A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter VII

Saturday, 13th June 199-, Dr Aquilino Oliveira's house, Cascais We were shown into the sitting room which, judging by the furnishings, was not Dr Oliveira's side of the house. There was natural light in the room, fancy ceramics and no dark corners of books. The art on the walls was the sort that demanded comment unless you happened to be a police inspector from Lisbon in which case your opinion didn't matter. I took a seat on one of the two caramel leather sofas. Above the fireplace was a portrait of a skeletal figure in an armchair as seen through lashes of paint. It was disturbing. You had to be disturbed to live with it.

Under the thick plate glass of the coffee table was Senhora Oliveira's more human side. Magazines like Caras, Casa, Maxima and the Spanish?Hola!. There were plants in the room and an arrangement of lilies but just as the eye relaxed it came across a dark metal figure scrabbling out of the primordial slime or a terracotta head, open-mouthed, screaming at the ceiling. The safest place to look was the floor which was parquet with Persian rugs.

Dr Oliveira showed his wife in. She was probably the same height as her daughter but her hair gave her another ten centimetres. It was big, pumped-up and blonde. Her tanned face looked tight, still puffy from barbiturate sleep and she'd tried to mask it with heavy eye make-up. Her lips were pink and she'd added an extra dark line to the rim of her mouth. She wore a cream blouse and a bra that created cleavage where none naturally existed. Her short silk skirt was five shades off matching her blouse and she was chained with gold about the waist. We shook hands. The jewellery felt crusty.

'We'd like to talk to your wife alone, Senhor Doutor.'

He was going to make a stand, a man in his own home, but the side of his wife's face said something to him which I missed and he left the room. We sat. Carlos took out his notebook.

'When did you last see your daughter, Dona Oliveira?'

'Yesterday morning. I took her to school.'

'What was she wearing?'

'A white T-shirt, a mini-skirt, light blue with a yellow check. Those big clumpy shoes they all wear these days studded with rhinestones. She also had a thin leather lace choker with a cheap stone strung on it.'

'No tights in this weather?'

'No, just bra and pants.'

'Any particular make?'

She didn't answer but squeezed her bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger and then rubbed them together to disperse the grease.

'Did you hear the question, Dona Oliveira?'

'I just…'

Carlos leaned forward and the sofa creaked underneath so he stopped halfway. Senhora Oliveira blinked her slightly enclosed brown eyes.

'Sloggi,' she said.

'Did something else occur to you then, Dona Oliveira?'

'A horrible thought… when you asked about the underwear.'

'Your husband's already told us that Catarina has been sexually active for some years.'

Carlos sat back. She dabbed at her smudged lower lip with a finger.

'Dona Oliveira?'

'Was there a question, Inspector Coelho?'

'I wondered if you'd tell us what's on your mind, it might help.'

'It's every mother's fear that their daughter might get raped and killed,' she said, automatically, as if that hadn't been what she was thinking.

'How have you been getting on with your daughter over the past couple of years?'

'He's told you…' she started, and held herself back.

'What exactly?' I asked.

She darted a look at Carlos who didn't help.

'How we haven't been getting on.'

'Mothers and daughters don't always…'

'…compete,' she finished for me.

'Compete?' I asked, and she picked up on my surprise.

'I don't think this will help you find Catarina.'

'I'd like to know more about her psychological state. If she was likely to get herself into a difficult situation. She's a confident girl. That could have been the start of the…'

'Why do you say she's confident?'

'She fronts a band… that needs something.'

'It wasn't a very successful band,' she said, and switched. 'Yes, it's true, she can appear older than she is.'

'Is that what you meant by competing?'

Our eyes connected but she couldn't hold mine for more than a few seconds. She seemed to steady herself against the coffee table, rapping it with her ringed fingers.

'I didn't… I'm wondering what he's told you now,' she said, glancing at the door.

'Just tell me what happened.'

'Did he tell you I found Catarina in bed with my brother?'

'Why would you see that as competitive?'

'He's thirty-two years old.'

'But he's your brother.'

'I don't see any reason to be discussing middle-age female paranoia with someone investigating my daughter's disappearance. The fact is if she can get him she can…'

'Your husband said that too.'

'This is hopeless.'

'Maybe your brother's the one to help us with…'

'I don't know why he has to do this… now of all times.'

'He?'

'I didn't find Catarina in bed with my brother. She was with my lover,' she said, coolly, now that she'd given up the pretence.

'Do you still see this man?'

'Are you insane, Inspector?'

'And your daughter?'

Silence.

'I don't know,' she said, after a while.

'I'll need to speak to him,' I said.

Carlos handed her the notebook. She scribbled fiercely and finished with a pile-driving dot that must have gone through to the cardboard.

'How did your husband find out?'

She pushed up her chin like a boxer who could take anything now. Truth, part truth and lies passed behind her eyes.

'You can imagine the atmosphere in this house… between me and Catarina. My husband talked to her. He's good with words. He wrung it out of her.'

'Did she seduce your lover… Paulo Branco?'

'The delicacy of young flesh is difficult to resist so I'm told.' She said it in a way that particularly pained her.

'She was a drug-user. Your husband knows about hashish. Were you aware of her taking anything stronger?'

'I wouldn't know the difference. I've never taken drugs.'

'But you know how you feel when you've taken a sleeping pill, Senhora Oliveira?'

'I go to sleep.'

'In the morning, I mean.'

She blinked.

'Doesn't it give you an insulated feeling, the real world kept at a distance? Did you ever notice Catarina in that state or perhaps the opposite, nervous, hyperactive, wired… I think they call it?'

'I really don't know,' she said.

'Does that mean you didn't notice or…'

'It means that, of late, I haven't cared.'

It was a long silence in which the unheard air conditioning made its presence felt.

'How did she get her money?' I asked.

'I gave her five thousand escudos a week.'

'What about clothes.'

'I used to buy her clothes until… until last year,' she said.

'Did you buy the clothes she was wearing?'

'Not the skirt. I wouldn't have bought her anything that short. It barely covered her knickers but then that's the fashion so…'

'Was she doing all right at school?'

'I didn't hear anything to the contrary.'

'No attendance problems?'

'We would have been told, I'm sure. Whenever I dropped her off she walked in there like a lamb.'

'One minute,' I said, and left the room.

I found Dr Oliveira in his study smoking a cigar and reading the Diario de Notiocias. I told him I wanted to break the news to his wife and asked him if he'd prefer to do it. He said he'd leave it to me. We went back into the room. Senhora Oliveira was talking animatedly to Carlos. She was sitting sideways on the sofa and her skirt had crawled up her legs. Carlos was as stiff as his hair. She saw us and froze. Her husband sat next to her.

'At a quarter-to-six this morning, Dona Oliveira,' I started, and her eyes looked into me avid and horrified. 'The body of your daughter, Catarina Oliveira, was found on the beach in Paco de Arcos. She was dead. I am very sorry.'

She said nothing. She stared into me hard enough to see the texture of my organs. Her husband took her hand and she absentmindedly removed it from his grip.

'Agente Carlos Pinto and myself are conducting the investigation into your daughter's death.'

'Her death?' she said, astonished and coughed out an appalled laugh.

'We are very sorry for your loss. I apologize for not telling you earlier but there were certain questions I had to ask which needed a clarity of mind.'

Her husband made another attempt on the hand. She left it there this time. She was speared rigid by what I'd said.

'We believe that she had been murdered elsewhere and her body taken to the beach in Paco de Arcos and left there.'

'Catarina has been murdered?' she said, incredulous, as if this was what happened to riffraff on television only. She slumped back into the sofa, stunned. She tried to swallow but couldn't, couldn't gulp down the dreadful news. I realized we weren't going to get any further today. We shook hands and left. At the garden gate we heard a long unrestrained wail from the house.

'I'm not sure I understood all of that,' said Carlos.

'It was… very disappointing.'

'I thought it was…'

'It was very disappointing for someone of your youth and optimism to have to look at that sort of behaviour.'

'Why did we have to know anything about this affair with the brother or the lover… what was Dr Oliveira's game with all that?'

'That was what was so disappointing,' I said. 'He was using us… he was using our investigation into his daughter's murder to punish his wife's infidelity. What we saw in there was a master class in humiliation. Now you've observed the intelligence of the lawyer.'

'But the wife,' said Carlos, agitated, 'the wife… when you left the room she didn't ask one question about her daughter's disappearance. Not one. She chatted. She asked me things about the stupid paintings, how long I'd been in the Policia Judiciaria, did I live in Cascais…'

'Yes, well, there were a couple of things about those two in there. First, Dr Oliveira kept a photograph of his previous family on his desk while Catarina was up on a bookshelf with some dog-eared paperbacks. The second was that both of them had brown eyes.'

'I didn't notice,' he said writing it down in his notebook.

'And brown eyes plus brown eyes don't often make blue, and Catarina Oliveira had blue eyes.'