The old man led them to the haus tamberan, an ancestral worship house. The structure was a tetrahedron, looking something like a sail from the Sydney Opera House. The facade was dilapidated, the thatch in disarray. A faded motif of pointed ellipses edged with triangles, and a worn row of carved ancestral clan spirits, were further testament that the hamlet had fallen on hard times.

‘No misis kam in hia,’ the old man apologised at the doorway. No woman allowed.

Mia had always found it intriguing that a culture built on the primacy of male gender constructed its places of worship in the shape of a vulva. The symbolism was ideological. As a male-gendered space, women were forbidden to cross the threshold. It was a demonstration of power – of male possession of the womb, with ritualised combat against the evil spirits which existed in menstrual blood, so feared that women were banished during menstruation, for fear of contamination.

Singkepe brandished a few kina and the old man reluctantly let Mia enter. Inside, the atmosphere was dry and cool, and there was an ingrained odour of smoke from decades of ritual. They laid Douglas down on the beaten clay floor. It seemed a fitting space to meet your maker. The soaring ceiling functioned architecturally, like any place of worship – designed to cow the visitor and induce a feeling of reverence. It was made of a complex latticework of hundreds of flexible bamboo poles lashed together, covered in overlapping dense layers of sago spathe. Without maintenance, chinks of sunlight were breaking through, where rats or birds had stolen material for their nests.

Frank Douglas was now on the very edge of death. The poison had colonised his entire torso and neck, and advance parties were travelling down his extremities in thin red lines. There was nothing Mia could do beyond sponge him down.

Half an hour later, a burst of excited shouting heralded the return of the boy. Drenched in sweat, he announced the shaman’s arrival. A ripple of trepidation swept through the village. Many of the older women picked up children and disappeared into their huts.

Covered in white and yellow ochre, the witch doctor entered the haus tamberan with suspicious eyes. His aggressive demeanour was augmented by an elaborate headdress of razor-sharp boar tusks and a huge cassowary claw speared through his septum. Around his neck were rows of cowrie shells, bird of paradise feathers, and strange nondescript tokens which looked like dried animal parts. He wore a traditional skirt of grass leaves, and carried a woven bilum or sacred bag, swollen with magic potions and herbs.

Noting his vicious-looking battle scars and missing finger, Mia realised a man of his age and experience might well know the chief of the local tribe near the mission.

The shaman came up to them and stared into their eyes. Singkepe flinched, while Mia averted her eyes respectfully. He gave her a disparaging sniff.

‘Woman in haus tamberan . . . nogut.’