Overland Run - Part 13

Charlie Gilmour had been destined for great things; the son of a very senior police officer he had wanted nothing else as a boy other than to join the Force as soon as he was old enough. He had excelled at the academy, scholastically bright he had also grown up among coppers, he knew the internal politics and how things worked. No one was surprised when he graduated with the Sword of Honour as head of the class and was photographed with the State premier. Years later a teenage bargirl had stolen the sword thinking the hilt was real gold.

He was a natural during his short stay in the uniformed branch. He terrified street punks, lashing out with fist and boot when there were no onlookers, and petty thieves and professional shoplifters gave his beat a wide berth. A good athlete he played in the second team for a local major league club and was never too busy to stop to chat to little old lady supporters who he knew would ring the station singing his praises regularly. His rise to the plain clothes division was rapid and surprised no one.
It was here that his career began to falter. His enormous ego and cynical manner disturbed his peers and superiors alike. His fellow detectives, already wary of him because of his father's high rank, slowly eased him out of the ‘boy's club' that is essential to any group of people carrying out this type of work. They cover each others backs and do extra duty so a mate can slip off for an hour or two to meet a girlfriend. They drink together and share information and membership is essential in the Police and Armed Forces alike. A less easily wounded man than Charlie would have seen the problem and sorted it out but the only thing that occurred to him was that they didn't like him and he began to develop the paranoia that would haunt him for the rest of his days. His blossoming attraction to young girls came out at police parties and functions where his attempts to flirt with the teenage daughters of his superior officers was noted with considerable annoyance and concern on their part.

He became solitary and friendless and began to develop bad work habits in the absence of any guidance by his more experienced work mates. His father retired early due to bad health and no senior officer stepped forward to replace him as a mentor. The lowest branch of the plain clothes division, that most young officers start in, is burglary. Seldom is great detective work called for, break-ins are attended and reported, signs of the technique or fingerprints of a known criminal are looked for and then the rounds of the informants begins.

Charlie once told Harry that all burglaries that are solved are usually solved through information given to the police. The offender flogs his ill gotten gains and heads for the pub where, after rewarding himself with a few alcoholic beverages, he begins to brag of his exploits. Other criminals down on their luck, betrayed girlfriends and people bearing scars from the fight outside the pub the night before whisper in the ears of the police. The money that changes hands in minimal, the criminal classes betray their fellows to be important in the eyes of the police and themselves and Charlie failed to see this. He treated informers with contempt and attempted to obtain information through coercion and fear rather than by flattery and by making the snitch feel his efforts were appreciated. In a short time he could clear the front bar of an pub that was a known criminal hang out merely by walking through the door. The people the police depended on to help solve most crimes fled before him and finally he resorted to a technique that had worked well when he was in uniform. He lied in court.

Magistrates in the court of petty sessions seldom take much notice of the low life, drug addicted criminals brought before them. Bag snatchers and people who rob small shops at knife point rarely bother with good lawyers, taking the free Legal Aid offerings who never query a police officer's testimony. Burglars, however, consider themselves a cut above these people and tradesmen in their own right. A fair bust with the resulting jail term is considered an occupational hazard but they tend to be reluctant to roll over for something they didn't do. The better lawyers they employ cross-examine the prosecution witnesses closely and senior magistrates take a very dim view of public servants giving false testimony. After several warnings Charlie realised his career was going no where and devoted more and more time to his developing business interests.

A nightclub was bought in his wife's name and a trip to Asia persuaded him that import/export was the coming thing. He brought containers of cheap goods into the country and went around the shops during duty hours selling them off as a wholesaler. Then he picked up a business from someone else, believing the original concept would make him rich. It was run the same way as a popular plastic goods manufacturer operated. Women were recruited as consultants who ran parties in private homes. The difference was the goods offered for sale were sexy lingerie and night wear. Sex toys were also offered to the all female customers and a male stripper provided entertainment. The deal for the operator was that they bought a ‘kit', consisting of enough stock for several parties along with whatever she need to run the party and cover several training runs with experienced women. It worked well, but like most things Charlie ran, he fucked it up. A woman operator pulled out owing several hundred dollars for stock and after a couple of threatening letters Charlie went to her home, showed his police ID card, and told her to pay up. Terrified she went to a popular TV news show where the well known host pounced on the story with glee. Charlie's superiors found out about this about the same time as a complaint arrived about him ejecting a drunk from his nightclub with too much enthusiasm, resulting in the hospitalization of the offender. Deciding to take the easy course they summonsed him to the office and suggested that with so many business interests he should devote himself to them full time. It turned out a bad day all round as he arrived home to find several officers from the Australian Taxation Office waiting to interview him.

In his last few months as a police officer he had been involved in an investigation of Harry and the associated search of his home. Harry lived in an apartment converted from a three story building and the opulence of the surroundings left the investigating officers astounded. A sauna and large spa tub filled the huge bathroom, a lounge bar took up all of one floor with racks full of imported champagne taking up a wall. Expensive artworks were every where and the walk-in freezer in the kitchen was full of lobsters and steaks. Charlie was filled with admiration and when the case was over and his career in tatters he picked up the phone and called Harry.
Their relationship had strengthened over the years, Harry loving having an ex-cop on his leash and Charlie finding the friend and mentor he had yearned for in the police force.

Now on a lonely tropical beach he had committed murder and was prepared to commit another.

"How do you feel now bigmouth" he spat, spraying Max with saliva "your not so fucking smart now, sneering at everyone else and crawling up Harry's arse while your own fucking useless life goes further down the toilet every day."

He heard a groan and a scrabbling noise from the car and involuntarily his eyes flicked to the source of the noise. Max grabbed his gun hand with his left hand and pushed the gun away from his face. Some people are weakened by terror, even passing out from fear, but others obtain superhuman strength. Fathers lift cars from run down children single handedly, soldiers club a dozen of the enemy with their rifle butts and Max pushed the gun away from his face. At the same time Charlie heard a click and felt what seemed like a sharp punch to his chest and he looked to see Max holding a camouflage green, cylindrical object about six inches long against him. Usually the best flick knives work with the blade opening from the handle they are folded into and the ones that shoot the blade from the end are cheap rubbish, but the knife Max had bought in Nong Khai had been made in Italy for NATO special forces and the razor sharp blade flew from the end of the handle with a massive force propelled by the powerful internal spring. Max heaved the knife upwards and across the stunned man's chest, cleaving through ribs and slicing arteries and heart muscles alike. His chest cavity suddenly filled with litres of blood and it sprayed from the awful wound splattering Max's face and upper body. For the last time, as the gun slipped from his nerveless fingers, Charlie produced the hurt and hard done by look Max knew so well. He opened his mouth to protest about the unfairness of it all but only blood came out and he slumped down onto the crimson sand.

Max turned to see Marylyn coming from the car as sheeted with blood as he was. The gun butt had only caught her a glancing blow barely stunning her but the cut in her scalp had bled as profusely as only a head wound can. She walked to the dead Charlie, spitting on him and kicking him in the face then she took the knife from Max's shaking hand and cut Charlie's belt dragging his trousers down, pulling his sagging genitals taut and severing them from his body with a couple of hacking slashes. Contemptuously she tossed them further down the beach to waiting seagulls and turned back to Max, kneeling at his feet and hugging his trembling body.

"God will reward you for this" she said, "there is no sin in taking the life of a man like him, we would all be dead now if not for you."

She took Max's hand and lead him to the water slowly undressing him before removing her blood stained clothes. To his amazement he saw that his cock was rock hard and she took it in her hand, "You took a life," she said, "Now your body wants to make a new one, but first we must wash that animal's blood off."

Later she scrubbed their clothes in sea water while Max lay naked in the shade of the palm trees sleeping as if he was as dead as Charlie. When Max woke up, she decided, they would drag Charlie's body into the sea where the tide would take it out and the oceans' denizens would dispose of it quickly. She would clean the car seat with seawater and a bucket in the back and they would lay her brother's body under the palms away from the road where Max was now. The mosque in the next town would be informed so they could collect him for a proper Muslim burial. She would tell them he had been murdered by para-military forces hunting Muslim guerillas The less officialdom knew about this the better.

Max woke to see that the sun was setting and helped Marylyn drag the body into the sea with the tide beginning to ebb. He got a clean shirt from his bag and decided to make do with the salt encrusted jeans. He thought back through the events; he had taken the knife from where he had hidden it with the drugs in Thailand only the day before. Not a knife fighter, or any other kind in his opinion, he still felt a sense of security from having it in the back pocket of his jeans. The police had gotten awfully close to him at Zamboanga and, illogically, he thought that the threat of it might buy him a few minutes time in a confrontation.

He couldn't believe he had killed Charlie, they had been somewhere between friends and acquaintances for many years. Charlie always rang if Max was in Australia and invited him out for a meal or offered the use of one of the season tickets he always had for the football. He thought about Charlie's adult sons who often came to the football with them and had been occasional drinking and whoring companions in the Philippines. Now he had killed their father. He wondered if Charlie would have pulled the trigger; he would never know now but it hadn't occurred to him to wait and see at the time. The knife had come out as naturally as a breath of air and he would take to his grave the feeling of his former mate shuddering on the blade like a gaffed fish. Thank God for Marylyn, he had no idea what he would have done if it hadn't been for her, probably driven the blood soaked car into town, leaving the bodies near the road for the next traveler to find and run for the police.

Charlie must have gone out last night and bought the gun, he knew enough of the country to approach a taxi driver or even a police officer and negotiate for a weapon. He threw it as far as he could into the sea, it was a rusting revolver that he assumed was around .38 caliber so there was no spent shell on the ground.

He decided that they would drive straight through to Cagayan de Oro. Where ever they went now the car must come, they had too much baggage and it would attract attention as they lumped it around, the unusual brief cases crying out to onlookers that they contained valuables. There were regular car ferries to Manila but he feared that they would be being watched by the police. Alternatively they could book into a hotel, stash everything in a room and lay up for several weeks till the heat died down. The more he thought of laying up with Marylyn the better he liked it, both veterans of many sexual encounters they could wile a way the days comparing notes. He grinned to himself, he may still be horny for his age but he suspected the attractions of a week of non stop screwing were gone, he could see himself wandering the town's bars, drinking and possibly attracting attention.

And in the end that was exactly what Max did. He sent several emails off to Rex; the only way he could contact Harry was to leave a message at the Angeles City hotel and it would have been a message he would have found impossible to word. The death of Charlie and the presence of his bags in Max's hands alone would have horrified Harry. He would have known about the fire fight at the airport by now as well as the search for the two foreigners and possibly already had people looking for them. Marylyn's family had been told nothing, they were used to her leaving at a moments notice and she ruled them with an iron hand.

He was musing on this in a small bar near the docks. Marylyn had gone to visit friends and to check the car in a lockup garage that they had rented attached to an all night service station owned by a distant cousin. Max had promised to stay in the room, a promise he had kept for at least thirty minutes, then using the excuse to himself that there was nothing on TV he had flagged a trike outside the hotel and gone out for a drink. Heading the driver towards the sea he stopped him at the first string of coloured lights, with instructions to wait outside. The bar was small and dirty, a few scrawny prostitutes eyed him hopefully but he ignored them. After more than a week with Marylyn he was starting to understand why Harry used Viagra. But maybe she wasn't like that with him, perhaps she saw Max as a holiday from paid sex, for her pleasure and not the customers. Fondly thinking of the gasping, heaving woman under him he thought that she was certainly making sure she was getting that. He sighed wearily as she though of the things she had done to him to arouse him when he thought further sex was impossible, urging him on with tongue, lips and fingers until he was near collapse. Something good had come of it though he thought, he must have lost at least five kilos.

In the interests of further weight loss he ordered Philipino rum with fresh lime juice and soda indicating to the barman to open a new bottle and leave it on the bar. The last thing he wanted was a Mickey Finn. He would pay for the bottle and take it with him giving it to the trike driver as a tip or maybe leave it with the hookers.

They would make their move in a couple of days he decided, down to Negros on the ferry then overland down the large island to Tacloban. Marylyn had given him several thousand US dollars half, he suspected, of the contents of Charlie's wallet; the money Harry had given him for expenses and emergencies. Well it as certainly an emergency he thought and considered the option of a private plane to Clarke air base from Tacloban. Too risky here, the air port may still be being watched. Then it became immaterial as for the second time in as many weeks he found himself at gun point.

Four police officers entered the bar with guns drawn and genially invited him to stand up and put the palms of his hands against the wall while they searched him.

© Julian. All rights reserved by the author.