Devil-Devil Read Online Free Page A

early afternoon. He had departed from the village three hours earlier, leaving the headman sullenly promising to keep the dead man’s hut intact. Kella had added a few succinct words as to what he would do to the headman if anything untoward should happen to Peter Oro. On his journey Kella had kept his eyes open in vain for the schoolboy, who had not returned to the village.
    Solomon Bulko, the headmaster, was sitting in a cane-backed chair at the head of the path, strumming idly on a guitar as he waited for the police sergeant. He was wearing the black shorts and white shirt worn by pupils and staff alike at the school.
    â€˜Which way now, bigfella?’ inquired the headmaster casually, playing a complicated riff with spectacular ease.
    â€˜Speak English,’ Kella admonished with mock severity. ‘Pidgin is a bastard colonial mish-mash of a language. Set an example to your charges.’
    Bulku grinned. He was a plump, jet-black, laid-back islander from Choiseul in the Western Solomons. His indolent manner concealed an incisive brain. He was the closest that Kella had to a friend in the islands.
    â€˜They let you come back then,’ observed the headmaster. ‘I thought they’d banned you from Malaita. I suppose they needed you to do some dirty work for them.’
    He stood up and placed his guitar on the chair. He ambled across the bluff towards the school buildings with Kella, equably making no effort to carry the sergeant’s pack.
    â€˜What are you doing here?’ he asked.
    â€˜Routine patrol,’ Kella told him truthfully. ‘I’m looking for an American anthropologist called Mallory. Have you seen him?’
    â€˜He was stopping at the mission house until last week,’ replied the headmaster. ‘Then he went walkabout into the mountains. Haven’t seen him for four or five days. Is something wrong?’
    â€˜Shouldn’t think so,’ Kella said. ‘He was supposed to fly over to Honiara for a meeting with the High Commissioner this week. When he didn’t turn up, the authorities thought they’d better check.’
    â€˜It’s a long walk up into the high bush,’ observed Bulko. ‘I was up visiting schools there only last week. Don’t worry. He’ll stagger down in a day or two looking embarrassed and the worse for wear. Then he’ll go away and write a book about it: The Devil-Devils of Kwaio: an in-depth study .’
    â€˜Why should he be different from the others?’ agreed Kella. ‘What’s he like?’
    Bulko considered. ‘About forty, tall, thin, bald. Inhibited, buttoned-up. Decent enough but not a laugh a minute.’
    They had reached the line of classrooms. A dozen of the older students were sitting on the grass, carving war clubs to be sold to tourists in the capital. The boys looked bored as they scraped away at the wood with their penknives.
    â€˜What are you making?’ Kella asked one of the pupils.
    The boy shrugged. ‘A club,’ he yawned.
    â€˜I can see that,’ said Kella patiently. ‘What sort of club — dia , subi or alavolo ?’
    The schoolboy looked blank. Some of the other students began to pay attention, welcoming any break in the tedium of the hot, empty afternoon.
    â€˜They’re all the same,’ answered the youth indifferently. ‘They were for fighting and killing in the time before.’
    Kella shook his head. ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘They used the alavolo for hand-to-hand fighting. The subi had another purpose.’
    â€˜What was that?’ asked one of the other pupils, a faint spark of interest in his eyes.
    Kella hefted the half-finished club in his hand. The balance felt all wrong. ‘It was used to smash in the sides of the huts of enemies and then to finish off the wounded,’ he said, handing back the club. ‘This isn’t a proper subi. You’re making the head too