A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter XIV

Saturday, 13th June 199-, Telheiras, Lisbon, Portugal We lunched on bifanas, a sandwich but with a hot slice of pork as a filling-an Anglo-Portuguese solution to lunch. I teased Carlos back round to me, cooled his temper. We ordered coffee. I handed over my sugar without a word. He asked me about my wife-something nobody ever did. He asked me what it was like being married to an Englishwoman.

'What was the difference, you mean?' I asked, and he shrugged, not that sure what he meant. 'The only differences we had were on how to bring up Olivia, our daughter. We had fights about that. She had fights about that with my parents. It was a cultural thing. You know how it is in Portugal.'

'We're pampered every inch of the way.'

'And adored. Maybe we have a romantic vision of childhood, that it should be a golden time with no responsibilities, no pressure,' I said, remembering all the old arguments. 'We cosset our kids, we let them know they're a gift to us, we encourage them to think they're special. And, for the most part, they come out confident, happy people. The English don't think like that. They're more pragmatic and they don't indulge… well, my wife didn't anyway.'

'So what's she like… Olivia?' he asked, getting used to the name.

'As it turned out the English upbringing was the best thing. She's a sixteen-year-old girl going on twenty-one. She can take care of herself. She can take care of me. She has taken care of me-that was how she managed her grief. She's socially adept too. She can handle situations on her own. She does things. She's a brilliant seamstress. It was my wife's hobby. The two of them spent all day running up clothes, talking to each other all the time. But I still don't know whether it was what I would call a childhood. It drove me crazy sometimes. When Olivia was a little girl my wife wouldn't listen to her unless she talked sense. If she wanted to talk little kid's rubbish she had to come to me… And, you know, sometimes that comes out… she has a need to prove herself all the time, to be good at things, to always be interesting. She can't always live up to her own high standards. Look, you've started me off now. I'll shut up, or you'll get this for the rest of the day.'

'How did your wife like the Portuguese?'

'She liked us,' I said. 'Most of the time.'

'Did you tell her?'

'That we're not so nice to each other? She knew. And anyway, the English hate each other even more, but at least- she said this-the Portuguese like foreigners, which the English don't. She also said I had a jaded view of my countrymen from talking to liars and murderers all the time.'

'She couldn't have liked everybody. '

'She didn't like bureaucrats, but then I told her they were specially trained. It's all that's left of the Inquisition.'

'What did she really hate about the Portuguese? There must have been something she really hated.'

'The television programmes never came on time.'

'Come on. She could do better than that.'

'She hated Portuguese men in their cars, especially the ones who accelerated when they saw they were being overtaken by a woman. She said it was the only time she saw us macho. She always knew she was going to die on the roads and she did.'

Silence. He wasn't satisfied though.

'There must have been something else. Something worse than that.'

'She used to say: the quickest way to get trampled to death is to come between the Portuguese and their lunch.'

'Not the lunch we've just had… and anyway that just means we're hungry. Come on… what else?' said Carlos, that inferiority complex of his trying to push me to further extremes.

'She thought that we didn't believe in ourselves.'

'Ah.'

'Any more questions?'

None.

Teresa Carvalho, the keyboards player, lived with her parents in an apartment building in Telheiras, which is not far from Odivelas on the map, but a steep climb on the money ladder. This is where you come when your first cream has risen to the top of your milk. Insulated buildings, pastel shades, security systems, garage parking, satellite dishes, tennis clubs, ten minutes from the airport, five minutes from either football stadium and Colombo. It's wired up but dead out here, like pacing through a cemetery of perfect mausoleums.

The Carvalhos had the penthouse. The lift worked. An Angolan maid kept us outside while she took our IDs in to Senhor Carvalho. She showed us into his study. He sat behind his desk with his elbows and hairy forearms braced. He wore a red YSL polo shirt with more hair pouring up out of the neck. His head was nut-brown with not a strand of hair across it. His moustache was strong enough that he must have trimmed it with bolt cutters. He tilted his head forward so that he looked at us from under where the boss of his horns should have been. He was less friendly than a bull with six bandarilhas in its back. The maid closed the door with the faintest click as if the slightest thing could draw the big bad bull's attention.

'What do you want to talk to my daughter about?' he asked.

'This wouldn't be your first visit from the Policia Judiciaria,' I said. 'Has your daughter been in trouble before?'

'She's never been in any trouble, but that doesn't stop the police from trying to push her into some.'

'We're Homicide, not Narcotics.'

'But you knew.'

'A guess,' I said. 'What are they talking to her about?'

'Manufacture and supply.'

'Of what?'

'Ecstasy,' he said. 'Her chemistry lecturer at the university is being held for questioning. He gives out names to make his life easier. One of them was my daughter's.'

I explained our business and he slowly released himself from the harness of his anger. He went to get his daughter. I called Fernanda Ramalho on my mobile. The pathologist might have been a marathon runner, but she gave her information out in one-hundred-metre sprints.

'Things you might be interested in,' she said. 'Time of death: near enough six or six-thirty P.M. on Friday. Cause of death: asphyxiation by strangulation, pressure applied by gloved thumbs to the windpipe (no nail marks on her neck). The blow to the back of the head: she was only hit once by something very hard and heavy, not an iron bar-the shattered cranium and the area of contusion suggest something like a sledgehammer. She was definitely unconscious when asphyxiated. I can't find any evidence of a serious struggle, no abrasions apart from the one on her forehead which was caused by contact with a pine tree. There was bark in the wound. She had nothing under her fingernails. Sexual activity: you're not going to like this. She had been penetrated both vaginally and anally. Condoms were used. No semen deposits. There were traces of a water-based lubicrant in her rectum and the damage to her sphincteral muscle would suggest that she had not practised anal sex before. Blood: her blood group is unusual, AB negative, and there were traces of three, four methylenedioxymethamphetamine… also known as E or Ecstasy. She had also smoked cannabis and there were traces of caffeine.'

'Anything in her stomach?'

'She hadn't eaten anything for lunch.'

'Is that it?'

'Something, even this quick, is never enough for you guys.'

'Fernanda,' I said. 'You know it's appreciated.'

She hung up.

Teresa Carvalho had long purple hair, dark purple eye make-up, lipstick and nail varnish. She wore a black vest, a black short skirt, black tights and purple calf-length Doc Martens. She sat in an armchair in the corner of her father's study and crossed her legs. Senhor Carvalho left the room and we sat in the silence left over from Teresa's gum-chewing.

Senhor Carvalho's shoes did not move off. Teresa didn't look at either of us but focused on a point above Carlos' head. I opened the door and told Senhor Carvalho that I'd like to talk to him again later. He moved off like a bear back into its cave. There was a micron of trust in Teresa's eyes when I sat down again.

'Nothing said here has to go further than this room,' I said.

'Dad says you're Homicide. I haven't killed anyone so I'm cool,' she said, cracking her gum at us.

'Have you spoken to any members of your band since it broke up on Wednesday night?' I asked.

That opener made it look as if there was plenty more ammunition in the magazine and I could see the implications fidgeting behind her eyes.

'No, I haven't. There wasn't much point.'

'Was that the last time you saw Catarina?'

'Yes it was,' she said. 'Has something happened to her?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Anything could have happened to her.'

'Any reason?' asked Carlos.

'She looks innocent enough, doesn't she?'

'The blonde hair and blue eyes, you mean.'

She cracked her gum again, and brought one of her Doc Martens up on to the edge of the chair.

'Go on, Teresa,' I said, 'tell us what you thought of Catarina.'

'She was badly fucked-up in the head.'

'What does that mean? Crazy, neurotic, drugged-out?'

'I don't think she's even sixteen, is she?'

'That's right.'

'You might find some thirty-year-old putas with her experience but I…'

'I hope this isn't cat talk, Teresa.'

'It's guys' talk. Go out on the campus and ask.'

'You didn't like her.'

'No.'

'Did you envy her?'

'Envy?'

'Her voice, for instance.' She snorted.

'The fact that guys went for her.'

'I told you, she was no better than a puta.'

'What about Bruno and Valentim?'

'What about them?'

'Just answer the question,' said Carlos.

'Where is it?'

'The band,' I said, trying to steady Carlos who didn't seem to like this one either, 'how did the band break up?'

'I didn't like the music any more.'

'I meant, how. Did you all have a row and split in different directions? Did some of you side with others…'

'I don't know what they did. I met up with a friend in the Bairro Alto.'

'That wasn't the saxophonist was it?' I asked, and she went still.

'No, it wasn't,' she said it so quietly we had to lean in.

'What else does he do apart from play the saxophone?'

She didn't answer. Her hand was up by her mouth, and a thumbnail between her teeth.

'This saxophonist… is he your lecturer at the university?'

She nodded. Fat tears formed in her purple eye make-up. She studied her knee.

'You weren't with him the night the band bust up?'

She shook her purple head.

'Did you see him?' I asked.

Her eyes closed and purple tears eased down her face.

'Maybe you saw him with Catarina Oliveira later that night?'

'She stole him,' she blurted along with some snot. 'She stole him from me.'

'Is that why Narcotics got a phone call about a university lecturer manufacturing and supplying Ecstasy?'

She sprang out of the chair and grabbed some tissues from her father's desk and smeared her face around so she looked as if she'd taken a heavy beating.

'Where were you last night?'

'In the Alfama at the festa.'

'When?'

'I was here most of the afternoon working in my room… friends picked me up about seven o'clock.'

I told her to write down the names and phone numbers of her friends.

'You still haven't told me what's happened to Catarina,' she said.

'She was murdered last night.'

' I didn't do anything to her,' she said quickly, the pen hovering.

'Do you think either Valentim or Bruno were involved with her sexually?'

'I'm sure Valentim was… he found her. Not Bruno. He was scared of Valentim.'

'Found her?'

'Heard her voice, brought her into the band.'

'So why do you think they were having sex?'

'That was Catarina's way.'

'But you never saw anything that confirmed it?'

She looked up to see how the truth would go down.

'No,' she said. 'I didn't see anything.'

We got up to leave.

'You're not going to tell the drug squad about my phone call,' she said.

'If your lecturer's innocent I am,' I said. 'Is he?'

She shook her head.

'Are you?'

'They're trying to say I lab-assisted for him but I didn't.'

'What about supplying?'

'No,' she said, her mouth clamped shut.

'Catarina had traces of E in her blood the day she died.'

'Not from me. I didn't give her anything.'

'What about Valentim or Bruno?'

'No,' she said, a terse, hard, rock-sure lie.

I gave her a long look which she couldn't hold. She was thinking how she could salvage something from the situation, how she could make me like her. The unpopular girl. The fraud. The conservative playing in purple and black.

'If you wanted to understand Catarina,' she said, 'you had to hear her sing. She had a direct line to pain.'

We drove through an empty Lisbon on the first hot Saturday afternoon of the summer. We went straight down the normally clogged arterial avenues through Campo Grande to Saldanha, to the huge roundabout at Marques de Pombal and on to Largo do Rato which baked silently in the heat. Carlos was talking like a man with a mouthful of nails who couldn't spit enough of them out.

'The world can do without chatas like Teresa Carvalho,' he said. 'Little senhorinha rica with no personality, playing at being a grunge artist but all the time nurturing and cultivating those piss-weak, middle-class Salazarist values. She's the kind who's always had what she's wanted and when she can't get it, because she's too much of a chata, she makes sure nobody else can have it. She rats on people to save her own ass. She's a liar. She checks you all the time to make sure she's telling you what you want to hear. She dumps on her lecturer, trashes Catarina and then she gives us…' he put on a whiny voice, '"If you wanted to understand Catarina, you had to hear her sing, she had a direct line to pain," and you can bet that she didn't think that up herself. Gah! They're all the same.'

'Who?'

'Middle-class girls. Nothing to them. Chickens without giblets.'

'Was Catarina a chicken without giblets?'

'She must have had more to her than the rest put together… which is why they're all queueing up to shit on her and tell us what a little puta she was, but so far we haven't met anybody associated with her who's worth more than five tostoes.'

'So you do want to find her killer?'

'Yes I do. Anything wrong with that?'

'Just checking.'

'But if she was a chata like Teresa Carvalho…'

'As a matter of interest, do you like black people?' I asked.

He checked to see which side of the field I was coming from.

'I'm not racially prejudiced, if that's what you mean,' he said slowly.

'But if you had a daughter and she wanted to marry a black guy…?'

'Maybe that should be my question to you.'

'I wouldn't like it,' I said. 'There… you found me out.'

'The good old racist Portuguese policeman.'

'That doesn't mean I think that black people are all criminals,' I said. 'I lived in Africa, I know Africans, and a lot of them I liked. What it means is that there are plenty of people out there who are racially prejudiced and I wouldn't want my daughter to have to face any of that if she didn't have to.'

The dark gardens of the Jardim da Estrela slipped by looking cool and soporific. I cut up by the side of the Basilica and climbed the hill up to Lapa. This is embassy land, an old money haven overlooking the docks of Alcantara, probably so the rich could see their money coming in. We parked in a central square outside an old apartment block with a view over an old and decrepit palacio which had scaffolding around it and a building licence from the town hall on the front gate.

We rang the bell. No answer. A gardener hacked away at some undergrowth on the other side of the railings.

'That's the Palacio do Conde dos Olivais,' I said to Carlos. 'It's been locked up and in ruins since I can remember.'

'Looks like they're doing it up.'

I shouted over to the gardener, an old dark-skinned guy with a face like a mule. He stopped work and leaned against the railing and removed the cigarette from his mouth that had gone out some time ago.

'It's going to be a bordello,' he said.

'Is that right?'

'You know what you need for a good bordello?'

'Nice girls, perhaps.'

'Plenty of rooms. This place is perfect,' he said and set off on an asthmatic laugh. He wiped his face off with a soiled rag. 'No. It's going to be one of those exclusive clubs for rich people with too few ideas on how to spend all that money they've got under their mattresses.'

Carlos grunted a laugh and rang the bell again. No answer. The gardener relit his cigarette.

'This is where the Nazis lived in the war,' he said. 'Then the Americans took it over when they lost.'

'It's a big place for a club.'

'They're serious people… the rich. That's what they tell me anyway.'

We got an answer. A very faint one. A spindly female voice too frail to comprehend. She let us in on the fifth explanation. We walked up the stairs to the second floor. A woman in a thick green cardigan and a tweed skirt answered the door. She'd forgotten who we were already and when we re-explained she said she hadn't called the police, that nothing had happened. She began to close the door with a shaky Parkinson's hand.

'It's OK, Mum,' said a voice behind her. 'They're here to talk to me. It's nothing to worry about.'

'I sent the maid out for something… and they always come when she's out, and I have to get up and answer the bell, and I can never hear anything from that…'

'It's OK, Mum. She'll be back soon.'

We followed the woman who shuffled into the living room on her son's arm. The walls were floor-to-ceiling with books and the air space was mostly taken up with racks of drawings, paintings, sketches and watercolours. The boy sat the woman down at a table which had a large diameter glass on it and a decanter of what might have been tawny port.

The boy, in regulation T-shirt and jeans, took us into another room. He had long straight dark hair parted in the middle and a sad face with a limited range of expression. His mouth barely opened when he spoke. The walls of this room were covered in more drawings and sketches, none of them framed.

'Who's the artist?' asked Carlos.

'My mother was a gallerist… this is what's left of her stock.'

'She looks sick.'

'She is.'

'Have you spoken to Valentim?'

'He called.'

'When did you last have sex with Catarina?' I asked, and Carlos flinched as if he'd have to answer the question.

Bruno stepped back and brushed his hair over his shoulders with his two hands flapping like a startled bird.

'What!' he said, his mouth opening two millimetres more than a clam's, which was a Munch's ' Scream, ' for him.

'You heard.'

'I wasn't…'

'Teresa Carvalho says you were. You, Valentim and half the university.'

He looked broken already, as if he was a spider wearing his skeleton on the outside. Valentim might have prepared him for something but not this. He swallowed.

'We don't want to hear Valentim's script either,' I said. 'This is a murder investigation so if I think for two seconds that you're lying and obstructing the course of justice, I'll take you down to the tacos for the weekend. Have you ever been there before?'

'No.'

'Do you know what they are?'

No answer.

'Pimps, prostitutes, druggies, drunks, pushers, pickpockets and other assorted punks too violent to be allowed home. No daylight. No fresh air. Pig slop for food. I'll do it to you, Bruno. The maid will look after your mother, so I won't feel bad about that. So, forget Valentim… and let's have it.'

He stood by the window and his head slid round to look over the palacio to the patch of the River Tagus visible through the trees. It didn't look as if he was going to have to do too much thinking.

'Friday lunchtime,' he said to the windowpane. 'Where?'

'The Pensao Nuno… it's near the Praca da Alegria somewhere.'

'What time?'

'Between one and two.'

'Were drugs involved?'

Bruno came away from the window and sat on the bed. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and spoke to the floor. 'We took a tab of E each and smoked a joint.'

'Who supplied?' He didn't answer.

'We're not doing anybody for possession or supply of drugs,' I said. 'I just want to have the picture straight in my head. I want to see every minute of that day clearly as if it were my own. Was it Teresa Carvalho?'

'Valentim,' he said.

'Valentim was there as well?' asked Carlos. The boy nodded to the floor.

'The two of you were there together… having sex with the girl?' Bruno gripped his forehead trying to squeeze the memory out. 'How did this happen?'

'Valentim said she was into it.'

'Was that true?'

He opened his hands and shrugged. 'So which of you sodomized her?' I asked. He coughed, a half sob, half retch. He wrapped his hands over his head and leaned over in the plane-crash position as if expecting some terrible impact.