Episode Seven: Homecoming

The sun had set on Ormoc City.

Verity was well aware that a new Diversion Road had begun to be built since she had last visited, but didn’t fancy taking it in the dark. Instead, she thought she’d take the slow route to her grandparents' place: along Rizal Street, across Anilao River on Hermosilla Drive and then out through Cogon towards Merida.

A simple enough drive.

She headed off, taking her time: getting used to both the bike and the vagaries of Filipino inner city traffic, with her duffel bag tightly strapped to the rear of her bike and her backpack on her back. She wasn’t stressed. Her Lola and Lolo’s routine hadn’t changed for decades. They would have had dinner and would now be watching some mindless variety show or an over-acted drama, passing comments on the implausibility of the plot or the quality of the acting, and they would stay like that until at least ten o’clock.

She was completely unhurried.

Until something caught her eye: a black car. Spotlessly clean. Foreign make. Likely Japanese. Showing no sign of wear and tear. It seemed to be matching her speed: when she moved faster on her motorbike, it moved faster; when she moved slower, it moved slower.

Verity was not in any doubt:

She was being followed.

By whom? She didn’t know. One thing she did know is that she would have to lose them. They could endanger her all they wanted. She was used to it.

But they could not know where she was staying. They could not endanger her grandparents.

That was a red line.

It was then, right then, that she formed a plan.

She called Don on earpods under her helmet. ‘Hey, I’m being followed here.’

‘Paparazzi on your tail? That will be a new experience for you.’ Don commented dryly.

‘No. I can’t tell who they are. Wanna join the chase and find out?’

‘Well, let me see: I could either watch someone do clearly pre-recorded karaoke to a ten year old hit song, or watch a drama where some rich man falls in love with a poor woman and discovers they might be long lost relatives so... I’m in. Where are you?’ Don asked her.

‘Lilia. Passing Jollibee.’ She told him.

‘Don’t let them know you’ve spotted them. At the Rotunda, take the Palo road, past Robinson’s, then take a right before St Peter’s and let them follow you through SAL's. I’ll be waiting.’ he instructed her, before hanging up.

A poorly lit pineapple plantation at night? Verity thought to herself. I hope he knows what he’s doing.

She did as he said. She kept calm on the road and drove as if nothing was wrong, all the time keeping a close eye on the black car that was following her. Traffic was quite heavy. Most people had finished their working day in offices and shops and were keen to get home – not to mention hungry. However, heavy though it was, at least it was flowing in her direction.

She soon reached the Rotunda. Her normal exit was the first one, but she took the second, headed further inland, towards the airport. ‘Really hope you know what you’re doing, Don...’ she muttered as she trundled past Robinson’s mall and the traffic slowly began to thin out.

Eventually it thinned out enough for her to put her foot down a little. ‘Okay, whoever-you-are, let’s make this look good.’ She muttered as the bike steadily gained speed. She glanced in her rear view mirror.

The black car had sped up. No doubt. She was being followed.

St Peter Chapels Funeral Home loomed large in front of her. She had no intention of paying it an untimely visit. She squeezed on the brakes, skidded to a sharp halt right in front of the bend, spun her bike around to face the plantation approach road, lifted her feet off the ground once more and sped off down the road.

A screech of brakes behind her told her that her pursuer was not far behind her.

The light from the main road quickly disappeared. The plantation was almost pitch black, and hauntingly so. Corporate logos and giant pineapple themed selfie spots, long since deserted due to the failing light, loomed almost from nowhere, silhouetted in her headlight.

This felt risky. Very, very risky.

All the while, behind her, she could see the two bright headlamps of her pursuer.

Her pulse was racing. Her heart was thumping in her chest. Every corner, every twist, on the lonely plantation road felt fraught with danger. It seemed to go on for an eternity.

This felt far from right.

Roberta’s phone rang insistently while her hand was delving for popcorn in a huge bowl, which she was munching in a loose top and joggers, watching the latest over-acted Tagalog drama. She read the caller name on the screen, sighed deeply in frustration, and picked it up.

‘One of your team is behaving very suspiciously.’ A disapproving male voice told her.

‘Really? How?’ Roberta asked him.

‘She’s driven erratically through Ormoc and has now taken a dangerous turn into a pineapple plantation road – at night.’ The exasperated voice replies.

‘Sir Michael, I did advise you to leave my team alone. Why are they following a young woman through a pineapple plantation in the dark? How do you think that looks? What do you think is going through her mind? Tell your men to back off. Please.’

‘May I remind you who we are?’ Michael snarled.

‘May I remind you who I am?’ Roberta shot back angrily. ‘If they do not leave her alone, I will send a patrol car after them and have them arrested for harassment.’

‘They have immunity.’ Michael pointed out.

‘They do not have a licence to prevent a journalist from carrying out her lawful business. Don’t you people believe in democracy? Or did it die on January the Sixth?’ Roberta spat, referring to the insurrection at the US Congress in 2021. She swiped the call closed and sunk back into her sofa to watch the end of the drama.

But Michael had well and truly ruined it for her.

Twist after twist after twist on the narrow plantation road, her pursuer a constant presence in the darkness, and soon Verity was crossing Anilao River once more. Before her, the street lights and traffic of the Palo road were getting steadily brighter. She exhaled in relief. She was so up tight it felt like she hadn’t breathed for the past twenty minutes.

She approached the road, looked left and right, and then joined it, heading back south towards the Rotunda.

But there, just out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a white multicab. And, seated in the back, with a monopod, a camera and the type of long lens only the most ruthless of paparazzo would have, was Don.

Sure enough, the black car was not slow in following her, just a few seconds behind. And as did so, Don was not slow in pressing the shutter button of his camera and taking pictures of it, his camera flashing like a machine gun of light.

Roberta's phone rang again. She sighed angrily again. She felt like she could throw this thing against a wall and have it smash into a million pieces.

She greeted him with tell-tale bluntness. ‘Sir Michael.’

‘Now they’re taking photos of us!’ Michael protested.

‘Well, stay out of our way... Sir.’ Roberta replied, as she ended the call again, during an advert for pig feed.

Verity’s phone rang just as she was approaching the Rotunda. She took the call on her earpods. It was Don. ‘Got some great shots. Licence plate and faces. You can lose them now.’

‘Oh, I fully intend to. Thanks, Don!’ Verity responded. Her foot pressed hard on the accelerator pedal. Her motorbike roared into life as she weaved through oncoming traffic, stray dogs and the occasional startled road-crossing pedestrian, and zoomed through Cogon, on the Merida Road, leaving the frustrated driver of the car stuck in traffic and slamming his steering wheel in frustration, while watching her disappear into the distance.

Shiloh sat at a wooden table for two in the outdoor, but under cover, restaurant at the Sabin Resort Hotel, while a band played gentle love songs in the background. Their only companion at dinner was their assistant. They were munching on a passable green leaf salad – had to watch their figure – while their assistant (whose name they could never care to remember) was eating what appeared to be a much more delicious chicken adobo bisaya with boiled rice and a little pickled papaya. Shiloh was jealous. Of course they were. Jealousy was Shiloh’s permanent default response to anything anyone else had. But right now, they had other things on their mind. ‘Are we all set for tomorrow?’

‘Yes, Ma’am.’ their well dressed and flawlessly efficient (to the point where it almost troubled them) assistant told them. ‘We have twenty-five girls signed up so far.’

‘They’d better be stunning. This place has a reputation to protect. And what about the sales meeting?’

‘I have chosen the ideal venue for it, Ma’am.’ The assistant smiled and handed him a tablet computer. ‘It’s around an hour’s drive from here, relatively new, perfectly manicured, secluded, exclusive and, as you can see, really quite exquisite.’ she told them through a self-satisfied smile.

Shiloh swiped through several pictures of the place. They had to agree. There likely wasn’t a better place to conduct this business in all of Leyte.

‘I don’t like it.’ Shiloh told her, much to her disappointment, before grinning like a Cheshire cat. ‘I love it.’

Her smug smile returned.

But Maja Estrella Hernandez had other plans, and they were well and truly underway.

Shiloh interrupted her musings. ‘You know, when I heard this band play their music in the early hours of the morning for that pathetically cheesy cis wedding, I really didn’t like them. I was going to complain and have every one of them sacked. But like that mole I had removed last year, I rather think they’re growing on me.’

Maja acknowledged him with a half-hearted grin.

Right now, her plan could not seem more right.

Alexei was also eating. Seated at a low table in the rooftop, poolside restaurant in the Bai Hotel, he relished every mouthful as he consumed delicious local cuisine – way superior to the dreadful battlefield rations he had eaten for months. They had not even been close to edible.

Yet here he was, calm as you like, peaceful as you please, listening to another gentle Filipino band playing, while eating good food, drinking good drink, watching beautiful people play in the pool and gazing at the views of Cebu and Mandaue, while a gentle breeze playfully ruffled his hair.

It was almost enough to make him forget that he was there to kill someone.

Verity’s half hour drive along country roads had been quiet and mostly uneventful. She had sped through abandoned PNP checkpoints, weaved gently to avoid stray animals and potholes and the occasional daring road-crosser, past paddy fields and glistening views of Ormoc Bay and the mountains.

It has been idyllic.

But now she was crossing the last bridge on her way into her grandparents’ home village. From nowhere, as if it had been dormant the entire time, a deep feeling of dread and impending doom hit her.

She brushed it off. She was just being silly. Nothing would go wrong.

She pulled up at her grandparents’ light blue concrete home, which still bore a few cracks from the last strong earthquake, and removed her helmet.

A foot or so below her, in their front room, her grandparents saw her form silhouetted against the incandescent street lights above her head.

‘Uy! Diego! One of Duterte’s hit men is outside. Have you been selling your tambal again?’ her grandmother whispered hoarsely, while hiding behind a twitching curtain and peering through the slatted jealousy windows. She was a small woman, even for her age, but was strong. Stronger than most people would believe. Her once jet black hair was now silvery grey, much to her disappointment, as she could no longer afford to dye it back to the colour it once was in her youth.

‘Ay! Dolores! Don’t be ridiculous! I didn’t sell that pill! I offered an Aspirin to my friend because he had a headache! Why would a hitman come to us? Duterte isn’t even president anymore!’ Diego scolded her. He was a taller man: lithe, tough and weather-beaten by a life spent mostly working outside. He was still fit for his age, but his age was advancing and he was no longer as strong as he used to be, something that was still a constant source of frustration.

‘They are coming this way! Hide!’ Dolores snapped.

‘If you think I am hiding with these knees...’ Diego protested.

‘Ayo!’ Verity called out. ‘Nay taw? Pwede i-abli ang portahan?’

‘Hide, man!’ Dolores whispered.

‘What hitman would call out to ask us to open the gate? Didn’t you hear? That’s Verity, your granddaughter!’ Diego scolded her.

‘Maybe it’s just a recording. They can do amazing things with computers these days.’ Dolores argued, as she followed Diego to their front door, which he unlocked with a large click.

‘I told you that you shouldn’t watch K-dramas after ten o’clock.’ Diego told her, before calling out, ‘Coming, Dai! Be there in a moment.’

Verity watched, while feeling ashamed that she was somehow burdening him, as her aging grandfather toddled up the stairs to the garage gate and pulled the bolt open with a metallic scrape.

‘So sorry, Lo. I forgot Lorraine finishes at six.’ Verity apologised, taking the old man’s hand and pressing the back of it to her forehead as a mark of respect.

‘Way problema, Dai.’ He held her tightly. ‘I’m just glad that you’re safe.’

She wheeled her motorbike into the garage, beside her grandfather’s Land Cruiser, and helped him close the gate behind them.

‘Nice wheels.’ He commented. ‘Much better than the Cub I used to take your grandmother to picnics in the mountains back in the day. Have you eaten?’ He didn’t give her a chance to answer. ‘Doesn’t matter – your Lola will feed you anyway.’

She left her helmet dangling from the handlebars and went inside the house to greet her Lola, who was now peering fearfully from the front doorway, half-expecting her husband to be gunned down where he stood for re-selling generic Aspirin from Watson’s pharmacy.

Verity took her grandmother’s hand and pressed the back of it to her forehead. ‘So good to see you, Lola.’ She told her.

Dolores took a good look at her, through her age-depleted eyes. ‘Wow! Look at you!’ she cooed. ‘Dressed like a lesbian. No wonder you can’t get a good man. I thought Duterte had sent you to kill my Diego!’

Verity ignored her. She'd found over the years that it was often the best thing to do. Diego shook his head and gestured for his granddaughter to enter the house. She took off her shoes, replaced them with a pair of cheap rubber sandals, and stepped inside their long-unchanged abode, with its teak cabinets, plastic kitchen shelves, ancient fridge-freezer and plumbing that had long seen better days.

Within a few minutes, and despite some half-hearted protestations, Verity found herself seated at the table in front of their diner kitchen, tucking into multiple tapas-style (but larger) dishes containing soup, cooked dried fish, pork humba, chicken barbecue, soup and vegetables, all accompanied with a plentiful supply of the obligatory rice. Verity tucked in with gusto. She had missed her grandmother’s cooking, even if half the food on the table had been bought from their neighbours.

‘So, how are your mother and father?’ Dolores asked Verity. ‘I don’t hear from them so much these days.’

‘Don’t they call you every Sunday?’ Verity politely pointed out.

‘I used to hear from them every day.’ Dolores said flatly.

‘That’s when they were here, La. They have a busy life now.’ Verity tried to gently set her straight.

‘But do you know how they are?’ Dolores insisted.

‘Well, they’re fine, I guess. I don’t live with them now. I have my own place. It’s just me: living the free life.’ Verity told her, while still eating as if she had been starved.

‘And in this free life, are there room for boys, or are you a-sexual?’ Dolores asked her.

‘A sexual what, Lola?’ Verity fired back, irritated by the question.

‘A sexual... I don’t know. I heard it on one of these TV shows. Are you one of these people who has no ambition to be with someone of the opposite sex?’ Dolores asked her bluntly.

‘Well, maybe. I don’t know. Boys weren’t exactly interested me in school. Or in university. And I have a career now. So I guess if they wanted me, I might be interested.’ Verity told her, somewhat grudgingly.

‘Good. That’s good. So tomorrow we can get rid of all your tomboy clothes and find you some nice skirts and dresses. Maybe fix your hair too. It looks like it got burned in a fire. We can take back that horrible motorbike too. I’m sure your Lolo can get a wagon from someone in the village to carry it. We’ll have the boys chasing after you before you leave this place. It shouldn’t be hard. One flash of your passport and they'll come running like hungry dogs.’

‘Lola! I’m not here to find a boy!’ Verity protested. ‘I don’t think I'm quite ready for that yet.’

Dolores would not be persuaded. ‘Well, better get ready, and quickly. Time waits for no man; ovaries wait even less.’

‘Lola!’ Verity snapped angrily, banging her cutlery down on the table.

Diego touched Verity’s wrist and squeezed it gently, trying hard to calm her down a little. ‘Sinta, you cannot say these things. Not to Verity. Not to anyone. They are not appropriate. She has a career now. Isn’t it better to find a husband and have a family after you have some money, not the way we did it?’

Dolores backed off. ‘But what is your career anyway? Writing? Where is the stability in that?’

Verity was stung by that rebuke. ‘I work in the media, La.’

‘What? Like social media? You don’t make money by pleading people to like and share, do you?’ Dolores probed.

‘Dili, La. I work for a company that owns newspapers and websites.’ Verity told her.

Both Dolores and Diego stared at Verity in mild disbelief and befuddlement, dreading what else might come out of her mouth, yet somehow needing to hear it anyway.

And then it came.

‘I’m a journalist.’ Verity admitted.

Her grandparents clasped their hands over their mouths in shock.

‘Please, no!’ Diego prayed to the heavens.

‘Why couldn’t you be a lesbian, or one of those new sexuality mga ko-an that sound like a disease?’ her grandmother said in shock. ‘Journalist? Journalist! Journalists get shot! And killed! What if they come here? I walk so slowly that by the time I’d get a pan from the kitchen to beat them with, they would have shot me! Three times!’

‘Journalism is a perfectly respectable profession, you know. People make money out of it.’ Verity argued.

‘They need to. Funerals are expensive.’ Dolores told her.

‘Dai, we love you dearly, and we respect your life choices as an adult, but you cannot stay here. You will put us in danger.’ Diego told her calmly.

Verity was stunned. ‘What? You’re putting me out on the street? Your own granddaughter?’ she exclaimed, not expecting an answer.

‘Journalist? Maypa bakla, or even burikat. I could have coped with burikat. I could have loaned her my old stockings. But journalist...’ Dolores muttered to herself.

‘No, Dai, I will not put you on the street. I will make some calls. Find you another place to stay. But please: do not tell them what you do.’ Diego instructed her.

‘So I become someone else’s problem?’ Verity asked him, her head reeling from what she was hearing.

‘Preferably younger and fitter, yes.’ Diego told her, as he picked up his mobile phone from the kitchen counter.

‘And single!’ Dolores added.

Verity was stunned by their reaction. ‘I cannot believe this. Really cannot believe this.’ she said. ‘My own grandparents don’t support me.’

Diego covered his phone microphone with his hand. ‘Oh, we support you, Dai, just from a safe distance.’

And so, within minutes, thoroughly bewildered by it all, and with leftover food still cooling on her plate (which her grandmother despised), Verity Defensor once again mounted her motorbike, tears streaking their way down her face underneath her helmet, until she drove a further ten minutes up the road to the small town of Merida. She took a few seconds to remove her helmet and compose herself, before driving the short journey distance down Siapon Street to stay at the resort where her grandmother and grandfather had once celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary during a previous trip: La Vista del Rio.

She checked in quickly and made her way to the double tee pee hut room her grandfather had booked for her, dodging a pack of dogs that seemed to be as at war with themselves as her family was. She unlocked the door, took her duffel bag and rucksack inside and flopped on the bed: alone in the room.

This was not at all how she’d planned this trip to turn out.

In Ormoc City, Don was lying on his bed, headphones plugged into his computer as he watched highlights of the latest football matches in Scotland. Football was the only thing he missed. Okay, he didn’t miss the drunken antics of the fans, the rampant sectarianism and the abusive aftermath, as if simply existing entitled certain teams to win everything. Neither did he miss passing on news to relatives about victims of violent crime after the perpetrator’s team had lost. But he missed the drama of the game. So watching it on a computer was fine by him. If it wasn’t for the tireless hum of the air conditioning near to his window, fighting off the incessant and ever-present heat and humidity, and the lack of anyone even considering putting vinegar on chips, he could have been back in Glasgow.

And he loved it.

Charlotte was surprising herself. She had talked with Gloria. Gloria had prayed with her. For the first time in her messed-up life, Charlotte felt like there was something she really had to do. She had a goal. A purpose. She would travel to Ormoc City in the morning with Gloria. She would head to a police station. She would hand herself in. And she would provide them with everything she knew about Shiloh Stalker Valdez, in a plea bargain that would buy her protection.

Simple.

Or so she told herself.

But, for at least tonight, she would sleep soundly.

She was determined about that.

Shiloh Stalker Valdez always slept soundly. At least, they did when their (nameless) assistant provided them with pills to calm down their cocaine-fuelled heart.

But now? It was as if their body was so confused it didn’t know which way was up. It was like jetlag: they were constantly half awake and half asleep. Even with Korean chemicals on their face and two huge cucumber slices delicately balanced over their two eyeballs, they were not at peace.

Maybe it was the anticipation of making a whole heap of money over the next few days.

It couldn’t be their conscience. Shiloh had long paid for expensive and extensive therapy to rid themselves of that.

No, it had to be something else. But no matter how they wracked their unusually sober brain, they could not find out why they felt such a chronic unease.

In the adjoining room to theirs, hoping that Shiloh’s low volume whale noise recording would drown her out, Maja Estrella Hernandez was working. Maja Estrella Hernandez was always working. But right now, she was not working for Shiloh Stalker Valdez, or his crooked empire.

No. Maja Estrella Hernandez was working for herself and herself alone.

She was seated at the desk in the hotel, dressed in her thin nightie and gown, slippers on her feet, tapping intently on her laptop keyboard. She had access to everything. Everything she needed. She just had to choose which card to play next.

She stopped typing, stared at the screen for a second and then knew what she should do.

She pulled her handbag from the floor, took put a shocking pink pen drive, slotted it in the side of the computer, and began a download.

This would go down very well. They would like this. She was sure of that.

She smiled a self-satisfied grin.

Her next move would be decisive.

In his Cebu hotel, Alexei called his wife. It was a surprise call. He wanted to check that the FBI were still keeping their side of the bargain. But there she was, in one of the giant off-white rooms of the Marriott Marquis Hotel, excitedly staring through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the traffic down below on Seventh Avenue and marvelling at how it never, ever seemed to stop.

She was having the time of her life. But something was missing for Lyudmila Orlov. Something that made her New York dream seem empty and vacant. ‘When will I see you again, dusha moya?’ she implored him.

‘Soon.’ He reassured her. ‘I just have to do one job and then I promise I will be on the next plane to America. And then we will start again.’

But first, he had to kill a man. An unarmed man.

A man he hated right now more than any man in existence.

Except one.

But killing that other man would be impossible.