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walking along the beach to the adjacent village of Haarumou. He had heard rumours that an elderly carver of traditional pan pipes there was refusing to practise his craft any longer because he had been threatened by a Gossile, one of the ghost-children who dwelt among the graves of women who had died in childbirth. The Gossile were reputed to spend their time making pan pipes for the gods. Sometimes they took umbrage if a human being developed the art too well, and would move in on the unfortunate man to harass him.
    Kella’s sharp ears heard someone climbing the wooded hill towards him. The noise was too loud to be made by a local, but very few expatriates visited this part of Malaita. Circumspectly Kella stood behind a broad banyan tree until he could makeout who the newcomer was. A few minutes later he glimpsed the portly form of Sergeant Ha’a toiling up the slope, gasping audibly for breath, giving a creditable impression of a tire with a slow puncture. Like Kella, he was wearing the khaki shorts and shirt and red beret of a member of the Solomon Islands Police Force. Kella stepped out from behind the tree and waited for Ha’a to see him. The other sergeant wiped the sweat from his eyes and squinted uncertainly through the trees.
    ‘I’ve been looking for you all damn day,’ he complained when he recognized his colleague. ‘You’re overdoing this jujuman bollocks. You don’t have to make yourself invisible just for my sake!’
    Sergeant Ha’a was a rotund, amiable Western Islander with jet-black skin, a flashing white smile and a reedy tenor voice that had once secured for him a minor reputation as a singer of comedy country-and-western songs on the northern club circuit when he had attended a course in Yorkshire. His bowdlerized rendition of ‘Your Daddy Ain’t Your Daddy, But Your Daddy Don’t Know’ had once even secured him a brief spot on a BBC Radio Light Programme talent show, a taste of fame that Ha’a had relished almost to the point of obsession. As a result, he now spent much of his time applying to attend more courses, of any description, in Great Britain, so that he could return and live the dream once more. In the meantime, he was noted for his addiction to the relatively mild fleshpots of Honiara. It would have taken considerable efforts on the part of his superiors to shoehorn him out of his air-conditioned office in the capital.
    ‘I would have thought that it would have made a nice change for you to get back to your roots like this,’ commented Kella sarcastically.
    Sergeant Ha’a shuddered. ‘I’m from the West,’ he said. ‘We don’t make such a big thing about fresh air as you primitive Malaitans. I’m here to take you over to Honiara sharpish.There’s a government ship waiting for us at Auki. Your attendance is urgently requested at Government House. Apparently there’s some sort of flap on.’
    ‘What about?’
    Ha’a shrugged indifferently. ‘I operate on a need-to-know basis,’ he told the other policeman. ‘And believe me, the older I get, it’s surprising how little I really need to know.’

Chapter Four
    ‘ THE GOOD NEWS ,’ said Robinson, the Secretary for Internal Affairs, ‘is that we have an interesting assignment for you, Sergeant Kella. He gave a wintry smile. ‘The bad news, I’m afraid, is that it will take you away from your niche on Malaita.’
    Kella shifted in his chair. He always felt uncomfortable in any of the offices in the administrative block of the Secretariat in Honiara, and this one was no exception. Robinson, the Secretary, was an African retread. On the shelves were carvings of masks and animals, evidence of long official colonial sojourns in what had once been the Gold Coast, British Somaliland and Cameroon, names that were no longer even detailed on maps of the continent in this era of independence.
    ‘I know nothing of the customs and traditions of other parts of the Solomons,’ said Kella hastily. ‘I would be of no use to you