A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter XVI

Saturday, 13 th June 199-, Pensao Nuno, Rua da Gloria, Lisbon, Portugal A police car arrived to take Valentim. I sent Carlos with it to start work on the search warrant. Jorge stripped off the cellophane to what must have been his third pack of the day. I took out the photograph of Catarina.

'You're still not finished?' he said, lighting up a cigarette.

'You lost a lot of weight recently, Jorge?'

'I was sick. They thought I had lung cancer.'

'What was it?'

'Just some pleurisy.'

'Good to get the weight off though.'

'You don't have to be nice to me, nobody else is.'

'You know about people don't you, Jorge?'

'The whole world's been past this front desk.'

'Have you always done this work?'

'Probably.'

'Ever been inside?'

'If I was, it was before I can remember whether I've been doing this job all my life.'

'That memory of yours must be famous.'

'I've got a room full of industrial awards for it,' he said. 'You should drop by some time, when I'm not so busy, and I'll show them to you.'

'Do you remember this girl?' I asked, snapping the photograph down on the bar. 'She was in here with that kid and another one Friday lunch time.'

If anything Jorge's eyes got rheumier. He barely looked at the shot.

'Look, Inspector, I've got a reputation to keep up. If it gets out that my particular brain disease cleared up and I got on a quiz show with the Policia Judiciaria I'll have an empty place.'

'Emptier than this?' I said. 'The floors aren't exactly shaking.'

'You take my point.'

'Maybe this place is due an inspection.'

'Why's it so important that I remember her?'

'Five hours after she left this place she was dead. Murdered.'

Jorge's eyebrows left his head for a moment.

'When?'

'This is ridiculous… I just told you. Friday six, six-thirty in the afternoon.'

'Here in Lisbon.'

'Maybe. She was found dumped on a beach in Paco de Arcos.'

He nodded, wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand feeling the rasp of the brisdes.

'She was in here Friday lunchtime. You must know that by now after talking to the kid. She was with another one as well… a student.'

'How do you know?'

'This is the gateway to heaven, Inspector. The whole world comes before me… even police officers.'

'Can I use your telephone?'

I called the home number of Catarina's teacher. She answered as if she'd been sitting there waiting for the phone to ring. I made an appointment for an hour's time. She said she wasn't going anywhere. I refitted the telephone, an old heavy Bakelite piece of work that took me back to my father's army headquarters in Africa. I headed for the stairs, Jorge's eyes on me all the way. I stopped two steps down and heard him sigh.

'The girl,' I said, 'had she been in here before?'

Jorge turned the page of his newspaper, kissed his cigarette again.

'Did you hear me, Jorge?'

'I heard you,' he said. 'I heard that phone call too. She's a schoolgirl.'

'Not even sixteen, Jorge.'

He shook his head, not that amazed at what the world had come to.

'She's been coming in here pretty regularly Friday lunchtimes, since March, April, something like that.'

'She was a hooker?'

'She wasn't going up there on her own for a nap, if that's what you mean,' he said, lighting another cigarette from the butt of the last. 'Girls these days, they're different. Clean, nicely dressed, polite. They come in here to make spending money for the weekend because they don't want to have to explain to daddy why they need 30,000 escudos for a decent Saturday night. The regular girls know it too. You go out there and watch. If they see a girl in a short skirt hanging around too long, they'll kick her half to death. If you ask me, and not many people do these days, Inspector, it's the heroin.'

'Did you know any of her clients?'

Jorge gave me a sad sorry look and tapped the side of his head.

'How many times have you been closed down?'

'Never… unless it was before…'

'That's enough, Jorge. You're boring me now.'

'Look, Inspector, I cooperate as much as I can… in the end.'

'How about doing some cooperating now?'

He thought about it, wanting to get me off his back.

'I'll tell you something, it's not much but if it'll get you down the stairs…'

'I won't promise you.'

'You're not the first guy to ask me about the girl… I mean in an investigative way.'

'What are we talking about… another cop?'

'Could be.'

'Get it out, Jorge. One go. Like pulling a tooth.'

'He looked like a cop but he wouldn't show me any ID and I wouldn't tell him anything.'

'What did he ask you?'

'He made out he was a punter and interested in the girl. I didn't believe him. He told me he was Policia Judiciaria. I asked for ID. He wouldn't show. I told him to stop wasting my time and he left.'

'When are we talking about?'

'Not long after she became a Friday lunch time regular.'

'April, May?' I asked, and he nodded. 'Tell me what he looked like.'

'Short, stocky, and the bit of hair I saw was grey. He wore a small, brimmed hat, black, which he never took off, a grey tweed jacket, white shirt, tie, grey trousers. No moustache, no beard. Brown eyes. That's it.'

'I'm going down the stairs now, Jorge.'

'Don't rush,' he said. 'I wouldn't want you to fall.'

I went out into the dark narrow street. It had been cool in Jorge's windowless reception and I stripped off my jacket and slung it over my shoulder. There were more girls outside now and I walked down the street towards the funicular asking the odd one here and there whether they'd seen Catarina. A couple of mulatto Brazilian girls remembered her, but not from yesterday. A bleach-blonde girl, standing on one leg while she repaired the heel of her shoe, tapped the photograph and nodded but couldn't remember when she'd seen her.

I asked the funicular driver, who I reckoned must take an interest in life around him rather than looking endlessly at the same old two hundred metres of rail up and down his hill, but he shrugged me off. I walked back down Rua da Gloria, got into my car and drove back to the bus stop at Saldanha. It was mostly newly developed office buildings around here and they were all shut but I found a few little places open to ask my question.

'Boa tarde, did you see this girl yesterday around two, two-fifteen? No. Thank you. Adeus.'

It's a stomach thing for me, police work. For a lot of my colleagues it's brain work. They have the suspects, the clues, the statements, the witnesses, the motives, and they reason them all together. I do that too but I have something in my stomach as well, something that tells me if I'm right. Antonio Borrego once asked me what it was like and the only thing I could think of was 'love' and he told me to be careful because, as anybody knows, love is blind. Good point. It's not like love, but that's the strength of it.

'Boa tarde, did you see this girl yesterday around two, two-fifteen? No. Thank you. Adeus.'

People ask me why I do this job, as if I have some choice in the matter, as if I could finish with it now and run off and be an avant-garde poet in Guatemala. I got into this thing because, back in 1978 when my father and I crept back into the country, that was the only job I could find, and in those days money was as scarce as a job. When I came out of the Rossio station after five years in London I knew what I'd been missing. The poverty bustle, I call it. There's a lot of it in Africa, which is why I recognized it. It's a nervous fireneticism brought about by insufficient economic activity to ensure that everybody gets fed. It's the agitation of hunger and it's gone now. The streets are calm like any other European city. Now there's only the stress left, but that's not the same as hunger, that's just neuroticism.

'Boa tarde, did you see this girl yesterday around two, two-fifteen? No. Thank you. Adeus.'

So I do this job because over the years I've come to believe in it. The hunt for the truth or the teasing out of the truth, anyway. I like the talk. I marvel at the natural genius humans have for deception. If you think footballers are pretty good at cheating and diving and deceiving, you should see murderers perform. Mind you, they get a lot of practice lying to themselves every minute of the day. Our prisons are full of innocent people. But that's the nature of the murderer. It's the ultimate human weakness. The most radical solution to the inability to resolve, and the shame of that weakness is the inadmissible guilt. But the lies… the lies keep the job alive. I'm like a couturier appreciating cloth, enjoying the texture, the finery of a brilliant tapestry, a fabulous, gold-threaded brocade, a silky smooth damask, a dark, rich, impenetrable velvet. But I never underestimate the value of a light, strong denim, a hard-wearing drill, a tough fine-ribbed poplin. That doesn't mean I don't get the moth-eaten taffeta, or the well-worn flannel, or wispy tissues of voile, it's just that I have the developed taste of a connoisseur.

" Boa tarde, did you see this girl yesterday around two, two-fifteen? No. Thank you. Adeus. "

We've seen some liars today. The lawyer, the wife, her lover, the psychology student, the little nouvelle riche girl, the old money kid. But take the Pensao landlord. Jorge. The one you'd expect to be a liar. The one who looked like a liar. But he wasn't. He was an elider, an omitter, an excluder, an editor, but he wasn't guarding his own secrets. That was the difference. Now Valentim. He's got potential. Plenty of practice. He's been at it since his father left, probably. He doesn't trust anybody. Not even his mother. He's got the makings of the finest brocade that one. Then there's the one I missed out. The victim. She must have done some lying in her time, but what interests me about her is the game she played on her mother. What was that? Phoning her up. Getting her to come over. So that what? So that she could show her that she knew? So that she could show her that she was better? So that she could punish her?

' Boa tarde, did you see this girl yesterday around two, two-fifteen? No. Thank you. Adeus.'

My stomach's told me something. Watch the lawyer. So far that's all. I don't know about Valentim. That's a hard thing, to admit that you sodomized a young girl. Still shaming, even for him. Maybe there was someone else. Another creep who did that to her, shamed himself and killed her for the feeling she'd given him. But it's a job, this one. Jorge said she'd been coming in there for months doing tricks for pocket money. The lover said she took money off him after sex. Teresa Carvalho said she's been sleeping around the university, even with her lecturer. Bruno said that wasn't reliable. None of them know her. They know bits of her. Only Valentim has got inside, but then he knew what he was looking for.

'Boa tarde, did you see this girl yesterday around two, two-fifteen? Yes. You did?'

I was in a cafe now on Avenida Duque de Avila, a few buildings down from Catarina's school, the Liceu D. Dinis.

'She came in here sometime after two o'clock,' said the barman. 'I've seen her before. She's at the school. She buys a coffee, drinks it, leaves… just like everybody else.'

'Was there any particular reason you remembered her?'

'I came on at two, she came in a few minutes later. She was the only person in the place.'

'Was she with anybody?'

'No. She stood at the counter, like I said. Blonde hair, blue eyes, white top, short skirt, nice legs, big shoes with shiny stones in the heels.'

'You took a good look at her.'

'Why not?'

'Any reason?'

He leaned on the stainless-steel counter, drummed his fingers on the edge of it, looked up into his head, went through a long list of pros and cons and balanced it all out. I didn't take my eyes off his face. He stopped fooling around.

'You're joking,' he said.

'I'm not.'

'Because,' he said, flipping his thumbs up on the counter, 'I wouldn't have minded fucking her. She had a very nice ass. OK? Now, who are you?'

'Police,' I said. 'Have you got a phone?'

'Down the end of the bar.'

I called Carlos who still hadn't got the search warrant. I told him to wait for me in the office when he got it, that I was going to talk to the schoolteacher for no more than an hour, and then we'd search Valentim's room together. I hung up, slapped some coins on the bar and left.

Catarina's teacher lived at the top of a smart, renovated four-storey apartment building in Rua Actor Taborda, which was just on the other side of Saldanha from the school and not far from the Policia Judiciaria building. It was after seven o'clock and still light with a little way io go but the heat was backing off now.

First thing. She didn't look like any schoolteacher I'd ever had or met. She had short, dark, shiny hair, fashionably cut. She wore earrings which looked like two bent coffee spoons and lipstick… even for the police. She had green, penetrating eyes that never left my face and perfect, white hard-looking teeth. She was wearing a lightweight, very short blue shift with the four inches of sleeve rolled over her shiny shoulders to keep herself cool. She was my height with long slim legs and long slim arms. Her name was Ana Luisa Madrugada.

'But I use Luisa,' she said. 'Ice tea? Homemade.'

I nodded.

'Take a seat.'

She went into a galley kitchen and opened the fridge. I sat in the dark room, the shutters partly closed to the light and heat outside. She'd been working. There was a table lamp on over piles of books and papers, some typed, some in longhand. A computer with text on the screen flickered in the corner. She handed me the ice tea and slumped into a chair opposite. She stretched out a long, tubular arm, not muscular but taut. She placed her glass elegantly on a side table, where there was an ashtray with two cigarette butts which had been smoked right down to the filter as if they were an allowance. She was hardly sitting, almost lying with her back on the seat of the chair and her legs so far out in front that her knees were almost touching mine.

She was careless with her limbs which was why I looked at them so much. I mentioned her work. She told me she was working on a doctoral thesis on a subject that did not snag in my brain. I found myself too concerned by the shift which was working its way up her thigh at her every movement, so that I thought I was going to see something that was none of my business, but I wanted it to be. A few seconds later I realized they were culottes and she could afford to be negligent. I could relax. My eyes drifted back up to her shiny shoulders and the bent spoons. I wished I'd brought Carlos along with me now. There would have been someone else to ask and answer questions while I did some idle watching without the pressure of having to pay attention.

I wanted to know how old she was. I tried to look at the back of her hands, but she wouldn't keep still. She looked anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five. She kicked me on the leg, and put her hand on my knee to say sorry. I felt plugged in, the blood zipping around me like quicksilver. How did it go? What were the words to use? Where were the words?

'Inspector?'

'Yes,' I said, seeing her head on one side, waiting for an answer. 'It's been a long day, Senhora Doutora.'

'Luisa,' she said. 'I've been talking too much. When I work all day and it gets to night-time I just need to talk. Having you here is a luxury. Normally I have to go down to the cafe and try to engage the barman, but they're surly down there and hard work. I give it to them anyway, my whole day's worth of nonsense. I'm doing it again. I'm talking too much. It's your turn.'

'I wouldn't mind some more nonsense myself,' I said. 'I don't get enough nonsense. Too much senselessness, not enough nonsense.'

'I got up at eight. By nine I was working. It was perfect. Everything was coming out just right. Then I heard some kids playing in the street, but there's no traffic, and I remember it's Saturday and that's why I'm working and not teaching. Then I think: What are kids doing in the city on the first hot day of summer? What am I doing in the city? Why aren't I having lunch with somebody out on the beach? Why isn't someone taking me out to lunch on the beach? Why am I sitting indoors writing learned rubbish that only five people will ever read? I can feel the pointlessness beginning to break like a tidal wave, so before it does I go back to work. I work all afternoon… and nobody calls me. They're all out at the beach.'

'Mine's the only call you get.'

'My saviour.'

'The police.'

She laughed.

'That is your job, isn't it?'

I ducked out of that one. I haven't been in the saving business for years. I've been in the picking-up-the-pieces business.

'I was lucky you were in,' I said. 'One other phone call and you'd have been gone.'

'I was always going to be in,' she said, a little melancholy creeping into the room.

'Not just work?'

'No,' she said and took a careful look at me, then shrugged. 'I split up with a boyfriend recently and fell off the edge of the earth. But anyway, that's not nonsense, that's deadly, seriously boring.'

'A long-term relationship?'

'Too long. So long we didn't get married,' she said, and then caught me on the hop. 'What about you?'

'What about me?' I said, defensive, only used to dealing the questions, nobody ever asking me anything personal.

'Are you married?'

'I was for eighteen years.'

'Police work probably isn't that good for marriage.'

'She died.'

'I'm sorry.'

'About a year ago,' I said and then thought of something which I said out loud, 'which means, in fact, that I was married for seventeen years, I suppose. I just still…'

It had grown darker in the room. We were sitting out of the restricted light from the table lamp and were now upright on the edges of our chairs, trying to see each other's faces in the warm dusk.

'I've been coming to the surface,' I said, stirred by the intimacy present in the room, and then disturbed by it, I pulled out. 'But that, too, is probably deadly, seriously boring.'

'And this is what happens to us.'

'What?'

'The deadly, seriously boring people end up working on Saturday afternoons. It's the only thing that makes us feel worth something.'

'I have a daughter. That helps. And I'm working only because a faceless man on the end of a mobile phone assigns things to me and I obey.'

'What sort of an assignment could bring you to my door? Is one of my kids in trouble?'

'You've had no calls today?'

'Don't rub it in.'

'Which of your kids do you think would be in trouble?'

'Boy or girl?'

'Girl.'

'Catarina Sousa Oliveira.'

'First time.'

'I thought somebody would be coming to talk to me about her in the end.'

'What about?'

'Drugs, probably.'

'I'm with Homicide.'

She put her hands up to her face. The word had chilled her. She went over to the window and opened a shutter to let more light in and some of the day's residual warmth.

'What's happened?' she asked.

'She was murdered yesterday, late afternoon,' I said. 'I'm surprised nobody's called you. Dr Oliveira said he tried last night.'

'I was out with my sister in the Alfama.'

'You were expecting trouble with drugs,' I said.

'I see it as part of my job to look for signs. Needle rash, dilated pupils, poor concentration, loneliness.'

'How many of those did Catarina have?'

'Everything except the needle rash.'

'Did you talk to her about it?'

'Of course. I talk to all the suspect kids.'

'Why was she lonely?'

'That doesn't mean she wasn't popular. You know how it is. She had talent. It attracted a lot of attention. She had a great voice and the blonde hair and blue eyes. A lot of the kids liked her and wanted to be like her… but she didn't have any friends amongst them… too far ahead for that.'

'You heard her sing?'

'It wasn't a beautiful voice, nothing clear or sweet about it but it could raise the hairs on the back of your neck. She could do fado but what she really liked was black music, the blues numbers… Billie Holiday. She loved doing Billie Holiday.'

'And she had plenty to cry about,' I said. 'What about mood swings?'

'She hasn't been so bad this term. She went through a patch of incredible anger. She'd go puce and look as if she was going to toss her desk out of the window, then she'd calm down just as quickly and go morose. I talked to her mother and things got better almost instantly.'

'She didn't have any medication in her blood.'

'Maybe she stopped taking whatever was causing the trouble.'

'She was sexually active in an extreme way for a girl her age. Were you aware of any relationships within the school?'

'Nothing happens in that place without the whole world knowing about it, but sometimes rumour is more exciting than the truth, and it's not so easy to distinguish, so I don't talk about what I hear.'

'I'm only interested in what you've seen.'

She came back from the window and sat on the edge of her chair again.

'I'll put it another way,' I said. 'I've retraced her steps from a Pensao in Rua da Gloria to the cafe down the street from the school, La Bella Italia, at around two-fifteen. She went to school, I presume. She wouldn't have come all this way not to.'

'She was in my class until close to four-thirty.'

'Then what?'

She wrung her hands and looked into the floor.

'I saw her leave the building. She was with this guy, a young guy who's teaching English Language. He's Scottish. Jamie Gallacher. He was talking to her on the corner of the street and she wasn't talking back. Then she walked off up Duque de Avila and he followed… that's all I saw.'

'Was that unusual?'

'If you listened to the rumour there was something going on there. I heard that Catarina would go back to his apartment after school sometimes. But that is not reliable and shouldn't appear in any of your reports. It's girl talk.'

'What do you make of Jamie Gallacher?'

'He's OK, but he's like a lot of these English people. He likes to drink and he drinks heavily… and then he's not such a nice guy.'