The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (21 page)

CHAPTER 9

     They were still in the same mood early the next morning. “It’s all right for you!” she laughed as he pleaded with her to give it a miss, “you’re not the one who’s going to be pregnant! We’ve got to find a chemist. I’ll be able to buy the pill here. Then you can indulge yourself to your heart’s content. Stamina, Jack, you always had stamina!”

     “Always? How would you know about my past?”

     “You kept me prisoner on that beach for an hour! Do you remember how many times you had me?”

     “Prisoner?”

     “Well, I didn’t say I was complaining that no one turned up to rescue me. But it was heavy stuff. I could feel your need.”

     “Need? Don’t all men have the need?”

     “Seriously, Jack, that’s one reason I took off. Serious stuff.  I could sense that in you.”

      “Sense what?”

      “That!”

      “What?”

      “It was tangible to me. You weren’t looking just for a good time. You wanted more.”

      “And that scared you?”

      “On the rebound? You bet it did.”

      “And what about now? Do you still sense the same?”

      “No, you’ve lightened up and maybe I‘ve got a bit more serious. You’ve had bad experiences, I guess, like me. It’s made you compromise, accept what there is on offer.”

      “What is on offer?”

      She shrugged. “Who knows?” She had been standing with a towel round her nakedness and now dragged herself finally towards the shower, leaving Jack to ponder her words.

      The immediate priority was to collect the money Graham had wired to the bank then get a change of clothes and also ensure Diana had her contraceptive pills. All that taken care of he still had an old friend to find and it looked as if he wasn’t far away. They roamed the bars along the Governor Camins Boulevard. At a pub they struck lucky when they met an Australian who'd heard of Gerry Montrose. "Sure, Gerry, my old mate, he's here, staying with some blokes up at the Plaza.” There was still something weird about it, though. The Australian chuckled as he described Gerry as a bit of a rogue, “What dodgy deal’s he in too now, mate?”

     “Does that sound like Gerry?” he asked Diana.

     “You’ve been away a long time, Jack. He’s definitely not the Gerry you knew.”

     Anyway, at least it looked as if they were near trail’s end. A Jeepney took them slightly out of town to the Plaza Hotel.  There the Muslim décor was a reminder of the prevailing religion.  They went to the reception and spoke to a young woman dressed in the traditional costume of the South Philippines, a sarong of brilliant kingfisher blue silk. The local dialect was a kind of pidgin Spanish, the verbs largely unconjugated. Diana was a linguist in the sense that she’d learned many tongues in some of the world’s best nightclubs. Jack didn’t dare interrupt. He was grateful enough that she could just about converse with the girl behind the desk. "He's here," she said. She pointed towards the bar,  "The girl says he's in there. I don‘t know whether to go in with you. I can‘t say we parted on the best of terms. I won‘t know whether to hug him or kick his teeth in."

     “Come on!” He grabbed hold of her hand, “let bygones be bygones. If he won‘t then tough. We‘re a team.” Without wasting another moment they strode across the floor into the bar.  After what they'd been through a triumphant entrance seemed appropriate. He was practising the Dr. Livingstone speech. A number of Europeans sat in the bar.  He looked at Diana because he couldn’t immediately recognise anyone there and, although he knew he‘d find Gerry would have changed as they all had, he still felt he‘d recognise him even in a crowd. She shrugged, an equally bemused expression on her face. Jack went up to the white-jacketed waiter and said, "I'm looking for Gerry Montrose.” The waiter pointed to a corner where three men sat together.  The two facing Jack didn't look anything like Gerry, so he walked over to the table and tapped the silver-haired man on the shoulder.  Diana was only a few feet behind as the man turned. Jack looked at him without the slightest hint of recognition. "I'm sorry," he said, "the waiter told me one of you was Gerry Montrose."

     There was a few moments’ hesitation while the other men looked shiftily at their companion and then the silver-haired man stood up.  "I'm Gerry Montrose, mate," he said.  His voice faltered as he spoke.

     Jack did a double-take. "You can't be," he replied.

     "Stone the crows!" the man said, and he turned round to his colleagues, "here's me thinking I’m still the same man I was when I was born, and this Pom comes along and tells me I'm not ‘im any more!"

     "I'm sorry," Jack said, "there must be some mistake.  I was looking for the Gerry Montrose who was -
is -
a lawyer in Hong Kong."

      The man turned and looked at his colleagues again and Jack saw for the first time what an unsavoury bunch they were. "Well I’m not the one with the woolly one up me but the other me's a brief in Honkers!  Jeez! Wouldn't you swap my life for his?"

     The Aussie’s companions laughed at his exaggerated posturing.

      "I'm sorry," Jack mumbled and he started to walk away.  Ribald shouts, aimed particularly at Diana, followed him. "You can fack off Pom but you can leave the sheila behind!" Jack was flustered as he walked back to reception.

     "Jack," Diana said catching hold of his arm, "it's nothing, it's just a case of mistaken identity."

     "Yeah," he replied, "of course it is, just a case of mistaken identity." He was totally blown apart by the discovery that the man he'd chased halfway across Asia wasn't the right Gerry Montrose and yet the signs had all been there. Everyone he’d met had described someone different from his friend but he’d just blindly ignored them.  They flagged a Jeepney back to the town and he couldn't understand where he'd gone wrong.  He started to rationalise it. "I don't understand this," he said, "I only came over here because two people told me Gerry was here.  One was K.K. Chow and the other was Graham. These are not the kind of guys who make mistakes."

     "Well it is a mistake. That isn't the Gerry we both know," she replied, "so something else is the problem."

     "You're damned right.  It isn't Gerry.  It's one hell of a coincidence but it isn't Gerry."

     "Doesn't it sound like someone wanted you to go on a wild goose chase? Maybe he's not Gerry Montrose at all. It's not exactly what I would call the most common name, is it? If somebody wanted to lead you up the garden path, they just get someone to pretend he's Gerry Montrose.  It must be easy for these guys to furnish someone with a false passport and say, just get on with it, go down the Philippines and enjoy yourself for a while, lead this Pom a merry dance. Hasta la vista baby."

     Jack weighed her words.  Amie had said Gerry wouldn't simply disappear off to the Philippines without telling her. She’d been so sure that she’d even checked with her cousin Lam in Macao. "Wow!" he said, "I might have been really gullible here." 

      "Stop the bus!" Diana called out.  The Jeepney driver looked puzzled but he stopped.  He gave them a big sunny smile as they got out.

     "You want to walk?" the driver said.

      "No, we've forgotten something," Jack replied, "back at the hotel."

      "I take you back," the Filipino said.

     Jack looked at the other passengers in the Jeepney, but the driver simply threw him a big smile and ushered them back in. “Everybody got time here,” he said, “not like where you come from. No one got any time there. Who better off, eh?”  He turned the vehicle round and shot back up the road to the hotel.  Jack gave him a generous reward and he seemed genuinely surprised.

     The girl at reception waved at Diana. The three men were still sitting in the bar.  Gerry Montrose turned round and was that a look of fear in his eyes as Jack strode up to him?  "You don't mind answering a couple of questions do you?" he asked.

     "Why should I answer your questions, Pom?"

     "Because it's better answering his than a copper’s," Diana chipped in.

     "No call for that Mrs," one of Montrose’s colleagues said, "no bladdy need to get on your high horse now."

     Jack asked Montrose for a few words in private and he excused himself from his company. "You're not Gerry Montrose," Jack said.

     "Fack me, you believe in getting in straight there on the eight ball," the man replied, "but who says I'm not?"

     "Look, I don't want any trouble, I'm just trying to find an old mate of mine, and I've found you.  I've come several thousand miles and at the moment you're at the end of it.  I'm losing patience fast.  If I don't get to the bottom of this soon, I will turn you over to the Police Chief, my friend, Mr. Roger Borromeo, and I'll ask him to find out why you're posing as a friend of mine."

     "I ain’t posing as nobody, mate, you ain’t got no proof," but there was no mistaking the panic in his voice. The use of the Police Chief’s name had had its effect. It was a frightening thought, being locked up in a Filipino jail as an illegal alien. This guy's ambassador far away up north in Manila wasn’t exactly going to break sweat to get him out.

     "If proof is what it needs, it won't take long for them to check your passport. Now look, I don't give a sod who you are, or why you're posing as Gerry Montrose, I just want to know where he is."

     The Aussie looked at Jack slyly for a few moments, weighing up the odds, wondering whether he could still get away with the subterfuge. He must have realised the game was up because his aggressive posture was suddenly deflated. "Search me mate," he said, "I haven’t got a clue.  I was just asked to do a job, and this is it. I'm sorry if I've upset you. Last thing on my mind.  I've got plenty of mates who're Poms."  He grinned at Jack ingratiatingly.

     "Do you know Gerry Montrose?"

      "Never come across the bloke in my life, wouldn't know him if he walked in here now and showed his backside."

      "How did you come to take on this assignment?"

      "Come again!"

      "How did you get the bloody job?"  Diana interrupted.

     "Jeez mate, your sheila can give it a bit of that."  He wagged his hand as if imitating a mouth, but one look at her face and he got on with the explanations.  "Yeah, yeah, okay, don’t get your knickers in a twist, sweetheart. This bloke in a bar in Hong Kong, the Stoned Crow, says I've got a job for you Corby - that's my name by the way, real name that is, Jim Corbett, Gentleman Jim, they call me, good eh?” One look at their expressions told him to cut to the chase and he added, “Hum, hah, and he says you go down the Philippines for a couple of weeks. Here's twenty thousand Hong Kong to spend, here's a passport. You just say you’re him and go walkabout.  There'll be this geezer comes looking for you from back in the old country, you know, England, the U.K whatever, and just you make sure he don't find you. Is he dangerous I ask? No he ain’t dangerous, he’s just an ordinary bloke, he says, it’s just we don’t want him finding this Gerry fella for a while, see. Fack this for a lark, says I. What am I going to do, refuse?" He laughed, "All goes to show don't it, the plans of mice and men and all that?"

      "So that's all there is to it, someone in a bar in Hong Kong paid you to impersonate Gerry Montrose?"

     "No one paid me to impersonate anyone, mate.  All I had to do was take this here passport, which on the face of it looks like a fair dinkum passport, as I'm sure you'd agree if you saw it, and go down and have a good time in the Philippines.  Well I was a bit down on my luck and I'd been on a bit of a bad streak with the gee gees, just unlucky, I can tell you.  My sheila had just voted with her feet and pissed off back to Perth, so what else was a bloke to do?"

     "And who put you up to this?"

     "Who? I didn’t know him. He was a gook. Young bloke, mid-twenties.”