Carefully Kella steered his dugout towards the artificial island belonging to the Gammon Man. Most of those canoes that had been tethered off Foubebe for the burial of Papa Noah that morning were being paddled away. Across the lagoon he caught a glimpse of Sister Conchita crouched deep in thought over the outboard motor of her canoe as she headed back to Ruvabi, but he made no attempt to attract her attention. He wondered why Brother John had not been present at the ceremony. The Guadalcanal man had been pursuing his own secret agenda lately.
He tethered his dugout to the jetty and climbed up on to the carefully raked and weeded shingle. The island was a small one, designed and constructed for the needs of a single family.
The Gammon Man came out of his house yawning to greet Kella. He was squat, muscular and broad-shouldered, with a wide, bland face and shrewd eyes. He had a large but firm stomach, attached like an extra slab of muscle to his body. ‘You woke me up, Sergeant,’ he complained mildly. ‘What sort of time do you call this?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Kella unrepentantly. ‘We can’t all work gentleman’s hours.’
The Gammon Man grunted, unimpressed, and led the sergeant back into the house. Inside it was divided by a partition into a living room and sleeping quarters. In the former there was a wooden table bearing an unlit oil lamp, and several basketwork chairs. There were piles of carefully dusted books, each wrapped in a large protective plastic bag, on mats covering the beaten-earth floor. Kella knew that most of them would contain acknowledgements to the Gammon Man, inscribed gratefully to him by their authors. Usually the islander would take several copies of these books in their transparent wrappings on his travels and display them proudly to all he met, especially expatriates who might be a source of employment.
The Gammon Man’s wife, a handsome Lau woman a decade younger than her husband, hurried out of the sleeping quarters. Sinuously she swayed her way to the kitchen attachment. She averted her gaze politely from the visitor as she passed.
‘A cup of tea?’ asked the Gammon Man. ‘Something to eat, maybe? My wife can cook an English breakfast if that’s what you’re used to these days. Ham and eggs, that sort of thing.’
‘No thanks,’ said Kella. ‘I tend to have my breakfast in the morning. I just want to ask you a few questions about the death of Papa Noah.’
The Gammon Man nodded and pointed to one of the chairs. He sat opposite Kella and regarded the policeman expressionlessly. The Gammon Man’s real name was Wainoni. He had received his nickname through his fluency in English, acquired at a mission school, an apparently built-in high degree of self-confidence in his dealings with expatriates, and a matchless ability to lie fluently and expressively about any local topics that interested foreign academic researchers visiting Malaita.
Wainoni had embarked upon what was to become an increasingly lucrative career soon after the war, when his fluency in English had led to his being recruited as a guide by a visiting professor of anthropology. After a cautious start, he had realized that the gullible Australian researcher was prepared to accept as the gospel truth almost everything his loquacious native escort told him, and that it was much easier to make up his own stories about the history and customs of the jungle around them than it was to go to the trouble of visiting inconvenient and possibly dangerous regions of the hinterland to find out the truth. In pidgin ‘gammon’ meant to lie fluently.
From this relatively inauspicious start, he soon found his reputation growing in the enclosed world of Melanesian scholarship. Soon he was being passed on reverently from one overseas scholar to another like a family heirloom, treated as a source of all indigenous knowledge, as well as being a willing, skilled and apparently fearless bush scout and counsellor.
Less articulate fellow islanders had looked on with increasing awe and wonder as Wainoni had parlayed his linguistic fluency, ingratiating manner and total disregard for the truth into a one-man business. Thesis after published thesis in Australasia, the USA and even parts of Europe owed their inception to his practised guiding hand and utter indifference to reality. No matter how wild or outlandish the theory being pursued by the latest grant-aided university visitor to Malaita, the Gammon Man could be relied upon, for a suitable fee, to provide the so-called facts that would eventually substantiate it in an eighty-thousand-word volume designed to languish neglected in some sunless college library.
‘You wouldn’t be thinking of spoiling things for me, would you, Sergeant?’ asked Wainoni, smiling thinly.
‘Hardly,’ said Kella with genuine respect. ‘You’re probably the only Solomon Islander ever to make a decent living out of whitey without actually stealing from him. We’ve all got to admire real talent when we see it in action.’
Wainoni relaxed perceptibly. ‘In that case, how may I help you?’ he asked.
‘Your latest protégée, or victim, Dr Maddy, was there when Papa Noah was killed outside the ark. How did she get there, and what was she supposed to be doing?’
‘That’s easy,’ the Gammon Man said promptly. ‘Dr Maddy is a musicologist. She’s come to make a study of pidgin songs about the Second World War.’
‘But the Americans and the Japanese hardly touched Malaita,’ said Kella. ‘Most of the fighting in 1942 was done on Guadalcanal and in the west, hundreds of miles away.’
Wainoni regarded the policeman like a teacher dealing with an obtuse pupil. ‘You know that and I know that,’ he said. ‘Fortunately, Dr Maddy doesn’t know it – yet.’
‘But it’s a matter of record,’ Kella said, startled for once out of his equilibrium. ‘People have written whole books about the war in the islands.’
‘You mustn’t believe everything you read,’ said Wainoni sententiously. ‘That’s one of the first things I always tell my clients. Written history is bunk. The truth lies in industrious personal research on the part of conscientious scholars, preferably guided on a previously negotiated daily stipend by me.’
‘Of course,’ said Kella. ‘Forgive me for doubting you. I should have known that you would have given this matter deep and proper thought. So you’re helping this misguided young woman to conduct an investigation into something that never happened?’
‘Hardly. I’m helping Dr Maddy with her groundwork into the unknown. Isn’t that what scholarship is supposed to be about? Anyway, one or two Japanese are rumoured to have taken up residence in hiding on Malaita after the war.’
‘Perhaps, but I doubt very much if they had the time or the inclination to compose pidgin songs about their predicament.’
‘On the whole, I’m inclined to agree with you,’ said Wainoni judiciously, ‘but surely that’s the point of scientific investigation? Learned people must study these matters, and it is the duty of the less gifted among us to help and guide them according to our abilities.’
‘For a fee.’
‘Exactly, Sergeant Kella! The labourer is worthy of his hire. You display a unique gift for getting to the heart of a problem. I shall have to watch out. I sense a potential rival.’
‘Remind me never to buy Government House in Honiara from you, should you offer to sell it to me,’ said Kella. Negotiating with the Gammon Man was like wading through treacle. ‘All right, why did you arrange for Dr Maddy to attend the feast at the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark last week?’
The Gammon Man frowned. ‘That was a bit strange,’ he admitted. ‘Of course I had heard that the celebration was going to include a choir of virgins from the main island singing “Japani Ha Ha!”. People passing through the lagoon were talking of nothing else but the church choir practising the tue tue dance and then singing that stupid little pidgin song, but it never occurred to me to pass on the information to Dr Maddy.’
‘Probably that was because you couldn’t think of a way of making a profit out of the transaction. Go on, who did take her to the celebration?’
‘It was the Tikopian called Shem, the one who claims to be Papa Noah’s spiritual heir. Somehow he contacted her and invited her to the feast. I don’t know why. I told Dr Maddy that it would be an unprecedented opportunity for her to record “Japani Ha Ha!” and maybe other songs relating to the war. On the day of the ceremony, I took her over by canoe to the saltwater village and delivered her to Shem, who was waiting on the beach. I left them and he accompanied her up to the plateau. The next thing I know, a couple of women from Sulufou brought her back here late that same night. Dr Maddy was in a considerable state of shock, but all she would tell me was that there had been a dreadful accident at the feast. I imagine that she was referring to the death of Papa Noah.’
‘And then you washed your hands of her?’
‘She had no more call upon my services. I had fulfilled my contractual obligations to the letter,’ said Wainoni with dignity.
‘But you still did nothing to look after her in her distressed state?’
‘It’s not my job to protect her,’ said Wainoni indignantly. ‘I’m not her father!’ A spasm of genuine alarm fluttered his jowls. He put a beseeching hand on the other man’s arm. ‘Whatever you do, don’t frighten her away, Sergeant Kella. That woman is a humble businessman’s dream. She’s got half the dollars from her scholarship grant and weeks of trusting innocence left in her yet.’
‘Stop it!’ said Kella, rising. ‘If I listen to any more of your fraudulence, you’ll have me believing that you’re as pure as a Sikaiana maiden. Take me to this island for which you are probably charging Dr Maddy an extortionate rent.’
The Gammon Man leered at him. ‘It’s only fifty yards away,’ he said mischievously. ‘Why do you need me?’
Kella hoped that his face was expressionless. ‘The last time Dr Maddy and I met, it was under slightly unfortunate circumstances.’
Wainoni grinned lasciviously. ‘Yes, she told me about that,’ he chuckled. ‘It’s all right, Sergeant Kella. I assured her that to the best of my knowledge you were not a peeping Tom. Indeed, I know for a fact that you have always adopted a more hands-on approach with the ladies. When it comes to sexual encounters, you waste more chances than I’ve ever had.’
‘Are you going to take me over or not?’ asked Kella, standing up.
Wainoni looked at his watch. ‘She won’t be there,’ he said triumphantly. ‘She said that she was going to Tabuna village at first light this morning to record some pidgin songs from a man who worked for the Americans unloading cargo during the war.’ He saw the expression on Kella’s face. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Don’t you know anything?’ asked Kella, heading for the door. ‘The men of Tabuna are the laziest on Malaita and a bunch of thieving villains into the bargain. None of them would risk breaking into a sweat unloading cargo, and as sure as your corrupt soul is bound to rot in the deepest pit of hell at Ano Gwou, where it will be condemned eternally to eat the ghosts of your ancestors, not one of them ever went near the war!’
‘Is that so?’ sighed Wainoni smugly. ‘There is so much duplicity around these days. My trouble is that I’m too trusting. Why, sometimes in my darker moments I fancy that some of my informants even lie to me.’
Kella walked back to his canoe, shaking his head resignedly. Think what you liked of Wainoni, you had to admit that he was good at what he did. As he untied his dugout, the sergeant noticed that a small lean-to hut on the island was full of green bananas. For some reason Wainoni had recently started ploughing some of his profits into this usually unprofitable trading venture. He was buying bananas from the bush people and transporting them to the market in Honiara. It was a shrewd enough move, thought Kella. After rice, wheat and corn, bananas provided the most lucrative cash crop in the South Pacific. The only problem lay in the fact that it was proving difficult to export them to overseas markets before they ripened. Perhaps the Gammon Man was planning for the future, the sergeant thought. One day, when Lau had become sated with academics and finally there were no more abstruse subjects to be twisted out of shape and put into books, the venal Wainoni might have to look for a real job.