The Night Watchman (29 page)

Both girls looked at me darkly, so I said, ‘You won’t shock me. I’ve heard nearly everything over the course of seventeen years of police work.’

‘She . . . she was bleeding between her legs,’ Joana told me, gazing down like a little girl who’s revealed something that might get her punished.

‘Had Morel raped her?’ I asked.

Saying the word ‘raped’ seemed to leave me alone in my own half of the room, across an invisible barrier from the girls.

Joana tried to reply, but her voice broke. Covering her eyes with her hand, she ceded to despair. While Monica comforted her, I stood up and traced my gaze back and forth over one of the Oriental rugs, dark red and brilliant orange, thinking of all the things I wanted to tell the two of them but not daring to intrude on their intimacy.

After the girls had regained a measure of their composure, Joana looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes. Her breathing seemed dangerously hesitant. ‘I was fine and then, suddenly, I wasn’t,’ she told me. ‘I’m really sorry, Inspector.’

‘There’s nothing to apologize for,’ I replied, sitting back down. ‘I only wish I could tell you something that would help.’

‘I’m not sure anything could help us now that Sandi . . .’ Monica shook her head rather than end her sentence.

‘I hate to put you through this, but it’s very important that you go on with your story.’

‘Of course – we know we have to,’ she said. To Joana, she added, ‘I’ll start, and you just catch your breath.’ After taking a quick sip of water, she said, ‘Sandi told us that Monsieur Morel was reading in his room with the door open a crack, so he heard her walking to her father’s room. He came out to her in the hallway and invited her into the kitchen, and he heated her some milk. It was supposed to help her fall back to sleep, he said. Later, Sandi figured out that maybe he’d put some drug in the milk, because she started to feel really weak. He told her he’d help her back to her bedroom, but instead she ended up . . .’ Monica took a long deep breath. ‘She ended up in his room, and he . . . he did it to her.’

‘Sandi swore us to silence,’ Joana continued, disapproval in her voice. The stern way she frowned gave me the idea she was remembering – bitterly – how she’d failed her friend. ‘She said that her mom and dad would never believe her, because Morel was her mother’s lover and her father’s best friend.’

‘And he also threatened her,’ Monica added disgustedly. ‘He told her he knew about her father’s affairs with other women and would make sure the gossip magazines wrote about them.’

‘He even claimed Sandi was at fault – that she’d seduced him!’ Joana said, seething with contempt.

‘But she hadn’t!’ Monica exclaimed. ‘Sandi wasn’t like that!’

When Joana kissed her cheek, I thought with admiration,
This friendship is far deeper than any I could have entered into at their age.
And I sensed that they would not have formed so strong a bond with Sandi unless she, too, had been beyond her age in terms of loyalty.

Joana said, ‘Monsieur Morel also told Sandi he’d wanted to take her virginity and, now that he had, he was no longer interested in her. He said she didn’t have to worry about him doing it again to her.’

My gaze turned inward as I realized that Sandi had given a present – a cookbook – to the man who’d raped her. Had she needed to feel her debasement so deeply that she’d be able to carry out her plan and kill herself?

That question seemed to solve a riddle that had confounded me for thirty-two years: why a woman sentenced to death would spend her final hours knitting a six-foot long, rainbow-colored scarf for her jailer.

‘Inspector?’ Joana asked.

‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘So do you think that Sandi ended up telling her parents what Morel had done to her?’

‘She claimed she didn’t, but I figured she was lying. In any case, they didn’t do anything about it. Dr Coutinho must have regarded Morel’s threat as real.’ Frowning disdainfully, she added, ‘He’d have hated for something bad to get into those stupid gossip magazines.’

‘I don’t suppose Sandi was able to sneak off to a doctor or clinic the day after she was hurt by Morel? I mean, to have herself examined.’

‘No, but I kept something that’ll prove what he did to her!’ Joana said with vengeful triumph. She reached into the pocket of her shorts, took out an amber phial and stood up to hand it to me. Inside was a sliver of stained white fabric. ‘It’s a piece of a bloody towel,’ she said.

‘Whose blood is it?’

‘Morel’s!’ She sat back down. ‘While trying to fight him off, Sandi scratched his back really badly. Once she was safe in our room, she wiped her hands on a towel. She couldn’t stand the feel of him on her. While she was showering, I snipped off a piece.’

‘That was smart,’ I said, though I knew already that her guile wouldn’t do us any good.

‘You can get Morel’s DNA from it, can’t you?’ she asked.

She leaned towards me and made fists. Three months of hope must have been inside them, because the moment I promised I’d give her phial to Forensics, tears flooded her eyes. Struggling to find the right words, she whispered, ‘Thank you, Chief Inspector. Thank you for helping Sandi.’

Her face was luminous. I realized it would have a disastrous effect on her to learn that it would be impossible to prove in court that Sandi had got Morel’s blood under her nails while being raped. Sandi’s testimony would have made that connection. But now that she was dead, there’d never be a trial.

After the girls had fetched a carton of apple juice from the kitchen and passed it between them, I asked if Morel had tried to hurt Sandi ever again, either in his home or at her own house. Monica had begun braiding Joana’s hair by then, with an impressive, sure-fingered seriousness.

‘She didn’t mention anything like that,’ Joana said, ‘but I’m not sure she’d have told us. She said she felt dirty all the time. But I know she didn’t trust what he said about not being interested in her any more. So she did everything she could to make sure he wouldn’t find her attractive.’

‘That was the real reason she chopped her hair off, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, and she started starving herself, too, to make herself even more unattractive.’ In a disapproving tone, she added, ‘She started wearing long shirts and trousers to hide that she was all skin and bones.’

I remembered that Sandi had worn her father’s sweater both times I’d spoken to her. I’d thought it was to comfort herself with his scent. She’d clearly become very skilled at subterfuge by the time I met her.

‘Did you ever see her throw up after a meal?’ I asked, thinking that I now knew why she’d kept a honey dripper in her bed.

‘Yeah, she told me she had started vomiting to keep from gaining weight. And she said it as if it were a fantastic new talent. It was crazy!’

‘And did you ever see her cut herself?’

Joana showed me a puzzled face. ‘Cut herself how?’

‘With a knife? On her arms. Or somewhere else on her body.’

Neither girl knew anything about that, which probably meant that Sandi intended to stick her blade into Morel if he ever dared step into her bedroom. Nor had they been aware of any suicidal feelings Sandi might have had. ‘Though she told us her dad’s death was her fault,’ Joana told me. ‘Maybe that was why she did it.’

Did she think it was her fault because she’d failed to tell her father about the deadly content of her nightmares, as she’d originally led me to believe? When I asked the girls, Joana said she was convinced it was quite the opposite – that it was what Sandi had confessed to her father that had ended up overwhelming her with guilt.

‘She must have told her dad that Morel had hurt her,’ the girl said. ‘And he must have confronted Morel. To silence Sandi’s father, to keep him from going public with an accusation, Morel paid someone to kill him.’

That was a logical enough explanation. Except that such a possibility would have required an unlikely series of events to have taken place at the Coutinho’s vacation house in the Algarve. And for Susana Coutinho to have lied to me about something crucial to her daughter’s life.

Monica stopped braiding her friend’s hair and said in a distraught voice, ‘Sandi might even have started believing that Morel was right when he claimed she’d seduced him. It seemed to me that she was way too upset to think clearly.’

‘You know, Inspector,’ Joana added, ‘Sandi also stopped getting her period. Because she wasn’t eating enough. And she was glad that happened.’

‘Glad? Why?’

‘She figured that no man would want her if she wasn’t getting her periods. Maybe it doesn’t make much sense now, but it made sense when she told us.’

Monica finished off her braiding with an elastic hair tie. Joana pulled the braid around to her front and inspected the neat, tight weave closely, obviously pleased. After thanking Monica, she leaned forward and grabbed a copy of
Visão
from the coffee table between us. She twisted the magazine into a tight scroll. I had the feeling she needed to feel her own strength.

‘I’ll stop Morel from getting anywhere near you,’ I told her, guessing at her fear.

She looked down at me with anxious eyes. ‘How can you do that?’

‘Because he knows I consider him a suspect, so he’ll be on his best behaviour. Also, I’ve got him under surveillance.’

‘You do?’ Monica asked, stunned.

When I confirmed that he’d be followed day and night if necessary, Joana tapped her scroll on Monica’s head and giggled.

I hoped that the girls’ devotion to each other would see them safely past this trauma.

To my next question, the girls told me that they didn’t know if Sandi had spoken to her therapist about being molested.

‘Did she say if Morel had tried to steal anything of hers?’ I asked; I was thinking of her turquoise ring.

‘No, she said nothing like that,’ Joana told me, and Monica agreed.

So maybe starving herself made her fingers so slender that the ring kept slipping off.

‘I’ve got it!’ Monica suddenly burst out.

‘What?’ Joana questioned.

‘The line from
Lungs
that Sandi liked best. It was something like, “Happiness crashed into her like a train rushing down the track.”’

Monica sang the verse as best she could remember. We retreated into silence after that. Joanna gazed away for a while, clearly fighting another wave of despair. It seemed almost certain that both girls were thinking – like me – that Sandi’s first sexual encounter had run her over. And been meant to.

‘Inspector,’ Joana asked, ‘when are you going to arrest Monsieur Morel? Can’t you do it right away?’

‘We need to talk about that,’ I replied.

‘Why is that?’

‘The problem is that there’s only one way I can think of that could make Morel the killer and keep things logical. And it’ll take some checking on my part. Mostly with Senhora Coutinho, and she’s not yet in any condition to answer my questions.’

‘We told you exactly what Sandi told us!’ Monica exclaimed in a hurt voice.

‘I’m sure you did, but your story only makes sense if Sandi’s father learned what had happened to his daughter on his last day in the Algarve. Because if Sandi said anything to him earlier, he’d never have let Morel stay in his vacation house with her. Not to mention that Morel wouldn’t have accepted an invitation to stay in the same house with a girl he’d raped three months earlier.’

‘Unless he’s a sick and evil person!’ Joana exclaimed.

‘Yes, there are people like that, it’s true. But if Sandi told her father she’d been raped, he’d have probably had a violent quarrel with Morel in the Algarve.’

‘That’s probably just what happened,’ Joana said.

‘Except that Sandi’s mother told me that everything was friendly there.’

‘It’s possible she wasn’t there to see what happened.’

‘Even if she wasn’t, she’d have found out about any bad argument that took place in her house.’

‘Maybe there was no fight because Morel told Dr Coutinho he regretted what he did,’ Joana said. ‘He agreed never to go anywhere near Sandi or Senhora Coutinho again and left right away. He told everyone he was headed for the airport, but he lied. He surprised Dr Coutinho at his house and shot him. Or he hired someone who did.’

‘And what was his motive?’

‘To prevent Dr Coutinho from going to the police.’

‘So to avoid a rape charge that might not stick, he paid for a murder? Not very likely. Besides, you told me yourself that Sandi’s father would have hated for something to come out in the press, so he wouldn’t have gone to the police. He’d have remained with Sandi at their vacation house. He’d have wanted to help her.’

‘Maybe he had something really important to do in Lisbon,’ Joana said, desperate to salvage her theory. ‘You didn’t know him. He was
always
working. Right, Monica?’

‘Yeah, there’d be whole weeks when he’d come home late every night.’

‘Besides,’ Joana added, ‘he was leaving Sandi with her mom. She’d be safe.’

‘Except we all know now that she wasn’t safe with her or anyone else,’ I told them.

I stood up and stepped away from the girls to think things out. Maybe Sandi had told her mother exactly what happened, but Susana refused to believe her story because that would have meant having to give up her boyfriend – and face a public scandal. She might have convinced herself that Sandi was lying about being raped in order to prevent her from leaving Pedro and marrying Morel. If she thought that Sandi had resorted to lying about something that serious – and something for which Morel could face criminal charges – then she might not have shown her daughter much sympathy. Which might explain why I sensed so much tension between them when we first met.

Not being believed is like having all that’s good about you murdered.

Ernie and I had never needed to say that to each other – every time we looked at each other, we knew it; but maybe that was exactly what I needed to tell Susana in order to find out what had happened between her and Sandi. Unless . . .

Another possibility turned me back towards Joana and Monica: Sandi had indeed lied, but not about being raped. ‘Tell me more about the men who worked in Morel’s stables,’ I said.