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your hard man out there, don’t bother,’ said Kella mildly. ‘He’ll be long gone by now. He is of the Afena Kwai tribe on the foothills above Gwau Rate. Good enough for bullying women and children who complain about your prices, but I doubt if he’ll stand up to a Sulufou man.’
    ‘There would be no question of opposing the law in this establishment,’ Gau said hastily. ‘Especially when that law is also the aofia .’
    ‘Don’t you dare talk about the aofia , you miserable little man,’ Kella told the trader. ‘That name is for the Lau people only. You degrade it even by breathing its name.’
    Gau looked genuinely frightened at the sudden change in the other man’s attitude. He scuttled as far away from Kella as he could, throwing up his thin arms in supplication.
    ‘Just ask me what you want to know,’ he snivelled. ‘Ask and get out!’
    ‘Bones,’ said Kella, half-ashamed of losing his temper. ‘That’s all I’ve been hearing today. What do you know about them?’
    ‘There’s a bones tabu on the station,’ said Gau cautiously. ‘So the old people say. It came about two days ago.’
    ‘Who is it from?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Kella looked hard at the trader. Gau capitulated. ‘They say it is from Pazabosi, the old magic man,’ he said with a rush.
    ‘Is this bones tabu over yet?’
    ‘I don’t think so. Soon. Very soon.’
    ‘Who is mixed up in it?’
    ‘I don’t know. You can hit me if you like, but I still can’t tell you. Business bilong whitefella.’
    Kella questioned the other man closely for another ten minutes, but it was evident that the resentful trader knew no more.
    ‘Very well,’ he said finally, walking towards the door. ‘Thank you for your help, Mr Gau.’ Kella nodded at the weights he had discarded. ‘I’ll be checking those before I leave. If they still give false weight tomorrow I’ll tear your store down plank by plank.’
    Afterwards he had dined on a roast chicken prepared by Bulko in his hut by the light of a battery-operated lamp over a substantial stove. They had eaten the meal in comfortable basket chairs while they listened to a Hank Williams LP on a portable record player. He had not bothered to question the headmaster. The Roviana man would never be told anything by the local islanders. Nor, with his attitude of benevolent self-interest, would Bulko want to know what was happening, unless it threatened his comfort or well-being.
    Instead Kella had inquired about Peter Oro, the missing schoolboy. Bulko had been typically vague. Yes, the boy was away on personal leave to arrange the funeral of his grandfather. No, he did not know much about the pupil, except that he was both bright and rebellious, but who wasn’t at that age? Wearily the headmaster promised to make inquiries among the teachers who knew the boy.
    Bulko was plainly less than enchanted with his charges. As he poured a beer for the sergeant he embarked upon a litany of complaints.
    ‘Just because they’ve been selected for higher education they think they need never get their hands dirty again,’ he grumbled. ‘They’ll do anything to avoid working in the gardens. They slope off into the trees and go walkabout, make up sob stories, go sick. Why, last week some of them even broke into the tool store and scattered the gardening equipment all over the place, just to avoid working on the land. We’re still looking for some of the missing stuff.’
    ‘What a shame,’ sympathized Kella. ‘Especially after the example of unrelenting manual work you set them.’
    ‘That’s different,’ said Bulko firmly. ‘They only think they’re special. I am special.’
    After the meal, under the cover of darkness, Kella had gone to work, making his way by a circuitous route to the graveyard on the northern boundary of the station. Several hundred white wooden crosses extended over the well-tended ground leading into the trees. Kella crouched behind a bush. For several hours no one approached