‘WELL, DON’T KEEP me in suspense. What did you hear about Andy?’ asked Sister Conchita as the canoe bumped across the lagoon, its engine opened to capacity.
‘They told me at the village that he had borrowed a canoe an hour ago and said that he was going to the logging camp,’ said Kella, his eyes fixed on the coastline of Alvaro as it grew closer. ‘Apparently he had business to finish there.’
‘I hope he’s not going to do anything silly,’ said Sister Conchita.
‘The point is,’ said Kella, ‘what silly things has he already been doing over the last couple of weeks?’
The policeman was looking uncharacteristically sombre. Sister Conchita had never seen him so tense and on edge.
‘Whatever it is, he’s probably been egged on by Mary Gui,’ she said. ‘Just like she talked Joe Dontate into joining up with Imison and his friends. That girl has a genius for preparing bullets for other people to fire, if she thinks it will do her any good.’
‘You’re entitled to your opinion,’ said Kella.
Conchita’s instincts told her that this would be a good time to keep quiet. ‘I can’t believe that Andy murdered Ed Blamire,’ she heard herself saying. ‘What reason would he have?’
The beach was only a few yards away. Kella cut out the engine, jumped over the side and dragged the canoe out of the water. He ran up the slope to Jake Michie’s office, with Sister Conchita at his heels. Work seemed to be going on as usual around the camp, although one or two of the Melanesians threw curious looks at the police sergeant and his companion as they hurried past. At the beginning of the coral road leading inland, a large truck with a cargo of logs had been driven into a ditch, jettisoning its load. Kella ignored it and ran across to the company office. He threw the door open and they went in.
Andy Russell was standing being supported by the two Australian security men. His head drooped dispiritedly. When he looked up, Conchita saw that there was a livid bruise on his right cheek, and that his nose and mouth were bleeding. Jake Michie, the logging boss, was sitting behind his desk.
‘Let him go,’ said Kella, indicating Andy. At first the big Australians merely glowered at him and did not move. The sergeant advanced on them. ‘Let go of him now, or I’ll arrest the pair of you for assault and obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty,’ he said. ‘I don’t think either of you’d fancy six months in an island prison, and that would be before your trial even began!’
Michie growled something at the Australians. Reluctantly the security men released their grip. Sister Conchita took Andy by the arm and led him over to a washbasin against the wall. She filled the basin with water, soaked a corner of her habit in it and started bathing his damaged face. Andy submitted dazedly to her treatment. All the fight seemed to have drained out of him.
‘The kid went crazy,’ protested Michie, standing up. ‘He came running up the beach and tried to get in one of the giant trucks with a load of timber on it. He was going to turn it over and block the road inland. It would have taken us days to get it right, and the silly sod could have killed himself. Luckily he only drove it into a ditch. Mitch and Quincy here dragged him out before he could properly get started. I want him arrested. I’ll prefer charges.’
‘Did they have to beat him up?’ asked Sister Conchita, glaring at the Australians.
‘Too right they did!’ said Michie. ‘We had to subdue him. The kid went berserk when we got him out of the truck.’
‘You’re ruining this island, you and your kind!’ said Andy defiantly. His nose had started to bleed again. ‘You cheated the islanders out of their custom land and you’ve ruined the habitat! Somebody’s got to try and stop you.’
‘You two can leave now,’ Kella said to the security guards before anyone else could speak. ‘Don’t go far away. I haven’t finished with you yet.’
The two Australians slouched disconsolately out of the office. Kella looked at Andy. ‘Do you deny that you trespassed on this island at night on two separate occasions, and damaged supplies of logs here by setting fire to them?’ he asked.
‘No, I don’t,’ muttered Andy, holding a reddening handkerchief to his nose. ‘I’d do it again, too!’
‘Who put you up to it?’
‘Nobody,’ said the VSO. ‘It was all my idea.’
‘Like hell it was,’ said Kella. ‘This was all part of Mary Gui’s plan, wasn’t it? She talked you and Joe Dontate into helping her.’ He did not look at Sister Conchita, who suppressed a smile. The sergeant had not been completely blinded by lust, then.
‘This is how I see it,’ went on Kella. ‘When she discovered that you were stranded alone on Kasolo, apparently without transport, she realized that this would provide you with an alibi if you raided the logging station. You could hardly be a castaway and a saboteur at the same time. She provided you with a canoe, so that you could land on Alvaro twice at night and set fire to the logs. She even put you up to crapping on the beach to make it look as if it was an old-time custom raid undertaken by a group of local freedom fighters.’
‘But what was the point of damaging the logging operations?’ asked Sister Conchita.
‘Mary knew how ingenuous Andy was, and that he was upset by the way in which the Alvaro Company had ruined this island. She also knew that he was young and foolish enough to take risks to put an end to the company’s operations.’
‘So it was all part of the Solomon Islands Independence Party’s campaign?’ asked Sister Conchita.
‘There is no Solomon Islands Independence Party, and there never has been any campaign,’ said Kella, shaking his head. ‘All Mary had was a few pieces of headed notepaper printed up to fool someone as credulous as Andy and make him think that he was striking a blow for the freedom of the islands. All the talk of meetings and motions being passed was just a smokescreen, the SIIP is a phantom, a figment of Mary Gui’s imagination.’
‘How can you be sure?’ asked Sister Conchita.
‘When I was in Gizo, I went to see the one man who would know,’ said Kella. ‘His name is Raesohu. He works at the radio station. If ever there is an uprising in the Western District, he will be behind it. He had never heard of the SIIP, and neither had four other leading independence fighters I questioned in the district centre.’
‘This is all very interesting, but I’ve got a company to run,’ said Michie suddenly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go and see how much damage Little Lord Fauntleroy here has really done.’
The logging boss lumbered towards the door. For a moment Sister Conchita thought that Sergeant Kella was going to stop him, but the policeman thought better of it. He followed Michie outside. At a loss to understand what was going on, but with implicit trust in Kella and determined not to miss a moment of what was going to happen, Sister Conchita went after them. Still dabbing at his nose, Andy brought up the rear.
The small party walked across the compound to the coral road. At the sight of the logging boss, those Melanesians in the area bent studiously over their tasks. Michie gave a grunt of exasperation and started examining the wrecked truck.
‘So what was the point of Mary Gui claiming that there was an independence party?’ asked a bewildered Sister Conchita.
‘Money,’ said Kella. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Michie?’
Michie stopped checking over the truck and turned back to the others. ‘How the hell would I know?’ he asked.
‘Because you were in on it with her,’ said Kella.
‘Now what are you talking about?’ asked Michie warily.
‘Mary Gui had the original idea, but she needed someone on the inside of the company to help her. Mary always needed a man for her operations. You were the only man on Alvaro in a position to help her. She discussed her plan with you, and you fell in with it.’
‘I’ve never heard so much garbage,’ said Michie.
‘Using the guise of the SIIP, Mary Gui wrote to you claiming that the freedom party would destroy the logging camp unless a donation was made to its funds,’ Kella went on. ‘To underline the point, she had persuaded Andy to make his raids. You were able to contact your head office and inform them that it was your considered opinion that unless they released the money to pay off the SIIP, the freedom fighters would step up the intensity of their attacks and slow down the production of logs. You told me once that the company would do almost anything to ensure that their operation here kept going. A couple of thousand dollars to keep the local independence movement off their backs would be nothing to such a wealthy company. They were probably making similar payments out of petty cash all over the world. You knew that it wouldn’t be long before you were replaced by a local logging boss, so you thought you’d make a little extra cash while you could. They authorized the payment, and you and Mary Gui split the money between you. You used Andy, the pair of you.’
‘That’s a load of balls!’ protested Michie.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Kella. ‘I discovered over a thousand dollars in a box in Mary Gui’s hut. She would never have saved that sort of money as a student in Australia. That was her share of the extortion money you persuaded your company to part with. I imagine that if I search hard enough, I shall find a similar amount in your possession somewhere.’
‘Prove it!’ said Michie.
‘I’m getting there. The part that really troubled me was where Ed Blamire came into all this. What did he do to merit being killed?’
‘I suppose you’re going to accuse me of that as well,’ said Michie.
‘Oh yes,’ said Kella. ‘You murdered Blamire in the mission church on open day and threw his body on the bonfire. Neither Andy nor Mary would have had the physical strength to do that.’
‘You were certainly at the mission that day,’ said Sister Conchita, casting her mind back to the day of the killing. ‘I saw you supervising the logging exhibition. You could have slipped away from the demonstration at any time and gone to the church. You found poor Mr Blamire there and killed him!’
‘Do any of you want to tell me why I would kill a man I didn’t even know?’ asked Michie.
Suddenly matters became clear to Sister Conchita. ‘You didn’t have to know him,’ she said. ‘He knew you. He was hunting you down. Ed Blamire worked for the Alvaro logging company, didn’t he? He had been sent here to investigate the threats against their operation. I remember now. While he was talking to me in the church just before he died, he told me about the different jobs he’d had. One of them I didn’t understand at the time. He said that he had been a tree-hugger. I suppose that was his way of saying that he was working for the logging company.’
Kella cast a glance of approval at the nun. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘That was the conclusion I came to as well. Blamire was an investigator sent in the guise of a tourist to check up on the sabotage attempts. Unfortunately for him, he was also a political supporter and admirer of John F. Kennedy. While he was here, he hired a canoe and paddled it to Kasolo to see for himself where Kennedy and his crew had landed after PT-109 had been sunk. When he arrived, he found Andy hiding on the island—with a canoe, which meant that he could go anywhere in the Roviana Lagoon. It didn’t mean anything to Blamire at the time, but unwittingly he had destroyed Andy’s alibi of being stranded on Kasolo and unable to leave the island. I suspect that Andy told Mary Gui or Joe Dontate what had happened, and that one of them informed you, Michie.’
Everyone looked at Andy. The VSO shuffled his feet and said nothing. Kella continued his story.
‘That meant that without knowing it, Ed Blamire had a vital piece of the jigsaw. By this time he was beginning to close in on you as the instigator of the extortion attempts, Michie. He knew that there would be vital evidence in the anonymous letters that you and Mary Gui had written on behalf of the SIIP demanding money in return for stopping the raids on the logging operation—if such letters existed. He even went to the District Commissioner and asked if Maclehose had the authority to perform arrests. At the time, he said that if he discovered some letters, he would return with them as proof. That’s where I got it wrong. I thought he meant letters that Imison and the other Americans had received from the FBI referring to the rumours about Kakaihe being involved in Lieutenant Kennedy debating surrendering to the Japanese.’
‘I’m sure that if we contact the authorities in Honiara, they will have discovered by now that Ed Blamire was a private detective working for your company, Mr Michie,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘When they hear what has been going on, Alvaro will send half a dozen investigators here to look at your books. They’ll soon unearth anything illegal.’
‘You jokers are out of your minds,’ said Michie. ‘Have you got just one piece of evidence to support these allegations?’
‘I think I might have,’ said Sister Conchita, remembering the day when Sister Jean Francoise had come hurrying excitedly out of the bush after her search for kava roots. ‘We’ve found the war club you stole from the mission and used to kill Mr Blamire. It was right in the heart of the undergrowth on Marakosi. One of the nuns found it by chance. The police will be able to examine it for fingerprints. No one wears gloves in the Solomons. You probably wiped it down when you got rid of the club, but if you’ve left just one trace on it, it will be found.’
Michie sighed. Suddenly he started running. He headed away from the coral road, towards the shore, moving with surprising speed for such a big man. The Melanesian labourers gaped at him as he passed. Kella cursed and set off in pursuit. Sister Conchita and Andy exchanged worried glances and followed at a slower pace.
‘He’s trying to get to the launch!’ said Andy.
Michie reached the beach. He hesitated. Kella was gaining on him. Abruptly the logging boss changed direction. He ran towards the fenced-off enclosure containing the latest consignment of logs waiting in rows in ten feet of water. There was a stiff breeze coming off the lagoon, stirring the tightly packed tree trunks so that they jostled hard against each other in the gurgling water.
‘Don’t be a fool!’ Kella shouted, coming to a halt.
Michie ignored him. Balancing precariously, his arms held out on either side of him, the big man started running across the slippery logs towards the anchored launch on the far side of the pen. Several times he tottered and almost fell, but he kept moving. Kella hesitated, and then started across the logs after him. The trunks were as slippery as glass. Michie looked back over his shoulder and increased his pace. He was almost halfway across the pen before he lost his balance. One of the logs revolved beneath his feet. The Australian danced grotesquely, his arms waving. Then he went sprawling across the heaving tree trunks. For a few moments he lay semi-conscious on top of the timber. A gap appeared between two of the logs. The Australian tried to cling to the glistening surface, but his clawing fingers lost their purchase. The trunk began to spin around. With a muffled shout, Michie slipped off the top into another gap appearing momentarily in the phalanx of timber. Then, as the logs smashed together again above his head to form a huge, immovable swaying wooden raft, he disappeared from sight.