The Company of Strangers

by Robert Wilson

  ‘Your Frenchman was shot last night. Dead,’ said Rui.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘We followed him to the caves, as usual. He went off to do his business and we left him to it, except we heard a shot, two shots. We went back up there this morning. Somebody found the body around six o’clock. The PVDE were up there because he was a foreigner, so I didn’t get too close. He’d been shot in the head at the viewpoint of the Alto da Serafina.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘I heard he was found with a gun on him,’ he said, ‘and some PVDE men were talking about a triple killing up in a big house in Estoril. Two foreigners and a Portuguese woman from a big family.’

  Voss drummed the tabletop, gave Rui a cigarette which he pocketed without thinking.

  ‘Do we do anything?’ asked Rui.

  ‘You wait,’ said Voss, and left the newspaper on the table.

  The PVDE had been hard at it since they arrived at Quinta da Águia at close to 2.15 a.m. They were working conscientiously to hide the fact that they had been unimpressively late on the scene. The first phone call about gunshot noise from the Wilsheres’ house had come in around 1.50 a.m. and had been discounted as carpet beating. By 2.00 a.m., however, there’d been another four calls, each reporting the same thing, gunshots – one quite loud, followed by two very loud and then two not so loud – and so it was that two PVDE men and two GNR men reluctantly got into a car and drove up to the Quinta da Águia with the bell on, just so that everyone in the neighbourhood would be woken up and they could feel important.

  At 6.00 a.m., because of the names of the dead found in the house, Captain Lourenço was informed and once he took a personal interest in the investigation the servants were rounded up and later in the morning a search began for the Englishwoman, whose address on her visa application was given as Quinta da Águia. They were waiting for her at the Shell building when she came back from Rua de Madres. They put her into a car and drove her to the PVDE headquarters on Rua António Maria Cardoso where there was intense activity as the reports of three other murders were being filed.

  Sutherland and Rose had gone through Anne’s story and come up against a serious difficulty – the hours spent in the café after Voss had dropped her placed her in Estoril. They had hoped to be able to hide her at the Cardews’ house – dinner and then too tired to go home, stayed the night. The time at the café made this impossible. They toyed with the idea of the truth, omitting her presence at the Wilsheres’ house but confirming that she spent the night with Voss – but it would compromise Voss. They’d hammered away at the problem until Anne put the idea of Wallis.

  Jim Wallis was found. He’d spent the night alone. A story was plugged into him – that Anne had dined with the Cardews, been dropped at the quinta, gone to the café, waited and waited for him, left, met him outside and gone back to his apartment in Lisbon. There were some shaky elements, not least of which was that Anne had never been to Wallis’s apartment and Wallis had a landlady. Anne was instructed to play her interrogation coy and reticent until the murders were disclosed and then, well, natural instincts would prevail. As she walked to the Shell building she elaborated the germ of the lie until it was an infection of perfect reality in her mind. She was desperate for it to work, her fear being that they would keep her locked up without charge for as long as they wanted to.

  The PVDE worked on her throughout the morning as more and more information came in. The Frenchman, Mesnel, whose revolver had not been fired, had been shot twice, grazed once and mortally wounded the second time. The bullet in Mesnel’s body matched that of the Smith & Wesson lying near Lazard’s body, with his fingerprints on it, in the Wilsheres’ house. The sides and underside of Lazard’s car, found outside the casino, were covered in cement powder and sand, and the tyre tracks matched those left at the site of the half-built villa belonging to Lazard where the bodies of the Couples had been discovered. The PVDE inspector was not convinced, by the way the bodies lay, that Hal Couples had done this unspeakable thing to his wife, strangled her and then shot himself in the head. As a scenario he didn’t believe it, and he said as much in his initial report to Lourenço, who had the benefit of an autopsy on Lazard which revealed blood on his penis and undershorts.

  By the end of the morning Lourenço saw it like this: Lazard had shot Mesnel in Monsanto, driven to Malveira, raped and strangled Mary Couples, shot Hal Couples with the man’s own gun. He had then driven to Estoril where there had been a disagreement, resulting in Wilshere shooting him with a gun probably kept in the safe. Wilshere had then been shot by Mafalda on the stairs and Mafalda had apparently shot herself by accident in the sitting room. There were some questions. Why did Mafalda put both barrels into the ceiling? Had she first attempted to kill her husband by dropping the chandelier on him? It seemed unlikely. Why was there the stink of brandy in the study, an empty bottle, a stain on the floor, but no stains on any of the bodies? Why, if the motive was robbery, was the safe open with four bars of gold in it? It wasn’t long before Lourenço was convinced that there was somebody missing from the scene.

  None of this information filtered down to Anne, who was in Room 3 with a single interrogator who asked a lot of questions and took copious notes. She told him how she had dined with the Cardews (tomato soup, mutton stew and cheese), gone to a café for a drink and then gone back to the Wilsheres’ where she’d overslept in the morning, taken the train to Lisbon and walked to work, arriving late. He drew the story out of her again, chipping away at her for more detail and getting it, masses of it. What she wore in bed, her dreams, whether she heard anything in the night (no), breakfast with Mr Wilshere (Dona Mafalda rarely attends), the walk to the station, the beauty of the morning sunshine coming through the mist, the cool after the terrible days of swelter. It was only after she was asked for a third rendering that Anne began to appear concerned.

  The PVDE man gathered the copious notes and left the room. She was there on her own for an hour (early lunch for the interrogators) and she developed some worry, which was not hard to do.

  At 12.15 two men came in and it was immediately different. They had strong alcohol and coffee on their breath and the words that came out on the back of it were ugly – liar, thief, murderer. She asked for a cigarette. They hit the table with their fists. They stood on either side of her, each with one hand on the back of her chair and the other on the table in front. They hemmed her in, breathed on her and told her what had happened at the Quinta da Águia the night before. She winced, shrank, paled and looked down into her hands, her shoulders shaking, her back shuddering under the implacable eyes of the two PVDE men.

  They gave her a cigarette, pulled their chairs around to the side of the table and smoked with her. One gave her his handkerchief and it was to him that she revealed her affair with Jim Wallis. Two agentes were dispatched. They picked up Wallis within the hour. During that hour Lourenço received a report in which he was informed that officially Lazard had left the country from Lisbon airport on a flight to Dakar the previous afternoon. This complicating development had the effect of clarifying everything to the PVDE chief, who treated this detail as confirmation that only foreign intelligence services could possibly have made such a fantastic mess.

  Voss returned to the legation and put a call in to his contact at the PVDE who told him the names of the three murdered people in the Quinta da Águia. He went straight across to Wolters’ office and asked to see him urgently. They sat in the darkened office, shutters closed to the high sun, only cracks of intense light around the edges.

  ‘I’ve had some disturbing news which I don’t fully understand,’ said Voss. ‘One of the agents I’ve been using to follow the French communist Olivier Mesnel reported to me that he was shot last night. The agent went up to Monsanto in the morning to where the body was found and overheard two PVDE men discussing a triple murder in a big house in Estoril. I’ve just contacted the PVDE who’ve confirmed the names of the three dead as follows: Mr Patrick Wilshere, Senhora
Mafalda de Carmo Wilshere and Mr Beecham Lazard.’

  Wolters’ face was perfectly still, the only movement in the room was the cigar smoke trailing from his fingers. The phone rang, more urgent than usual to Voss’s mind, and he sat back to admire Wolters’ collapsing world.

  The call was from Captain Lourenço demanding to see a representative from the German Legation in his office in Rua António Maria Cardoso. This was how Voss came to be sitting at the hottest point of the day staring at the PVDE chief’s back as he stood looking out of the unshuttered window in the vague direction of the São Carlos theatre. Voss was still thinking about Wolters, convinced that the general was as stunned by Lazard’s murder here, in Portugal, as he was himself.

  ‘It’s been very hot these past few days,’ said Lourenço. ‘I’ve been glad my office faces east…not that it makes that much difference. In Lisbon, you see, it’s the humidity that throttles.’

  ‘You should get out of the city more, sir,’ said Voss.

  ‘I would. I’d love to…if people would give me the time.’

  ‘Surely…’

  ‘People like yourself, Senhor Voss.’

  ‘Me, Captain?’

  ‘What’s going on, Senhor Voss?’

  ‘You’ve confused me now, sir.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Senhor Voss. You don’t strike me as a man who confuses easily,’ said Lourenço. ‘I’m looking at six murders, five of them foreigners. I’m quite certain that that is a record for one night in Lisbon and it is one record I am not proud of holding.’

  ‘Were any of them German?’ asked Voss. ‘Is that why…?’

  ‘No, none of them were German. That is why you’re here,’ said Lourenço. ‘I find it interesting that the military attaché has been sent, don’t you?’

  ‘I was sent because I was on hand,’ said Voss, wondering how long his dumb show could continue.

  ‘This is an intelligence matter, Senhor Voss,’ he said, settling behind his desk, smoothing his moustache with his fingertips. ‘So, please, let’s not walk around each other for an hour.’

  ‘We are as shocked by last night’s…’

  ‘Yes, yes…please, Senhor Voss, the point.’

  ‘We were expecting some goods from Senhor Lazard, that is true,’ said Voss. ‘But we were expecting him to leave the country in order to procure them. In fact, we know he left the country and we were very surprised to find him still here and even more –’

  ‘What were the goods?’

  ‘Well, I say “goods”…what I mean is that he left with diamonds in order to buy dollars. We have a hard currency problem in Europe.’

  ‘So he should have had some diamonds on him?’

  ‘I don’t know about on him, but they should have been in his possession, unless they were being carried by the man who boarded the Dakar flight impersonating Mr Lazard.’

  ‘Don’t try to confuse the issue, Senhor Voss. It’s very clear in my mind. All I want to know is why Lazard should shoot a Frenchman in Monsanto, drive to the Serra de Sintra to rape and strangle Senhora Couples, shoot Senhor Couples and then go on to Estoril where I am sure he was about to shoot Senhor Wilshere.’

  ‘I’d like to propose the theory that Senhor Lazard was operating in his own interests,’ said Voss. ‘Have the Allies been forthcoming about Senhor and Senhora Couples?’

  Lourenço’s dark eyes didn’t leave Voss’s face as they lit up with his first idea of the afternoon.

  ‘Ah, yes, now I see…is it possible he was using your diamonds to buy something from Senhor and Senhora Couples? Then, having got what he wanted, he killed them. The only problem is that Senhor Couples, according to the American consulate, is a salesman for a company which makes printing machines for use in the construction industry…she was his wife. There’s been gossip that she was having an affair with Senhor Lazard, which I find hard to believe. What was the value of the diamonds?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I would like to know, Senhor Voss.’

  ‘I meant why do you find it hard to believe that Senhor Lazard would be having an affair with Senhora Couples?’

  ‘The details of her death were not pleasant…You will have noticed that I used the word rape…that was…I was being…ach!…the man was an animal,’ said Lourenço, throwing his hand away. ‘And who is this Frenchman? That’s another thing.’

  Voss dipped his head, sorry that he was unable to enlighten.

  ‘Have you spoken to the English girl who was staying at the house, she must…?’ said Voss.

  ‘She knows nothing. She wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘She said she was there. She said she had breakfast with Wilshere in the morning and went to work, but the reality…I don’t know…foreigners.’

  ‘Foreigners?’

  ‘She was off with her English boyfriend somewhere in Lisbon…These women…she only arrived here on Saturday. I should have been born…’

  Lourenço trailed off. Voss survived the jolt, which had started out as fear, turned into a wild, irrational jealousy and finished as happiness. He lost Lourenço’s words as he stared across the street at the sun blinding the windows of the building opposite.

  Wolters listened to Voss’s report of the interview with Lourenço in hard silence, his eyes blinking once a minute as if that was part of the process of taking in the disaster. A million dollars lost, the most valuable supplier of industrial diamonds dead, the plans, which would have taken them a step nearer to a secret weapon, well, where were they? Did they ever exist?

  ‘What do we know about this?’ asked Wolters, the process of shifting blame already starting in his head.

  ‘What we know is useless to us,’ said Voss, relishing this moment, wanting to be able to share it with someone – this was what happened when the SS took over Abwehr intelligence operations.

  ‘But we do know something?’ he asked, clutching.

  ‘We know that someone calling himself Beecham Lazard boarded the Lisbon/Dakar flight. According to Immigration in Dakar he arrived safely but nobody of that name was on the Dakar/Rio flight which has now taken off…’

  ‘Yes, yes…I know these things.’

  Voss studied him, looking for confirmation of his theory, but Wolters was expressionless. There was nothing in his face to show whether he knew what Lazard had been doing, whether this had been part of the game – a bluff to the SIS and the OSS to focus their attention outside Portugal. Whatever. It had gone wrong.

  ‘I will write the report of this matter,’ said Wolters. ‘I will send the report personally to Berlin. Is that understood?’

  Voss waited until evening to see whether a report came out of Wolters’ office. Only Wolters himself came out and that was to leave the legation for a cocktail party at the Hotel Aviz and then dinner at the Negresco afterwards.

  Voss left the building at 7.00 p.m. and went back to his apartment where he knelt at the window smoking, drinking his preferred rubbing alcohol and watching the square, waiting, waiting for tomorrow to finally arrive.

  Because he never took cabs it had been a long walk for Paco to the small park above the Santa Clara market in the Alfama district. He had been told that the information he was going to be given would certainly be worth the very long walk from Lapa across the city. He sat under the trees with a view over the church of Santa Engrácia, wondering whether this was a dangerous place to be. Behind him, watching him, was someone else who was also reflecting on the same building, which was still incomplete after 262 years’ work. Paco sat back and tried to enjoy the warm night air of the empty park and watched the lights of small craft inching their way across the Tagus which was as big as a small sea at this point.

  The voice that came to Paco from behind him was not Portuguese. He had heard this kind of voice before. It was a voice incapable of relaxing. It was an English voice and only capable of speaking barely comprehensible Portuguese. The park was so dark that even when he turned round he couldn’t see who was speaking. He didn’t like this voice. Paco didn’t lik
e anybody. But he especially didn’t like this voice because it belonged to someone who wouldn’t make themselves known, the type who would always be on the edge of light, just in the shadows.

  ‘Ah yes, Paco. Beautiful up here, isn’t it? Especially at night. Very quiet. Hardly aware of the city.’

  Paco didn’t reply. These were just some of the things that Englishmen said.

  ‘I have something for you, Paco. A piece of information. Something that you could use at the right moment. I can’t tell you when that moment will be. It might be tomorrow or the next day. You will listen and watch as you always do and you will decide the correct moment for you to go with this piece of information to the man who will pay you well.’

  ‘Who is the man who will pay me well?’

  ‘This isn’t anything that should go to the PVDE.’

  ‘They do not pay me well.’

  ‘Then that is good,’ said the English voice. ‘The man who will pay you well is SS General Reinhardt Wolters of the German Legation.’

  ‘He will never see me. Why should such a man want to see Paco Gomez?’

  ‘There is no doubt that he will want to see you with this piece of information.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You will tell him that last night you saw his military attaché, Captain Karl Voss…you do know who I mean, don’t you, Paco?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘You will tell him you saw Captain Karl Voss with the English girl…’

  ‘The English girl who works for Shell, who lives in the house of Senhor Wilshere?’

  ‘Yes, that girl. You will tell him that you saw them walking together in the Bairro Alto last night,’ said the English voice, ‘and that they are lovers. That is all.’

  Chapter 24

  Thursday, 20th July 1944, PVDE Headquarters, Rua António Maria Cardoso, Lisbon.