A Small Death in Lisbon

by Robert Wilson

  Behind the poster was a panel. Carlos unscrewed it with a penknife. Set into the door was a thick file bound up with rubber bands.

  'You know what that looks like,' said JoJó. 'Insurance.'

  'You'd better leave now,' I said to him. He didn't want to. 'I'm telling you for your own safety.'

  'If that's the bear you've found,' he said, making for the door, 'kill it.'

  On the front of the file Gonçalves had written Oliveira/ Rodrigues. It was the only work in hand, and we saw why when we opened up the files. It appeared that Dr Aquilino Oliveira was the client and Miguel da Costa Rodrigues the job. In the file there were three thick dossiers containing every movement Miguel Rodrigues had ever made between August 30th of last year and June 9th of this year. Nine months' solid surveillance. In the last five months he'd only missed three Friday lunchtimes in the Pensão Nuno.

  'What have you got there?' I asked.

  'Photographs. Shots of girls in the street, dates on the back. Presumably girls that Rodrigues had bought. Look at them.'

  'They're all blondes.'

  'An obsession.'

  'And that last one?'

  'Catarina Oliveira.'

  I shivered badly, shuddered the length of my body, as if I'd just had a trickle of liquid slime down my spine. Carlos raised his eyebrows at me.

  'I was just wondering,' I said, 'what sort of a person Dr Oliveira is, to use his own daughter as bait in a murder set-up.'

  'Not his own daughter.'

  I planted the heels of my hands into my eye sockets and didn't move or speak for five long minutes. When I took my hands away the room was strangely dimmed, as if autumn had moved quickly into winter.

  'Do I get to know?' asked Carlos, sitting across from me, looking young and unconcerned.

  I had been thinking that I could stop this now, that I could shred the files and walk away. We could accept the original and believed version of events and move on. But I couldn't, I had to satisfy myself, I had to be sure that Luísa Madrugada had not been involved. And if I didn't do that ... I could see myself lying in bed watching her sleep, one: of those guys like a million others, wondering why I couldn't make that ultimate commitment, but knowing too.

  'What are we going to do?' asked Carlos, sensing the decision crisis.

  'Did you keep all your handwritten notes on Catarina's case?'

  'They're somewhere, but it's all in the reports.'

  'You might think it's all there, but you and I know it's not. Not absolutely everything and that's what I have to have now. I want every single thing on Catarina's case and I'm going to read it all from beginning to end ten times over. And tomorrow we're going to Caxias Prison to see Miguel da Costa Rodrigues.

  'What's he going to tell us?'

  'Amongst other things, why he would think that somebody would spend nine months on his tail.'

  ***

  I left the office early with the file and Carlos' notebooks and took them back home. I read everything through several times until it was late and dark and I was hungry. I had a quick steak in A Bandeira Vermelha and drank two coffees. I went back home and moved pieces of paper around again. Olivia came in about 11.00 p.m. and went straight to bed. I opened another packet of cigarettes.

  By midnight I had the beginnings of three ideas. The first was to do with dates and times, but I didn't have all the information. The second was much more interesting, but I needed a photograph that wasn't in Catarina's case files. The third needed the help of Senhora Lurdes Rodrigues and another photograph I didn't have. I went to bed and didn't sleep.

  Carlos was already in the office when I arrived. I'd finished the night with an hour of deep sleep between six and seven and had woken up feeling as if I'd been broken on the wheel. I sent him off to find the marriage date of Dr and Senhora Oliveira while I went to the personnel department and asked for Lourenço Gonçalves' old PJ file. I hoped he hadn't grizzled up too much because the latest photograph of him was during his last weeks as an officer with the PJ and was ten years out of date.

  Carlos came back with the date of 12th May 1982 for the Oliveiras' marriage. I sent him down to the files to find a usable photograph of Xeta, the murdered male prostitute who'd been found in Alcântara and another of Teresa Oliveira looking as young as possible. I arranged with the prison in Caxias to see prisoner number 178493 at 11.30 a.m. I phoned Inácio in Narcotics and asked him whether he was still holding the fisherman, Faustinho Trindade. He wasn't.

  We went first to the Rodrigues house in Lapa. The maid answered the door and left us on the step. Lurdes Rodrigues took her time coming to see us. She didn't want us in the house. Her face was unambiguously hostile.

  'And now, Inspector?' she said.

  'A question, Senhora Rodrigues. Did anybody you didn't know come into this house between Saturday 13th June and Friday 19th June?'

  'What a question, Inspector. Do you really think I'd be able...'

  'I'm talking about tradesmen, delivery men, repair men, electricity meter readers.'

  'You'll have to ask the maid,' she said, backing into the house. 'She wouldn't even bother to tell me that sort of thing.'

  The maid came back on her own. I asked the question again. She thought about it for some time until her eyes widened with memory.

  The only one I didn't know was the telephone man, but they're always different.'

  'How come you remember him after all this time?'

  'He wore a hat, and wouldn't take it off even when he came into the house, even when I glared at him.'

  'What did he say the problem was with the phone?'

  People in the area had been complaining about static. He wanted to check all our lines.'

  'Was he carrying anything?'

  'A suitcase of tools and one of those phones they use for testing.'

  'Did you see inside the case?'

  'He opened it, but I wasn't much interested.'

  'Where were you?'

  'There are three lines,' she said. 'One in the living room and two in Senhor Rodrigues' study. One is a fax line.'

  'Did you leave him alone?'

  'Of course I did. I'm not going to watch a repair man for half an hour.'

  'Half an hour?'

  'Maybe less.'

  'Did you see his van?'

  'No. He didn't have a van.'

  'You left him in the study for half an hour.'

  'No. Fifteen minutes in the study.'

  I took out the photograph of Lourenço Gonçalves.

  'Is that the man you saw?'

  She glanced over the photograph, with no hint of surprise in her face.

  'He was greyer,' she said, 'but that was him.'

  We continued down the Marginal to Caxias. The prison, high up on the hill, must have given some of the prisoners one of the most expensive sea views in the area. We parked up outside, watched with casual interest by some T-shirted inmates behind the chainlink.

  We sat in an empty interview room while the staff brought the prisoner up from the cells. Miguel Rodrigues' body wasn't looking too bad on the prison regime. He'd lost maybe fifteen kilos. His face, however, was grey with depression, his eyes dull. He'd lost his manicured sleekness, his billion-escudo glow.

  'If this is about that General Machedo business,' he said, without sitting down, 'I'm not talking without my lawyer present.'

  'That's Spanish business,' I said. 'I just need some help on some dates.'

  'I don't have much use for dates any more,' he replied.

  'This might help you.'

  'Or not,' he said.

  'Did you know you were being followed for nine months before your arrest?'

  'By the police?'

  'Privately.'

  'By whom?'

  'We'll come back to that.'

  'To answer your question,' he said, deliberately, 'no, Inspector, I did not know that I was being followed.'

  'You had two offices. One on the top floor of the Banco de Oceano e Rocha building on the Largo Do
na Estefânia and the other in the Rua do Ouro.'

  'That's right.'

  'Until five months ago you used to spend Friday lunchtimes and afternoons in the Baixa office. Was there any reason for that?'

  'I liked my privacy at the end of the week.'

  'Does that mean you used to entertain women down there?'

  'I thought you were going to ask me about dates.'

  'We're getting there.'

  'Jorge Raposo used to send girls down to those offices.'

  'And what happened to make you start going to the Pensão Nuno?'

  'Boredom,' he said. 'Jorge revealed another service.'

  'You only ever entertained women in the Rua do Ouro offices?'

  'It was private. There were no secretaries. If papers needed to be signed my secretary would have them brought down to me. It was my Friday office.'

  'Was it always that way?'

  Silence for some long moments.

  'Since my brother died,' he said. 'That was his office. I didn't want to get rid of it. I made it my own and...'

  'When was this?'

  'He died New Year's Day 1982,' he said, desperation and sadness leaking into his already grey face, as if this had been a watershed moment. 'Then soon after that it started.'

  'What?'

  'Seeing girls. That didn't happen when Pedro was alive.'

  'Who was the company lawyer at the time?'

  'The lawyer?' he said, sounding surprised. 'The lawyer was Dr Aquilino Oliveira. He was my father's lawyer, too, before the revolution.'

  'And what happened to him?'

  Miguel Rodrigues blinked, his brain trying to make a connection that would help him see why he'd ended up in prison for killing his ex-lawyer's daughter.

  'I don't know. I'm not sure what you mean.'

  'He's not the lawyer any more is he?'

  'No, no, he retired years ago.'

  'Retired?'

  'I mean he stopped working for us. It was a very confused period in file company. I remember I wanted him to stay. I wanted the continuity, but he was adamant. He said he had a new wife and he didn't want to spend too much of his later years working at high pressure. That was it. I had to accept that.'

  'Did you meet his wife?'

  'No, never.'

  'You didn't go to the wedding.'

  'It wasn't that sort of relationship.'

  'Did you ever see the wife?'

  'If I did, I don't remember.'

  'So from early 1982 you started seeing girls in your office in the Rua do Ouro. In those first few months did any of those girls stand out: particularly?'

  'I was a jaded man, Inspector. It's probably some kind of disease. I couldn't help myself. I used to feel very excited at the prospect, but afterwards it was nothing. My mind blanked the experience out. If a girl came back three or four times, maybe I'd remember her.'

  'Were all these girls blonde?'

  He sat with his wrists crossed between his legs and frowned, but not as if he was having to think about it, more as if he was examining new information.

  'At that time, yes, they were pretty well all blondes,' he said finally. 'I've never thought of it like that. I never asked for blondes, but that seems to have been the case.'

  'In those first few months of 1982 when you started seeing girls do you remember a time when you had to get rough with a particular girl ... some time in April perhaps?'

  'Rough?'

  I took out the photograph of Teresa Oliveira. She was lying down, her dyed blonde hair all around her. She looked relaxed, asleep, not that young, certainly not as fresh as she would have been at twenty-one. I pushed the photograph across to Miguel Rodrigues. He looked down at it without picking it up.

  'There's no trick to this,' I said. 'You won't be charged with anything. This woman has since died quite recently. Can you remember whether this woman ever came to your offices in the Baixa and whether you had to get rough with her, in order to have sex.'

  'I don't remember,' he said. 'I really don't. It was a very difficult time for me. I'd lost my brother, his whole family, it was an awful time.'

  'Your secretary at the bank. Is she still there?'

  He shrugged, a little aggressively.

  'Was she the same one as in 1982?'

  'Yes. But look, Inspector, who is this woman?' he asked, tapping the photograph.

  'You tell me,' I said.

  We left Miguel Rodrigues in a state of anguish, still shouting questions to us as he was taken back down to his cell. He had less idea than we did why he'd been followed for nine months. We went back into Lisbon and straight to the Banco de Oceano e Rocha tower. We took one of the glass bubble lifts up the full height of the atrium and on to the top floor.

  The top floor of the bank felt empty. Most of the staff had already been laid off. The people who remained were the key workers, being interviewed daily by the government investigators. We had to wait half an hour to talk to Miguel Rodrigues' secretary. She was in her late forties, wore spectacles and looked efficient, and slightly fierce from some recent stress lines that had appeared around her mouth. She was the kind of woman who'd know everything there was to know about the company she worked for. She recognized me from the newspapers. It tightened up her mouth.

  After a look through the diaries she recalled that period in the bank's history. Early 1982 had been hell. They'd been in temporary offices in Avenida da Liberdade which were bigger than the Baixa ones but not much.

  'Do you remember a Friday in late April or May,' I asked, 'a young woman from the lawyer's office coming in to get some papers signed? Probably urgent papers and probably a lunchtime.'

  'I normally sent one of our own girls down...'

  She was a blonde girl, no more than twenty-one years old.'

  'Yes, I do remember her,' she said. 'She got married to our lawyer, Dr Oliveira. She was his secretary. I thought about her just the other day. I used to see her in VIP. She died you know.'

  'Did she ever go down to Senhor Rodrigues' office around April, May 1982 ... on her own.'

  The secretary blinked behind her gold-framed glasses.

  Yes, she did. It was the week before she got married. And she didn't come up here any more after that. Yes, there was nobody available to take the papers down to Senhor Rodrigues and she said she'd do it herself.'

  I showed her the photograph of Teresa Oliveira and she nodded slowly.

  She doesn't look so well in this photograph,' she said.

  Chapter XLIII

  Tuesday, 24th November 1998, Banco de Oceano e Rocha, Estefânia, Lisbon

  We went for a late lunch in a small seafood restaurant on Avenida Almirante Reis. I had grilled squid, Carlos went for the cuttlefish in its own ink, which my wife had always referred to as the tarry gym shoe. We drank a half-bottle of white and finished with coffee.

  'Maybe you should have told Miguel Rodrigues who the woman in the photograph was,' said Carlos, meaning Teresa Oliveira.

  'I'd have had to spell it out for him,' I said, 'and prison is a lonely place full of nothing but the smell of men cooped up together and empty time. Miguel Rodrigues is serving a minimum of twenty years for a crime he did not commit. I don't like him. I don't think he's a good man. He's possibly a sick man. But I am not going to be the one to inflict on his mind the fact that he sodomized his own daughter.'

  There was a prolonged silence while Carlos stirred his coffee up to the required syrup.

  'If he raped her, why didn't she report it?' he asked.

  'She was a young woman on the brink of a brand-new life. A week away from getting married. And that's quite apart from it being 1982. The feminist movement hadn't exactly built up a head of steam in Portugal by then. You'd have had a job to find women anywhere, even in England, prepared to report rape in those days. Think about it. It would have had an impact on her marriage, it would have destroyed a large chunk of her husband's business, there would have been a long, intrusive investigation, perhaps with a trial at the end o
f it. No ... she just hoped it would go away and maybe it would have done, if she hadn't got pregnant. When that baby was born with those blue eyes ... that must have been a hard day.'

  We paid the bill and walked back up over dry, dead leaves to where we'd left the car. The kids had come out in the Arroios park to run screaming through the pigeons which swooped over the old boys playing cards in their woollen hats.

  'So, we have a motive now,' said Carlos.

  'I don't think we've got all of it yet. This was just the obsession of the man—he was going to bring Miguel Rodrigues down. But I think there's something else in this.'

  'And the killer?'

  'We'll find the killer.'

  'You don't think Dr Oliveira paid someone to kill her.'

  'Like Lourenço Gonçalves?'

  'Possibly.'

  'I don't think so. I think his obsession was a little more refined.'

  We stopped under a shop's awning while a blast of freeze-dried air shot through the Largo Dona Estefânia.

  'And what now?' asked Carlos.

  'We go to Paço de Arcos and find Faustinho Trindade.'

  'You don't sound happy about this.'

  'I'm not.'

  'If you think some justice has been done, why don't you leave it?'

  'Don't you want to nail Dr Oliveira?' I asked, hating myself for asking it.

  'We'll be interfering, won't we?'

  'We will.'

  'They've achieved some kind of result.'

  'Are you including the Minister of Internal Administration in "they"?'

  'I think I might be.'

  'And all those big men who came to watch my first interview with Miguel Rodrigues ... those spectators at the coliseum, who enjoy the smell of blood as long as it's not their own?'

  He swallowed hard, disgusted by it. I put my arm around his shoulder.

  Let's go to Paço de Arcos,' I said. 'And take it from there.'

  The traffic was terrible in Lisbon and out on the Marginal there'd been a four-car smash, the blood fresh and bright on the tarmac under the setting sun. It was early evening by the time we arrived in Paço de Arcos, the sea already dark, but choppy in the wind with white caps still visible in the failing light. The horizon was just a crack of light with two long, grey melancholic streaks of cloud. I did a small circuit through the town and came back on to the Marginal heading for Lisbon. We pulled into the car park by the boatyard of the Clube Nautico.