Social Murder

By Wayne Michael Dunwell

“Ronni’s mind fell completely silent. She stopped being aware of the room around her, there was only the hateful figure of a bully and an abuser ahead of her, all else was a blur.”

You’re in a strange city. Your friend is missing. Could you find the courage to do what is necessary? Would you even know where to start?

These are the questions faced by law graduate Ronni Wong when her friend Jenny disappears after a date with a man she met online. Finding evidence suggesting that Jenny’s internet lover hides the darkest of secrets, Ronni is forced to embark on a journey through social media to discover the identity of a kidnapper, and then a dangerous race against time through the streets of Metro Manila to save her friend’s life. The clock is ticking, can Ronni make it in time?

Join Ronni as her investigation into one disappearance leads her into mortal danger. Social Murder will keep you on the edge of your seat, and at the same time challenge you to think about how you use social media. Are you safe online?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781528988827

Wayne Michael Dunwell

Wayne Michael Dunwell was born in Lincolnshire, north-east England, in the same year that British Leyland launched the Austin Allegro, the British government introduced the equally popular Value Added Tax, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the Sydney Opera House and Typhoon Nora paid unwelcome visits to the Philippines and China. At least the Aussies had a good year, eh? He has worked in a variety of logistics and IT-related posts in Windy England, taught contact centre agents how to provide technical support in Rainy Belgium, managed online customer support and community management for a well-known electronics brand in Frozen Finland, and taught Chinese students English in the scorching-hot Philippines. As well as a penchant for variances in climate, he also spends far too much time watching and reading detective and sci-fi stories, which is probably why he got as far as his mid-forties before actually putting any of his ideas down in writing. Social Murder is his first work to be published.

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About the Author

Wayne Michael Dunwell was born in Lincolnshire, north-east England, in the same year that British Leyland launched the Austin Allegro, the British government introduced the equally popular Value Added Tax, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the Sydney Opera House and Typhoon Nora paid unwelcome visits to the Philippines and China. At least the Aussies had a good year, eh?

He has worked in a variety of logistics and IT-related posts in Windy England, taught contact centre agents how to provide technical support in Rainy Belgium, managed online customer support and community management for a well-known electronics brand in Frozen Finland, and taught Chinese students English in the scorching-hot Philippines.

As well as a penchant for variances in climate, he also spends far too much time watching and reading detective and sci-fi stories, which is probably why he got as far as his mid-forties before actually putting any of his ideas down in writing. Social Murder is his first work to be published.

Dedication

In memory of Iris Spillett.

Copyright Information ©

Wayne Michael Dunwell 2023

The right of Wayne Michael Dunwell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528988803 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528988810 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781528988827 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Thanks to my former English students from China, who are collectively the inspiration for the character of Ronni Wong and who helped with the little bits of Chinese used in this story:

闫颜 – Carina

黄艳艳 – Mia Huang

譚濱銳 – Perla Tan

刘浩盈 – Veronica

Also, thanks to the best sister in the world, Viang Salise, for always being there, as well as for a little Tagalog help in this work, to Jay Jay Borleo, to my proof-reader and critic, Bunny Austria for the encouragement and enthusiasm, to Allen Prowle for trying his best to educate me in English all those many years ago, and to my wife, Evangeline, for just everything.

One of Those Days

Day 1: Saturday, the 15th of April

The Jazz Residences complex stands on the outer edge of Makati City’s business district, a gated community of four high-rise towers named after jazz instruments: violin, cello, piano, and clarinet, though more commonly referred to less imaginatively as Towers A, B, C and, D. A home to wealthy business types, property investors and ex-pat workers in over five thousand residential units, with a small shopping mall, gyms, an outdoor pool complex with all the comforts of the better-off person’s home. There are forty-six floors if you believe the buttons in the lift, but since the buildings observed both the American tradition of not having the thirteenth floor and the Chinese tradition of not having a fourth or any number in the tens that ends in four, the number is not really so high.

At the end of her journey down from the thirtieth floor of the Piano Tower, an attractive woman with black, shoulder-length hair, with a small blue-coloured Kipling bag draped over the left shoulder of her white, floral-patterned half knee-length dress, walked swiftly across the marble-floored, bright and shiny lobby. In true Filipino customer service style, she was greeted with a happy, Good morning, ma’am, from the receptionists, a passing bell-boy pushing his trolley of bags, and the doorman, who also added, Have a nice day, ma’am, as he held open the front door for her to pass through. Once out of the cool, air-conditioned building, she was hit by the full force of the Makati environment, pretty much always in the very late twenties or early thirties degrees Celsius and laced with exhaust fumes. Ahead of her lay the private exit road from the subterranean car park and on the opposite side of it a high concrete wall separating the Jazz complex from the gigantic Manila South Cemetery.

Sliding her dark sunglasses down from their resting place on her forehead to her nose, she turned to her left and walked out of the complex, past the guard on the external car park exit, who gave her a friendly smile, a salute, and a Good morning, Miss Ronni!, and onto Metropolitan Avenue, heading east towards Makati Avenue, one of the central business district’s main thorough-fares. At the first junction, on a slightly offset crossroads, an M.A.P.S.A. traffic officer was trying to manage the flow of vehicles through the busy intersection, but if the truth were to be told, he was unable to do much. Traffic lights in Manila seem to have a different meaning to those elsewhere in the world, green is still ‘Go’, but amber means ‘floor it and get through before the red’, and red means ‘there’s still a few seconds before cars start to cross from the side streets!’

As always, the crossroads was in complete chaos, long after the red light showed, the cars were still going through, and not just those observing the Americanised ‘right on red’ rule. A battered old Mitsubishi L300 van had overshot the white line on Nicanor Garcia Street but was unable to make it across, as the vehicles moving along Jupiter Street had begun to lurch forward on receipt of their green light. Those heading west were squeezing into a single lane, which invaded the eastbound lanes to get around the L300 to the cacophonous blare of numerous horns. Behind the L300, a white Manila taxi occupied much of the zebra crossing, forcing pedestrians to squeeze between them to cross.

Once at the other side, Ronni walked by the Banco de Oro bank, where a man of about thirty years, wearing mismatched short trousers, a T-shirt and brightly coloured trainers, was sitting astride a Yamaha Sniper 150 motorcycle that he had just parked and removed his crash-helmet. He hastily hand-combed his dishevelled fringe, made eye contact, gave her a bright smile, and said, Lampara ka ba? Pahimas naman?

Ronni slowed down and glanced in the man’s direction, looked him up and down, and prepared to walk on without comment. She did not understand, but she could tell clearly enough that she was being clumsily propositioned or catcalled. Alone, he was not her type and having spent her first six months of university dating an art student who rode a classic American Harley, she was hardly going to be impressed by something barely more than a scooter. Not to be so easily rejected, the man winked and blew an exaggerated, almost ape-like kiss, and then raised his eyebrows whilst appearing to lower his gaze to her chest. Before she could bite down to stop them, Ronni heard the words, Who the fuck do you think you are? tumbling loudly from her mouth in her broad Australian accent.

It was like one of those moments in a martial arts movie where the scene freezes in mid-leap or mid-kick and the camera pans around. In a second that seemed to last minutes, Ronni suddenly became aware of everything and everyone around her. A group of youths entering the nearby 7-Eleven store all paused and turned to look, as did a couple of young lovers walking arm-in-arm past her right side, several other pedestrians, and a number of the passengers in a crowded Makati Loop-Service jeepney waiting for the jam caused by the errant Mitsubishi L300 to clear so that it could make its right turn. Suddenly feeling deeply self-conscious, Ronni rolled her eyes at her unwanted admirer, gave a dismissive wave of her left hand, and walked swiftly on.

Until that moment, she had blended seamlessly with the street crowd. Standing one hundred and fifty-six centimetres tall with her slim figure, lightly tanned skin, deep brown eyes, and small nose, she looked every bit the typical Filipina, and indeed she was. Born twenty-two years and eight months previously in Angeles City, to a mother who either could not or did not want to raise them, she and her twin brother had been put up for adoption whilst still in the womb.

David Wong, a Brisbane lawyer and second-generation Australian, and Wong Xiaoping (otherwise known as Katy Wong) had met when they were both eighteen during one of David’s Chinese New Year trips back to his ancestral home in Qingdao. They corresponded by letter for another year and married in Qingdao the following New Year, then tried unsuccessfully to have children for the next ten or eleven long years, including several failed attempts at IVF, before agreeing to adopt the unborn twins whose mother they would never even meet. They had at first wanted to adopt a Chinese child, but the bureaucracy and cost seemed to be distressingly hard to bear, and feeling desperate to raise a family of her own, Katy had persuaded her husband to take what seemed like a much easier route. Katy had travelled to and stayed in Angeles City some months surrounding the birth, caring for Michael and Ronni and processing the necessary papers to bring them to their new family home in Brisbane.

Ronni wasn’t prone to these aggressive outbursts, she had spent a long time learning to suppress them, but since her staying in Manila she’d experienced misogyny at a level that even the most hardened Bogan male back in Australia wouldn’t dare attempt in broad daylight for fear of coming off worse against many a modern Aussie Miss. Some of her Christian friends had mentioned the common notion that people have an angel on their right shoulder encouraging them to do good things, and a devil on the left encouraging them to do bad. As part of the largest cultural demographic in Brisbane, that thirty-or-so percent who have no religious affiliation, Ronni had once found this idea quaint and amusing, but through her mid-teens, as she coped with a certain amount of racial bullying, she had come to view the two sides of her personality similarly; each constantly trying to pull her in different directions.

It came to the point where she imagined them as two fully anthropomorphised characters, not good and evil as in the Christian ‘angel and devil’ concept, but definitely representative of the two sides of herself, even having her own names. Mei-Lin was the Chinese girl always urging Ronni to be respectful, polite, and to think about her ‘public face’, whilst Veronica was the Aussie girl who did not tolerate being messed about and whose solution to almost every problem was Go on, kick ’em in the nuts, girl, you know you wanna! Sometimes it