A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter XLI

Monday, 23rd November 1998, Palacio da Justica, Rua Marques da Fronteira, Lisbon I've never wanted fame. If I'd wanted to be famous I wouldn't have been a policeman. Fame has always struck me as a perverse form of prostitution. You perform, or just appear, and in return receive enormous attention, an uncomplicated love. Nobody knows the famous and the famous know nobody and yet the intensity of emotion, the wholesale adoration is bigger, more impressive than any individual's love. For me the greatest invasion of privacy was to have to accept the fame. An inability to accept it would have meant that fame had changed me and for the worse. It was the compulsory enjoyment that I couldn't stand.

I became famous. I was a hero. I was the little man from down the Linha, the one who'd shaved his beard off for charity (see how the smallest thing was changed for my benefit), took on the establishment and brought them to justice. The media loved me, but would they have loved me as much with a beard, no new bridgework and fifteen extra kilos? I learnt the value of a good suit and a permanent smile.

The feeding frenzy was ferocious. The River Tagus boiled pink with the blood of the past. Miguel da Costa Rodrigues' real identity of Manuel Abrantes, the much feared Inspector da Policia in PIDE, who ran a network of hundreds of bufos, informers, who permeated the lives of thousands of ordinary people, and who was directly responsible for the suffering of many of the unfortunates in the Caxias prison, convulsed the nation. Current-affairs programmes and talk shows bloomed for weeks as people aired their memories of oppression, persecution and torture-the frying pans of Tarrafal on Cape Verde, the bull pens of Aljube, the flooding dungeons of the Fort of Caxias. But this angle was short-lived and, when the programmers saw the soaps reasserting themselves at the top of the league, they realized their mistake-people didn't want history. They wanted personal history.

They quickly found Jorge Raposo in his house of joy, and in a half-hour special he reassembled the PIDE infiltration of General Machedo's entourage, the trap set in the Badajoz churchyard, the killing of the General's secretary and the summary execution of the General by Manuel Abrantes. It was spell-binding television. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I got up close to see if I could find the familiar old ruined Jorge that I'd known, but his studio make-up was impenetrable, his new double-breasted suit as smooth and hermetic as armour plate. I could only imagine his crusty heels encased in their brand-new loafers. As a result of the programme the Spanish government announced an investigation into the affair as it had taken place on Spanish soil.

They found me. The heroic widower fighting against odds that I didn't recognize. They found Luisa, the committed teacher who'd become the fearless publisher and the hero's lover. They found Olivia, the hero's daughter who'd cut the tie that had given the investigation its biggest break, the new fashion designer who might have been backed, personally, by Miguel da Costa Rodrigues.

Finally, and perhaps the most damaging development for my privacy, was that, with the publication of the supporting documents for the origination of the gold, there was an immediate freeze of all the Banco de Oceano e Rocha's assets. This was followed by a raid on their offices, including the old offices on the Rua do Ouro in the Baixa, where two of the original bars of gold were found in an old wall safe. The Policia Judiciaria leapt at the chance of a publicity coup and my face appeared on the front of all the newspapers, flanked by the two bars of Nazi gold. In at least one publication appeared the legend Inspector Dourado -the Golden Inspector. This was followed by the announcement of a full government investigation into the origins, funding and affairs of the bank since its inception.

At this point I thought I was going to lose control of my life completely, but my luck turned. There were further revelations about the financial scandal that had plagued the companies which had built Expo 98 and the developers of the upmarket residential area around the site. The spotlight shifted. The media reloaded. But the Zeitgeist was the same-fat cats, acting with impunity.

By the end of June I'd been promoted. I didn't get a new job because one didn't exist at the time. I got a pay rise, which I didn't need because for weeks I wasn't allowed to buy a drink or pay for a meal. All bills were settled by others. More uncomplicated love.

I was given a secretary, temporarily, to handle all my calls which meant I hardly spoke to anyone who wasn't a journalist or a TV producer. I had little time. I did no work. The PJ rode high on the success of the investigation. I was envied and despised by my colleagues and welcomed into the brotherhood of my superiors.

It was a relief, after intense government pressure, when the trial finally took place, in record time in the middle of November. The prosecution took it seriously. I was endlessly coached and rehearsed. The defence built their case on Catarina's history: that although she was a schoolgirl from a respectable family, she was nothing more than a common prostitute and drug-user. They concentrated on her voluntarily getting into the car and her willingness to have straight sex (there was no apparent violence against her), the fact that no murder weapon was found, the lack of motive for the killing, there being no witnesses who saw the defendant hitting the girl, stripping her, loading her into the boot of the car or dumping her on the beach at Paco de Arcos. They puffed Miguel Rodrigues' good character, his charity work and that of his wife and the impeccable upbringing of his brother's daughter.

The prosecution's case hinged on whether the defendant had sodomized the girl or not. That was his motive for murder. Through my testimony, the initial interview with Miguel Rodrigues and the photographs of his bruised chest, they not only cast doubt on the veracity of anything that the defendant might have said, but also proved beyond reasonable doubt that he had sodomized Catarina Oliveira. That broke the back of the case. There was no murder weapon because the murderer had killed with his own hands, by strangling the girl. He wasn't seen stripping her, but ultimately the girl's clothes had been found in his possession. He wasn't seen dumping the girl, but it was clearly established that he was in Paco de Arcos, had left there at night and would therefore have had the opportunity. They scythed his good reputation to the ground.

On Monday 23rd November at 16.00 the judge handed down his verdict. Miguel da Costa Rodrigues, also known as Manuel Abrantes, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

I was invited by the Minister of Internal Administration to the Jockey Club, to celebrate with some editors, journalists, TV producers, presenters and high-ranking police officers. When I declined they sent Narciso after me. It was then that I realized why he was my boss. This was his territory. I was a stray cat. A photograph was taken of Luisa and me at the champagne reception and after half an hour Narciso let me know that I could leave.

We drove out to Paco de Arcos. Olivia had already eaten and was watching television at my sister's house. I took Luisa to A Bandeira Vermelha and a cheerful Antonio Borrego served us his dish of the day. It was one of his favourite Alentejano concoctions- ensopado de borrego -a large tureen of lamb broth with neck chops and breast stewed until the meat has all but parted from the bone. Nobody cooked it like him. He opened a bottle of red Borba Reserva '94 and left: us to it.

I sipped the wine and ate some cheese and olives. I didn't feel like talking even. Luisa was annoyed with me for dragging her away from the party. To her it was an opportunity to network in her new role as fearless publisher, and she would have preferred to stay.

'Eventually you'll tell me what the problem is,' she said, lighting a cigarette in time for the arrival of the main course.

'I'm depressed.'

'Is that a post-trial policeman thing, like post-natal depression is for women?'

'I don't think so.'

'Maybe you've got post-event blues… now you've got to get back to real life.'

'I want to get back to real life.'

'I don't have to tell you all the reasons why you shouldn't be depressed. Promotion. Pay rise. Pinnacle of your career. A bad man put away for life.'

'None of that matters. What matters is being here, eating Antonio's ensopado de borrego, drinking red wine with you. I was not built for drinking champagne with arseholes. This is the best thing…'

'The best thing?'

'All right, we've…'

'Relax, Ze. I'm teasing.'

I sucked some more lamb bones, drank more red wine. We finished the meal. Antonio cleared everything away and brought two glasses of aguardente and two bicas. We smoked. Luisa refused to coax me out of my mood. The bar emptied. Antonio loaded the dishwasher. Tyres ripped along the Marginal. A bitter wind moved through the trees of the park.

'He didn't do it,' I said.

'What are we talking about now?' asked Luisa.

'The reason why I'm depressed,' I said, 'is that Miguel Rodrigues or Manuel Abrantes did not murder Catarina Oliveira.'

'How long have you been thinking this?'

'Do you want the truth or the media version?'

'Don't be a chato, Ze.'

'No, you're right. I'm being a chato to the last person I should be a chato to. I thought he didn't do it, from the moment I found the girl's clothes in his study.'

'Which was amongst the most damning pieces of evidence in the whole trial.'

'Exactly… with those clothes in his possession he became the stripper of the body and therefore the most likely murderer.'

'And you think somebody else put the clothes there?'

'Two things. Miguel Rodrigues was supposedly harassing me on and off the case. I wasn't getting the information on the car from Traffic. I was taken off the job. I was invaded by Narcotics. I was pushed under a tram. If he was feeling the heat that much, why didn't he get rid of one of the most damaging pieces of evidence against him? And the second thing. Why weren't the girl's knickers with the…'

It was at this point that the parasites got out of control, and the most virulent and debilitating of the diseases of the famous ran through me like a bad case of malaria. I got a large, ugly dose of paranoia.

Nobody knows the famous, the famous know nobody.

'With the what?' asked Luisa, who'd reared back at the same time. 'Why are you looking at me like that?'

'How am I looking at you? I don't mean to…'

'You're looking at me as if you're looking into me, as if you're looking into the back of my head.'

'It's nothing. I don't know what I'm thinking any more.'

It wasn't true. I did know what I'd been thinking. I'd been thinking that I'd got a lot of harassment, right up to the moment when I landed Miguel Rodrigues, and having landed him under those difficult circumstances, I had to find a way of getting public opinion on my side. And what happened? My girlfriend of one week is an expert on the Salazar Economy, she's already been looking at the Banco de Oceano e Rocha, she produces the name Klaus Felsen, she has a father in magazine publishing, who's looking for a big story for a launch issue that's ready to go. And when the story broke it was all so easy. Narciso was suddenly as dreamy as a pastel de nata from the Antiga Confeitaria in Belem. And I was desperately hanging on to the mane of a bare-back media stallion, galloping across the open plains.

It is the nature of paranoia that things which had seemed so right at the time suddenly become inflamed with suspicion. And once I'd started thinking like that, other thoughts began to assert themselves. Who had given me Luisa Madrugada's number? Dr Aquilino Oliveira.

Like pure quinine for a bad malaria attack, there's only one cure for paranoia-the absolute, undiluted truth. The arranged truth, even though there is some justice in it, will never be good enough, will never absolve the most important people.

I was sick and I had to have the one and only cure.

If, then, I could have thought beyond the tight circles in my head, I would have realized that, in reaching for the pure truth, I was going to disrupt the arranged one. If it had been arranged, then it had been arranged by somebody. Somebody powerful and somebody vindictive, who would not take kindly to the disruption.

I looked at Luisa again, trying not to dig under the surface. Antonio Borrego, the only man still letting me pay for my food and drink, put the bill down between us.