Free One Blood by Graeme Kent Page B

fair poker player, thought Kella.
    ‘You don’t do obsequious, do you, Sergeant?’ the big Australian said thoughtfully.
    ‘Maybe I’m practising for the post-colonial era.’
    ‘You and me both,’ sighed Michie, sipping his coffee. ‘You and me both.’
    Kella wondered how many dependent nations still remained to give nomadic expatriates like the logging boss work, and for how long. Already most emerging countries were insisting onany new operations being placed in the hands of local overseers. Soon the rough-hewn but shrewd Michie would be as obsolete as the remaining British official administrators clinging desperately like alcoholic limpets to their tenuous positions in the South Pacific. The difference was that Michie seemed to be aware of his precarious position.
    ‘Do you want me to show you where the attacks took place?’ asked the logging boss, with little hope in his voice.
    Kella nodded. Under different circumstances, he decided, he might almost have liked the crude, bull-headed Australian. Michie was a brave man. It was not his fault that he as much in thrall to his own background and customs as Kella was to his.
    ‘That would help,’ said Kella, draining his coffee cup and standing up.
    Outside, Michie led the sergeant to the piles of logs waiting to be floated out to sea. Over the last year or so there had been so much traffic across the swampy area of peat bogs running down to the sand that Kella could see coral outcrops almost masked by dying mangrove roots visible below potholes worn in the surface. He recognized some of the different kinds of felled trees in the heaps, lopped and stripped of their branches. There were towers of kesi, airate, noora and nanum. Looming over all the others were the large collections of the grey-barked kauri pines, which would be exported to be stripped, planed and turned into profitable plywood. Michie stopped in front of two piles a little apart from the others. They were shrouded in black plastic sheeting. He shouted to a gang of labourers to strip back the coverings. The sheets fell to the ground to reveal a tangle of burnt and useless gnarled tanglewood.
    ‘There were two separate fires, a few nights apart, about a month ago,’ said the logging boss. ‘By the time anyone got here, they were well ablaze. We’ve put a permanent night guard on the timber piles now.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘There have been a couple of attacks on drivers,’ said Michie. ‘Those happened at night as well. They could have been carried out by Malaitans settling grudges against the whites, though.’
    Kella nodded. ‘There was something else too, wasn’t there?’ he asked.
    ‘How do you know that?’ asked the logging boss.
    ‘There’s no signature,’ said the sergeant. He saw the look of incomprehension on Michie’s face and explained. ‘If the raids were done by Melanesians, they would leave some sort of sign, even if we couldn’t understand it. It’s a tradition of the old war parties, which is still observed.’
    ‘Yes, there was a sign, for what it’s worth,’ said Michie, setting off again. ‘I suppose that proves that the raids were by islanders.’
    ‘Probably. Though I never really thought they would have been carried out by a bunch of retired expatriate planters from the Honiara Yacht Club,’ said Kella. ‘So I can’t say I’m surprised. Show me.’
    Michie led Kella to a spot close to the waterline on the beach and pointed. ‘There!’ He indicated. ‘Is that enough of a signature for you?’
    Kella walked forward and knelt by a pile of drying human excreta on the water’s edge. ‘The attackers left this?’ he asked.
    ‘The Malaitans wouldn’t crap here, would they? They’re clean buggers. They’ve got their own latrines. They wouldn’t clean up anybody else’s shit, either. That’s the only reason it’s still there.’
    Kella had seen enough. He started walking across to his canoe on the beach. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll be