A Small Death in lisbon (10 page)

Carlos had been sitting with his coffee cup ten centimetres from his mouth for the last two minutes, transfixed by the exchange. I shot him a look and he ducked into his coffee.

'When you said "man", your wife "found Catarina in bed with a man", that sounds as if her companion was older than ... than one of the "boys" in the band for instance. Was that the case?'

'You're a careful listener, Inspector Coelho.'

'How old was he, Dr Oliveira?' I asked, volleying his flattery straight back at him.

'Thirty-two.'

'That's very precise. Did Catarina tell you that?'

'She didn't have to. I knew the man. He was my wife's younger brother.'

The ormolu clock nearly missed a tick.

'Didn't that make you very angry, Dr Oliveira?' I said. 'You don't have to be a lawyer to know that your brother-in-law broke the law—that's child abuse.'

'I'm hardly going to run him in, am I?'

'I didn't mean that.'

'I'm a mixture, Inspector Coelho. I was an accountant before I became a lawyer. I'm sixty-seven years old now and my wife is thirty-seven. I married her when I was fifty-one and she was twenty-one. When she was fourteen...'

'But she wasn't,
Senhor Doutor,
when you knew her. You weren't taking advantage of a minor.'

'That's correct.'

'Perhaps, after this incident, Catarina, in your talk with her, gave you some reason to be tolerant with your brother-in-law?' I said, struggling with the sentence as if it was a giant octopus.

'If, by that, you mean, she wasn't a virgin, Inspector Coelho ... you would be right. You might also be shocked to know that she admitted to seducing my brother-in-law,' he replied, copying my syntax.

'Do you think she was telling the truth?'

'Don't imagine that they're thinking like we were when we were fourteen.'

'Did drug-use come up in this conversation?'

'She admitted to smoking hashish. It's very common as you know. Nothing more. She wouldn't ... I know,' he faltered. 'I'm beginning to see from your expression, Inspector Coelho, that after a conversation like that you think I should have locked her in a tower until she was twenty.'

I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking a whole turmoil of things but not that. I've got to get this face under control.

'Perhaps you're a more advanced ethical thinker than most Portuguese,
Senhor Doutor.'

'We're nearly a generation beyond the dictatorial age and prohibition makes for a criminal society. I don't call that advanced ... just observant.'

'You said she wouldn't have admitted to using anything more than hashish...'

'My son's a heroin addict...
was
a heroin addict.'

'Catarina knew him?'

'She still knows him. He lives in Porto.'

'He's off it?'

'It wasn't easy.'

I remembered his stooped clerical walk. With these burdens he should have been bent double.

'You're still a practising lawyer.'

'Not so much now. Some corporate clients keep me on a consultative basis and I represent a few friends on tax points.'

'In these calls on Friday night, did you speak to any of her teachers?'

'The one I wanted to speak to, who I consider to be a concerned woman and the one who taught her on Friday afternoon, wasn't available. You know ... it was Santo António...'

He wrote down her name, address and number without my asking.

'I'd like some shots of your daughter and I think we should speak to your wife now, if possible.'

'It would be better if you came back later,' he said, and tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to me. 'My mobile number's on there too, if you hear anything.'

'You gave your daughter a lot of freedom, would she have gone to the Santo António celebrations without telling you?'

'Friday night we always have dinner together and she likes to go down to the bars in Cascais afterwards.'

We left the house. He didn't see us out. The maid watched us from the end of the corridor. It was hotter outside after the chill of the house. We sat in the car with the windows down. I stared into the square beyond the line of trees seeing nothing.

'Shouldn't you have told him?' asked Carlos. 'I think you should have told him.'

'A complex individual, the lawyer, don't you think?'

'His daughter is
dead.'

'I just had a feeling that by not telling him we might learn more,' I said, giving Carlos the paper. 'My decision.'

Fifteen minutes later a flame-red Morgan convertible, containing the lawyer in dark glasses, eased into the street. We followed him around the square, past the fort, through the centre of Cascais and back on to the Marginal heading for Lisbon. The day seemed to be taking shape.

'See if he looks at the beach when we pass Paço de Arcos,' I said.

Carlos, braced as an astronaut for lift-off, didn't blink but the lawyer's head didn't turn. It didn't turn until we cruised into Belém past the Bunker, or the new Cultural Centre as it is sometimes known, and the gothic intricacies of the Jerónimos monastery. Then, it suddenly snapped to the right to catch the ship's prow monument to the Discoveries—Henry and his men looking out across the Tagus at a gigantic container ship nosing out into the well-known, or maybe it was the blonde in the BMW overtaking him in the inside lane.

'Well?' asked Carlos.

I didn't answer.

The mist had cleared from around the bridge, the cranes being used to sling the new rail link underneath it saluted Cristo Rei, the massive Christ statue on the south bank, whose outspread arms reminded us that it could all be possible. I didn't need reminding. I knew it. Lisbon had changed more in the last ten years than in the two and a half centuries since the earthquake.

It had been like a mouth that hadn't seen a dentist for too long. Rotten buildings had been yanked out, old streets torn up, squares ripped out, centuries of plaque scraped off, façades drilled out and filled with a pristine amalgam of concrete and tile, gaps plugged with offices and shopping centres and apartment blocks. Moles had tunnelled new stretches of Metro and a brand-new intestine of cabling had been fed into the root canals of the city. We'd wired in new roads, built a new bridge, extended the airport. We're the new gnashers in Europe's Iberian jaw. We can smile now and nobody faints.

We thundered over the patchy tarmac at Alcántara. An old tram dinged past the Santos station. To the right the steel hulls of freighters flashed between the stacks of containers and advertisements for Super Bock beer. On the left office blocks and apartment buildings climbed up the hills of Lisbon. We ran the light at Cais do Sodré as a new tram, a mobile hoarding for Kit Kat, hissed behind us. I lit my first cigarette of the day—SG Ultralights—hardly smoking at all.

'Maybe he's just going to his office,' said Carlos. 'Do a bit of work on a Saturday morning.'

'Why speculate when you can call him on his mobile?'

'You're kidding.'

'I'm kidding.'

The yellow façade and the massive triumphal arch of the Terreiro do Paço sucked us away from the river towards the grid of the Baixa valley between the hills of the Fort of Sào Jorge and the Bairro Alto. The temperature hit thirty degrees. Fat, ugly bronzes loafed in the square. The lawyer's Morgan cut right down the Rua da Alfândega and left into Rua da Madalena which climbed steeply before dropping away into the new-look Largo de Martim Moniz with its glass and steel box kiosks and disinterested fountains. We skirted the square and accelerated up the slope of the Rua de'Sào Lázaro past the Hospital de'Sào José and into the square dominated by the pedimented, pillared façade of the Institute of Medicine. We parked close to the statue of Dr Sousa Martins, his plinth heaped with stone tablets of thanks, wax limbs and candles. Dr Oliveira was already parked and walking down the hill to the Institute of Legal Medicine. Carlos took his jacket off and revealed a long dark stripe of sweat-soaked shirt.

By the time we arrived in the Institute the lawyer was using all his training to get what he wanted—the staff, however, were more difficult to impress than a judge. I left him with Carlos and arranged for the body to be displayed. An orderly brought in Dr Oliveira, who had removed his dark glasses and now wore the bifocals. The assistant drew the sheet back. The lawyer blinked twice and nodded. He took the sheet from the assistant and pulled it back to see the whole body which he inspected closely. He drew the sheet back over her face and left the room.

We found him standing outside in the cobbled street. He was cleaning his sunglasses endlessly and wearing an expression of extreme determination.

'I am sorry for your loss,
Senhor Doutor,'
I said. 'I apologize for not telling you earlier. You have every right to be angry.'

He didn't look angry. The initial determination had flagged and the confusion of emotions that had followed had left his face strangely flaccid. He looked as if he was concentrating on his breathing.

'Let's walk up here and sit in the gardens in the shade,' I said.

We walked on either side of him through the cars, past the good
doctor's statue which rather than being imbued with the success of the cured was, in its pigeon-shit-spattered state, infused with the sadness of those who'd been lost. The three of us sat on a bench in surprising cool some distance from the pigeon-feeders and the coffee-drinkers idling in plastic chairs around the café.

'You may be surprised to know that I am glad that you are investigating the murder of my daughter,' said the lawyer. 'I know you have a difficult job and I also realize that I am a suspect.'

'I always start with those closest to the victim ... it's a sad fact.'

'Ask your questions, then I must go back to my wife.'

'Of course,' I said. 'When did you finish in court yesterday?'

'About half-past-four.'

'Where did you go?'

'To my office. I keep a small office in the Chiado on Calçada Nova de'S. Fransisco. I went by the Metro from Campo Pequeño, changed at Rotunda and got off at Restauradores. I walked to the Elevador, took that up to the Chiado and continued on foot to my office. It took me maybe half an hour and I spent half an hour there.'

'Did you speak to anybody?'

'I took one call.'

'From who?'

'The Minister of Internal Administration asking me up to the Jockey Club for a drink. I left my office just after half-past-five and as you may know it's only a two-minute walk to Rua Garrett from there.'

I nodded. It was cast-iron. I asked him to write down the names of the people who were with him at the Jockey Club. Carlos gave him his notebook for the purpose.

'Can I talk to your wife before you tell her what's happened?'

'If you follow me back there, yes. If not, I won't wait.'

'We'll be right behind you.'

He gave me the paper and we walked back towards the cars.

'How did you know to come here,
Senhor Doutor
?' I asked, as he threaded his way back to his Morgan.

'I spoke to a friend of mine, a criminal lawyer, he told me that this is where they bring the bodies of those who have died in suspicious circumstances.'

'Why did you think she'd died like that?'

'Because I'd already asked him about you and he told me you were a homicide detective.'

He turned and walked across the cobbles to his car. I lit a cigarette, got into the Alfa, waited for the Morgan to pull away and followed.

'What did you make of that?' I asked Carlos.

'If it had been my daughter in there...'

'You were expecting more distress?'

'Weren't you?'

'What about numbness? Trauma leaves people numb.'

'He didn't seem numb. The look he had on his face when we came out, he was galvanized.'

'Concerned about himself?'

'I couldn't say ... you know, I only saw him from the side.'

'So you can only tell me what I'm thinking about when you look at me head-on?'

That was just a bit of luck,
Senhor
Inspector.'

'Was it?' I said, and the boy smiled. 'What did you think of Dr Oliveira's accountancy? The mathematics between him and his wife.'

'I thought he was a bloodless son of a bitch.'

'Strong feelings,
agente
Pinto,' I said. 'What does your father do?'

'He was a fitter with LisNave. He installed pumps in ships.'

'Was?'

'They lost some contracts to the Koreans.'

'Your politics might be to the left of centre perhaps?'

He shrugged.

'Dr Aquilino Oliveira is a serious man,' I said. 'He's high calibre ordnance ... 125 mm cannon, no less.'

'Was he a colonel in the artillery, your father?'

'The cavalry. But listen. The lawyer has used his brain all his life. It's his job to use his intelligence.'

'That's true, so far he's one step ahead of us all the way.'

'You saw him. His instinct was to check the body. His brain always operates in front of his emotions ... until, perhaps, he remembers he's supposed to have feelings.'

'And then he leaves the room to go and collect them.'

'Interesting,
agente
Pinto. I'm beginning to see why Narciso put you on to me. You're an odd one.'

'Am I? Most people think I'm very normal. They mean boring.'

'It's true you haven't said a word about football, cars or girls.'

'I like the way you see the order of things,
Senhor
Inspector.'

'Maybe you're a man of ideals. I haven't seen one of those since...'

'Nineteen-seventy-four?'

'A little after that, in the mess that followed our glorious revolution there were lots of ideas, ideals, visions. They petered out.'

'And ten years later we joined Europe. And now we don't have to struggle on our own any more. We don't have to sweat at night thinking where the next escudo is coming from. Brussels tells us what to do. We're on the payroll. If we...'

'And that's a bad thing?'

'What's changed? The rich get richer. The ones in the know go higher. Of course, it's trickled down. But that's the point. It's a trickle. We think we're better off because we can drive around in an Opel Corsa which costs us our entire living wage to run while our parents house us, feed us and clothe us. Is that progress? No. It's called "credit". And who benefits from credit?'