A Good day to die

2

Tomboy drank the rest of his beer and ordered another one from Tina's daughter. He then spent the next few minutes flirting with her while she leaned against the table opposite, a cloth in one hand and a smile on her face that was wide enough to be friendly but had little in the way of depth.

He said he bet that all the boys were chasing after her, and told her what a pretty young thing she was. She was a pretty young thing too but I doubted if she was a day over sixteen — while Tomboy was, if my memory served me correctly, the grand old age of forty-two, which made the whole thing look a little tasteless. He winked at me now and again, between jokes and compliments, just to demonstrate that it was nothing more than light-hearted banter, but I could see the hint of desperation in his act. He might have thought he was messing about, but, like a lot of men whose looks are fading as their waistlines expand, he needed to believe he still had that elusive 'something' the girls always go for. Unfortunately, he didn't. As well as being about three stone heavier than he had been back in the old days in London, the booze had reddened his nose and cheeks and scattered them with clusters of broken veins, while his precious blond locks — the pride and joy of his youth — had been reduced to a few desperate strands on top and a scraggy ponytail at the back.

But that didn't stop him. He asked Tina's daughter what she liked most in a man. 'Apart from the obvious,' he added, chortling.

She giggled. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Don't ask me that.'

'You should make it multiple choice, Tomboy,' I told him. 'You know, A: beer gut; B: loud London accent. That sort of thing. It'd give you more of a chance.'

'Sense of humour,' she said, looking pleased with herself. 'That's what I like.'

Tomboy turned my way with the makings of a glare. I think he wanted to say something — a similarly barbed comment aimed in my direction — but remembered that he'd just asked me to kill someone, so decided to let it go.

'You have a good sense of humour, Tomboy,' said Tina's daughter. She didn't say the same to me, but then I didn't know her as well.

Tomboy smiled. 'Thanks, love.' But he'd lost interest in the banter now. Like an unwelcome heckler, I'd messed up his routine.

He quaffed the rest of his second bottle of beer and announced he had to go. He had things to do, he said. Phoning London, for one. Letting the man called Pope know the job was on.

I finished my own drink in silence, still watching the outriggers in the bay, but with nothing like the pleasure that I'd taken in the view earlier. I liked Tomboy, and hadn't meant to piss him off. He was a big man with a big personality, and he'd been good to me since I'd arrived at his Philippine hotel three years ago, on the run and without a friend left in the world. So I figured that I owed him. But killing someone on our very own doorstep? That felt like one payment too far.

Which was one reason why I still wasn't sure whether I was actually going to go through with it or not. The other reason was that I'm no cold-blooded murderer. I've done jobs before. Blacklip was one, and there were others before him in England. Jobs where I've had to end the lives of people who deserved it. Drug dealers; child molesters; the worst kind of criminals. They weren't many in number, and they never interfered with the work I did as a detective in London's Metropolitan Police, so I never thought that I was doing much wrong. However, all that changed three years ago, when I made a mistake and shot some men I was told were bad guys, but who were actually anything but. That's what I mean about not taking things at face value. People lie. They also double-cross, even the ones you're meant to trust. Anyway, the result of that particular mistake was that I ended up on the run, with the police, Interpol and God knows who else after my blood. None of them were successful, and after a long and indirect journey, I made it here to the Philippines, going into business with a man who used to be one of my best informants back in the old days, when I was still on the side of the forces of law and order and people had known me as Detective Sergeant Dennis Milne.

Originally, Tomboy had owned a hotel and beach bar on Siquijor, a tiny island way down in the south of the Philippine archipelago, and I worked for him there. When I'd arrived it had been doing quite well, but then the Islamic rebels of Abu Sayyaf began to extend their kidnapping and bombing operations closer and closer to where we were, and the visitor numbers had slowed to a trickle. Tomboy and his Filipina wife Angela had sold up at a significant loss just over a year earlier and we'd headed north to start again in the Puerta Galera region of Mindoro, a large island a few hours' boat and taxi ride from Manila. It was a lot busier here, and a lot safer too. Unless your name was Billy Warren, of course.

I paid my bill and left Tina's daughter a fifty-peso tip, then headed out onto the narrow concrete walkway that was Sabang's equivalent of a promenade, stepping over a couple of three-year-old kids playing on the ground with a mangy-looking puppy. I made my way along the beach, past a group of local men who were stood watching a cock-fight on the sand in front of the boats, then cut into the narrow, dirty backstreets of the town. The journey took me past the ramshackle stalls selling raw meat and fish, where the women gathered to barter in staccato tones; through gaggles of raucous schoolkids, heading home in their immaculate uniforms; past cheap tourist shops and girlie bars; across planks of wood that acted as bridges over the streams of effluent-laced water trailing beneath; under washing lines; through people's backyards; past noisy games of pool played under tin roofs. And all the way I nodded to people I knew, greeted a few of them by name, breathed in the hot, stinking air, and thought how much I loved this place. The vibrancy, the heat. The freedom.

When I emerged at the other end of town and stepped back onto the promenade, the sun was setting in a blaze of gold and pink above the headland in front of me.

It was beautiful. It should have made me happy.

But I was too busy thinking about the fugitive coming from across the sea, and wondering whether he was going to be the man who ruined it all for me.