Sorry I have not been online for a couple days. Friday morning my friend was murdered in front of his apartment. Death in Manila is time consuming and complicated. When I got to the office in the morning, His wife called me almost as soon as I had walked in and turned on the air conditioner. “Martin has been hit! Please come here I need you.” I left the office right away, and called back. “Call a doctor it will take me some time to get there.” She replied, “He's dead!” I arrived just before 7 am, and the crowd of people was gathered with morbid curiosity as they cleaned the street of his dead body. The police took his family and I to the station for questioning, this went smoothly, and since there were witnesses to the crime they were able to get a good sketch of the suspect. We left the station at 10:30 am, and I took his wife and mother home. After the a quick trip to the German embassy to notify them of the death, and of course they are closed for half a day on Fridays. I arrived after they closed about 12:30 pm. The guard was kind enough to give me the emergency contact number, and I went to my office to call them. The Germans are very efficient in handling such things. I had his mothers phone number, and that is the only contact information available. The Embassy contacted the police in Germany and in no time, his family there was notified of the murder.
Martin also has two family members in Japan, and there was no contact information available for them. He was always telling me stories about them and how much he missed his children there. I knew where they grew up, it is a part of Japan I am familiar with as well. I called a friend of mine that lives close to there, and he was able to locate and notify them. Thank you for that. I have heard now that they did not handle the news very well, and I am so sorry about that. I hope they will contact me sometime, and I can talk to them and tell them some about what their father had been doing since he met them last. I called the police back to find out where the body had been taken. They gave me a name of a funeral home, so I started on my way to find that. All this time his dog had been locked up in the apartment and not walked or fed. On the way to the funeral home. I picked up his wife's sisters, and we went to the apartment to take care of the dog. She is a beautiful Doberman and she had not made any mess at all in the house. She would not let the sisters in the apartment, but I knew the dog well, and she allowed me to walk her out. On the street she could sense immediately that something was wrong, and she would not leave the exact spot where Martin was shot for a long time. Finally after a quick urination on the spot, she let me walk her down the street to take care of the rest of her business. Next we left for a quick stop at the funeral home to arrange the body retrieval and to move him to the place the funeral will take place.
This was about 2 pm. However the body was not there, and we found to our amazement that it had been released to an unscrupulous funeral director, and we could not locate it. Back and forth to the police station to help with locating the body. The friendly detectives that we had talked to in the morning were no longer at work, and a different batch of police were at the station. These people had other priorities and were not much interested in helping locate the body. In the end about 1:30 am we were able to negotiate a release of the body for money. His dead body was basically held hostage until I paid them for it. Of course it was very hot Friday, and it was already decomposing rapidly. The funeral parlor we took him to was kind and efficient. They did their very best in cleaning up the situation and were so professional. They have my recommendation if you ever happen to be dead in Manila. Call Sanctuarium. They provide complete services and it is a professional first class environment. By this time the dog has had a hard day with not enough food or water all day. So I brought her home and that ended the long sad day.