Deadly Rivalry in Tonga

By Kerry James

DCI Kulī Fīnau of the Tonga Police is suspicious of the goings-on at the Paradise nightclub, where government ministers and officials are entertaining expatriate representatives of a new tourism development with underage girls. But the untimely deaths of two visiting academics throw Kulī into the w

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kerry James
• Release date: Dec 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645338515

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Characters in the story

(First names are in bold)

Kulī, his family, and colleagues in the Tonga Police

Detective Chief Inspector Kulī Fīnau of the Tonga Police

`Iunisi Makamata, Deputy Police Commander

Māhina Sipōti, a senior staff sergeant in the uniformed section

Mele Fīnau Hausia (Kulī’s sister)

Mosese or Mo (deceased great-uncle to Mele and Kulī)

Detective Corporal Nusipepa (Nusi) Kaisinga

Tilaila (Kulī’s aristocratic ex-wife)

Tiopepe, a secretary at the police station

The visiting academic group, their family and associates

Colin Brown (Kolini), an academic from New Zealand, and his wife Ellen

Cindi Folsom, an academic from Hawai’i

Doug McPherson (Colin’s neighbour in Wellington, New Zealand)

Graham Hislop, an academic from Australia

Heather Brownlow, an academic from New Zealand

Jim Clifton, an academic from New Zealand

Joanna (Jo) Pocock, an academic from Australia

Laura Harding, an academic from Australia

Leah (Lea) Lardenham, an academic from Australia

Lindy, Leah’s sister

Louise Thompson, an academic from Australia

Pip (Pipa) Carey, an academic from Australia

Saloni Vea and Valeti Foaki, academics from the University of the South Pacific (USP)

Central Planning Department staff

`Alisi Fonu, Deputy Director

Kālo Mānoa, a young graduate

Mele`ana, librarian

Pita Liava`a, Director

Soana Petelō, a young graduate

Other characters on Tongatapu

Antonio and Julius, two men employed by the tourism development group

Charlie (Sarlie or Charlotte/Sālote), a beautiful young woman

Professor Filo `Olarisa, Director of Kolisi Halakanasa, and his wife `Ana

Lisiate Vaka, a linguistic scholar at Kolisi Halakanasa

Reverend Dr Loumalie

Mona and Sepa Tauvaka, proprietors of Mona’s Guesthouse

Pita, a minicab driver

Rodney Fifita, given by the Fifita family to Vikitō Paea to bring up as his son

Dr Sialepa, Chief Medical Examiner at Vaiola Hospital, and coroner

Sunia, chief surveyor at the Lands department

Tohi Laumanu, Keeper of the Palace Archives, member of the Tonga Tradition Committee

Vikitō Paea, owner of the Paradise Club

Vikitōlia (Victoria) Paea, 12-year-old relative of Vikitō Paea (in the superior female line)

Characters on Vava`u

Kefu Tangitau, a carver, and his wife Valeti

Peauafi (Peau) `Ofalahi, magistrate, and his wife `Ofa

Semisi Fifita, head of a business family with strong criminal tendencies

Siua, constable in Vava`u Police

Tomasi, a hotel receptionist

Chapter One: The Conference

Dr Pip Carey settled a light shawl around her shoulders and glanced at the rain through the murk on the glass louvres. Tonga’s winter sky continued leaden and dank. The meeting room at Kolisi Halakanasa was grey too, and the presentations had been lifeless. The first day of the conference had seemed just a deluge of words that fell past her ears without finding a foothold in her mind.

Pip watched a single white heron flying above the brown water which, after three days of heavy rain, swirled over the college’s low-lying grounds. A couple of thin dogs pulled at something helpless flapping at the water’s edge. Beyond the college boundary, waves crashed onto the inner reef. Seawater crested the sea wall and crossed Vuna Road to add its share of Pacific Ocean flotsam to the ugly scene. Pip shivered.

She didn’t like academic conferences at any time. She’d come to this, made up of diverse scholars of Tonga, because the kingdom’s people had provided her with hospitality and research opportunities over the last decade or so, and she could catch up with old friends. Tonight, for example, she was due to attend a family funeral with a great favourite, Mele Fīnau Hausia. Mele had even had her youngest brother, who was about twenty years Mele’s junior and now Detective Chief Inspector Kulī Fīnau, agree to pick her up at the college and drive her to the night-long `ā-pō, the preburial wake. Pip was looking forward to meeting him. He must be about her age and good for a rundown on the Tonga Police if he’d even an iota of the brains and gumption of his oldest sister.

Once again, Pip turned her attention back to the Tongan doctoral student, who was making an abstruse technical point from his research on centuries of local linguistic change. But, once again, his careful delivery was drowned out by Leah Lardenham’s more penetrating voice right next to her. Leah hadn’t stopped talking all day. She now waved a piece of typescript at Pip.

‘He’s going to get his tomorrow, Pip. … That’s what I’ve been telling you but you haven’t been paying the least attention to me. Look: results from old Colin Brown’s site below the mouth of the lagoon will blow Graham Hislop’s theories to shreds … Can’t wait … If he’s too ill I’ll read it for him …’

The insistent monologue broke off because Leah dropped the paper and had to slide under the table to retrieve it. She had physical heft to match her lung capacity, so that it took her some time to find the pages and re-emerge from the depths, covered in cement dust.

‘Ruddy Graham thinks he’s king of the archaeological heap,’ Leah gasped. ‘No respect … dumped her … horrible and shaming way … Louise, now … poor kid is devastated … uses people, all his students … He had Laura running around for him calculating nearby eighteenth-century whale populations, to estimate the amount of whale teeth ivory available … Up in Vava`u last week with … a real beauty … Jim, too, … wouldn’t have thought it of him … Girls never learn!!!’

What was Leah on about? Graham Hislop was a young, meteorically rising archaeological star. Colin Brown was an older scholar, who hadn’t got any results after years of digging somewhere round the capital’s inner lagoon. They were both at the other end of the conference table where the Reverend Dr Loumalie, the President of Kautaha Kauako `o Tonga, the KKOT, or Scholars’ Association of Tonga, was casting furious glances her way.

‘Shush, Leah. This is the last working session and we’re meant to listen.’

Pip at once regretted her sharp tone, but it was too late. Leah, despite her ebullience and bulk, was a sensitive soul. Her mouth formed itself into a perfect ‘O’ of high dudgeon. She then turned her back on Pip to talk to her friend, Valeti Foaki, a Tongan educator, on her other side. Pip would have to make it up to her later. But the vote of thanks preceded a general rush to the door and out into the rain as students ran for the dormitories to get ready for the formal conference dinner. Pip would’ve followed them but Dr Loumalie stopped her, calling her by her Tonganised name, ‘Pipa’.

‘Can you walk Colin to the accommodation blocks, please, Pipa? He’s not too well.’

As if to prove the point, Colin took out a green Ventolin inhaler, sucked on it, and then dropped his books and papers as he stumbled down the wooden steps onto the wet ground.

‘The bedding is damp and the mould everywhere here is playing havoc with my asthma,’ he wheezed.

Pip had just got Colin onto the rough path marked out with white coral stones that were being submerged by the rising water when Graham Hislop loped past wearing leggings and ankle-high trainers that sent muddy water splashing up on them.

‘Brains before dotage,’ he said.

‘Very witty. I’ll take some wind out of that blowhard’s sails tomorrow. He goes for this Sāmoa is the Cradle of Polynesia crap just to get into that English professor’s good books. You know, Gasson, the one who spent about thirty minutes in the South Pacific forty years ago, and dotes on the idea. Hislop probably doesn’t think any more of it than I do, but the old boy has promised to sponsor him to a fellowship at Cambridge for his support. Hislop’s got no integrity.’

‘You have a paper to present tomorrow, Colin?’

‘My findings will blow his out of the water.’

Colin was about to say more but stumbled just then into a large puddle. A coughing fit followed that had him sucking in cortisone again. When they finally reached the men’s block, he muttered something that might have been thanks, and hauled himself up by the railing into the dorm. Pip wasn’t sorry to take her leave of him. A pitiful fellow, but one who could be waspish and nasty. What was Colin going to say tomorrow to discomfit Graham? ‘Oh, Vincent!’ muttered Pip, using her familiar expletive, which evoked the artistic genius who ran wavy, coloured, rings around the sun but couldn’t get them out of his own head.

She climbed the three stairs into the women’s dorm opposite and found her allotted cubicle. It had curtains of patterned tapa cloth and, to serve as a bedside table, a tapa covered box topped with a lace doily and a little glass vase of fresh flowers. She changed into another black drip-dry dress that was easy to wash and wear in the humid Tongan climate, even if it always felt like she was wearing kitchen cling wrap. She added a kie kie, a woven waistband with pandanus strips hanging from it, and remembered to put a torch into her black handbag together with her camera. Family members liked to have their photos taken when kissing their dead goodbye. She took a black umbrella and picked her way with care back to the Kolisi Halakanasa’s refectory shelter, which was near the gate where she was to meet Kulī, the great detective. She hoped that as a police officer he was keen-eyed enough to find her in her suitably funereal attire in the dark of night.

She looked into the feasting place as she passed. The food included whole baked piglets, steaming hot yams, taro, and a range of side dishes on coconut leaf platters set out on the long communal tables. It all looked delicious. Seated near Graham Hislop on the school benches alongside the table was Jim Clifton, a middle-aged historian, handsome, and greying at the temples. He also had an interest in prehistory, which put him in sympathy with Graham. Their conversation seemed intense as they bent in towards one another.

Hislop’s tight orange curls and intense round blue eyes made him look for all the world like a portrait of the explorer Abel Tasman. Leah had been going on and on about one of his young women students, either Laura, the strapping bronzed amazon, or Louise, the pale vapid lachrymose one, both of whom were sending him covert glances from farther along the table. Had they been treated badly by Graham when she, or they, had been his postgraduate students? Pip hadn’t really followed all Leah said but it was a common enough story in academia, though never a pleasant one, and confirmed Graham’s arrogance and ruthless ambition. Apart from his energy and undoubted intelligence, Pip couldn’t see much in him.

‘Let me find you a seat. You need to eat, Pipa,’ said `Ana `Olarisa, the wife of Professor Filo `Olarisa, the Tongan director of Kolisi Halakanasa.

‘I’ll be eating white bread and margarine and jam, and drinking hot, sugared, milky tea, real Tongan food, until very late at an `ā-pō, I’m afraid, `Ana. Nothing like this marvellous spread. Mele Hausia’s asked me along, and her brother Kulī is meant to be picking me up.’

‘We know Kulī. He often stops by to chat to Filo whenever he can in his crazy job. He’s got so many police responsibilities, I’m glad he’s found time for family obligations.’

‘He talks to Filo?’

‘He’s a bright and thoughtful man when you can get him off `Ikale Tahi’s chances in the rugby championships.’

‘Then I’d better not keep this intellectual tyro waiting, `Ana.’

‘You need to spend some time in the group, with their good company, too, Pipa. Not always going off on your own, working.’

‘True. I tend to be a loner. But tonight, I’m committed.’

Giving `Ana a quick hug, Pip headed off in the rain to meet DCI Kulī Fīnau. He now appeared as both a dutiful brother and the thinking person’s CID officer, which made him intriguing. She wondered what he thought of Filo `Olarisa’s militant prodemocracy stance, and how it would fit with policing law and order in autocratic Tonga. Dare she ask him?

She glanced again into the cosy, companionable, lit shelter. Leah was in good form, if the laughter around her was anything to go by. Colin sat nearby but he looked wan and ill. Pip would’ve liked to go in right there and then and apologise to Leah for the cutting words she’d spoken to her earlier, but it was impossible to get to her through the noisy, lively crowd. She vowed to catch up with her first thing the next morning and smooth it all over as best she could. In the meantime, she hastened to meet Mele’s brother.

In the event she did neither, because Kulī Fīnau never arrived, and by the following morning, Leah Lardenham was dead.

Chapter Two: Kulī meets the Ministers and Māhina

DCI Kulī Fīnau was not having much of a day either. Rain blew through the rusted metal louvre frames in his office at the Central Police Station, and made puddles on the floor. Wind gusted a memo out of his full in-tray. It hovered lazily in the air, before dropping into one of the puddles. To have to get up, and then bend down to retrieve it, was unthinkable in this humidity.

The town gutters had given up long before. Try to cross any main road, and you fetched up on the other side looking like you’d just fallen off a boat. Schools were closed, shops too. He could hear kids yelling as they took rain baths under a broken downpipe at the end of the police building. Kulī felt so soiled he would have loved to join them.

Something nasty was going on at the Paradise nightclub and in its Cap’n Kooki Bar by the waterfront on Vuna Road. He could feel it. His toes tingled with presentiment. He had carried out an informal vigil there all hours of the night during this last week, which had emptied his pockets and filled his head with smoke, stale beer, and a greater certainty.

‘Nusi!’

His deep voice reverberated around the office walls, which dripped with condensation. Detective Corporal Nusipepa Kaisinga appeared, a look of polite enquiry on his long, lean face. His grey shirt looked like it’d just been laundered. Kulī bet too that Nusi’s regulation black trousers would have knife-sharp creases. Of course, he had a wife, which Kulī did not, but not even that could explain the man’s irritatingly neat appearance in this weather.

Despite his lower rank, Kulī preferred Nusi to all the seat-warming sergeants who lounged in the CID room. Nusi was unswervingly loyal to Kulī and was also a Fount of Local Knowledge. This could sometimes irritate his brilliant boss too, who wasn’t, but it had the advantage of being very useful.

‘Vikitō Paea is back to employing underage girls at the Kooki Bar, right?’

‘`Io. Some are still at school. Same old story. Fathers emigrated overseas and left families without money to get food, let alone school fees. One of them is only twelve, but she’s a runaway from Vava`u, some sort of relative of Vikitō’s through her grandmother, who’s the sister of old Semisi Fifita …’

‘Yes, yes, and one of the vilest criminals in the country. I know.’

In fact, Kulī hadn’t known about the girl from Vava`u, Tonga’s main northern island group, but he wanted to avoid a long genealogical lecture. One trouble with the Fount of Local Knowledge (FLK) could be too much information (TMI).

‘Then, why haven’t we been called in? Who are the middle-aged pālangi men, three times their age, these kids openly consort with by the dance floor, and likely upstairs in the rooms Vikitō keeps for the purpose?’

Kulī’s disgust wrinkled his broad nose, and made him look like the hunting dog he was named for: one who chased his prey to ground.

‘No-one’s complained, boss. The Vava`u kid faced down the Salvation Army worker sent to get her. She said that Vikitō treated her better than her own family. But then she’s probably fahu to Vikitō through her grandmother, and so can boss him about … ’

Kulī waved away the complicated analysis of social superiority.

‘Foreign men use our kids for sexual pleasure and get away with it, like all the other stuff that goes on down there, the pimping, and pill popping. But there’s something else, Nusi. I can smell it.’

Kulī was about to shake his head, but remembered that it hurt after his late nights, so instead he ran a pointed pencil though his hair and pricked at his skull to get his brain moving. He kicked off his regulation black, size twelve, police sandals. He always thought better when his toes could breathe and had room to move too.

‘You’ve been spending time at the club unsanctioned?’

Kulī batted the objection away like a mosquito. ‘I’ve gone to the Paradise Club in my time off. I have to see the Minister of Police this afternoon, but I’ve not much for him except the scent of a trail.’

‘It’s going home time now, boss, so I wish you a good weekend.’

‘No chance. My sister, Mele, has me picking up a friend of hers, Pipa Carey, at the history conference at Kolisi Halakanasa, and taking her to great-uncle Mosese’s `ā-pō. She’s a smart-talking doctorate of something, so she and Mele can laugh about the fact that I don’t have one, while the wake sinks slowly into the seawater at Sopu. And now, I’m late for that ministerial meeting.’

Kulī strode down from the first floor on stone steps that had hollowed in the middle from decades of use. He waved to the men in the holding cells on the police station’s ground floor and sped to the back entrance. It being a wet day, all the police cars had been taken, of course. He waded across the parking lot to a battered Japanese sedan by the back wall and, like a piece of origami, folded himself into the driving seat. The engine stuttered into life and the car passed through the crowded town. Then, out of sheer habit, it veered toward the gate of the Royal Nuku`alofa Club, a gentlemen-only retreat. Kulī got the car just under control, slowed past the back of the Royal Palace out of respect, and then raced out to the Tonga Police headquarters at Longolongo.

He parked under a breadfruit tree by the guard house and swore when the rainwater pooled in its broad leaves fell onto him. All around the circular drive to the front entrance, he leapt over large potholes to make up for the exercise he didn’t get. Once under the portico, he brushed the worst of the dirt off his tupenu and emptied out his sandals. He then squelched off to the ministerial suite of rooms at the end of the office complex, content with the illusion that black mourning garb donned in honour of great-uncle Mosese didn’t show marks like other colours did.

Deputy Police Commander `Iunisi Makamata was already inside the Minister’s outer office bestowing her lacquered smiles upon his secretary. `Iunisi turned to receive Kulī’s polite customary greetings with all the grace she might have used had he handed her three-day old fish, and looked pointedly at her non-regulation, bejewelled watch. The secretary, herself the daughter of a high noble, seized the moment to send him a cheeky come-hither look. She was most likely filling in time until her parents arranged a suitable match for her.

‘Good luck,’ she whispered.

Kulī passed into the ministerial presence three paces behind `Iunisi. He realised he might need some luck only when he found himself facing not one but two ministers of the Crown. The first, the Minister of Police, sat in a chair covered in red leather behind a matching desk. A small man, he seemed swamped by his own magnificence. On the wall above him was a large photograph of the reigning monarch plus the Coat of Arms of Tonga, which had the motto Ko e`Otua mo Tonga ko e ho Tofia (‘God and Tonga are my Heritage’) picked out in coloured enamels. Seated to his right in a large red-velvet chair, reminiscent of a throne and set on a kind of podium, was the second, the Minister of Tourism. His noble title ranked well above that of the Minister of Police. Seemingly to emphasise this, he’d positioned himself beneath a portrait of another member of the royal family, whom he closely resembled. With the passivity befitting his great rank, he didn’t so much as glance at the police officers.

Both ministers were dressed in black but this didn’t mean they were related. Tongan extended families could be vast, and someone or other was always dying. Kulī wouldn’t have put it past the Minister of Police to try to make it look as if he and the Minister of Tourism were more closely related than they were. Take him and his great-uncle Mosese, for instance. He hardly knew him, yet he was bidden to this wake to bulk it out and show how well-thought of Mosese had been. Status-seeking was a national pastime. But the king’s school high-jump record had never been broken: no-one would dare to try.

The Minister of Police was still arranging his papers, or his thoughts, so Kulī let his eyes wander. The high-ceilinged room was painted the same institutional cream colour as Kulī’s own office, and had a coffee table and easy chairs off to one side, all covered with hand-crocheted white squares. An air conditioner chugged away. All it did was lift the leaves of a limp pot plant nearby. The contraption reminded him of a respirator he’d once seen in Vaiola Hospital. If the similarities held, the plant hadn’t a chance. The only other feature of any note was a set of black and white photos of previous police ministers. Each man stared out of the frames firm-faced with selfless duty, but Kulī had heard a few stories. To him, it looked less like a line-up of law enforcers than framed mugshots. Glimmers of daylight shot grey and white flashes across their faces, making them seem even more like part of a horror show.

The minister looked up. Kulī’s gut tensed. He waited to sound out his suspicions of the Paradise Club, and to get approval to keep an eye on the place. He had to.

‘It has come to our attention, or, at least, I have had my attention drawn by my ministerial colleague here.’

The Minister of Police acknowledged the Minister of Tourism with a nod so low as to constitute almost a bow. Kulī waited.

‘There’s been some unwanted activity on the part of overzealous police officers at one of our capital’s night spots, the Paradise Club on Vuna Road. This has annoyed some customers; in particular, foreign guests to our shores engaged in work that is extremely vital to the well-being of the economy of our country. We, that is, I, wish this unwarranted police activity to cease.

‘You may not be aware but a large tourism project that’s required a huge input of overseas investment has been being put together with great diligence for some years now, due to the untiring efforts of my ministerial colleague’ – again the all-but bow to the Minister of Tourism – ‘and is about to reach its concluding stages. Which is to say, an agreement between the Government of Tonga and the representatives of the overseas companies who’ll be responsible for the development, which is expected to bring jobs to our unemployed and underemployed, especially our school leavers, to help stem the brain drain overseas. It’ll also bring in large numbers of high-end tourists, unlike the backpackers and riffraff that occupy the modest guesthouses around town. The benefits to the kingdom are therefore incalculable.

‘The negotiations with the overseas interests have been delicate but they could be finalised next week. These negotiations are complex and demanding. It is imperative that the parties to them be allowed privacy and relaxation when they are not at the negotiating tables. The police presence has been highly intrusive and objectionable. I repeat, it must stop forthwith.’

The minister stopped then, for breath, or to regain some syntactical sense. Did Kulī see the Minister of Tourism looking at him, his eyes mere slits with a frown line drawn between them?

‘These people are important guests in our country and must be allowed leeway. They’ve come from different places, where our customs are not observed, and they shouldn’t be expected to fall into line with our ways the moment they arrive. Of course, I’m not suggesting that if anything illegal is going on that it shouldn’t be investigated. But I am assured that this isn’t the case. The men are of impeccable character and, need I repeat, of the greatest importance to our economy.

‘If the police do anything’ – now the police minister’s gaze fell directly upon Kulī – ‘I suggest they might turn their attention to guarding the equipment already in-country. The expensive heavy earthmovers are located behind steel mesh fences at Hala-o-Vave awaiting their use once the agreements have been signed. But this hasn’t stopped local youth from raiding the premises and trying to drive the machines, and like nonsense. I hope I have made myself clear.’

Kulī suspected he knew he’d been clear enough to frighten him off.

‘Have you got that, `Iunisi?’ said the Minister of Police, in quite another voice.

‘Yes, `Eiki Minisitā,’ purred `Iunisi, sliding him a look.

So that’s where the jewelled watch came from. He’d heard rum­­ours …

‘Kulī?’

‘`Eiki Minisitā?’

‘No more meddling, do you hear?’

With that they were dismissed.

‘Did you get that, loser? Don’t interfere with matters above you, or you’ll be back in the