The Dualist - Chapter 4

I awoke with a thumping drum in my temples and a squealing pig’s rendition of Rossini’s William Tell Overture ringing in my tinnitus ears. Damn phone. I answered it on maybe the fiftieth bar and heard a female voice responding to my hello.

“I’m looking for Mister Right,” it said.

I didn’t recognise the voice but the accent was of the west, deep, almost masculine. It sounded a warning to fools.

“Well I hope you find him,” I said, hoping it was a hoax or a wrong number, an unintentional interlude from the rhythm-less banging in my brain.

She didn’t seem to appreciate my acid wit.

“I am looking for Mr Frank Wright,” she said, testily, making me wonder briefly might I have I touched a raw nerve.

“Speaking,” I said.

“Mr Wright. Were you the taxi driver, the one who reported the incident of the dead man in Phibsboro last evening…?” she asked.

Thoughts flooded back.

“He be me,” I said.

“I am Garda Joan Casey, Phibsboro Garda Station and I have a few questions I need to ask you about yesterday’s incident.”

My first thought was - the wallet. Shit. Surely they couldn’t know about that.

They didn’t.

“We’re having difficulty identifying this man and we were wondering might you be able to shed any light on things for us. I mean for example, might he have said anything to you about who he was.”

That was an easy one.

“No, quite the opposite he didn’t… he barely said one word for the whole journey.”

“I see. Or might he have left anything in your car that might help us put a name to him – an ID, a wallet, a mobile phone or anything like that?”

In my mind’s eye the wallet appeared before me like a big juicy burger.

But I resisted.

“No, nothing. I didn’t find anything at least,” I lied.

The Garda went on.

“It’s just that it’s a bit unusual for a man not to carry any form of ID on his person. In this day and age particularly. Which sort of led us to think he might have left it on the seat or something as he was paying you.”

Pay me… now that was a laugh.

“Pay me? He didn’t pay me at all, Guard. He was dead before he got the chance.”

“Oh, that’s unusual,” the Guard continued.

“You’d be surprised – in this town.”

“Well I’m sorry about that but there’s not much we can do about it as we don’t even know who he is.”

“Yeah, I’ll just have to write this one off.”

“I was wondering if you could check the car again in case there might be something under the seat or on the floor,” she said.

“What, you mean now? I’m only out of bed.”

“Well no, not this minute but at your earliest convenience,” she said and continued, “because we have no idea who he is at the moment and any information at all about him would be a great help.”

“Well I’ll check again just in case.”

“Thank you, Mr Wright.”

“No problem at all.”

After the call, I opened the window to exorcise the bad air in the room and studied the empty bottles. I tried to unsuccessfully to recall what had happened the night before. To a man with a hangover all episodes of the pre-sleep past, of the drunken night before, seem to have occurred about a thousand years ago, so much so that his memory of them is virtually blank the following morning. Questions like “Did I do that?” “Did I say that?” are often real posers for me the next day. There may well be some clarity at the actual time, as the glass was tilting, but all that turns to black once sleep’s curtain falls. It’s as though the Khmer Rouge conducts a slash and burn in the brain and bludgeons and cudgels everything back to the year zero.

I made a cup of tea and a slice of toast and thought about the Garda’s call again and considered my options.

Broadly there were two.

I could give the Garda the wallet and say that I had found it in the back of the car like a normal civic minded person or I could take the safe option, say nothing at all, leave things the way they were and move on as if nothing had happened.

Of course I wasn’t sure what one to take.

Not until I went through the wallet again.

© Séamus Bagnall 2014

More tomorrow ...