The Dualist - Chapter 2

A dead man is a dead man and unless he’s Lazarus (and you’re God) then nothing is going to change that. But appearances need to be kept up. People have to make a fuss to turn a buck these days and a lot of the time that simply involves making it look as though they are busy. That’s why the ambulance load of rubber gloved paramedics fizzed about all-business in the rainy rush hour with their clipboards and stretchers, drips and syringes, defibrillators and ventilators, blankets and bandages, stethoscopes and tourniquets, potions, lotions, laptops, flashlights, headsets and phones.

But they could’ve spared themselves the trouble.

The chap was already dead as a doornail.

Meanwhile, two chubby boy policemen in oversized hi-vis jackets, laminate ‘Garda’ logos cracked and fading away on their backs, stood guard nearby and took turns looking towards me every so often to check whether it was just their imagination or that I really did have two heads and two left feet. It may be my own imagination but every time I encounter them, or anyone else that exercises authority over me, I get the feeling that they believe I am guilty of whatever it is that shouldn’t have been done. It’s as though they are genetically, institutionally, suspicious of me and my ‘type’, that type being any man with a scar on his face. I suppose, this shouldn’t come as a surprise given that they are paid to be suspicious of the nips and tucks and cuts and grazes and welts and bruises that often come as a consequence of dodgy dealings and unsavoury behaviour. But I can’t honestly say that it doesn’t bother me. Or I try not to allow it at least

Still, standing there, my neurotic mind soon began its race to the prison gates, as a scruff ball of a detective in an old bargain basement anorak, cheap shoes, and some underclass of fart weary flannel trousers came over to me and muttered an introduction, Detective Inspector Barney Mulligan or something. He hovered about me for a while and started firing irritating questions at me as though angling for a quick solution to the case in the form of an admission of guilt from me - his tone implying that simply by my presence I had something to do with the man being dead.

I wasn’t in the mood for any wild accusations though.

“Woh, woh, woh,” I said. “Before ye even start.”

He looked at me.

I went on.

“I’ve never seen the man before in my life before today, I just picked him up in my taxi and he collapsed when he got out of it. That’s what happened.”

I half expected him to pose some outrageous, incriminating question but to my surprise, he woh-wohed as instructed, as though somehow my retort had defeated him – as though he was too jaded to argue with me. His tone changed and he became more civil, courteous even or perhaps despondent was the word. He asked me a couple more questions about where the guy was picked up and where he was left off. I told him straight and he penned the answers into his notebook. Then he asked me was there anything about him, anything unusual about him, about his look or demeanour, that in hindsight you could say might have led to this? Was he drinking or on drugs or medication that I could tell? I said I couldn’t be sure but that he looked sick from the moment he got into the cab. He scratched down bits and pieces of my answers and asked me for a number where I could be contacted and that a Garda or two would call to me to take a more detailed statement if that was okay by me.

Which it was.

Then he said thanks and disappeared over to have a word with the paramedics to see might they have anything to add but by then I could tell that he was convinced that this was an accident rather than a crime. A man had died in a taxi, or just outside one, and that was all there was to it. Make sure that procedures were adhered to, that the right personnel were called to the scene, that the time of death was recorded, that any next-of-kin were notified and that the media were briefed if they were interested and that would be the end of that.

Nothing more to see here ladies and gentlemen.

Which was fine by me too.

Routine and unfortunate deaths in taxis are all very fine and the Guards are welcome to investigate them in whatever way they want. The crux of the issue however, for me at the time, was the not insignificant matter of an unpaid fare to recoup. Before he’d left the scene, I had told the Detective about this but the gravity of the situation, my situation, didn’t really register with him. It didn’t register with him that this dead old codger had effectively done a runner on me (albeit to the other side), leaving me to carry the expense. All fifteen euro of it. That he had in a sense committed a crime of his own that should be investigated.

I am a working man after all and with twenty thousand cabs in operation in this town, a cab for every man, woman and child in the place, it sometimes seems, it’s hard to make ends meet. So when a fare does come along, it counts. Every penny counts and I don’t work for nothing.  For me there is no sense in accepting a fare unless I am going to get paid. I am making perfect sense here. In bad times like these even death is not a good enough excuse for not paying your bills. There are no excuses at all for that. The man in my back seat was alive (though hardly well) when the journey was completed. He was at his destination before he died. Now I don’t mean to split hairs here but I took him to where he wanted to go and he was alive when we got there. That means a contract was agreed.

I kept my side of the bargain.

But none of that registered with the policeman. It didn’t matter to him. Not a whit.

But it registered with me.

Lex talionis, an eye for an eye, you see? Man steal from you, you take from him. Law of the Israelites, law of the jungle, law of the streets. It’s a dog eat dog world out there and you have to claim what belongs to you using the most suitable means at your disposal. For some it’s gavels and wigs, for others it's fists and threats, for more again it's baseball bats and sawn-offs. But when I have to get what is mine in this here world full of scammers and scumbags and blackguards and knaves, I like to rely on two things.

My sleight of hand.

And my chancing arm.

So it was a good job, deft expert that I am, that I’d earlier used both of these talents to pick the man’s wallet as he lay there dead on the street.

© Séamus Bagnall 2014

More tomorrow ...