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.