Gorgonzola’s eyes narrowed at thoughts of dessert. The last I saw of her was the waving tip of her tail as she disappeared among the shadowy fronds.
I slung the rucksack onto my shoulder and headed off up the road to the little bar at the corner that stayed open till the last customer left. I chose a quiet spot at the back of the small courtyard and ordered a poncha to assist in the thinking process. Half an hour later, I still hadn’t worked out what to do about the drugs in the fish market. An anonymous tip-off about drugs in the fish market wouldn’t be acted on before Monday morning. So to get action I’d have to identify myself. And then the comandante would view it as a challenge to her authority that I’d been brazen enough to return against her express orders. It would be like a red rag to a bull. I sipped disconsolately at a second poncha—
Suddenly I had something else to worry about. Someone was watching me, I was sure of it. In my line of work you don’t last long if that basic survival instinct is not highly developed. The trick is to surreptitiously identify who is taking that special interest. If the surveillance comes from behind, you’re in trouble, but my chair was against the wall of the small courtyard so that was to my advantage.
I took another sip, put the glass down, and gazed vaguely ahead, chewing my lip as if deep in thought. That way, I’d avoid eye contact. Only two of the tables directly in front of me were now occupied. At one, three young men were slouched over an array of empty glasses and bottles; at the other, an old man in a battered black hat was gazing morosely into his drink, not taking the slightest interest in me. But somebody was. I could sense it. That unsettling feeling of being watched was, if anything, stronger.
With my elbow I nudged at a beer mat till it fell to the ground. I reached down to scrabble for it and as I slowly straightened up, studied the tables to my right. Nobody was looking in my direction.
Hrmm. The cough came from beside my left shoulder. As a shadow fell across the table, I was conscious of the stale smell given off by a chain-smoker’s clothes. I swung round. My eyes focused on a pale-blue shirt with a thin red stripe, and flicked up to an all too familiar face and bushy moustache.
‘Yes, senhor?’ I said, my face betraying no sign of recognition. Would he follow my lead and permit me to remain under cover, under wraps?
An interminable pause, then he said slowly, ‘Disculpe, senhora. Excuse, please. I think you are someone I know.’
‘Many people mistake me for my sister.’ My smile was open and innocent.
‘Ah.’ He pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘I am a friend of your sister. Perhaps you can tell me what she is doing now?’ He put up a hand to stroke his moustache and hide his amusement.
I leant towards him, lowering my voice, though no one appeared to be taking any interest in us or in our conversation. ‘She has a problem, senhor, a big problem. You see.…’
Later, fully awake, I lay in bed gazing at the strips of moonlight slipping silently through the louvre bars onto the tiled floor. Dead to the world, Gorgonzola snored softly near my feet, twitching as she chased an elusive dessert through the shadowy banana jungle. Would Raimundo act on my tip-off? All the while that I’d been telling him about my visit to Câmara de Lobos, he’d puffed thoughtfully at one of those awful cigarettes and said nothing.
‘… and so,’ I’d finished, ‘I’m certain that the courier will come some time today, before the market opens on Monday.’
He’d stood up. ‘Tell your sister to take care,’ he’d said and walked away without a backward glance.
I shifted restlessly under the thin cotton sheet, causing G to stir in protest. Could I count on him? Perhaps he’d feel it his duty to tell the comandante about my return…. Brain too active for sleep, I lay there watching the infinitesimal slide of the moonlight bars across the tiles.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Twenty-four hours later, in the early hours of Monday morning, I was again watching the play of moonlight on shutters, but this time I was crouched in a derelict two-storey building just down the street from Gonçalves’ flat. I’d gained entry to the building, as had others before me, by prising aside some loose boarding at a downstairs window. Trying not to breathe in the nose-wrinkling odour of stale urine and wet rot, I’d picked my way to the stairs through the assorted detritus such places attract – beer cans, bottles, syringes, discarded clothing. Now from my position at a window on the upper floor I had an angled view of the entrance to the block of flats opposite. As before, his scooter was parked by the rubbish bin.
Some time after midnight I’d watched Gonçalves weave his unsteady way home from the nearby bar. On Saturday night I’d seen him come out of the flats within an hour of my taking up surveillance, but this time I was having no luck. Unfortunately for me, he seemed to be sleeping the sleep of the unjust instead of puttering off on some nefarious business, giving me the opportunity to search his flat and maybe find something to implicate Dorothy Winterton. But as the minutes passed, it seemed increasingly unlikely that I’d be given this opportunity.
I eased myself into a more comfortable position, envying Gorgonzola, probably now stretched out on my bed after her nocturnal stalk through the banana plantation. Before I’d left I’d opened a tin, but she’d made it clear with a disparaging sniff at the bowl, that snack-on-the-hoof activated the taste buds more than snack-on-the-plate.
In the street outside nothing moved, not even a stray cat in the shadows. In Gonçalves’ block of flats the windows were dark except for one where a faint glow behind thin curtains showed that someone apart from myself was still awake. Though to tell the truth, I wasn’t fully awake: last night’s lack of sleep was taking its toll. I’d lain in bed worrying most of the night and it hadn’t solved a thing. I still didn’t know what action Raimundo had taken over the drug stash at Câmara de Lobos. Or if a trap been set for the drug courier. Or if the comandante now knew of my presence in Madeira. I had a sudden depressing thought: Raimundo might have decided it would be more prudent to forget all about our meeting. What if…?
I woke to a flurry of rain against the window and the steady drip … drip … drip of water through a gaping hole in the lath and plaster ceiling. No helpful moonlight now to aid my surveillance of the dark street, just the yellow glow from the metal lamps fixed at fifty-yard intervals to the buildings. Between the faint pools of light everything was in deep shadow. One of the lamps illuminated the rubbish bin and the scooter still in position beside it. I heaved a sigh of relief. I hadn’t missed him while I was asleep unless … unless he’d gone off on foot. There was no way of telling. Oh well, I’d just have to—
I leant forward. A man was zigzagging unsteadily from one pool of light to another, a sailing ship battered by squalls, tacking to harbour. His woollen Madeiran hat was pulled low, practical earflaps down as protection against the driving rain, internal warmth supplied by the contents of a bottle that glinted as he lifted it to his lips. Idly I watched him weave his way to the doorway of the flats, bounce off the jamb on his first attempt to negotiate the entrance and stand there, swaying gently as he negotiated his key into the lock. He lurched inside and I settled back to my boring vigil….
For the second time I lost the battle against sleep…. It was the sound of an engine stuttering into life and the receding high-pitched buzz of a two-stroke speeding away that jolted me awake. Rubbing my eyes and yawning, I knelt and peered through the grimy glass. There was an empty space beside the rubbish bin where Gonçalves’ scooter had been parked. Now was my chance. I got stiffly to my feet and made my way down the stairs and out into the street.
In the doorway of Gonçalves’ block of flats out came my latex gloves, a second-nature precautionary measure against those incriminating fingerprints. All I had to do now was find the right apartment. A metal grid hanging by one screw on the jamb had, in more prosperous days, held the names of the householders, but now any names in the spaces were defaced and illegible. I wasn’t too worried. Gonçalves’ name would be on his door to avoid the disaster of an illi
cit consignment being delivered to a neighbour. With the picklock I had less trouble gaining entrance to the flats than the man in the Madeiran hat, and moments later I was walking towards the stairs. My pencil torch shone on peeling walls of an indeterminate colour and a stained and littered passageway. The wet footprints of the drunk in the Madeiran hat petered out as I climbed. I didn’t stumble over his prostrate body, so he’d obviously made it to wherever he was going.
It was on the second floor that the narrow beam picked out Gonçalves’ name scrawled on a torn piece of card taped to a door surprisingly strong and in good repair compared with the others I’d passed. This door with its intricate mechanism designed to safeguard the secrets of a professional took me considerably longer. But at last, click. The picklock worked its magic and the final lever yielded.
I pushed open the heavy door – and immediately wished I hadn’t. I don’t know what I’d expected to see, but it certainly wasn’t Gonçalves’ dead body pinned to the kitchen table by a traditional Madeiran half metre-long meat skewer. He was staring up into the harsh light of the bare overhead bulb, eyes and mouth wide in a ghastly re-enactment of Munch’s Scream.
I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and stepped forward. The blow to his throat had been delivered with such force that the point of the triangular steel rod had embedded itself deep in the table. Blood had spurted from the wound onto the floor. How long had he been dead? Tentatively I touched the back of the hand dangling limply on my side of the table. Still warm.
I dragged my eyes away. Dominating the room in stark contrast to the cheap kitchen chairs, grimy bed coverings, blackened pot and frying pan on the tiny stove, was the latest in home cinemas, sound muted to a whisper. On the screen a distraught blonde cringed in terror as two men slashed viciously at each other with knives. In front of the screen a comfortably upholstered black leather and chrome chair lay on its back, the only sign that Gonçalves had put up any kind of a fight. He must have known his assailant. Wary of visitors, he wouldn’t have opened the door to an unknown. And by dozing off twice during my two-hour vigil, I’d missed not only the murderer’s arrival, but his departure. I realized now that was what had wakened me – the revving engine as the murderer made his getaway on Gonçalves’ scooter.
The slam of car doors in the street outside brought home how incriminating it would be if I was found here, standing on bloodstained floorboards beside the body of a man who’d just been brutally murdered. That would take a lot of explaining away. I turned and made for the door.
BAM BAM BAM. The thick panels trembled under a violent pounding.
‘Police! We know you’re in there, Gonçalves. Open up!’
BAM BAM BAM.
Rooted to the spot, struck dumb, heart in mouth – clichés, I know, but an all too apt description of the physical state of DJ Smith, HM Revenue & Customs.
BAM BAM BAM.
‘Open up, you bastard, or we’ll shoot off these fancy door locks.’
I took a deep breath, and with a hand that shook, took hold of the key and turned it.
‘Sso-o, Sshmit.’ The comandante spread her long fingers on the polished desktop and studied her nails, for this occasion painted execution-black. ‘Let us go over your story once again. Do not leave anything out.’
Standard police procedure. When suspects retell their story many times, if they have something to hide, the chances are they will trip themselves up. Interrogators are on the lookout for any inconsistencies, any vital detail that might differ, something on which they can pounce.
With a sigh, I launched yet again into my account, ‘… and in the two hours I was watching the flat, nobody went in, except, of course, the drunken neighbour who—’
With a sudden flash of insight, I realized I’d seen the murderer. The man in the Madeiran hat. That drunk was fumbling not with keys, but with picklocks at the entrance to the flats; those footprints, still wet, on the stair were those of the murderer. But there was only my word for it that he even existed.
The comandante took a closer interest in her nails. ‘This drunk, Sshmit, you are thinking of telling me that this man is the murderer? This is very convenient for you that such a person comes along to pull you off the hook, is it not?’
I had to admit that his appearance on the scene did seem rather too opportune, too neat a means of shifting the blame off myself.
‘If this person exists,’ – her tone conveyed that this was most unlikely – ‘you will, of course, be able to give me a description of him.’
‘Well, no, I can’t, Comandante. You see, it was dark, it was raining and—’
She slapped the flat of her hand hard on the desk, startling me. In their vase, as one, the phalanx of strelitzias swung sharp beaks in my direction, marksmen lining me up in their sights.
‘Enough, Sshmit! Is this the only street in Funchal that does not have lights?’
‘Street lights do not penetrate the sideflaps of a woollen Madeiran hat,’ I said wearily. Why didn’t they just get it over with and charge me? I’d had little sleep in the past twenty-four hours and I was past caring.
Comandante Figueira’s perfect teeth smiled the smile of a cat that has just finished playing with a mouse. ‘At last, Sshmit, you have given me the helpful answer.’ From the top drawer of her desk she produced a clear plastic evidence bag beaded with moisture. It contained a Madeiran woollen cap.
‘That, my dear Sshmit, was found under the leather chair lying in front of the television. How did it get there?’ She tilted her head back and gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. ‘Gonçalves leaps up when he sees the intruder. The assailant forces Gonçalves towards the table. They struggle. The hat falls … the chair falls…. Then comes the blow that kills.’ She switched her gaze to me, and her eyes narrowed. ‘You, of course, could have been wearing the hat, as a disguise. It could have been your hand that delivered the fatal blow.’ She paused. The silence lengthened.
Indeed, I could very well be guilty. And looking at it dispassionately, I had little chance of proving otherwise. The evidence against me was pretty damning: I’d been found in the room with a man who had just been killed, the door locked from the inside. I’d been wearing gloves….
‘Yes, we have considered this. And’ – she let me squirm for a few moments longer – ‘we have evidence that the murderer is someone other than yourself. We found in the blood the mark of a shoe. We compare it with your shoe, and it is not the same.’
So that’s the reason they’d taken away my boots. I stared at her. The bastards. ‘You mean,’ I snapped, ‘you subjected me to this pantomime of an interrogation when you knew I was innocent?’
A flash of white teeth. ‘Innocent? Not entirely innocent, I think. Your hand was not the hand that drove the espetata skewer through the neck of the unfortunate Senhor Gonçalves, that is true. But why, Sshmit, was someone given the order to kill him? We must ask ourselves that, must we not?’
It sounded as if she already knew the answer. And after a moment, so did I. Raimundo had passed on my tip-off to Comandante Figueira, and the raid on the fish market had signed Gonçalves’ death warrant. Gangland killings had a language of their own: he had been killed in a way that would be a warning to other informers.
‘I see that you understand me, Sshmit.’ She nodded in satisfaction. ‘That fleabag Gonçalves, who is no longer troubling us, was just the small fish. The next question is … now that we have the evidence against her, how do we close the trap on the big fish Winterton?’
‘Evidence? Winterton?’ I said, stunned.
The Comandante seemed to be taking more than a little satisfaction from my astonishment. ‘Officer Ribiero, who like you, causes me much trouble, yes much trouble….’ She paused for a long moment, gaze unfocused as she mentally reviewed Raimundo’s past misdemeanours. ‘… has for once done something right. Yesterday, he has the clever thought. He looks again at the CCTV tape taken ten days ago showing the woman with Gonçalves in the Massaroco gardens, and he notes the meet
ing was in the early morning. He thinks to himself, Ribiero, someone stole the camera on Sunday morning because there has been another meeting between the woman and Gonçalves. Then he looks at the Sunday morning tape on camera two which is covering another area of the grounds, and he sees another person who is out so early. Someone who is running for the exercise.’
‘Jogging,’ I said. Could it be Zara in Kinsey Millhone mode?
The comandante was riffling through a file of papers. ‘Officer Ribiero thinks this person may have seen a meeting with Gonçalves and this mystery woman in the bathrobe, so he goes to the hotel and finds out who is running in the morning for the exercise, questions her and brings her here to make the statement.’ She selected one of the papers and studied it briefly. ‘And this person, it seems, is the same Senhora Porter-Browne who in the Caves of São Vicente prevented you from drowning.’ She ran her eye down the page. ‘I read you the important bit. She states, “Every morning I run round the hotel gardens. On Sunday morning I was finishing my run when I spotted old bag Winterton skulking in the bushes with a man. Got to give it to her, didn’t think she had it in her. The grumpy old bat is never up that early. Kinsey Millhone would have gone on running as if she saw nothing, and doubled back through the bushes, so that is what I did”.’
She looked up, frowned. ‘I understand, Sshmit, that these words “bag” and “bat” indicate that the senhora does not have a great respect for the suspect Winterton, but perhaps you can explain who is this person Kinsey Millhone to whom she refers?’
‘Senhora Porter-Browne,’ I said with a smile, ‘reads many crime novels, and Millhone is one of the detectives she much admires.’
‘Aah, like Sherlock Holmes,’ she nodded and continued reading. ‘“Those big flowery bushes made good cover, so I got quite close. Might have known her taste in men was the pits. This guy had weird pointy ears, and a big baldy patch. Gave me the creeps. I heard her say something about Monday and she handed him a stash of notes. Well, someone like her would have to pay for sex, wouldn’t they?”’
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