A blind alley

In the last issue of hotpress, we carried a simple public service message. Having received an e-mail from Michael Healy, of the IT Solutions department in the ESB, we asked readers “Have You Seen Paul McQuaid?” The short piece that followed described how Paul was last seen on the night of Friday 11th May. He had been drinking with his friends in Judge Roy Bean’s, located on Nassau St., in the centre of Dublin, and left – apparently to go home – not long after midnight. That was the last that anyone had seen of Paul, at the time.

Similar notices had been appearing in other media over the course of the fortnight. And, under the banner Missing Person, a small poster featuring Paul’s smiling face had begun to work its disquieting way into people’s consciousness, wrapped carefully around lamp-posts by friends who were involved in the desperate search for someone who seemed literally to have disappeared, unaccountably, from their lives. Seeing those posters, and reading the notice in hotpress, it was impossible not to feel a sense of dread. If you haven’t been there, it is difficult to understand the way in which the anxiety takes hold of you, twisting you up and paralysing you from the inside out, when someone close to you disappears. These grim stories sometimes have a happy ending – or at least one that carries within it the seeds of fresh hope. But in your heart, when the dreaded thing happens, you know that you have no right to expect anything other than the worst.

Sadly, in the case of Paul McQuaid, that was the outcome. Almost three weeks after his disappearance, his body was found, lying forlornly in a laneway off Wicklow St., and very close to Grafton St., scarcely a quarter of a mile from where he had last been seen. The discovery of his body a few yards away from the busiest pedestrian thoroughfare in Dublin was shocking. How could the body have lain there undetected for up to nineteen days? It was a deeply disturbing thought, especially given that an investigation into the disappearance was apparently being conducted by the Gardai.

Initial reports indicated that the Gardai did not suspect foul play. That this view would be offered to the media so quickly was baffling. The presence of a body in a laneway that takes you nowhere in itself posed obvious questions. The Gardai indicated they believed that Paul McQuaid had fallen from a fire escape, below which his body was found.

One day on, there was a change of tack. Now the Gardai were not ruling out foul play. The jacket which Paul had worn on the night was missing, as was his wallet, containing his credit cards. It is in the nature of things that people would speculate. Why had Paul McQuaid gone up the lane, which according to some reports is used on occasion by homeless people sleeping rough, and by drug addicts?

It may be that there are potential explanations to which only those close to the deceased man will be privy. But there are also possibilities that seem obvious. The lane might have offered the opportunity for Paul McQuaid to relieve himself before embarking on the journey home. Or, if enough drink had been taken, he may simply have ended up there not knowing either where he was, or where he was supposed to be going.

In relation to the Garda theory that he fell from the fire escape, what could he have been doing, attempting to hazard what would, at the very best of times, be a treacherous climb? Unless Paul was a very different character than the one described by those close to him, there is no logical explanation for that.

Certainly, the information that is currently in the public domain leaves more questions than it provides answers. Hopefully, the investigation by the Gardai, and the inquest which will take place, will reveal more, because there is something deeply disturbing about the way in which the whole thing has been handled by the authorities to date.

It isn’t just that Gardai seem to have been willing to offer the media interpretations which are questionable, and to do so sooner than seems appropriate. The fact that a body could remain undetected for almost three weeks, so close to where the individual disappeared, asks very pertinent questions about the manner in which the Gardai handled their role in the search. When this question was raised initially by the media, it was indicated by Garda sources that so much effort had been expended, as yet to no avail, in the search for another young man who went missing earlier this year, Trevor Deely, that there was an unwillingness to expend the same resources again.

This line has subsequently been denied by the Garda Press Office. But it is still valid to ask why no attempt seems to have been made to search the area in the vicinity of Judge Roy Beans. The indications to date seem to be that Paul McQuaid died shortly after he went missing – however, it is possible for someone who does fall to remain alive for a considerable time, suggesting that a bit of decisive action might in circumstances of this kind, save a life that would otherwise be lost.

For anyone who is located in the city centre, there is another galling aspect to this appalling tragedy. There is an unprecedented level of hassle and unpleasantness involved in working and operating in Dublin right now, with clampers and litter wardens patrolling the streets on behalf of Dublin Corporation and making life stupidly difficult for people who are attempting to do business. And yet between these new enforcers, who have responsibility for ‘order’ on the streets, and the Gardai, they failed completely to turn up a dead body, just off Grafton St., for almost three weeks.

It comes down to a question of priorities. If the focus was really on keeping the highways and the by-ways clean and healthy, rather than hitting vulnerable targets for revenue through pre-emptory fines, then there is no way that a dead body could lie in a centre-city laneway for as long as Paul McQuaid’s remains were abandoned.

Maybe the Gardai will tell us what the hell they think was going on? b