Dial - Season 1 - Episode 26

Episode 4 years ago

Dial - Season 1 - Episode 26

What shocked me was his incredible facial resemblance to Akos, even with all that facial hair of his. I had imagined that a girl as beautiful as she had taken her looks from her mother, but I was wrong. This man looked very handsome, and it was evident that his facial good looks had been passed on to his daughter.

“This is Nana b0s0mba,” the policeman said in a hurry. “He wanted to see you, Mr. Biko. We’ve rounded up the bureaucratic tape concerning the death, you see, and we’ve released the body of the deceased to him. He wanted to see you before leaving, and there were a couple of questions I also wanted to ask.”

Akos’ father walked forward slowly, and then he smiled sadly and held out his hand.
“Mr. Biko, glad to meet you,” he said, and his voice was cultured and gentle.
I got to my feet in a daze and shook his hand.
I had expected an ogre, a giant of a man with a mean face, dressed in scary priestly clothes with painted body parts.
This soft-spoken, gentle and slightly-built man was far from the image I had perceived of him. Surely, this couldn’t be the same person Akos had been so terrified of.
“Glad to meet you too, Nana,” I said in a humbled voice. “I’m extremely sorry about Akos, sir. I sincerely am.”
He nodded and sat down across from me, and I noticed that his eyes were fixed on my face, and he never looked away again.
“My daughter called me about a month before her death,” he said gently, and again he smiled sadly. “She told me she was in love with you, and that you were going to marry her.”


I laughed nervously, and I wasn’t sure for a moment how to play it, and I gently rubbed my forehead.

“Look, Akos was involved in an accident that could have been fatal,” I began and smiled at them. “She was nearly knocked down by a car. I sent her to the hospital, and later we became friends. Yes, I did like her a lot, yes, but she told me she was in a relationship, and so I didn’t press it.”
“I’m confused here, Mr. Biko,” Nana b0s0mba said. “I know her relationship with that other boy was over a long time ago. Are you saying you’re not the one she was referring to, the man who gave her the ring?”

I smiled, and I was sure it looked fake and forced, but then I had decided to play the part, and so I stuck to it.
“Oh, I did give her the ring, yes,” I said in a rush. “I was getting her a present, a chain actually, and she saw the ring and said she loved it, and so I bought it for her too.”
The man nodded, but I noticed that his eyes had suddenly gone cold.

“She had saved your number as ‘Husbie’ on her phone, Mr. Biko,” Chief Inspector Danso said, sounding confused. “And she was pregnant too, judging from the test kits in her bag. Her friends at the hospital spoke about you, that you were going out, and confirmed you gave her the ring, promising to marry her. Are you denying all that?”
They were pushing me into a corner, and I detested it.

I knew they had nothing on me, and knew I had to stick to my story. The whole issue was messy, a real big mess, and I admitted that I had really forced the girl to go to the extreme, but there was nothing I could do about it.
I was filled with remorse, yes, and wished things had ended differently, but it hadn’t. As sorry as I was for Akos’ death, I wasn’t about to be weighed down with some responsibility I was not ready for, and so I changed tack and took on a more brutish approach.

“I don’t know what you’re driving here, sir,” I said, summoning the coldest voice I was capable of. “Look, maybe I did lead Akos on. Let’s be honest here, she was an incredibly beautiful woman, and yes, I did tell her I would have wanted to marry her. But she had a boyfriend, and that was as far as we went. I don’t know why she saved my name as Husbie, and I don’t know who got her pregnant. Believe me, there was nothing but friendship between us.”
The policeman looked at the fetish priest, but the priest only regarded me with very calm eyes, and then he stood up slowly. He looked at the policeman.
“I think we’re done here,” he said calmly. “Have you given him the letter?”
Chief Inspector Danso Cuger stood up too.
“Oh, I forgot,” he said.
He reached into his pocket and brought out a crumbled envelope. I remembered, quite too late, that he had informed me at an earlier date, a week earlier actually, that Akos had left a letter for me.
I took it from him, and my hand shook a little, as much as I tried to stop it.
They stood looking at me, but I made no attempt to open it.