A Small Death in lisbon (35 page)

'They talk in Estoril about whores down here? I don't think so.'

'They do. They might not call them
putas,
they might call them ... actresses, maybe, but they're paid in presents and dinners just as surely as the whores at the docks get cash.'

Abrantes wondered who'd helped her rehearse that. He didn't think those words were her own. In the cafés of Estoril they might see tie Parisian cut of her suits, the American nylons, the millinery in from London, but
he
saw a girl from the Beira with an urn of water on her head.

And you?' he asked, the imitation Lisboeta making him cruel.

'I'm your wife!' she shouted, and flung the kiosk card of Pica in his lap.

He picked up the card, checked it and snapped it down on the table next to him. He gave her a flat, level stare with dull black onyx eyes. She froze and corrected herself.

'I'm the mother of your children, your two sons,' she said, thinking this would weaken him, but this time it didn't.

'I've had some news,' he said. 'From the Beira. Two weeks ago.'

'Two weeks ago?' she repeated automatically, a strange darkness settling on her like the shadow on an X-rayed lung.

'My wife died.'

'Your wife?' she said, momentarily confused.

'Don't repeat everything I say. I know what I'm saying. My
wife
died. You remember her, don't you.'

She did. The old hag on the hill who'd been moved out for her. She nodded.

'She died,' said Abrantes. 'Do you understand?'

'I understand,' she said, the realization creeping up her like hemlock.

'I am going to marry again,' he said, getting to his feet and walking away from her. 'I'll be announcing my intention to marry
Senhora
Monteiro at the end of this week.'

She yelled something at him which was incoherent. It turned him. The large, slow head, blacker than a bull's inside.

'And me?' she shrieked. 'What about me?'

'You will continue to look after the boys in Estoril.'

'Like a nanny,' she said, leaping to her feet. 'Like an English nanny!'

'You're their mother,' he said, icily. 'They need you.'

'And you're their father,' she yelled, stamping her foot, 'and we...'

The words stopped. There were no more inside. Abrantes saw a flit of pure malevolence behind her eyes. She was puce, her fists clenched by her hips. He thought he might have to slap her to bring her out of this little fit and took two steps towards her for the purpose.

'You remember Christmas 1941?' she asked, and he stopped mid-stride.

'No,' he said, weighing his hand.

'You were out selling your wolfram across the border when
Senhor
Felsen came back early and caught you.'

'How would you know this? You were still a child then.'

'You were trying to cheat him ... I knew that much and so did he. I saw him waiting for you all day, furious,' she said, slowing down now to deliver. 'But he cheated you too.'

'Cheated me?'

'He raped me in our bed that night and the night after and it...'

She saw what it did to him. She saw that momentary self-pitying shallowness in his eyes and the muscles in his face slackening, punched silly by her words. She felt suddenly strong, too strong, because she was enjoying herself. She leaned her face out at him.

'Manuel is not your son,' she said quietly, and laughed, the emotion in the room too high for her. The giggle grated over her larynx like claws screeching down glass. Abrantes' head lowered, his eyes blinkered by his thick forehead. The big spaces in his head were suddenly filled and directed. His fist came up slowly and then snapped into her face. Her nose crunched. She felt the splintering of it in the bones of her face and cranium. Warm, thick blood spread in a fast gush over her lips, the metallic taste creeping into her mouth. She fell flat on her bottom, her head kicked back into the arm of the chaise longue, stunning her. A wide cravat of red opened down her blouse. She felt another blow coming and managed to get her hands up. Abrantes' fist slammed the back of her own hand into her mouth taking her two front teeth with it and shattering her knuckles. She fell sideways, choking, and saw the blood pool out and soak into the edge of the carpet.

'You're going back to the Beira and live with the pigs.'

Saturday, 13th June 199–, Alfama, Lisbon

I arranged for a car to pick us up. I let Jamie Gallacher buy cigarettes and he smoked all the way to the
Polícia Judiciária
and played with the door lock until the driver couldn't take it any longer. I hadn't let him wash or shave. He was still in the creased T-shirt and beer-stained jeans but with a brand-new pair of Nikes on his feet which might not be his for very much longer in the
tacos,
which is what I had in mind for him after he'd made his statement. It wasn't that I didn't believe him. It was that I didn't like him.

The big, dark car possibility coincided with the way my thoughts were leaning, that a creep had turned up after Valentim and Bruno, after Jamie Gallacher, and had sodomized her and killed her for being someone out there who knew the type of person he really was. It felt right, too, that the victim had had a spat and stormed off. It could happen to girls—they got emotional, became vulnerable and that was when a creep might pick them off and rape or kill them. I've seen them, not many of them, Lisbon's not a violent city. They're cruel these creeps. They offer comfort—a hug, a stroke, a little kiss, a small squeeze, an ugly grab and then mayhem.

It was possible that the driver of the big dark car knew her already. Maybe he'd been waiting outside the school, seen Gallacher hit her and moved in. My stomach was telling me things. The only problem was that it had been telling me things since I'd been in Luisa Madrugada's apartment.

Jamie Gallacher made his statement and I sent him down. He protested, telling me he had to teach on Monday morning.

'You're under suspicion of murder, Mr Gallacher. You've admitted to a sexual relationship with an underage girl who was one of your pupils,' I told him. 'I can keep you in a police cell for a year without charge while I carry out my investigations. This is Portugal. It's our system of law. You're guilty until proven innocent. Have a nice weekend.'

Carlos had the search warrant. We drove out to Odivelas. It was getting late now but I had to see.

The tick opened the door and read the warrant through. He took it to Valentim's mother. She sat at the kitchen table, smoking, facing away from the television in the next room which showed fat people pretending to be rich and trying to be funny with no success. The tick sucked on a bottle of Sagres. She looked up, red-eyed, the sockets blackened by mascara, lipstick worn off. Her voice was thick with saliva, from drink and tears.

'Where do you want to start?' she asked.

'Just his room. Is it locked?'

She shrugged. The tick nodded.

'Key?'

The tick shook his head. The tick knew everything.

I turned the door handle down and leaned into it. It cracked open easily, the door too small for the frame. I started at one end of the room, Carlos at the other. He gave me a pair of surgical gloves and snapped into a pair himself. He was methodical, careful. I knew he would be. He went through every page of every book, treating each one as if it was his own. He did the same with the sheet music. I went through the bedside locker. There was nothing unusual in the drawer. The cupboard contained spiral-bound exercise books which were full of notes from academic books. I leafed through them. Carlos slid under the bed with a pen torch in his mouth. A few moments later he grunted and came out with a key with a plastic tag. It had '7D' written on it. We bagged it and left the room.

'Find what you want?' asked the mother.

I asked them if the key meant anything to them. The tick shook his head, but he knew. The woman looked down at the ashtray in front of her, the strap of her bra down her shoulder.

We sat in the car and held the key up to the street lighting.

'What do you think?' asked Carlos.

'Garage maybe.'

'The car?'

'Possibly. Or just somewhere to keep his things private.'

A face appeared at the window on Carlos' side. The tick out for more blood.

'You want to know which door that key opens?'

'You don't like him do you?' I said.

'Little piece of shit.'

'Get in.'

The tick took us on a short drive of less than two kilometres into a light industrial zone with small warehouses, workshops for panel-beating, car repairs, foam-rubber furniture makers and other low capital businesses. Unit 7D was the size of a double garage with a large door for shipping and delivery and a small door for the office. It was a cheap place, if you weren't a student and this was how you made your money. I tried the key. It fitted and turned. I pulled it out.

'You're not going in?' asked the tick.

'Not without a search warrant.'

'
I'm
not going to tell.'

'I don't give a shit,' I said. 'If there's something in there I don't want to risk not being able to use it. And I don't know what your game is either. Maybe you'll change sides.'

We dropped the tick at a bar close to the apartment block. He wen't in there and hooked his buttock up on a stool and flicked his finger for a beer. We drove back to Saldanha and did the paperwork for the key. Carlos was sulking so I took him across the road and bought him a beer in the only place open, the city dead on its feet around here after a long week and the heat. We sat in silence under the glare of neon and sipped Super Bock with our jackets hooked over the chair backs. The barman was watching football. I asked him the score, not that interested.

'Zero-zero,' he said, barely listening.

'You can watch that stuff all year round now,' I said.

No answer. I turned back to Carlos who was weighing things in his head.

'You speak English like an Englishman,' said Carlos.

'1 was there for four and half years, four and a quarter of them in the pub,' I said. 'I only spoke to my wife in English and I still use it with Olivia.'

'You didn't tell me why you were in England.'

I lit a cigarette and gave him a direct look.

'Aren't you tired?' I asked.

'Something's got to happen while I drink this beer.'

'You don't want to talk about football.'

'I don't know anything about football.'

'Shit!' said the barman.

We looked up in time to see the ball sailing into the stands.

'My father was in the army, you know that already. He was serving in Guinea fighting those good old colonial wars under General Spínola. Maybe you know this too...'

'Carry on.'

'They were unwinnable wars. Guys your age were getting killed every day for no very good reason other than that Salazar wanted to be an Emperor. General Spínola had a brilliant and unconventional idea. Rather than killing people in order to make them Portuguese citizens why not be nice to them. He decided to wage what was called a "hearts and minds" war. He improved medical care, education, supplied books, that kind of thing and suddenly the Africans loved him and the rebels lost their cause. It meant that my father's men didn't get killed any more, and it also made him a big Spínola fan.'

Carlos sat back, a little resistance building already. It made me feel tired.

'So after the revolution, after the euphoria had worn off, when Portugal was a seething mass of dozens of different political parties and agendas, with the communists cornering a fair amount of the functionary power, my father decided that his old pal Spínola's solution to the problem of this chaos was the right one.'

'A second coup,' said Carlos.

'Exactly. And as you know, it was uncovered and my father had to get out fast. He had friends in London so we moved there. That's it.'

'He should have been shot,' said Carlos, into his beer.

'What was that?'

'I said ... your father ... he should have been shot.'

'That's what I thought you said.'

'There'd been a revolution. The democratic process was in hand, chaotically in hand, I agree, but that's the process. What it didn't need was another coup and the installation of a military dictatorship. I think, without absolutely any doubt at all, that your father and all the rest of them, should have been shot.'

It had been a long day and a hot one. I'd had a beer on an empty stomach. I'd spent a day having my new, exposed face read by people who didn't know me. There were all sorts of reasons why hearing this kid calmly condemning my father, my dead father, to death ... well, it brought something out in me that hadn't been aired for some time. To use an English expression—I lost it. I'd never been sure what the 'it' had been until then. Now I know. It's the control that makes us human. I lashed out claws exposed for once.

I slammed my fists down on the table, the two beers jumped and hit the deck, the barman braced himself against the steel counter.

'Who the fuck do you think you are!?' I roared. 'Are you the prosecutor, jury and judge rolled into one? You weren't even out of your nappies when all this happened. You didn't even have your own teeth. You didn't know my father. And you have no fucking idea what it's like to live under a fascist dictatorship, to see men getting killed, to see them saved by the ideas of one man, to see your country dropped in the shit by a bunch of power-seeking, self-aggrandizing bastards. So who the fuck do you think you are condemning men to death? You're the whole bloody reason this kind of shit happens in the first place.'

Carlos tipped back on his chair and saved himself on the front window, beer down his shirt and trousers, but his face calm, impassive, not cowed.

And you think that's part of the democratic process, do you? To get back into your tanks and drive down the Avenida da Liberdade. You think that's the proper way to address political differences in a modern world? Maybe they should have shot you as well.'

I went for him, crashed straight through the table, tripped over it, cut my hand on some broken glass, slipped on the beer, got back on to my feet, lunged at him and found myself connecting with the fat, porky shoulder of the barman, who must have seen this sort of thing happen before and had vaulted his hundred kilos over the bar faster than a Chinese gymnast. He grabbed my flailing arms.