Travel: Global Myths No 4

Another story from the travellers' grapevine

A VIOLENT criminal, involved in London's drug rings, finally went a cocaine deal too far and found himself on the run from both the police and one of the most ruthless drug gangs in the country. After several near misses, he realised his only chance of survival would be to vanish from the country. Fortunately, his mother was Australian and he decided it was time to make use of his dual nationality. He bribed and bullied his way out of the country, avoiding the police and decided to settle down in Sydney, where he would, he thought, go straight.

Alas, he found that his particular skills were of little use for anything legal, and he found himself as one of a two-man operation running boatloads of heroin between Australia and Thailand. This went well for several months until, in a fight over money, he shot and killed his partner while out at sea. He cut the body up and threw the pieces overboard, erasing the evidence of his crime forever.

He decided to call it a day, convinced that with the only witness to the drug dealing and murder at the bottom of the sea, he could live out his life in idle luxury with the cash he had amassed from his Australian operation. He was alarmed, therefore, when three weeks later a detective turned up and arrested him for the murder. They had, they said, irrefutable evidence that he had killed the boat's skipper, dismembered him and thrown the bits into the sea.

Apparently the previous day, Sydney's oceanographic institute had introduced its latest acquisition to the public: a four-ton tiger shark. On its first day on display the leviathan had vomited a severed arm into the pool. Police found it had been hacked off at the arm with a knife, even though the shark had originally clearly grabbed it at the elbow. A tattoo and fingerprints all over the arm identified both victim and perpetrator.

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