A Small Death in Lisbon

by Robert Wilson

  'Did drug-use come up in this conversation?'

  'She admitted to smoking hashish. It's very common as you know. Nothing more. She wouldn't ... I know,' he faltered. 'I'm beginning to see from your expression, Inspector Coelho, that after a conversation like that you think I should have locked her in a tower until she was twenty.'

  I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking a whole turmoil of things but not that. I've got to get this face under control.

  'Perhaps you're a more advanced ethical thinker than most Portuguese, Senhor Doutor.'

  'We're nearly a generation beyond the dictatorial age and prohibition makes for a criminal society. I don't call that advanced ... just observant.'

  'You said she wouldn't have admitted to using anything more than hashish...'

  'My son's a heroin addict... was a heroin addict.'

  'Catarina knew him?'

  'She still knows him. He lives in Porto.'

  'He's off it?'

  'It wasn't easy.'

  I remembered his stooped clerical walk. With these burdens he should have been bent double.

  'You're still a practising lawyer.'

  'Not so much now. Some corporate clients keep me on a consultative basis and I represent a few friends on tax points.'

  'In these calls on Friday night, did you speak to any of her teachers?'

  'The one I wanted to speak to, who I consider to be a concerned woman and the one who taught her on Friday afternoon, wasn't available. You know ... it was Santo António...'

  He wrote down her name, address and number without my asking.

  'I'd like some shots of your daughter and I think we should speak to your wife now, if possible.'

  'It would be better if you came back later,' he said, and tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to me. 'My mobile number's on there too, if you hear anything.'

  'You gave your daughter a lot of freedom, would she have gone to the Santo António celebrations without telling you?'

  'Friday night we always have dinner together and she likes to go down to the bars in Cascais afterwards.'

  We left the house. He didn't see us out. The maid watched us from the end of the corridor. It was hotter outside after the chill of the house. We sat in the car with the windows down. I stared into the square beyond the line of trees seeing nothing.

  'Shouldn't you have told him?' asked Carlos. 'I think you should have told him.'

  'A complex individual, the lawyer, don't you think?'

  'His daughter is dead.'

  'I just had a feeling that by not telling him we might learn more,' I said, giving Carlos the paper. 'My decision.'

  Fifteen minutes later a flame-red Morgan convertible, containing the lawyer in dark glasses, eased into the street. We followed him around the square, past the fort, through the centre of Cascais and back on to the Marginal heading for Lisbon. The day seemed to be taking shape.

  'See if he looks at the beach when we pass Paço de Arcos,' I said.

  Carlos, braced as an astronaut for lift-off, didn't blink but the lawyer's head didn't turn. It didn't turn until we cruised into Belém past the Bunker, or the new Cultural Centre as it is sometimes known, and the gothic intricacies of the Jerónimos monastery. Then, it suddenly snapped to the right to catch the ship's prow monument to the Discoveries—Henry and his men looking out across the Tagus at a gigantic container ship nosing out into the well-known, or maybe it was the blonde in the BMW overtaking him in the inside lane.

  'Well?' asked Carlos.

  I didn't answer.

  The mist had cleared from around the bridge, the cranes being used to sling the new rail link underneath it saluted Cristo Rei, the massive Christ statue on the south bank, whose outspread arms reminded us that it could all be possible. I didn't need reminding. I knew it. Lisbon had changed more in the last ten years than in the two and a half centuries since the earthquake.

  It had been like a mouth that hadn't seen a dentist for too long. Rotten buildings had been yanked out, old streets torn up, squares ripped out, centuries of plaque scraped off, façades drilled out and filled with a pristine amalgam of concrete and tile, gaps plugged with offices and shopping centres and apartment blocks. Moles had tunnelled new stretches of Metro and a brand-new intestine of cabling had been fed into the root canals of the city. We'd wired in new roads, built a new bridge, extended the airport. We're the new gnashers in Europe's Iberian jaw. We can smile now and nobody faints.

  We thundered over the patchy tarmac at Alcántara. An old tram dinged past the Santos station. To the right the steel hulls of freighters flashed between the stacks of containers and advertisements for Super Bock beer. On the left office blocks and apartment buildings climbed up the hills of Lisbon. We ran the light at Cais do Sodré as a new tram, a mobile hoarding for Kit Kat, hissed behind us. I lit my first cigarette of the day—SG Ultralights—hardly smoking at all.

  'Maybe he's just going to his office,' said Carlos. 'Do a bit of work on a Saturday morning.'

  'Why speculate when you can call him on his mobile?'

  'You're kidding.'

  'I'm kidding.'

  The yellow façade and the massive triumphal arch of the Terreiro do Paço sucked us away from the river towards the grid of the Baixa valley between the hills of the Fort of Sào Jorge and the Bairro Alto. The temperature hit thirty degrees. Fat, ugly bronzes loafed in the square. The lawyer's Morgan cut right down the Rua da Alfândega and left into Rua da Madalena which climbed steeply before dropping away into the new-look Largo de Martim Moniz with its glass and steel box kiosks and disinterested fountains. We skirted the square and accelerated up the slope of the Rua de'Sào Lázaro past the Hospital de'Sào José and into the square dominated by the pedimented, pillared façade of the Institute of Medicine. We parked close to the statue of Dr Sousa Martins, his plinth heaped with stone tablets of thanks, wax limbs and candles. Dr Oliveira was already parked and walking down the hill to the Institute of Legal Medicine. Carlos took his jacket off and revealed a long dark stripe of sweat-soaked shirt.

  By the time we arrived in the Institute the lawyer was using all his training to get what he wanted—the staff, however, were more difficult to impress than a judge. I left him with Carlos and arranged for the body to be displayed. An orderly brought in Dr Oliveira, who had removed his dark glasses and now wore the bifocals. The assistant drew the sheet back. The lawyer blinked twice and nodded. He took the sheet from the assistant and pulled it back to see the whole body which he inspected closely. He drew the sheet back over her face and left the room.

  We found him standing outside in the cobbled street. He was cleaning his sunglasses endlessly and wearing an expression of extreme determination.

  'I am sorry for your loss, Senhor Doutor,' I said. 'I apologize for not telling you earlier. You have every right to be angry.'

  He didn't look angry. The initial determination had flagged and the confusion of emotions that had followed had left his face strangely flaccid. He looked as if he was concentrating on his breathing.

  'Let's walk up here and sit in the gardens in the shade,' I said.

  We walked on either side of him through the cars, past the good doctor's statue which rather than being imbued with the success of the cured was, in its pigeon-shit-spattered state, infused with the sadness of those who'd been lost. The three of us sat on a bench in surprising cool some distance from the pigeon-feeders and the coffee-drinkers idling in plastic chairs around the café.

  'You may be surprised to know that I am glad that you are investigating the murder of my daughter,' said the lawyer. 'I know you have a difficult job and I also realize that I am a suspect.'

  'I always start with those closest to the victim ... it's a sad fact.'

  'Ask your questions, then I must go back to my wife.'

  'Of course,' I said. 'When did you finish in court yesterday?'

  'About half-past-four.'

  'Where did you go?'

  'To my office. I keep a small office in
the Chiado on Calçada Nova de'S. Fransisco. I went by the Metro from Campo Pequeño, changed at Rotunda and got off at Restauradores. I walked to the Elevador, took that up to the Chiado and continued on foot to my office. It took me maybe half an hour and I spent half an hour there.'

  'Did you speak to anybody?'

  'I took one call.'

  'From who?'

  'The Minister of Internal Administration asking me up to the Jockey Club for a drink. I left my office just after half-past-five and as you may know it's only a two-minute walk to Rua Garrett from there.'

  I nodded. It was cast-iron. I asked him to write down the names of the people who were with him at the Jockey Club. Carlos gave him his notebook for the purpose.

  'Can I talk to your wife before you tell her what's happened?'

  'If you follow me back there, yes. If not, I won't wait.'

  'We'll be right behind you.'

  He gave me the paper and we walked back towards the cars.

  'How did you know to come here, Senhor Doutor?' I asked, as he threaded his way back to his Morgan.

  'I spoke to a friend of mine, a criminal lawyer, he told me that this is where they bring the bodies of those who have died in suspicious circumstances.'

  'Why did you think she'd died like that?'

  'Because I'd already asked him about you and he told me you were a homicide detective.'

  He turned and walked across the cobbles to his car. I lit a cigarette, got into the Alfa, waited for the Morgan to pull away and followed.

  'What did you make of that?' I asked Carlos.

  'If it had been my daughter in there...'

  'You were expecting more distress?'

  'Weren't you?'

  'What about numbness? Trauma leaves people numb.'

  'He didn't seem numb. The look he had on his face when we came out, he was galvanized.'

  'Concerned about himself?'

  'I couldn't say ... you know, I only saw him from the side.'

  'So you can only tell me what I'm thinking about when you look at me head-on?'

  That was just a bit of luck, Senhor Inspector.'

  'Was it?' I said, and the boy smiled. 'What did you think of Dr Oliveira's accountancy? The mathematics between him and his wife.'

  'I thought he was a bloodless son of a bitch.'

  'Strong feelings, agente Pinto,' I said. 'What does your father do?'

  'He was a fitter with LisNave. He installed pumps in ships.'

  'Was?'

  'They lost some contracts to the Koreans.'

  'Your politics might be to the left of centre perhaps?'

  He shrugged.

  'Dr Aquilino Oliveira is a serious man,' I said. 'He's high calibre ordnance ... 125 mm cannon, no less.'

  'Was he a colonel in the artillery, your father?'

  'The cavalry. But listen. The lawyer has used his brain all his life. It's his job to use his intelligence.'

  'That's true, so far he's one step ahead of us all the way.'

  'You saw him. His instinct was to check the body. His brain always operates in front of his emotions ... until, perhaps, he remembers he's supposed to have feelings.'

  'And then he leaves the room to go and collect them.'

  'Interesting, agente Pinto. I'm beginning to see why Narciso put you on to me. You're an odd one.'

  'Am I? Most people think I'm very normal. They mean boring.'

  'It's true you haven't said a word about football, cars or girls.'

  'I like the way you see the order of things, Senhor Inspector.'

  'Maybe you're a man of ideals. I haven't seen one of those since...'

  'Nineteen-seventy-four?'

  'A little after that, in the mess that followed our glorious revolution there were lots of ideas, ideals, visions. They petered out.'

  'And ten years later we joined Europe. And now we don't have to struggle on our own any more. We don't have to sweat at night thinking where the next escudo is coming from. Brussels tells us what to do. We're on the payroll. If we...'

  'And that's a bad thing?'

  'What's changed? The rich get richer. The ones in the know go higher. Of course, it's trickled down. But that's the point. It's a trickle. We think we're better off because we can drive around in an Opel Corsa which costs us our entire living wage to run while our parents house us, feed us and clothe us. Is that progress? No. It's called "credit". And who benefits from credit?'

  'I haven't heard anger like that since ... since FC Porto came down here and put three past Benfica.'

  'I'm not angry,' he said, cooling his hand out of the window. 'I'm not as angry as you are.'

  'What makes you think I'm angry?'

  'You're angry with him. You think he killed his daughter and he's given you the best possible alibi a man can have ... and you're angry about it.'

  'Now you're reading my face in profile. Next it'll be the back of my head.'

  'You know what annoys me?' said Carlos. 'He makes out he's some kind of liberal thinker but you think about this. He's nearly seventy years old. He must have worked the best part of his life under the Salazar regime and you know as well as I do that you didn't work in those days unless you were politically sound.'

  'What's happening here, agente Pinto? I've spent the last twenty years of my life not thinking about the revolution other than the fact we get a holiday on 25th April. I've been with you less than half a day and we've talked about it three or four times. I don't think it's any way to start a murder investigation by going back twenty-five years and looking...'

  'It was only talk. He was projecting himself as a liberal. I don't believe him ... and that's one of the reasons why.'

  'Guys like that are too intelligent to believe in anything. They change...'

  'I don't think they do. Not this late on. My father's forty-eight, he can't change and now he's scrap in the breaker's yard along with all his old pumps.'

  'Don't get fixed ideas about people, agente Pinto. It'll cloud your vision. You don't want to ram somebody into a life sentence just because they're politically disagreeable, do you?'

  'No,' said Carlos, innocent as his hair, 'that wouldn't be fair.'

  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?'