A Small Death in Lisbon

by Robert Wilson

  'What about?'

  'Drugs, probably.'

  'I'm with Homicide.'

  She put her hands up to her face. The word had chilled her. She went over to the window and opened a shutter to let more light in and some of the day's residual warmth.

  'What's happened?' she asked.

  'She was murdered yesterday, late afternoon,' I said. 'I'm surprised nobody's called you. Dr Oliveira said he tried last night.'

  'I was out with my sister in the Alfama.'

  'You were expecting trouble with drugs,' I said.

  'I see it as part of my job to look for signs. Needle rash, dilated pupils, poor concentration, loneliness.'

  'How many of those did Catarina have?'

  'Everything except the needle rash.'

  'Did you talk to her about it?'

  'Of course. I talk to all the suspect kids.'

  'Why was she lonely?'

  'That doesn't mean she wasn't popular. You know how it is. She had talent. It attracted a lot of attention. She had a great voice and the blonde hair and blue eyes. A lot of the kids liked her and wanted to be like her ... but she didn't have any friends amongst them ... too far ahead for that.'

  'You heard her sing?'

  'It wasn't a beautiful voice, nothing clear or sweet about it but it could raise the hairs on the back of your neck. She could do fado but what she really liked was black music, the blues numbers ... Billie Holiday. She loved doing Billie Holiday.'

  'And she had plenty to cry about,' I said. 'What about mood swings?'

  'She hasn't been so bad this term. She went through a patch of incredible anger. She'd go puce and look as if she was going to toss her desk out of the window, then she'd calm down just as quickly and go morose. I talked to her mother and things got better almost instantly.'

  'She didn't have any medication in her blood.'

  'Maybe she stopped taking whatever was causing the trouble.'

  'She was sexually active in an extreme way for a girl her age. Were you aware of any relationships within the school?'

  'Nothing happens in that place without the whole world knowing about it, but sometimes rumour is more exciting than the truth, and it's not so easy to distinguish, so I don't talk about what I hear.'

  'I'm only interested in what you've seen.'

  She came back from the window and sat on the edge of her chair again.

  'I'll put it another way,' I said. 'I've retraced her steps from a Pensáo in Rúa da Gloria to the café down the street from the school, La Bella Italia, at around two-fifteen. She went to school, I presume. She wouldn't have come all this way not to.'

  'She was in my class until close to four-thirty.'

  'Then what?'

  She wrung her hands and looked into the floor.

  'I saw her leave the building. She was with this guy, a young guy who's teaching English Language. He's Scottish. Jamie Gallacher. He was talking to her on the corner of the street and she wasn't talking back. Then she walked off up Duque de Ávila and he followed ... that's all I saw.'

  'Was that unusual?'

  'If you listened to the rumour there was something going on there. I heard that Catarina would go back to his apartment after school sometimes. But that is not reliable and shouldn't appear in any of your reports. It's girl talk.'

  'What do you make of Jamie Gallacher?'

  'He's OK, but he's like a lot of these English people. He likes to drink and he drinks heavily ... and then he's not such a nice guy.'

  Chapter XVII

  20th December 1941, Serra da Malcata, Beira Baixa, Portugal

  The mule train had split up. Abrantes had sent the younger man on ahead. He was cursing himself for overloading the mules but there was no sense in leaving just a few hundred kilos behind for another trip. Two of the mules had broken down, one lame, the other with a snapped girth. They'd tried to spread their loads out over the other mules, but it was impossible, they risked losing more. There'd been no let-up in the weather which had turned colder, bringing ice in the rain on the back of a fierce north-easterly, while black clouds crowded the hills.

  Abrantes and one of his men, Salgado, unloaded the mules. While Abrantes worked on one mule's hoof, Salgado did his best to repair the torn leather strap of the other. They were down by the river when they heard them. Men on horseback. The guarda. One of the regular border patrols. The two men looked at the wolfram, over two hundred kilos of it, nearly one hundred and fifty thousand escudos' worth. They pinched their cigarettes out and calmed the animals.

  Abrantes jerked his head at Salgado and they picked up a sixty-kilo sack of wolfram each and staggered to the edge of the freezing river. Salgado wanted to drop his in at the edge but Abrantes urged him out into the faster flowing water in the middle. They went back. Salgado couldn't manage the second one, so they picked up the next two sacks between them and waded out. They went back to the mules and coaxed them into the water and back out again. They could still hear the horses of the guarda closer now but not making progress, assessing the situation.

  They didn't see them at first, the acoustics of the river valley playing games with the sound of the hooves on the rocks. The guarda appeared directly above them, their peaked caps silhouetted against the lighter distant sky. One of the men pointed down to their position. Two of the guardas unholstered their sidearms, the third took out a rifle from the back of his saddle. They shouted down to them. The rifleman levelled his weapon and aimed. Abrantes and his man put up their hands. The two guardas with pistols galloped along the ridge and came down into the gully. Their horses trod carefully over the rocks towards the two mules. The guardas dismounted. The man on the ridge lowered his weapon, stuck it back in his saddle, and reined his horse round to join the party down by the river.

  The chefe da brigada approached the two men still with their hands up. He adjusted the grip on his gun in his gloved hand. He looked over the mules.

  'What are you doing out here?'

  'We've had trouble with the mules,' said Abrantes. 'This one's lame and the other's girth has broken.'

  'Where's your cargo?'

  'We don't have one.'

  'Where have you come from?'

  'Penamacor.'

  'Where are you going?'

  'Foios,' said Abrantes. 'We're taking the mules back to their owner. They've been used for work outside Penamacor.'

  'What sort of work.'

  'Transport.'

  'Transporting what?' said the guarda, getting frustrated.

  'You know, working around the mine.'

  'Wolfram?'

  'I think so. I think that's what it was.'

  'Were you carrying any wolfram?'

  'No, we're just taking the mules back.'

  'You're wet. Up to your waist, you're wet.'

  'We've just brought the animals across the river.'

  The chefe pointed them over to the mules with his pistol. He slapped the mules' bellies, satisfied himself that they were wet. He went to the riverside. The guarda with the rifle arrived and dismounted. He tore a branch from a tree and joined the chefe. They walked along the side of the river dragging the branch along under the water.

  It was late afternoon now and the light was failing. Abrantes didn't know where the guarda were from, but they had a two-hour ride ahead of them, wherever. The chefe and the rifleman talked out of earshot. They came back to their horses, all three mounted and rode back out of the river valley without exchanging another word.

  Abrantes brought Salgado to his side and they sat and watched the river for some minutes, the rain driving into their backs. He took out his Walther P48 and checked that it was loaded and still dry. They made a fire. Abrantes worked on the mule's hoof again, Salgado repaired the girth. Night fell and they slept around the fire, having eaten some stale bread and ham.

  In the morning they were up at first light wading into the river to bring out the sacks of wolfram. It took some time, as the river had swollen some more during the night, and the
y could only bring them out one at a time. They loaded the sacks on to the mules, giving the lame mule the lighter load. The rain had stopped, but the cold wind was still blowing and there was more on its way down from the meseta. They moved out of the gully and up on to the ridge to start the climb across the serra to Spain. That's where they were waiting for them, on the other side of the ridge.

  The chefe de brigada raised his gun and told the men to stop. Abrantes fell to one side as if he'd taken a bullet in the side of the head. The chefe instinctively squeezed the trigger and Salgado open-mouthed took the bullet high in his chest where it shattered his clavicle. Salgado's mule took off. The second bullet hit Salgado in the stomach before he'd reached the ground.

  Abrantes dragged his mule down to the floor, he tore the gun from his waistband and shot the chefe in the chest under the armpit. The man fell to the ground. The rifleman was trying to keep his rearing horse calm and Abrantes let off two shots, the second hitting him in the head. The third guarda wheeled his horse round in time to take a bullet between his shoulderblades. He fell backwards with a crack and his horse ran back down into the gully.

  Abrantes tethered his mule and approached the chefe who was still breathing but bubbling blood out of his mouth. He shot him in the head. The rifleman was already dead. The third guarda had a broken neck. Abrantes went to Salgado who was lying on his back so flat that it was as if the ground had already claimed him. He was panting, scared and in pain, his lips and face white. Abrantes tore open the man's coat and shirt and saw the mash of bone and flesh at his clavicle and the dark hole in his stomach. Salgado whispered something. Abrantes put his head down to his mouth.

  'I can't feel my legs,' he said.

  Abrantes nodded at him, stood back and shot him in the eye.

  The chefe's horse had stayed. Abrantes loaded two guardas on to it and took them down to the river. The other two horses were down there and he tethered them to a tree. He went back and loaded the chefe and Salgado. He filled the dead men's clothes with rocks and dragged each one of them out into the river.

  Riding the chefe's horse he picked up his own mule and found Salgado's grazing in a hollow, still fully loaded with the wolfram. He spread the loads from the mules over the guardas' horses and set off once more across the serra for Spain.

  It was the afternoon of Christmas Eve and Felsen was still in Abrantes' house, waiting with his cleaned and loaded pistol. It had been a long wait and one he had not been prepared for. There was only so much time he could spend thinking about Abrantes, the missing wolfram, and how he was going to manoeuvre the Portuguese across the border and leave him out there, amongst the rocks and broom, with a bullet in his brain.

  Occasionally Maria came in with coffee and then later food and drink. She wanted his attention but he wouldn't give it to her. Her presence irritated him. She triggered strands of thought that he'd rather have left dormant. He remembered a look she'd given him when they were burying the Englishman in the courtyard, and that would start him thinking about that afternoon in the old mine, and he'd have to shake his head and pace the room to get rid of it. He wondered why he'd had her now. How could it have been to spite Abrantes when he was going to kill the man anyway?

  At that moment she'd appear again, and the word 'rape' would climb into his brain, and he'd remember the thrill as he rammed gently into her, her eyes darting afraid above the knuckles of his hand over her mouth. But then it had turned into something else. He'd felt that heel on his buttock. She'd come back the next night and it had sickened him. He told her to stay in the kitchen.

  He thought about other women. He thought about the first woman. A girl who was supposed to be out in the field working for his father, but who he'd caught sleeping in the barn. She'd seen the way he'd looked at the flesh between her stocking top and skirt, and had let him have her to keep him quiet.

  She was still the only one by the time he arrived in Berlin as a young man. A girl picked him up in the railway station. He'd thought that this was all part of the wild city life until he'd finished, and she'd demanded her money He'd asked, what for? And her lips had hardened to chisel tips. She'd called the pimp, who'd taken one look at the size of the farmboy and produced a blade. He'd paid and backed out and then heard the pimp beating the girl. Wilkommen in Berlin.

  The weather closed in again over Amêndoa. The rain raked die tiles. Felsen smoked and continued to amuse himself by trying to remember all the women he'd ever had in the right order. If he missed one he had to start again. It took him some time to work his way to Eva.

  He didn't want to think about her, but in the near darkness of the house and after their brief encounter back in Berlin, he found he couldn't prevent his mind from drifting back over the shards of the affair like gunsmoke over a battlefield. He began to discern her slow dismanding of their relationship. From the moment she'd taken him back in after they'd split up over his accusation that she was acting, to that last sexual act in his apartment before the Gestapo removed him in the morning. But even in that period he could still find moments when they'd reconnected, and he could still feel that point of contact when their knees had touched under the table in the club only a few nights ago. He rubbed it as if it was still burning.

  He lit a cigarette and the draught in the room battered the smoke this way and that, whipping it away to nothing. He asked himself if this was what love was—this strange acid in the stomach that burns a constant ulceration, this airlock in his pipes that could send shudders around his system and stop the flow of everything. But that was not how he'd ever heard love described and, like a man taking a short leap over a high drop to white water, he lurched to a sudden conclusion. He'd gone from intimacy to loss without ever having experienced love. It choked him and he had to pace the room again to try and free himself of the notion. He took long hard draws on his cigarette until he was dizzy with nicotine and he reeled to the door and let himself out into the blustery afternoon.

  The wind gusted needles of sleet into his face. He breathed it in as if it would somehow clean him out. He had no idea how long he stood there. The afternoon had already darkened with the weather and his face had instantly numbed. The only way he knew that there was ice in the rain was the way it spiked his tongue.

  When finally he turned to go back into the house he saw that he wasn't alone in the street. Some way off two figures approached, heads bowed against the wind. Felsen came level with the steps up to the house. One figure split away and headed for the side of the house as if for cover. In profile now, he saw it was a mule. The other figure came doggedly forward and he knew from the gait and the hat that it was Abrantes. He felt the hardness of the gun in his waistband. He unbuttoned his coat in the middle. The figure didn't hesitate until he was about five metres away.

  Felsen's fingers flipped open another button. Hands appeared from the clothing of the man opposite. Felsen slid his hand into the opening of his coat and gripped the handle of the gun. Abrantes' left hand came up and removed the scarfing from his face. The right hand hung limply. When it happened it was quick, too quick for Felsen to move. Abrantes covered the five metres in a fraction of a second, threw his arms around the German and smacked two hands on his leather back.

  'Bom Natal,' he said. Happy Christmas.

  Abrantes guided Felsen back up the stairs and into the house. He shouted for Maria and told her to take care of the mule. She disappeared out of the back of the house. They went into the parlour room and Abrantes threw logs on to the fire. Felsen's face came back to life, raw and aching. Abrantes went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of aguardente and two glasses. He poured the liquor and they drank to Christmas. He was happier than Felsen had ever seen him.

  'I heard you were in Foios,' he said, as if Felsen had dropped round there for a drink and found nobody in.

  'The chefe at Vilar Formoso said we could be in for a hard time. I thought I'd take a look at the mules.'

  'And you saw that I'd been running them for months.'
/>   'Months?'

  'I've got more than fifty tons over there.'

  'Where?'

  'In a warehouse in Navasfrias.'

  'You should have told me. I've had a hard time explaining the shortfall in Berlin.'

  'I'm sorry for that. I was only reacting to rumours.'

  'Which rumours?'

  'That now you've invaded Russia and that campaign is ... continuing, Dr Salazar is not so concerned about an invasion here. The Germans are too stretched, they say.'

  'You remember the Corte Real going down in October?'

  'And the Cassequel,' said Abrantes. 'The Cassequel was one of our best ships, seven thousand tons.'

  'So you don't think this is a Lisbon problem?'

  'I think we should go to Vilar Formoso tomorrow,' said Abrantes. 'Take the chefe another Christmas present.'

  'I was there only a few days ago.'

  'They have short memories,' he said.

  'And we could cross over and take a look at the product in Navasfrias,' said Felsen. 'Is it secure?'

  'It's secure.'

  Secure meant men with shotguns. Felsen suddenly saw himself lying amongst the rocks and broom with his face blown apart, but he couldn't back down from Abrantes now. He nodded and checked Abrantes, but all he saw was weathered skin stretched over large bones with eyes concentrated on the task of pouring more alcohol.

  What was it Poser had said to him, or someone else in the legation, about the Portuguese? Two things. The first, that there wasn't a law in Portugal that couldn't be got around, and the second, was that the Portuguese never came at you head-on. They got you looking straight ahead and then they stuck you from behind. It had been Poser. He remembered pointing it out to him that this, of course, would never happen in Germany and the Prussian had walked off sick of his irony.

  The two of them ate a Christmas dinner of a large hen and some roasted bacalhau. They drank two bottles of pre-war Dão which left the warm, rounded taste of a less complicated summer at the back of the mouth.

  Felsen went to bed early and smoked and drank aguardente from his metal flask in the dark. He kept his gun under his pillow. After an hour he went across the courtyard and listened at the door of the house with the gun dangling from his hand. He heard Abrantes' familiar grunt and Maria's strange hiss.