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the stones were regarded as holy and must not be touched by outsiders.
    Sullen growls of ‘White blackfella!’ emanated from the horrified crowd as Kella discarded the sacred stones. It was a phrase to which he had long grown accustomed and it did not deter him.
    Nobody else in the village would have dared to approach the pile, while Peter Oro probably would not have remembered their significance. If Senda Iabuli, or anybody else, had wanted to conceal something during the villager’s last days, this would be as good a place as any in which to do it.
    Kella found what he had been looking for towards the bottom of the pile. A hollowed-out bamboo container was secreted behind the largest boulder. Kella removed the wooden top and shook out the contents. He held up the package for all in the village to see. Then he unwrapped the large celeus leaf. Inside was a piece of dried ginger sprinkled with lime.
    Kella saw the headman gaping at his discovery. ‘You know what this is?’ the police sergeant asked.
    The headman nodded, all traces of pride wiped away. ‘The death curse,’ he whispered.
    Kella nodded. ‘Now we can be sure that someone intended to kill Senda Iabuli,’ he said.
    Carefully he replaced the contents of the container. He glanced at Peter Oro, wondering how the youth would react to the vindication of his belief that his grandfather had been murdered.
    The boy was not even looking at him. He was staring aghast at the scattered sacred rocks. Kella followed his gaze. Something else had been hidden at the base of the pile. The sergeant stooped and picked it up. It was the bone of an animal, carved, polished and trimmed roughly into the shape of a quill, some six inches long.
    Peter Oro backed away fearfully, breathing hard. Then he turned and raced off into the trees. Kella swore and hurried after him, ignoring the stinging branches whipping into his face as he tried to overtake the boy. He should have anticipated such a flight. He caught up with him a hundred yards along a track leading to the village gardens. Defiantly Peter faced him.
    â€˜I thought you wanted my help,’ panted Kella.
    â€˜I’ve changed my mind,’ spat the boy, almost in tears. ‘You bring too much trouble. Go away!’
    Kella was suddenly aware that they were not alone. Thirty yards away at a bend in the track stood a tall elderly islander with a helmet of grey hair. It had been years since they had last met but Kella recognized him at once. For a moment the two men stood with their eyes locked. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the old man lifted a short carved bone on to which he had impaled a bladder of a bonito fish glowing with phosphorous. The islander pointed the stick at Kella. At the same time, with his other hand, he lifted a bag made from a pandanus leaf and rattled the contents viciously. Abruptly he turned and was lost to sight among the trees.
    Peter Oro looked at Kella. All traces of the youth’s truculence had vanished. Suddenly he was just another frightened village boy brought against his will into contact with the ghosts.
    â€˜That magic man has cursed you, Sergeant Kella,’ he said, his voice shaded by misery and despair. ‘Now surely you will die!’
    The schoolboy turned and ran.

4
    CUSTOM MAGIC
    The Roman Catholic mission station at Ruvabi was situated on a bluff overlooking a river winding through the trees towards the placid blue sea a few miles away. The thatched bamboo classrooms stood along one side of a grassy square while the dormitories and the huts of the teachers were across the way. The ramshackle sprawling mission house and a neat red-roofed stone church were a hundred yards off, on the far side of the station, close to the ever-encroaching bush. Scattered haphazardly about the area were the huts of those Christian families who had abandoned their villages over the years.
    Kella climbed the steep path from the river to the school buildings in the