'He sounds a good man.'
'He's a hard, proud Alentejano who still eats pig's tail and ears at Christmas.'
'Boiled or what?'
'No, no, grilled.'
'He must be a hard man.'
It was lunchtime when we arrived at the garage units and most of the others were closed. Only a tyre shop was doing any business. We let ourselves in through the small door and walked into a black partition wall and the smell of death.
The lights didn't work. We took out pen torches. Carlos squeezed past a wooden staircase and went through a black curtain underneath. I went up the stairs. Carlos gagged at the smell getting stronger. I came out on to a platform in the roof gable. I still couldn't find the fuse box for the unit. There was an expensive piece of computer equipment, a video camera and a television. Along the wall were seven polystyrene heads with wigs. All the eyes had been burnt out with cigarette ends.
'Porra!' said Carlos. Fucking hell.
'What?'
'This stink. I've found it. There's some dead chicks down here.'
'Chicks?'
'That's what I said ... and a snake. A very unhappy snake.'
'I don't like snakes. Is it in a cage?'
'Do you think I'd be talking like this if it wasn't?'
'I'm coming down.'
I joined him in a three-walled stage set. At the back of the set there were seven pairs of stilettos, three rubber dresses, a bed, a chest, a moped, a spare can of petrol and a tool board.
'Have you seen what's missing from the tool board?' asked Carlos.
From the outline, a short-handled heavy lump hammer was missing.
'Let's find the electrics.'
'There's a box over there by the moped, near the floor.'
'Turn it on and let's take a look at Valentim's oeuvre.'
Carlos stepped over the chest and opened up the box. He flicked the main switch and dropped four others. There was a loud crack and four powerful halogen lights came on overhead.
'Shit!' yelled Carlos. 'This is ... Out! Get out!'
The studio lights suddenly went out, sucking us back into a more intense darkness, except the darkness wasn't total. Around the electrics box were yellow flames. Carlos crashed over the moped. I ran at the black partition and dropped my shoulder into it. It collapsed and I tore it away from the wall. Carlos was at my back when I heard the low thump of the spare can of petrol catching alight and I ripped the door open. We fell out into the parking area followed by smoke and flames. I got into the car and reversed it away from the unit. Carlos called the fire brigade. I sat on the car bonnet in the shade of the units opposite and watched 7D burn. Carlos was wild, sweating, still scared and pacing up and down in front of the car.
'He booby-trapped it.'
'Are you sure?'
'No, I'm not sure. I didn't have enough time to check the fucking wiring diagram...'
'Calma pá, calma.'
'You saw what happened.'
'I'm asking you.'
'I threw the switches. The thing started fizzing. Sparks everywhere. There seemed to be petrol, the smell of petrol.'
'From the moped or a booby-trap?'
'Why don't we go and ask him.'
At 3.00 p.m. we were sitting in an interview room with Valentim playing the air guitar, his eyes closed in simulated ecstasy. I introduced the cast to the tape recorder and asked Valentim to give his full name and address. He complied without stopping his guitar practice.
Do you like film?' I asked.
'Movies?'
'Making them with film ... or do you prefer video?'
'I like film.'
'I didn't see any in your studio ... just video. I suppose it's cheap, but it gives an ugly effect. You have to light everything or you lose it, that's the problem. Film's more subtle. Even 16 millimetre.'
'But it's expensive.'
'There are other problems too, aren't there?'
Valentim stopped playing his guitar. He tapped a single finger on the table, keeping time in his head. Waiting.
'What other problems?'
'You have to develop the film. Edit it. Make a master print. Teleciné that on to a videotape and then make your copies.'
'Like I said, it's expensive,' he nodded.
'And not private, either.'
'That's true.'
'But if you go the video way, there's a heavy initial investment. You have to come up with what? Thirty million escudos?'
'You don't know anything about computer equipment, do you, Inspector?'
'Tell me.'
'That edit suite was a million escudos,' he said. 'Cheap, isn't it?'
'You'd be a long time working in McDonald's to put that sort of money together.'
'If you thought that was the best way of raising it.'
'How did you?'
'Like normal people. I went to the bank.'
'And they don't mind lending to a student.'
'I'm not a policeman, Inspector Coelho. It's not a compulsion of mine to be totally honest about who I am and what I do. Banks want to lend money. They've got a lot of it. Interest rates are going to come down when we join the Euro. I'll make the repayments. What do they care?'
'How many movies did you make of Catarina?' asked Carlos.
Silence.
'Don't make us go through your whole collection.'
'You wouldn't enjoy it.'
'How do you know?'
'You don't seem to have a very artistic temperament.'
'Just tell us how many films.'
'Three. They were silent movies. Not pornography. Sorry, agente Pinto, to disappoint you.'
'We're talking art, are we ... with baby chicks, a snake, rubber dresses?'
'Take a look. I'd be interested in your opinion.'
'What were the three films of?'
'Her face ... looking into camera.'
That sounds interesting.'
'She had a very special look.'
'Which was?'
'That's why it was special,' said Valentim, staring at me.
'What did this look say to you?'
'This seems to have gone from interrogation to therapy now.'
Carlos snapped.
'I'm going to bust you, you piece of shit,' he said, quietly. 'I'm going to bust you for murder.'
'Then you've got a job on your hands, agente Pinto, because I did not kill her.'
'Where's the hammer?'
'The hammer?'
'From your tool board. It was missing.'
'It should be in there somewhere. Take another look.'
Silence, while Valentim played a drum solo on the table.
'Where were you on Friday afternoon?' asked Carlos, desperation creeping in.
'I told you.'
'Tell us again.'
'I went to the Biblioteca Nacional. I stayed there until closing time which is seven-thirty. Go and ask the librarian. We had an argument. She wouldn't let me use the computer after seven o'clock.'
'Do you know anybody with a C series black Mercedes?'
Valentim laughed and frowned.
'I didn't borrow that much money from the bank.'
'How do you make your repayments?'
'I work. I sell my videos. I make money.'
'Pornography?'
'Like I said ... you don't have a very artistic temperament. Perhaps it's something to do with your work. It must be quite boring...'
Carlos' fist was already closed.
'I should stop the tape recorder if I were you, Inspector Coelho. Agente Pinto wants to resort to more conventional police methods.'
I terminated the interview at a few minutes before 16.00. Carlos and I walked to Duque de Ávila.
'He's involved,' said Carlos, still furious. 'I know he's involved. We should have asked him if he booby-trapped the switchbox ... just to see his face.'
'I think he'd humiliated us enough by then. We'll let the fire department give us that bit of information.'
By 4.25
p.m. we were working the bus queues on either side of Duque de Ávila showing photographs of Catarina. It was an advertisement for not committing crime because there's always somebody out there who's seen you. Four people saw Catarina get into the black Mercedes. One guy remembered it like it was one of the best scenes from his favourite movie. The car in front was a metallic grey Fiat Punto. The black Mercedes was a C200 series, petrol engine with the letters NT in the registration. The car behind it was an old white Renault 12 with a rusted rear wheel-arch. And the car that Jamie Gallacher fell against was ... I told him that he'd given us more than we needed and took his name. I sent Carlos back to the Polícia Judiciária and told him to give the information to Traffic. I also gave him Lourenço Gonçalves' name and told him to find a business address and phone number. And I did what I'd wanted to do all day—I went to my favourite apartment in Rua Actor Taborda.
Chapter XXXI
24th April 1974, Rua do Ouro, Baixa, Lisbon
Joaquim Abrantes stood in the dark in front of the open window, it was late, close to midnight. His wife, Pica, lay on the chaise longue playing with the dial of the radio, trying to find some entertainment that didn't drive her husband into a frenzy. She'd almost lost the radio to the street below once already when she'd come across some foreign station and picked up the Rolling Stones singing 'Angie' at a sudden full volume.
'Turn it off!' he'd yelled. 'I hear music like that ... and I think it's the end of the world.'
'What are we doing here, anyway?' she'd asked, annoyed. 'Why don't we go home and relax in Lapa. You're always like this when you're on top of your work.'
'I'm worried,' he'd said, but didn't take it any further.
She settled for a local station called Rádio Renascença. She recognized the voice of José Vasconcelos whom she'd met several times when she'd been in the business. Abrantes grumbled again. He didn't like music. It offended his inner workings. He smoked from one of four cigarettes he had going in various ashtrays around the room.
'And now,' introduced the quiet voice on the radio, 'Zeca Afonso sings Grândola, vila morena...'
'I don't know what you have to worry about.'
'I'm worried,' said Abrantes, crushing a butt out into another ashtray and picking up a lit cigarette from it, 'because something is happening.'
'Something's happening?' said Pica, with mock astonishment. 'Nothing's happening. Nothing ever happens.'
'Manuel told me he thought something was going to happen.'
'What does he know?' said Pica, who'd never liked Manuel.
'He's an Inspector with PIDE. If he doesn't know, nobody knows. I'm going to call him.'
'It's after midnight, Joaquim.'
'Turn that radio off,' said Abrantes, hearing the lyrics now. 'That Zeca Afonso is a communist.'
He dialled Manuel's number. Pica toyed with the volume, turning it lower.
'He's a communist,' said Abrantes, to the ceiling, 'and I won't have him in the house. Now turn it off.'
He listened on the phone. It rang continuously. Pica turned the radio off.
He's in bed and that's where I'm going,' she said.
Abrantes ignored her. He walked to the window with the phone in his hand. He disconnected and dialled another number but couldn't get a line.
Four men sat in a car just off the Eduardo VII Park in the centre of Lisbon. They were a major, two captains and a lieutenant. The captain in the front seat had a radio on his knees which they all stared at, hardly hearing it. The major leaned back in his seat to look at his watch in the street lighting. The lieutenant yawned with nerves.
'And now,' said the quiet voice of José Vasconcelos from the radio, 'Zeca Afonso sings Grândola, vila morena...'
The four men held their breath for a moment until Zeca Afonso began to sing. The captain turned in his seat to face the major.
'It's started, sir,' he said, and the major nodded.
They drove two blocks to a four-storey building and parked up. The four men got out and each took a pistol from his pocket. They walked into the building which had a small plaque outside: Rádio Clube Português.
Manuel Abrantes was sleeping at the wheel of his Peugeot 504 saloon. The front right-hand tyre thumped into a pothole and he came awake to find grass scudding under the front of the car. He threw the wheel to the left and the car latched back on to the tarmac. He stopped and breathed in quick, short breaths until the scare subsided. He wound down the window and sucked in the chill air. He felt for the passenger seat and found his briefcase. He undipped it and pulled out a file, his own personnel file from the PIDE/DGS headquarters on Rua António Maria Cardoso. He fed it back in. Everything was as it should be. The little anxiety dream he'd just had at the wheel was only that. He loosened his trousers which were cutting into his belly and startled himself with a loud, uncalled-for fart. His stomach still upset. He put the car in gear and started moving again, calmer now.
'Where am I?' he asked, out loud as if a passenger in the back might lean forward and tell him.
A sign loomed at the end of a long straight piece of road. He gripped the steering wheel and blinked the sleep away. Madrid 120 km.
An eighteen-year-old Zé Coelho was drinking cheap bagaço in a white-tiled tasca in the middle of the Bairro Alto with three of his schoolfriends when the owner came thundering down the stairs from his apartment above.
'Something's happening,' he said, breathless and shocked. 'I was listening to the radio ... some army officers busted in on the programme. Now they're just playing music continuously.'
'If you want to go to bed,' said Zé, 'you don't have to invent a coup.'
'I'm serious.'
The seven people in the bar looked at the man for several seconds until they'd all seen his seriousness. They got up as one and went out into the street. Zé Coelho flicked his shoulder-length hair over the wolfskin collar of his floor-length woollen capote Alentejano and they started running down the narrow cobbled alleyway towards the square below.
They were not alone. A crowd was gathering in the Praça de Luis de Camões and the words 'coup' and 'revolution' ricocheted off the statue in the middle of the square. After fifteen minutes the crescendo of excitement hit its top note with a shout to march on the PIDE/DGS headquarters in Rua António Maria Cardoso. They entered the street from the Largo do Chiado and found another gang of people coming up from Rua Vitor Cordon.
Behind the arched gateway and high walls the doors to the building were shut and the front dark, but the faint glimmer in the windows told the crowd that there were lights on in the building somewhere. They hammered on the gates yelling incoherently. Zé stood in the middle of the street, punching the air with his fist and shouting 'Revolution!' and, inclined to go one step too far, 'Off with their heads.'
Windows opened at the top of the building and dark figures leaned out over the street. Four shots shattered the night air. The crowd split both ways down the street with screams and shouts. More shots followed them. Their boots thundered on the cobbles. Zé ran back up the hill and fell in a confusion of legs around him. He rolled over on the cobbles and, further down the street from in front of the PIDE building, he heard terrible noises coming from a man's throat. He checked the top of the building again but could see nothing. He crouched and ran back down the street, grabbed the man by his coat collar and hauled him up the hill. When he was safe he fell back and reached down to the choking man. His fingers found the slippery warmth of a neck wound.
Joaquim Abrantes had slept very badly. He woke up at six o'clock feeling groggy and bad-tempered, as if he'd spent the day before drinking. He tried to call his sons, but still couldn't get a line. He opened the window and looked out into the empty street. Something was wrong. The street should not have been empty. He sniffed the air, it was different, like the first whiff of spring after a long winter except that they were in the middle of spring already. A wild-eyed young man burst into the street from the direction of the elevador up to the Chiado. He raised his fist in
the air and shouted to the empty street:
'IT'S OVER!'
He ran up the street towards the Rossio.
There were horns blaring and a faint seethe of chatter and singing. Abrantes leaned further out of the window. He wasn't wrong. People were singing in the street.
'This is bad,' he said to himself, and strode back to the telephone.
'What's bad?' asked Pica, standing by the bedroom door in her red silk dressing gown.
'I don't know yet, but it sounds bad. People are singing in the street.'
'Singing?' said Pica, both charmed and mystified that something really was happening. 'Ah, well, even if there has been a coup...'
'COUP!' roared Abrantes. 'You don't understand, do you? This isn't a coup. This is a revolution. The communists have arrived.'
'So what?' she said, shrugging herself off the door jamb. 'What are you worried about? Half your money's in Zurich. The other half's in'são Paulo. Even the gold's out of the country...'
'Don't mention the gold,' growled Abrantes, wagging his finger. 'Don't even say the word "gold". That gold does not exist. It never existed. There never was any gold. Do you understand?!'
'Perfectly,' she said, and went back into the bedroom, slamming the door.
Abrantes pulled on his coat and went out into the street and walked towards the Terreiro do Paço and the river. The Praça do Comércio was full of troops, but they were all laughing and joking with each other. Abrantes moved amongst them, stunned.
At a little before 8.00 a.m. a column of tanks appeared from the barracks of the 7th Cavalry. Abrantes positioned himself in the arcade at the north of the square.
'Now we shall see,' he said to a soldier, who looked him up and down as if he was Neanderthal.
The column of tanks drew to a halt. The turret of the lead tank opened. A captain on the ground stepped forward. The lieutenant in the tank shouted down to him. His voice was clear in the fresh early morning and the total silence in the square.
'I have orders to open fire on you,' said the lieutenant, and the soldiers in the square shifted, 'but all I really want to do is laugh.'
A Small Death in Lisbon Page 35