1. INT. SMALL OFFICE, DUBLIN, DAY
We begin in an empty, tiny OFFICE, beige walls, thin brown carpet, a window at the front, top open, staring out to the traffic jam below. The OFFICE is oddly empty. There is a bookshelf and a Victorian table being used as a desk and a chair in a similar style. Suddenly, the door, emblazoned in flaking beige-cream paint is shafted open. A bald, shaven-browed swarthy SLAVIC WORKMAN in ill-fitting overalls places a large cardboard box brimming with styrofoam and bubble wrap.
2. INT. LIVING ROOM, DUBLIN, DAY
CUT - We see a pink floral-wallpapered LIVING ROOM, filled with old sofas and thick shag-pile carpet and various knick-knacks, dolls, ceramic cows, clocks among other stuff on both the mantelpiece and also in wooden-framed glass cabinets. An old lady, MRS. HEALY is sitting in an armchair, listening to an old gramophone player in the corner. She is lost within the music. A ginger-haired INTERIOR DECORATOR, female, pretty, small, twenties, ginger-haired is with her.
INTERIOR DECORATOR (walking down, friendly)
Can I bring up that record player, Mrs. Healy?
MRS. HEALY (friendly, cosy)
Yes, of course, it's good, but it takes up an awful lot of space here! And they call it a gramophone!
INTERIOR DECORATOR (friendly)
Yes, I know!
The INTERIOR DECORATOR nods, and lifts up the GRAMOPHONE. As she goes behind MRS. HEALY in her chair, she attaches a hose to the gramophone. She puts a gas mask on her face. The gramophone begins emitting trails of gas. MRS. HEALY drops dead on the floor. Clouds of gas engulf the room. The INTERIOR DECORATOR walks out, gently, a sinister smile growing across her face.
3. INT. SMALL OFFICE, DUBLIN, DAY
CUT - Back in the once again empty OFFICE, the box falls. Out falls a black ball, shining, the same size as a bowling ball, but with a Geiger counter attached. It is a bomb. It audibly ticks. Suddenly, it stops and explodes, flames burning down. The door falls down, and is set on fire. The SLAVIC WORKMAN looks in, only to be blown away by the impact.
4. EXT. GEORGIAN STREET, DUBLIN, DAY
We see, among the fleet of old GEORGIAN HOUSES, a POLICE CAR, a FIRE ENGINE and an AMBULANCE darting along. A GARDA or IRISH POLICE OFFICER, middle-aged, a cop on the walk, runs over towards the distraught INTERIOR DECORATOR.
5. INT. POLICE INTERROGATION ROOM, DUBLIN, DAY
We see a grizzled, rotund, balding DETECTIVE of Italian descent, LEONARDO "LEN" VITO DABRAST sitting in a darkened, cramped INTERROGATION ROOM.
DABRAST (gruff, smoking)
So, what is your name, miss?
INTERIOR DECORATOR (confused)
Aren't you banned from smoking?
DABRAST (bangs the table, aggressive)
This is my room! My room, my laws! So, girl, what is your name?
INTERIOR DECORATOR (quiet, mumbling)
Vera Claythorne.
DABRAST (squints, confused)
Excuse me!
INTERIOR DECORATOR (shouty)
VERA CLAYTHORNE!
DABRAST (suddenly friendly)
Right, Vera, how did you survive the gas raid if there was no gas explosion.
INTERIOR DECORATOR (pleading)
There was no gas. Mrs. Healy dropped dead. I assure you it was shock.
DABRAST (serious, gruff)
Traces of gas were found. If you were in the room with her, then you would be dead. We know that there was a gas mask lying about.
INTERIOR DECORATOR (quiet)
Right, it was there, probably an old wartime memento. I put it on. There was only one.
DABRAST (laughing)
No joking, miss! It was of recent origin, we believe from tests. You brought it in. The wreck of a bomb was perhaps there too. You were in!
INTERIOR DECORATOR (shouting, pleading)
No! No! No!
DABRAST (tough, dismissive)
There was a corpse found, a workman. Was he allied?
INTERIOR DECORATOR (helplessly nods)
Right, yes he was. I had the gasmask, but I didn't know she was going to die.
DABRAST (confused)
But you knew the gas was lethal?
INTERIOR DECORATOR (pleading)
Lethal but not fatal. He told me that there was a financial reward. Within the house, there were some files that Alexei, the workman had been ordered to destroy.
DABRAST (quizzical)
Why did they need to be destroyed?
INTERIOR DECORATOR (shrugs, weeping)
I do not know, but we couldn't look suspicious so a search of the house was out of the question. We staged it as a surprise refurbishment of the house from one of her nephews, but in fact it was to hide our bomb.
DABRAST (curious)
But you don't know who ordered Alexei?
INTERIOR DECORATOR (weeping)
Yes, and now that Alexei is dead, not only will I never know who I was working for, I may never get the financial benefits that I was promised!
HERO (OOV, tired yet youthful, world-weary yet ready for the world)
And it was this bizarre mystery that started my career was a private investigator. Let this story begin.
7. EXT. BACK STREET, BRAY, CO. WICKLOW, DAY
We see a sickly young lad, in his teens, thatch of unruly dark hair, known only as HERO, walking around, in a trenchcoat, initially coloured beige, but covered in thick but sporadic layers of mud. He passes a row of bins and a discoloured blue-shopfronted and rather grotty-looking SEAFOOD RESTAURANT, "PALERMO RIVIERA".
HERO (mock film-noir/1940s detective style, V/O)
How I got involved with the so-called "Carnehan Affair" was that I had eaten too many kippers for breakfast at the cheapo seafood restaurant around the corner. Slightly too burnt, with glaring, torn glimpses of raw fish-flesh, this inedible luncheon ranked as one of the worst meals that I had ever eaten, or rather freebased. It sat there among such stiff competition as that charred, cremated burger rather fittingly served at a funeral, albeit that of a rather beloved aunt.
8. INT. GOLF CLUB, NIGHT
CUT - We see a literally ROSE-TINTED FLASHBACK, to a couple of months earlier. HERO is moaning, sitting in front of a charred horrid pile of meat in a bun, screaming at the flustered-looking WAITRESS in a gold-walled GOLF CLUB DINING ROOM, filled with mournful-looking CHILDREN and OLD COUPLES dancing in the background, seemingly unaware that this is not a wedding. In the corner is MAD IAN, a large, bouncer-sized bald, genial-looking, eye-patched chef in full uniform.
HERO (O/V)
However, then, I had thrown a tantrum at the golf club where it was being held. My uncle, the at first house-proud Men's Captain of the Golf Club always stood by my side. However, in this case, he seemed to act as a bridge between my ill self and the angry chef, Mad Ian (my uncle's colleague in the local rugby squad twenty-five years before) and the army of disgusted maids. The maids were discomfortable. They were not looking forward to cleaning up the single, one-tenth-eaten mound of smoking black bovine side-boob. However, now was a different matter. I was currently running out to the bins at the side of the restaurant, the exotically named "Palermo Riviera", named after the local council estate. My head hit a lamppost, as I in a rather odd state, enthusiastically vomited into the bins, half-dazed and half-confused. My eyes widened to see the piles of self-produced chunder below me, as it sat huddled at the center of the bin. This slovenly piscine vomit-bucket (without a bucket, if that makes sense) was at the top, supported by piles of sadly now-unreadable copies of 1970s British porno magazines.I looked around. I realised that for the six months since I had been expelled from school for having "a relationship" with a teacher that I, aged seventeen still did not have a purpose. I was unemployed. I had not been allowed a job. No one in the county of Dublin would give me the honor of working anywhere, not even in the position of a toilet roll scrubber or as a Parnell Street pimp. I wanted to use my mind. I realised that the police, the Gardai, the "guards", the rozzers, the Sweeney, whatever word you use to describe them, they were in Ireland as incompetent in the role of judge, jury and executioner as a stuffed parrot in a fridge, especially as they were not allowed to be executioner. They were not even armed. AND BONUS - ALAN BENNETT PASTICHE- UK PLAYWRIGHT TRIBUTE
When I was a young lad, we didn't have television. We didn't have radio. We didn't even have much books. Yes, there was the bible, and the scraps of yesterday's paper Dad would get from the bins, the recipe book my mam used and the odd soft-core tract that my brother would read. But I wasn't interested in women's stuff or sex. I was my own man. Our entertainment at home was shadow puppets, Aunty Nora and Uncle Shirley playing the accordion, that Greek prostitute who roomed with us briefly playing the bouzouki. That prostitute, a child all of nineteen was what my mother, blind drunk, her eyes half-closed, would call a "grand old lady". That constant repetition of saying things that one does not mean. My father on the other hand, alongside my brother were transfixed by the purported beauty of the prostitute, who my parents believed had come to England for her education, and not to earn a few guineas from the trade of inserting her buttocks within the view of the common working class man, drinking his beer, eating a packet of crisps, and with the distant memory of a marriage since ruined by a brood of six, and bingo night in Harrogate.
My mother found out the true occupation of the Greek girl one night, my brother tightly holding her to my bunk in the bunk bed that I shared with my brother. The poor harlot was enjoying her company, letting out a series of incomprehensible but reasonable orgasmic cries. My mother hit the girl over the head with a large jug and basin from the commode, for we did not have a bathroom. We were far too common.
My mother liked sex, if only after marriage and in small doses. My father on the other hand was stiff with his jealousy of my young, fit brother, his virility in his prime. I on the other hand could not see the point of fornication, if you do not want to be the parent of the child. Any road, the last I saw of that curly-haired Greek prozzie was the sight of her being kicked into the taxicab heading to Scarborough by my mother. My brother was very disappointed, and so was my father I suppose, and I too missed her lively continental ways and her slight almost-glamour.