The Forgotten Dead

by Tove Alsterdal

  I tried to picture the scene, the people moving about like actors, but I wasn’t quite sure what the set looked like or exactly where Patrick had stood.

  ‘The German woman, Ms Hirtberger, also says she saw a black man,’ the inspector went on. ‘But he was on his way out to the terrace right before all the commotion started up. She’s positive about that because she’d been watching him. She says, and I quote, “He was a real tasty morsel”.’ Ferreira gave me a wry smile. ‘Do you know what your husband was wearing when he disappeared?’

  I ran both hands through my hair. A real tasty morsel. What a bitch.

  ‘He almost always wears a sport coat over his shirt,’ I said. ‘Dark colours. Nice slacks, maybe chinos. Hardly ever jeans.’

  Ferreira pointed at me, pretending to be shooting a pistol. ‘That’s exactly what Marlene Hirtberger says. Grey sport coat and grey shirt, dark trousers. He was also wearing a tie, but he’d loosened it and unfastened the collar button. It was a hot day.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ I said dully. ‘Then you know that he didn’t do it.’

  ‘Time for coffee,’ said Ferreira, reaching for his phone. He pressed a button and said something to whoever answered. Portuguese sounded like a cooler, slightly haughtier version of Spanish.

  ‘Witness statements can be a somewhat unreliable source of proof,’ he said after hanging up. ‘People remember things incorrectly, they mix up the days. Some can’t even tell the difference between black and white.’

  ‘Have you found out who those two men were?’

  He threw up his hands.

  ‘We don’t have the resources to comb Lisbon’s streets for two ordinary-looking men wearing ordinary suits. That’s how they were described. It’s not a high priority case, and I find that annoying. I don’t want these kinds of incidents happening on my streets.’ He got up and went over to the door. ‘According to the autopsy, Yechenko’s death could have been suicide. The injuries he suffered when his body struck the cobblestones twenty metres below would have been the same.’ He opened the door just as a bell rang, and accepted a small tray with coffee and a plate of pastries. I didn’t see who had brought them. The inspector kicked the door shut and then set the tray in front of me.

  ‘You said your husband has disappeared, is that right?’ he asked.

  I took a bite of pastry, which was unbearably sweet. Then I recounted the whole story as the inspector stuffed himself with jam-filled butter cookies.

  ‘We haven’t located him, at any rate,’ he said, after I’d finished. ‘All the districts know that we’re looking for a black man who was at the scene of the crime, so if he’d shown up anywhere in Lisbon, I’d know about it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said.

  He brushed a few crumbs off his trousers.

  ‘All suspicious deaths that occur outside the home come to my attention. When foreign citizens are involved, the case is assigned to me, without exception. I’m the only one in the department who speaks English.’ Ferreira cast a glance at the picture of Patrick, which lay in front of him. ‘And after Yechenko was murdered, we also made enquiries at all the hospitals.’

  I leaned back, allowing his words to sink in, but I felt no sense of relief. The inspector wiped his hands on his trousers and motioned towards the pad of paper where he’d jotted down notes as I told him my story.

  ‘I’ll need to check up on this,’ he said. ‘But I doubt we’ll make any progress. Unless Yechenko’s widow shows up with new information, that is. A name or two, for example.’

  ‘His widow?’ I stared at Ferreira. It had never occurred to me that Josef K was married, or that anyone would miss him. ‘Is she here in Lisbon?’

  He nodded.

  ‘She identified his body. She said they were embarking on a long trip. To Brazil. That’s why they’d stopped here. Her husband went up there to see the view. That’s all we managed to get out of her.’

  ‘Is she still here in the city?’

  ‘As far as I know.’ The inspector shrugged. ‘She wanted to arrange for a funeral, but her husband’s body is still in the morgue.’

  ‘Do you know where she’s staying?’

  ‘Of course you realize I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘I just want to talk to her. Maybe she knows something about Patrick.’

  He crossed his arms and shook his head.

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I said, and then looked away. I felt as if my stomach had assumed firmer contours. It will have a name, I thought. One day I will no longer be saying ‘it’.

  The man’s expression softened and took on a fatherly look that made my skin crawl. I leaned down and grabbed my bag, slinging the strap over my shoulder as I got up to leave. I should have kept my mouth shut.

  ‘Maybe you’d like to see the place where Yechenko died?’ said Inspector Ferreira behind me.

  I paused on my way to the door and turned around. He was aiming his pen north, from what I could gather. ‘Take the number twenty-eight tram to Alfama and get off at Largo das Portas do Sol. If you go down the stairs from the look-out, you’ll pass the spot where Yechenko’s body struck the ground.’ He looked down at his papers. ‘Further along the lane you’ll see a door marked number 62. There’s no street name, and besides, it would be confusing to talk about streets in Alfama. They’re not on any map.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘At the very top.’ He pointed his pen in the air. ‘And if she mentions any names …’

  ‘Then I’ll come and tell you,’ I said.

  ‘Tell Vera Yechenko that she’ll soon be allowed to make funeral arrangements for her husband.’

  ‘Patrick Cornwall?’ The hotel manager got up from his chair. He’d been sitting at a computer, entering my check-in information. ‘Do you mean the American?’

  He’s here, I thought. He must be here. My heart fluttered wildly. It was actually totally logical. This was where he’d been hiding all along, in a dingy third-class hotel in Lisbon, where the buildings perched on the steep slopes and the bars advertised peep shows.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, smiling. ‘He’s my husband.’

  The hotel manager lowered his head and slowly came towards me, looking like a boxer ready to go on the attack.

  ‘Are you here to pay his bill?’ he asked.

  I automatically stepped back.

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  ‘He left without paying.’ The man pointed at the key in my hand. ‘I can’t give you a room unless you pay his bill.’

  I pressed my hand to my chest, taking in breath after breath without getting any air. It was a physical sensation. Hope being ripped out of me. Leaving behind only emptiness.

  ‘We didn’t realize at first that he’d left, so it was four nights in all.’

  The man showed me a printout and pointed at the number at the bottom. One hundred and forty-four euros. I stared at the name at the top. Patrick Cornwall. And our address in New York. The length of stay was: Tuesday, 16 September until Friday, 19 September. The dates merged before my eyes.

  ‘Or else we’ll have to take up the matter with the police,’ said the manager, drumming his fingers on the plywood veneer desk.

  I turned away. From the reception area I had a good view of the bar. A painting covered an entire wall, showing cannons and ships in Lisbon harbour. The place was empty. No guests, no music, only a timeless silence as weighty as the furniture and the heavy drapes that had clearly never been cleaned. Spots on the ceiling. Dust. A great weariness hovered over the whole bar, a sense of bygone times.

  Patrick would never have left a hotel bill unpaid. He was too much of a mama’s boy to do that. Properly brought up and always careful to do the right thing. But that was the Patrick I knew, the man who had left New York, filled with anticipation. So much had happened since that moment, until he had checked in here, in this shitty hotel.

  ‘Where are his belongings?’ I managed to say. ‘Did he take them with him
or are they still here?’

  The hotel manager didn’t reply. He was still drumming his fingers on the front desk.

  ‘I’ll pay the bill, of course,’ I told him. ‘I’m sure Patrick intended to do that, but …’

  I got out my wallet and put two one-hundred-euro banknotes on the desk. At the airport I’d taken out a thousand euros. I had less than $3,500 left.

  The manager took the money and my passport. It occurred to me that it was essential to have a passport, no matter where someone intended to go or what they intended to do.

  ‘Do you still have Patrick’s passport?’

  ‘No, we gave it back. We keep it only long enough to verify the information in the computer.’

  ‘What about his other things? His clothes and his laptop?’

  The manager opened a drawer and took out a key ring. Then he raised the flap at the end of the counter and stepped out. ‘Follow me,’ he said, letting the flap fall shut with a bang.

  He led the way down a corridor, past a pile of empty crates, and then down some narrow stairs. At the bottom he unlocked a door.

  ‘This is where we keep baggage that has been left behind.’ He touched a wall switch and a bare bulb in the ceiling came on. It was a storage area for all sorts of things: broken chairs and paint cans. In one corner I saw a small pile of abandoned suitcases, a backpack, and several plastic bags with clothes sticking out of the tops. I recognized at once Patrick’s brown suitcase with the metal fittings. My throat tightened.

  ‘I need to get back to the front desk. Turn the light off when you leave.’ The man’s footsteps reverberated on the stone stairs as he left. The sound was then muted on the wall-to-wall carpet in the corridor, before it faded out entirely.

  I stood there motionless, staring at the suitcase. I remembered it lying open in our apartment, with Patrick moving around it, putting his clothes inside and then closing the lid.

  The suitcase wasn’t locked. I placed it on the floor and opened the lid, and there were his clothes stuffed inside, all wrinkled. His grey chinos and a blue shirt, and the red cashmere designer sweater that I’d given him for his thirty-seventh birthday. Everything haphazardly jumbled together. I picked up the sweater and held it against my face, burrowing my nose in the soft wool that smelled of him. Olive soap and the faint scent of aftershave, with a slight tinge of sweat. I couldn’t tell what I was really noticing and what was merely a memory of how he smelled. I was breathing cautiously to keep the traces from vanishing altogether. And an image appeared in my mind of Patrick when he’d left. I saw his back disappearing into a white haze in which only oblivion remained, and loneliness. Tears ran down my face and I made no attempt to stop them.

  Patrick would never have left his things in such disarray. He was the kind of guy who arranged his socks by colour. It was clear that he hadn’t left voluntarily. And he hadn’t come back. I could no longer help thinking the worst. That he might be dead.

  I had no idea how long I sat there, huddled on the cold stone floor, clutching his sweater in my arms. Five minutes, ten minutes, an hour? A lifetime passes and then it’s over. It’s a fucking lie that there’s anything left but loneliness.

  And Patrick’s scent in every breath, his soft sweater against my face.

  I just wanted to say good night … I miss you so much.

  Finally I straightened up. Carefully I folded the sweater, and then lifted out all the other items, one by one. The travel guide for Paris. A book by the poet Rimbaud in the middle of the dirty underwear and socks that smelled sour when I picked them up. I took out one garment after another, and then put them back in the suitcase. Missing were a pair of black chinos that he almost always wore, a grey shirt, the grey sport coat. The clothes he was wearing when he disappeared. I saw that his laptop was also gone, and there was no research material. I closed the lid and locked it. Without the combination no one else was going to rummage through his things. Then I put the suitcase back in the corner, switched off the light, and closed the door behind me.

  I went upstairs to my room.

  I noticed a faint mouldy smell. The carpeting looked like it had been there since the 1960s. The walls had the same dirty yellow colour as the rest of the hotel. I opened the glass French doors and stepped out onto a narrow balcony that faced the street. Over the railing hung a string of flags with washed-out borders and fields of colour. A wheeled suitcase rattled over the cobblestones below.

  Somewhere out there is an explanation, I thought.

  And some bastard is going to pay for all this. He’s going to burn in hell.

  ‘Where’s his computer?’ I asked when I went down to the lobby twenty minutes later. I had freshened up and changed into an almost clean shirt. ‘He had a laptop with him, and it’s not in the basement.’

  The manager handed over a receipt, which I took without even glancing at the amount.

  ‘Everything that was in his room is in the suitcase,’ he said, giving my signature a suspicious look. ‘It was a real mess in there, and the maid had to clean up after him.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ I said. ‘Who told you that?’

  The manager narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Everyone who works in this hotel is totally reliable.’

  Somebody must have ransacked the place, I thought. Somebody other than Patrick.

  ‘I know he had a computer. Did he take it with him when he left?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see it.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ I said, mimicking his stern expression, lowering my head and glaring like a bull or a boxer about to attack.

  ‘You may be upset because you lost some money. How much was it? Let me see.’ I picked up the receipt and looked at the amount. ‘One hundred and forty-four euros.’ I crumpled the paper in my hand. ‘But my husband has disappeared, and his laptop is missing. Tomorrow morning I’m going to the police. If you don’t tell me everything, I will personally see to it that they turn your hotel upside down and that every single American TV company is here when they do it.’

  He held up his hands.

  ‘I’m telling you there was no laptop. I was there in person when we decided to enter the room and remove his belongings. He must have taken the key with him and slipped out.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Strange how the threat of media attention could make people talk. It was like the fairy tales I read as a child: Watch out or the wolf will get you. Or the Russians.

  The manager explained in meticulous detail how the maid had cleaned the room as usual on Tuesday.

  That’s when Patrick had gone out to meet Yechenko, I thought.

  The next day, on Wednesday, she’d found everything in the room scattered about, but she cleaned it all up, and that was that. Except that Mr Cornwall hadn’t come back. The maid was positive that he hadn’t slept in the bed. On Friday they had entered the room and emptied it.

  ‘Could anyone else have been in the room?’ I asked.

  ‘There is always someone here at the front desk.’

  ‘But you went with me into the basement. There was no one at the desk while you stepped away.’

  ‘What I mean is that someone is always on duty.’

  He pressed his lips together and straightened his tie. Then he turned his back and sat down at the computer. An electric clock on the wall told me it was 1.50 in the afternoon. I felt my stomach churning, and I realized with surprise that I was hungry. And that everything would just keep on going, as if nothing had happened.

  I was clinging to a leather strap hanging from the ceiling. The tram was ancient, rumbling and whining and coughing and complaining like a live animal as it rounded the bends. We made it to the top of a ridge and the road levelled off and ended in a marketplace. I got off, along with three Scandinavian tourists, and a black-haired girl carrying an easel under her arm.

  The view from up here extended for miles. The city climbed the mountai
nsides in a hodgepodge of little white buildings, worn-out roads, and curving red-tiled roofs. I saw verdant backyards with cats, and laundry hanging outside to dry. And far below me was the harbour and the river that widened as it spilled into the Atlantic.

  A single café was open outside a small kiosk, and I bought a cup of coffee and sat down on a rickety chair. A couple in their twenties were making out over their beers, and the girl from the tram was setting up her easel. It was a scene that anyone but me would call romantic. Mikail Yechenko probably hadn’t found it very romantic either as he plunged headlong down to the cobblestoned lane below.

  I looked at my watch. It was 2.50. Twenty minutes left until the precise moment it had happened. The double hamburger from the Hard Rock Café on Avenida da Liberdade felt like a hard lump in my stomach.

  I thought to myself: Here sits Joana Rodrigues, reading her psychology textbook. Over there, Marlene Hirtberger will soon come walking across the square, heading for the terrace to admire the view, but on the way she’ll catch sight of something else that attracts her attention. A real tasty morsel.

  I saw Marlene Hirtberger. I saw Joana Rodrigues. I saw the thirteen-year-old skateboarder, who had come here to defy death. I placed them all in their positions. It was important for me to have arrived at the proper time, when the shadows fell as they had on that day. Only when everyone else was in place would I allow Patrick to make his entrance.

  I finished my coffee and stood up to move closer. A footbridge, some eighteen metres in length, led out to the actual viewpoint, bordered by low, white walls on both sides. It was there the daredevil Jorge Maurício had been skateboarding. I cast a sidelong glance to my left. If he had veered to the wrong side, he would have either landed in a thicket of nettles ten metres down, or he would have been killed when he struck the stone steps.