‘I go talk to the boys on the gate.’

Bili comes down the stairs and joins them at the door. ‘Don’t shout at him,’ she says. ‘He didn’t do it. He’s just been told to pick it up.’ And then to the guard, ‘It’s okay. Tenkyu tru.’ The guard slopes off next door and Benson shakes his head. ‘Sori tumas,’ he says again.

‘Can they get in from next door without you noticing?’ Jericho persists.

‘Maybe,’ Benson says. ‘If the door is open. Down below. Where the machines are. Air conditioning, all something.’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ Bili says, and walks out into the bright light. She is dressed in black. Her hair is pulled back, severe. Jericho sees a vulnerability he hasn’t seen since that visit to Oxford when Bili, dressed in her best, was waiting for Don. The time he had forgotten and was instead on his way to London to see the Algerian journalist who was about to become his third wife.

The barrister from Sydney is a small man, of modest appearance. Pale hair and wire glasses. He came off the plane the morning before with a battered leather briefcase, and shook Bili by the hand. ‘How’s it going?’ he said, mopping his brow. ‘You well? You look well.’ He’d worked for her before, knew the country, liked it. Liked the people. Liked her.

‘We’ll win this case,’ the barrister said. ‘We should win on the documents, but if we need to, we’ll call the landowners. Here.’ He pulled a pile of papers out of his briefcase. ‘I’ve read their statements and these are the ones I think are strongest.’ He had a list of four he wanted to interview that afternoon. Forgoing lunch, Jericho got up, left Bili with the barrister and their sheaves of paper and went to find the landowners. There were twelve of them, elders of the clans, some of them with grey beards and gnarled faces, others younger, recently called to their position, men in the prime of their authority.

They were staying with their wantok, the clerk in the forestry department who had first found the documents and alerted Bili to what was happening.

The clerk’s uncle was one of the men assembled in the small house in Gerehu when Jericho arrived to find the four the barrister wanted to interview. The uncle was one of the younger of the elders. His hair had only a whisper of grey. He had recently returned to Collingwood Bay after years over in New Britain working for one of the large importers. He’d seen what happened when villagers lose their land, and what happened when the first flush of money had gone and they had to beg garden land from others. When they were reduced to rice and tinned fish. And he’d seen what happened to the land when it was planted with oil palm. Sitting with the older men, cross-legged on the pandanus mat, with his shirt buttoned up to the neck in respect for the barrister, this uncle was mournful. He knew the arguments for development. What did he have to offer the young who go to town and see only what they do not have? He knew the benefits of a tin roof, and a tank of water. He knew the shame of young men who went into town and felt they were of no account, but he had no answers. He knew only that they must fight for their land, that foundation and heritage. Without it, there would be true poverty. He wanted to ask the lawyer about these things, he said to Jericho. The barrister come from Sydney. The man they were paying by the work of their women who sewed the tapa cloth hand bags and hats.