A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter XXXIV

Tuesday, 16th June 1998, Avenida Almirante Reis, outside Anjos Metro, Lisbon

I fell into a cafe close to the Metro station. If it had a name it didn't snag in my brain. If there were people in it, they were faceless. I went to the toilets at the back and washed my face. I asked for a glass of wat er and swilled my mouth out. I ordered a cup of tea with two tea bags. Catherine of Braganca might have introduced tea to the British but her legacy in Portugal is Lipton's. I sugared the tea heavily and drank it. I ordered something stronger and sat down, sweating again, the breathing not going well, unsynchronized. The barman kept an eye on me. The TV was encouraging us all to go to Madeira.

A large presence came from the rear of the bar, stood over me and blocked out some of the neon in the room.

'Is this where all the old detectives come to cure their troubles?' he said, sitting himself down at my table.

I knew him. I knew that big nose, those seedy eyes. I knew that smooth, black moustache sharpened at the tips.

'I just had an accident,' I said. 'Nearly fell under a tram. I feel a bit shaky that's all. Had to sit down.'

'In a city of trams like this one, it's amazing how few people disappear under them.'

'I don't remember your name… but I know I know you.'

'You're Ze Coelho,' he said. 'I nearly didn't recognize you. You used to have a beard. Joao Jose Silva… they called me JoJo. You remember now?'

I didn't.

'I was "retired" three years ago, you know… eased out.'

'You weren't on Homicide, were you?'

'Vice.'

'Did you just say that old detectives come in here for the cure?'

'They used to… until three days ago.'

'What happened then?'

'You remember a guy called Lourenco Goncalves?'

This name is following me around.

'No I don't, but I've heard of him,' I said.

'He was in Vice too.'

'Were you partners?'

'More or less,' he said, evasive. 'He used to come in here… until three days ago.'

'I heard he set himself up in business.'

'He calls himself a security consultant now. A fancy name for private detective work. Following rich guy's wives around the place, seeing if they're doing something more than the shopping on a Wednesday afternoon. You'd be surprised.'

'Would I?'

'He was… so were the husbands, which meant he didn't always get paid.'

'So why doesn't he come in here any more?'

He shrugged.

'We used to have a drink and go and play cards in the park in summer.'

'Was he married?'

'He was. His wife went back up to Porto. Couldn't stand us southerners down here. Thought we were all Moors. Took the kids with her.'

I finished my drink. The man was depressing me. I didn't know why. The seediness of those eyes maybe.

'I've got to go,' I said. 'I don't want to get retired early.'

'You're not interested in what's happened to Lourenco?'

'You mean, after three days, he's missing or what?'

'He used to come in here every day.'

'Have you been to his office?'

'Course I have, it's right across the street, second floor. No answer.'

'Maybe he went away.'

'He didn't have the money to go away.'

'Call me if he shows up,' I said, giving him a card. 'And call me if he doesn't show up by the end of the week.'

I didn't wait for his reply. I had to get out of there before the neon split my head open. I walked up to Luisa's apartment. She was out. I went to the Policia Judiciaria building. No Carlos. I took some aspirin and began to feel stronger. Abilio Gomes put his head in and told me I looked like death. I watched him disappear down the corridor. I went into his office and opened up the Teresa Oliveira file on his desk. It was nearly the first detail on the front page. She was found dead in a black Mercedes E series 2 50 diesel, registration 14 08 PR. I closed the file.

I walked down to the Avenida da Liberdade to get some air in my lungs. It wasn't a pleasant walk. The traffic was heavy and the pollution high in the afternoon heat. I carried on down to the Pensao Nuno and up the same strip of lino, which must have been a mid-seventies vintage, up the same dark flights of stairs, which must have been eighteenth-century, to the one-metre bar of neon over the reception, the most modern thing in the place. Jorge Raposo was still there, smoking over a different newspaper. I put my hand on the counter.

'Looking for Nuno?' he asked, without looking up.

'I've heard that one before.'

'Inspector,' he said, not pleased to see me. 'It's you.'

'Your memory for faces is coming back.'

He sucked his teeth and considered that.

'Only the ones I have to remember. Troublemakers for instance.'

'Those three kids who were in here Friday lunchtime.'

'You see what I mean, Inspector,' he sighed, his eyelids closing and only returning halfway.

'Did anybody come out after them?'

'Like three went up and four came down,' he said, his shoulders beginning to shake with fake mirth. 'It takes a little longer than that, so I understand.'

I gave him a long look. He held it, untroubled.

'How many times a year do you get hit, Jorge?'

'In the last quarter of a century? Not once.'

'And before that?'

'The police force was the same, just the uniforms were different and the methods. You know-not so sensitive.'

I nipped round the back of the counter and drove my knee into the side of his thigh. He went down hard on the strip of dead carpet he had behind there. The cigarette left his fingers. I picked it up and stubbed it out.

'A bit of nostalgia for you, Jorge,' I said. 'Now when you wake up every morning you're going to say "Shit, Inspector Coelho might come and see me today. I'd better start remembering how it happened with that young girl who came in here on Friday lunchtime, walked out and got herself killed four hours later." Your memory'll have an open line to pain and just when you think you've got over it and you can walk up the stairs one at a time, I'll be back and do the other one.'

I went up to the room and looked around. The bed had been moved back to the wall. That was the only change. I sat on it and smoked, but nothing came to me. I checked myself in the mirror. Still not good.

Jorge was lying where he'd fallen behind his counter grunting. He looked up at me from the corner of his face. He squeezed his eyes shut.

'Keep trying, Jorge,' I said and left.

I called Luisa. She was in. I called Olivia to tell her I'd be late. I took a bus up to Saldanha and walked down to Luisa's apartment. The stairs felt long and hard. She let me in and sat me down with a glass of ice tea. I told her about the accident. She sat on the chair with her knees up holding on to her ankles, unblinking.

'I had a little note,' she said, when I'd finished. 'It was under the windscreen wiper on my car.'

She reached over to the table and handed it to me. It was a sheet of A4 paper. Written in red felt-tip pen was the word PUTA.

'How daring,' I said, unimpressed.

I told her about my conversation with Narciso that morning and how he'd moved me off the case.

'They know about me?'

'They saw me going into this building and they know your car now, don't they?'

'But you're not sure who "they" are?'

'I wouldn't say it's a concerted effort,' I said. 'If it was, I'd probably have been suspended by now. I think we're just talking about certain elements in the police force who have been told that influential people are not happy about how my investigation has developed.'

'All this because of Catarina?'

'She had a full sexual history. There are plenty of people out there who want to have sex with young girls. Some are persuasive, others offer money and there are a few who just take it. Catarina had been sodomized. Even in this permissive age, sodomizing a young girl is a shameful act. The thought of appearing in court on that kind of charge could have been enough for her assailant to kill her. There are some big men circling in this case. Her father, you know. And he's connected to the Minister of Internal Administration. Dr Oliveira was having a drink with him when his daughter was killed and having dinner with him when his wife committed suicide.'

'Teresa Oliveira committed suicide?'

'Sunday night… the loneliest time.'

It upset her and she had to get up and pace the apartment floors. I smoked and sipped ice tea, no closer, after talking it through with Luisa, to knowing who was applying pressure from where. Did it emanate from Narciso or was he just a channel? She kissed me to give some reassurance. I kissed her back because it tasted good. She thumped into the chair again.

'And I had some good news today, too.'

'You don't have to do your doctorate any more?'

'Not that good,' she said. 'My father's offered to let me launch this magazine he's had on the blocks for the last two months.'

'I thought you wanted to publish books.'

'I do, but this lets me burst on to the Lisbon publishing scene, which will be good for the book-publishing business. There's always more interest in a new magazine and I'll get a lot of attention…'

'But…?'

'I have to come up with the launch idea. What's going to make this magazine stand out from the rest.'

'And your father couldn't find the answer?'

'So he's made it sound like a present in that I get all this free publicity, but there's just this little Gordian knot I have to untie.'

'You need a good old-fashioned sex scandal. People caught with their trousers down.'

'Something a little more serious than that, Ze. It's a business magazine for the Iberian Peninsula not a tabloid rag for the hairdresser's.'

'You didn't say. Had I known…'

'What?'

'I'd have suggested a businessman with his trousers down.'

'Nobody's going to have their trousers down in any magazine I publish.'

'Then you might have circulation problems because that, as far as I know, is all people are interested in these days.'

'You're depressing me.'

'Then let's drink to the rise of frivolity.'

It was close to 9.00 p.m. and still light, with the days getting longer and the time shorter, as I walked down through the blocks of flats from Paco de Arcos station. A siren was blaring and men were running to the Bombeiros Voluntarios building. Moments later two fire engines blasted out into the street, leaving me with the impression that nothing ever stops. There are no blank spaces any more to colour in at your leisure.

I hovered at the street corner, contemplating a beer with Antonio Borrego. I was earlier than expected. I'd felt too tired to have dinner with Luisa, but I'd come alive on the journey back. I needed a shower first. Inside the house I knew I wasn't alone. The cat was sitting on a chair in the darkening kitchen, paws and tail neatly tucked away. She closed her yellow eyes at me and I left her to contemplate her night's killing.

I went up the stairs and stood at the top and thought I heard the faintest sound of someone in pain. There were no lights on. I walked the strip of carpet to Olivia's room and opened the door straight into her wide-open eyes and mouth just beginning to gape with horror. I shook my head and stepped back but the image kept coming at me. She was lying on her back, her bare legs wrapped around Carlos' rib cage, her ankles crossed and resting on his buttocks. He loomed over her, naked, board-straight on outstretched arms. His head snapped round. I slammed the door shut and reeled back two small steps as if I'd been hit in the face.

And then, like someone who has been hit in the face, I was furious. Mad enough that my eyeballs pulsated. I reached for the door handle, the blood thumped in my forearm, as a tremendous hammering started on the front door. I gripped the door handle and felt it gripped from the other side. The hammering at the front door didn't stop. I thought of the fire brigade, my mind going for an odd link.

I ran down the stairs. The cat had vacated the kitchen chair. I ripped open the front door. There was a man I knew, but not in this context, standing with six men behind him and a van behind them.

'Inacio?' I said, my mind in pieces now, holding out my hand.

'I'm sorry, Inspector,' he said, ignoring the hand. 'But this is business.'

'Narcotics business? Here?' I said, hearing movements up the stairs behind me.

'That's right,' he said. 'I'm still with Narcotics.'

'But you said this was business. I don't…'

'We've come to search the house,' he said, holding out a warrant, which I didn't read. 'You know a local fisherman called Faustinho Trindade?'

'I know Faustinho,' I said, looking through the warrant now. 'He was…'

'He's a well-known drug-smuggler. He was seen going into this house. You were seen leaving with him and going down to the boat club.'

'Search the house, Inacio. Search the house. Take your time,' I said.

Inacio stepped into the hall and gave the men their instructions. Two went back to the van and returned with large tool boxes. Olivia and Carlos met them on their way down the stairs. Inacio directed us into the kitchen. The three of us sat around the table with an agente standing over us while the rest thundered around the house. Olivia engaged me in some direct eye contact.

'Who are these guys?' she asked in English.

'Narcotics agents. They're searching the house. If you've got any in your room you'd better tell me now.'

'No, I haven't,' she said, unblinking.

'Are you sure?'

'I'm sure.'

Only then did I become aware of each blood cell, every platelet in my veins. My stomach went into free fall. The bag of grass in the attic room.

Carlos looked like a dog who'd regretted eating some green meat from the bin. There was a loud cracking noise from above. I asked the agente what was going on.

'Floorboards, I imagine,' he said. 'Empty your pockets on the table.'

We emptied our pockets. Carlos', I noted, contained 4000 escudos, some change, four condoms, which I was glad about, a pen, his ID card and his Policia Judiciaria card.

'I didn't know you were a cop,' said the agente looking at Carlos' card. 'Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?'

Nobody said anything. The agente shrugged. He picked up Olivia's card and measured the birthdate against Carlos'.

'Maybe not,' he said.

They were in the house for forty minutes. They found nothing. Inacio apologized and this time shook my hand which was running with sweat. The men left. I stood in the darkened hallway and looked into the lit kitchen. Olivia and Carlos were standing together like some movie couple who'd survived a hurricane. I pointed a finger at Carlos.

'You can leave now,' I said. 'Go on! Get out! Fuck off out of here!'

He came towards me and slipped out of the door. I had nothing to say to my little girl. Nothing to say to my daughter. I went up the stairs one at a time all the way to the attic room. I turned on the table lamp. I sat at the desk. I opened the drawer. No bag of grass. No papers. I took out my late wife's photograph which was face-up and not how I'd left her. I closed the drawer. I put her photograph on the desk facing me. I felt betrayed, defiled, rifled, my world shaken up so that I was reduced to the one constant-the unflagging image of my dead wife.

Half an hour passed and three ships in the night.

Olivia appeared, reflected in the dark panes of the window.

'Your bag of grass is outside in the bougainvillea… and the papers.'

'You've been in here before?' I said, tired, not angry any more.

'After school… just to look at Mummy,' she said. 'But I don't talk to her like you do.'

'You think a year is a long time, but it isn't,' I said.

'I sat here the other day and wondered what it would be like to have her back… whether I would want to have her back.'

'Wouldn't you?'

'I've never stopped thinking "Mum would be interested in that, I'll tell her when I get home",' she said. 'And then I get home, and there's nobody here and there's never going to be anybody here. Absolutely never. And that's when I miss her. I want to have her back, but it would have to be as it was before. This gap. This one year without her has changed everything.'

I nodded, slightly exaggerated, like a drunkard. I lit a cigarette, Olivia took it. I lit another and played with the tin seashell ashtray.

'Loss is like a shrapnel wound,' I said, 'where the piece of metal's got stuck in a place where the surgeons daren't go, so they decide to leave it. It's painful at first, horribly painful, so that you wonder whether you can live with it. But then the body grows around it, until it doesn't hurt any more. Not like it used to. But every now and again there are these twinges when you're not ready for them, and you realize it's still there and it's always going to be there. It's a part of you. A still, hard point inside.'

She kissed the top of my head. I put an arm around her hips. I put the photograph back in the drawer.

'I've met somebody,' I said.

'I know.'

'Do you?'

'That business with the telephone on Sunday. The way you smelt when you came back and… you might not know it, but you're happier.'

'I'm not sure how to do it… this getting to know someone again.'

'What's she like?'

'I couldn't tell you yet,' I said. 'It's been a rocket ride so far. She's different to your mother, but she's like her too in the important ways. She's a good person, a real person. Someone you can trust.'

She stroked my head.

'Like Carlos,' she said.

I resisted a reply, but I didn't deny it.

'I'm angry with him. I'm not going to tell you otherwise. If Inacio hadn't turned up…'

'Why?'

'He knows what he's doing. He knows your vulnerability. He knows he's ten years older than you. He even knows it's against the law. He met you on a Sunday morning and by Tuesday evening he's in bed with you… he abused…'

'He didn't know what he was doing. I've already talked to him about Mum. What's ten years? The law's stupid. And so what? Mum told me that you two were in bed with each other inside a week and I knew I wanted him more than anything else in my life. And that's what I did. He did not seduce me. He didn't abuse anything. He's… he's got something. He's got something that all those fancy kids I go to school with haven't.'

'What? What's he got…?' I said and stopped the second half of that sentence just in time… that I haven't.

'That's the point, Dad,' she said, running a hand through my hair.

'What is? You're being as cryptic as your mother used to be.'

'I don't know… but I want to. The thrill of that mental connection, remember.'