A Small Death in Lisbon

by Robert Wilson

  As he relocked the door the flesh at the back of his neck began to crawl. He heard his name whispered softly over and over. Manuel. Manuel. Manuel. The cell corridor was empty. He shuddered, picked up the pitcher and nearly ran back to the guard's empty chair.

  He drove back to the house in Lapa needing to be quiet and alone. He drank heavily, aguardente directly from the bottle. He slept deeply and horribly until late. He was woken by the sun streaming through the undrawn curtains, the clap of the palm trees in a nearby garden, the noise of children playing. His face was hot, swollen and sweaty. His insides felt black.

  He showered and soaped himself until his body squeaked, but he couldn't get shot of the blackness in his gut. He drove to Belem and had a coffee but couldn't get a pastel de nata down his constricted throat. He was an hour and a half late getting to work. Jorge Raposo was waiting for him.

  'We've got a problem,' he said, and Manuel's black guts ran cave-cold.

  'Do we?'

  'The Medinas girl. She's dead.'

  'Dead?!' he said, the blood vacating his head so that he had to sit down.

  'The guard found her this morning. Blood everywhere,' he said, waving a hand distastefully around the genital area.

  'Has the doctor seen her?'

  'That's how we know she's dead. She miscarried. Died of internal and, by the looks of it, external bleeding.'

  'Miscarried? Did we know she was pregnant?'

  'No, we didn't, and by the way, the boss wants to see you.'

  'Narciso?'

  Jorge shrugged and looked at Manuel's hands.

  'No cakes today?'

  Major Virgilio Duarte Narciso eased the phone back on to its cradle and smoked the last inch of his cigarette as if each drag was lacerating his lungs. Manuel had been trying to cross his legs but he was in such a sweat that the material stuck to every inch of his lower limbs and he just couldn't get one over the other. His boss, the major, rubbed the end of his large, brown nose, as thick as the thumb of a bo:dng glove with every pore visible, as if they'd been pricked there.

  'You're being transferred,' he said.

  'But...'

  'In this matter there is no argument. The orders have come down from the Director himself. You are to head a team responsible for bringing that charlatan General Machedo to justice. We've had an intelligence report that he is over in Spain preparing another coup attempt. You are being promoted to chefe de brigada with immediate effect and you will be briefed by the Director himself this afternoon in Lisbon. There. What do you think of that? You don't look very happy, agente Abrantes.'

  Manuel still found himself staring into the cold crevasse of his own thoughts.

  'I'm honoured,' he stammered. 'I thought I was too young for such a promotion.'

  The major closed an eye and looked at him shrewdly.

  'Caxias is no place for a man of your ability.'

  'I thought you wanted to see me about the Medinas girl.'

  'Who's she?'

  'She died in her cell last night. Miscarried. Internal bleeding.'

  The beat of silence was broken by the phone ringing. It jolted them both and the major yanked it to his ear. His secretary informed him that his son, Jaime, had been taken to hospital with a broken wrist after falling out of a tree. Major Narciso hung up, mesmerized by the space between himself and Manuel until he re-focused once more. Manuel tried and failed to swallow.

  'Ah,' said Narciso, finally crushing out the cigarette, whose end was stinging his nail, 'one less communist for us to worry about.'

  On February 19th 1965 Manuel Abrantes was having dinner in a small restaurant in Badajoz in Spain, no more than two kilometres from the Portuguese border. His two fellow-diners were enjoying themselves and Manuel himself was a mask of geniality. In two hours' time he and his two companions would be taking a short walk to a dark place for a meeting with a Portuguese army officer from the barracks in Estremoz, who would outline the strategy which could be the beginning of a new life for eight million Portuguese. Manuel's two dinner companions were General Machedo and his secretary, Paulo Abreu.

  This meeting had taken six months to bring off, not to mention the four previous years PIDE had spent infiltrating the top echelons of General Machedo's entourage. Manuel had arrived at the best possible time. He'd brought fresh ideas to a man who'd spent the best part of a decade in exile. He'd cured the melancholia that surrounded the General and had infected him with a new optimism. Around Manuel, the General had begun to believe in a future.

  The February night was cold and the heating in the restaurant inadequate. They sat in their coats and drank brandy to quell the shivers. At 11.00 p.m. a man came in and drank a coffee at their table. Fifteen minutes later they put on their hats and made the short two-hundred-metre walk to the churchyard, where the meeting was supposed to take place. There was a half-moon in a freezing clear sky and they had no trouble seeing their way. The man who'd come to their table walked a few metres ahead of them. The men didn't speak. The General's shoulders were hunched against the cold.

  Inside the churchyard the man told them to wait in a narrow passage between some marble mausoleums. The General looked through the window of one and remarked on the smallness of the coffins.

  'They must have been children,' said his secretary, which were his last words. A hammer struck him on the back of the head and his forehead broke the glass in the mausoleum door. The General stepped back, shocked, and found two men on his shoulders. His hands were lifted out of his pockets and held behind him. He watched in horror as his secretary was strangled in front of him. Even in his unconscious state Paulo Abreu struggled to hold on, his legs straightening and straightening until they were still and the feet slack.

  The General was forced to his knees. The man who'd come to the restaurant removed a handgun from one pocket and a silencer from the other. He screwed them together and handed the piece to chefe de brigada, Manuel Abrantes, who looked down at the General whose hat had fallen off in front of him. The face, the whole body of the old man was suddenly completely exhausted. The General shook his head but his neck couldn't support it and it sank on to his chest.

  'We must have been children,' he said, bitterly.

  Manuel Abrantes placed the muzzle of the silencer on the back of the General's head and squeezed the trigger. There was a dull thud and the man shot forward with such force that his arms were torn from the grip of the two PIDE men.

  Manuel handed the gun back to the agente. He reached down to the General and felt for a neck pulse. There was nothing.

  'Where are the graves?' he asked.

  The man with the gun walked down the corridor of mausoleums and turned left to a corner of the churchyard. The holes were barely a foot deep.

  'What the hell is this?' said Manuel.

  'The ground was too hard.'

  'Bloody idiots.'

  Chapter XXX

  Monday, 15th June 1998, Avenida Duque de Ávila, Saldanha, Lisbon

  By 7.00 a.m. I was washed, inexpertly shaved, suited and standing outside the Liceu D. Dinis on the corner of Duque de Ávila and República, enjoying the early cool of the day. I'd woken up at 5.00 a.m. wanting it to be my summer holiday, with nothing to think about other than book choice, beach position and lunch. The photos in my pocket of Catarina Oliveira jolted me back on to the rails. I was going to work on the streets around the school to see if there was anything in Jamie Gallacher's car pick-up story.

  I had a bica in the Pastelaria Sequeira on the corner opposite the art nouveau school building and asked myself if I felt lucky. I had to after a weekend like that and immediately I drew a blank from the staff of the pastelaria. I went up to the café Bella Italia whose barman had seen Catarina come in for a coffee after the session in the Pensão Nuno. It wasn't the same barman as on Saturday, but he pointed me to an old woman who sat in the window.

  'It's her first shift,' he said. 'Morning, lunchtime, end of the afternoon. Nothing happens on that stretch of pavement that she
doesn't know about.'

  I spoke to her. The skin of her face was like crépe paper. She wore white gloves with a single button at the wrist, a heavily pleated blue dress and hefty white, leather low-heeled shoes. She nodded at the photo of the girl. She'd seen her with a man that fitted Jamie Gallacher's description.

  'They were not happy,' she said, and returned the photo.

  Fifty metres down the street from the Bella Italia was the traffic light where Avenida 5° de Outubro crossed Duque de Ávila. This was the point where Jamie Gallacher said Catarina got into the car. The crossroads was surrounded by apartment and office buildings. This was a place of work. At that time of the afternoon there must have been plenty of people on the street heading for their weekend. I went to the bus stop opposite the Bella Italia. As the time approached 8.00 a.m. more people arrived. If Gallacher had hit the girl there must have been someone on this side of the street who'd been at the bus stop and seen it.

  Marshalling Portuguese people is not an easy thing to do, even when they're from the same family and heading for lunch, but when they're getting off a bus on the way to work they become a thunderous herd. But I was lucky that day, and so was Jamie Gallacher. I found a twenty-five-year-old marketing executive who worked for an international computer company on 5° de Outubro. She'd seen the man hit the girl and walk away down Duque de Ávila. She saw three cars pull up at the traffic light. The first was small and silver, the second one was large and dark, the third white. The driver of the second car, dimly visible behind tinted glass, had leaned across the seat and shouted out of the window. The girl had come off the pavement. They'd talked briefly. The lights had changed, the silver car took off and the girl got into the passenger seat. The car had crossed Avenida 5° de Outubro and headed in the direction of the Gulbenkian Museum and the Museum of Modern Art complex.

  'Did you see what make of car it was?'

  'I was looking at the girl most of the time,' she said. 'I'd seen him slap her face and if he'd gone after her I'd have done something, but he didn't, he fell back on a car and its alarm went off.'

  'The car the girl got into, did it look expensive?'

  'It was new. The windows were tinted ... that's all I can tell you. You can talk to my work colleague who was with me. He's a guy, he'll know about the car.'

  The woman's work colleague remembered the car. Without a doubt, he said, it was a black Mercedes.

  'If I send you some Mercedes brochures do you think you could give me a series type and a model number?'

  He shrugged his eyebrows.

  I took down their telephone numbers and walked back to the Polícia Judiciária building. I took a slight detour so that I could walk the length of Rua Actor Taborda and look up at Luísa's attic window. I knew she wasn't there but I wanted to enjoy feeling young and foolish. I succeeded on one count only.

  I went to the personnel department in the PJ building to follow up Jorge's lead on the private detective who'd been sniffing around after Catarina in the Pensão Nuno. I asked one of the older guys if he knew of any retired policemen who were currently engaged in private work. He gave me a list of six names.

  'Do you know any of these guys to look at?'

  'Most of them. If I haven't seen them in the flesh I've seen their photographs.'

  'Short, stocky, grey hair, no facial hair, brown eyes ... wears a black, brimmed hat which he never takes off.'

  'Lourenço Gonçalves. He was bald and had a red birthmark on the back of his head which was why he never took the hat off.'

  'Have you got a number for him?'

  He told me to try the phone book and gave me the full name.

  I went up to my office. Carlos had the search warrant for Valentim's garage unit. I sent him out to get the Mercedes brochures and take them round to the computer company. I had Jamie Gallacher brought up from the tacos. I called Lourenço Gonçalves' apartment in Benfica. There was no reply.

  I pumped Gallacher for more information on the car. He was in poor shape, but relieved and keen to help. When I saw invention begin to play behind his eyes I sent him back to the cells.

  I sat down and, in an hour and a half, wrote a six-page report on the investigation. Carlos came back towards the end of that time and said that the car had been identified as a C series. I rounded off the report, collected the statements together and sent them up to Narciso. I tried Gonçalves again. Still no reply. He must have a place of business. I dropped it for the moment.

  By 11.30 a.m. I was sitting in front of Narciso, watching him smoke his SG Gigantes and finger my report as if it might be worth something. He went to the window. He was a small man in his mid-forties who took such care over his appearance that you'd have thought he was due on television at any moment. Even in high humidity he could always get his shirts to puff out at the back and the creases down his arms were never anything less than blade-sharp. He looked more powerful and cooler than any policeman in the building.

  'How's it going with agente Pinto?' he asked, something I'd forgotten about already.

  'There's nothing wrong with agente Pinto, he'll make a good detective.'

  'Answer the question will you, Inspector.'

  'Nobody likes him, I know.'

  And you do?'

  'I have no problem with him.'

  'I heard there was a fight across the street on Saturday night. Your hand, you cut your hand.'

  'And that fight wasn't his first?'

  'I'm surprised to hear you like him, that's all.'

  'He has a difficult personality but it doesn't bother me.'

  Narciso turned his smooth handsome face on me. It had darkened a few shades over the sunny weekend but it hadn't warmed him up—he was still and chill as always.

  'The one concern I have about your report is this spurious allegation from Senhora Oliveira about child abuse.'

  'I presume she didn't make a formal complaint.'

  'No, she didn't,' he said. 'She died yesterday.'

  Silence. The air conditioning reached my bone marrow.

  'You make that sound like natural causes.'

  He shook his head.

  'Overdose,' he said. 'She was found in her car parked on a street in'São João do Estoril, about three hundred metres from a friend's house where she'd spent the night.'

  'A considerate woman,' I said, more guilt humped up on to my shoulders.

  'We're looking into it now.'

  'Who is?'

  'Inspector Abílio Gomes.'

  'Ask him to make sure that Dr Aquilino Dias Oliveira can account for every minute of his Saturday night.'

  'Which brings us back to your report.'

  'The allegation, you mean.'

  'An allegation made to the wrong person on an informal basis with no supporting evidence by an unstable woman with a history of barbiturate dependency.'

  'Has the maid said anything?'

  'Not that I know of.'

  'You don't think it warrants inclusion in the report?'

  'That was a good day's work, Inspector. Let's see what Valentim Almeida's garage unit produces. I want to see your report on that and the interview with him afterwards.'

  I grabbed Carlos, signed out a car from the pool and headed north to Odivelas. We sat in a traffic jam on Campo Grande for half an hour. I told him about Teresa Oliveira which silenced us for several minutes. Horns blared, indifferently. Techno music thumped loudly from behind tinted windows adjacent.

  'You're right about Olivia,' he said, seeing as we were following a van with that name on the back.

  'Are we talking about my daughter now?'

  'She's different.'

  'Half-Portuguese, three-quarters English,' I said. 'What did she talk to you about?'

  'She told me about a kid at her school who has his own Range Rover.'

  'That doesn't sound like her to be impressed.'

  'She wasn't. That's what I meant. She's different. She asked me what I thought a seventeen-year-old kid with a Range Rover could aspire to.'
/>
  'A test question—what did you say?'

  'I said it could leave him free to aspire to greater things than more material wealth.'

  'Did she buy that?'

  'No,' he said. 'She thought he'd already been corrupted. It was good. I found I was arguing against myself for once.'

  'She likes that,' I said, looking across at his face staring resolutely out of the windscreen. 'Ideas. Arguing. Intellectual aggression ... it's something she rarely sees in girls her own age. What would you call her...?'

  I got his attention.

  'A chicken with giblets?' I asked.

  The traffic jam unlocked. The vertebrae of metal snake stretched. The techno music behind the tinted glass took off. Other things were playing on Carlos' mind.

  'You were in there a long time,' he said.

  'What are we talking about now?'

  'With Narciso,' he said. 'Was that all you talked about... Senhora Oliveira's suicide?'

  And her allegation against her husband.'

  'Anything else about the investigation in general?' he hedged.

  'He asked how we were getting on, too.'

  Carlos' hand tightened around the ceiling grip.

  'I suppose he knew about the fight,' he said.

  'Not your first by all accounts.'

  'I had one with Fernandes in Vice.'

  'I don't know Fernandes,' I said. 'What happened?'

  'Fernandes is a pig,' he said, jutting his face at the windscreen. 'He had something going with some pimps and their girls. He wanted to initiate me into his little score. I refused. He asked me if little boys was more my thing and I hit him.'

  'You've got to try and lengthen that fuse of yours, you know.'

  'I overdid it, too. I punched him in the gut and he didn't get off the floor for fifteen minutes. I was transferred away from him the next day.'

  'I'm glad we didn't get that far.'

  'I'd never have hit you. You had every right to be angry. When I told my father what I'd said to you, he damn nearly beat me up himself.'