. Even an exceptionally agile man would not have been able to va. . .