Singkepe nodded thoughtfully. ‘Traditional weapons are powerful. I’ve seen a slash from a pig jaw axe kill a big man in three days, while an old lady from my village got chopped up with a rusty machete and lived with 350 stitches.’ His dense monobrow furled as he looked more closely at the trembling man. ‘You got the arrow out of him, then?’

‘Yes, would you like to see it?’

He put the box on the table, and Mia passed him the dish containing the grisly claw. It was as if she had just presented him with his mother’s decapitated head. Singkepe stepped back, shaking and pale with fear.

‘Get it away from me!’

Mia had forgotten that superstition and belief in magic were common to many Papuans, and not just those in remote villages.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘That’s very bad medicine.’ Singkepe made the sign of the Cross twice in quick succession. ‘He gonna die for sure.’

‘Why bad medicine?’

‘Cassowary are female spirit ancestors. They are eating his manhood from the inside. They won’t stop.’ He shuddered. ‘Not until nothing is left.’

Singkepe’s fear of the claw was as real to him as her fear of his gun. Mia had seen with her own eyes how the awful power of ‘pointing the bone’ could kill healthy individuals within a week. But those afflicted believed they were cursed, so how did this apply to an old cynic like Douglas, who was surely immune to autosuggestion?

‘You’re saying there’s nothing I can do, then?’

Singkepe paused. ‘You could get the curse lifted, but this is very, very hard.’

‘You mean . . . a witch doctor?’

He nodded reverently. ‘A very, very powerful one.’

Mia had met a few witch doctors in her time. They appeared to be charlatans waving feathers and bones over hapless patients, who all too often died needlessly. What Douglas needed was a medical facility and powerful antibiotics. That was real magic.

‘Sergeant. Will you please tell Lieutenant Kaboro we need to get Mr Douglas urgent help or he is going to die.’ He nodded assent and Mia took the opportunity to make another appeal. ‘We’re not your enemy,’ she whispered. ‘If there is any way you can help us, please do it now before it is too late.’

He stiffened at the touch of her hand on his arm, and reluctantly she let go.