busker

Hamish RIP

I'm a little shocked to pen anything right now, but the Blog must go on, right?

I learned today that my oldest pal, dating back to my Hong Kong youth and godfather of my elder daughter, had been murdered on the luxury Philippino isle of Borocay.

I'd seen the Hong Kong reportage of the killing of antiques doyen, Mannfred Schoeni but it hadn't mentioned Hamish - referred to in the press as John Cowperthwaite.

Then I followed a link, and got the full gory details.

Since then, the rumour mill has been at work, along the lines of this from an insider who doesn't usually deal in guesswork:

"Not sure if its interesting or not, but it makes one wonder.

As far as I can make out, it seems that Hamish was going to be involved in a new project on Boracay and Mannfred, (who has made a lot of what I suspect is dodgy money) was investing in the project.

The developer was the other guy.

I vaguely knew Mannfred ... he managed to make very big bucks in a short time in HK and then transferred to Africa. I suppose they pissed off some locals. It's not the first time this has happened in this area. Anyway, pretty rum stuff."