'What are we talking about now?' asked Luisa.
'The reason why I'm depressed,' I said, 'is that Miguel Rodrigues or Manuel Abrantes did not murder Catarina Oliveira.'
'How long have you been thinking this?'
'Do you want the truth or the media version?'
'Don't be a chato, Ze.'
'No, you're right. I'm being a chato to the last person I should be a chato to. I thought he didn't do it, from the moment I found the girl's clothes in his study.'
'Which was amongst the most damning pieces of evidence in the whole trial.'
'Exactly… with those clothes in his possession he became the stripper of the body and therefore the most likely murderer.'
'And you think somebody else put the clothes there?'
'Two things. Miguel Rodrigues was supposedly harassing me on and off the case. I wasn't getting the information on the car from Traffic. I was taken off the job. I was invaded by Narcotics. I was pushed under a tram. If he was feeling the heat that much, why didn't he get rid of one of the most damaging pieces of evidence against him? And the second thing. Why weren't the girl's knickers with the…'
It was at this point that the parasites got out of control, and the most virulent and debilitating of the diseases of the famous ran through me like a bad case of malaria. I got a large, ugly dose of paranoia.
Nobody knows the famous, the famous know nobody.
'With the what?' asked Luisa, who'd reared back at the same time. 'Why are you looking at me like that?'
'How am I looking at you? I don't mean to…'
'You're looking at me as if you're looking into me, as if you're looking into the back of my head.'
'It's nothing. I don't know what I'm thinking any more.'
It wasn't true. I did know what I'd been thinking. I'd been thinking that I'd got a lot of harassment, right up to the moment when I landed Miguel Rodrigues, and having landed him under those difficult circumstances, I had to find a way of getting public opinion on my side. And what happened? My girlfriend of one week is an expert on the Salazar Economy, she's already been looking at the Banco de Oceano e Rocha, she produces the name Klaus Felsen, she has a father in magazine publishing, who's looking for a big story for a launch issue that's ready to go. And when the story broke it was all so easy. Narciso was suddenly as dreamy as a pastel de nata from the Antiga Confeitaria in Belem. And I was desperately hanging on to the mane of a bare-back media stallion, galloping across the open plains.
It is the nature of paranoia that things which had seemed so right at the time suddenly become inflamed with suspicion. And once I'd started thinking like that, other thoughts began to assert themselves. Who had given me Luisa Madrugada's number? Dr Aquilino Oliveira.
Like pure quinine for a bad malaria attack, there's only one cure for paranoia-the absolute, undiluted truth. The arranged truth, even though there is some justice in it, will never be good enough, will never absolve the most important people.
I was sick and I had to have the one and only cure.
If, then, I could have thought beyond the tight circles in my head, I would have realized that, in reaching for the pure truth, I was going to disrupt the arranged one. If it had been arranged, then it had been arranged by somebody. Somebody powerful and somebody vindictive, who would not take kindly to the disruption.
I looked at Luisa again, trying not to dig under the surface. Antonio Borrego, the only man still letting me pay for my food and drink, put the bill down between us.
Chapter XLII
Tuesday, 24th November 1998, Poticia Judiciaria building, Rua Gomes Freire, Lisbon I sat at my desk and booted up the computer. I accessed the missing-persons file and put in a search for Lourenco Goncalves to see if he'd reappeared or been found. There was no record of a missing-persons report being logged. I looked out of the window at the brilliant sunshine and shivered.
I found Carlos and took him for a walk down to Avenida Almirante Reis. It was cold, very dry, and the wind was a lacerating northerly. There'd been no rain this year. The last three years it had rained the whole of November until I felt as depressed as an Englishman. This year it had been eerie. No rain. Day after day of brilliant sunshine, cloudless skies. And rather than joy, it brought with it the chilling notion that the planet had been irrevocably damaged.
The small, narrow bar between the Anjos and Arroios Metro stations where I'd first met JoJo Silva was packed with mid-morning coffee-drinkers. We went straight to the back of the cafe. JoJo Silva was sitting at a table staring into an empty coffee cup as if the grounds were going to tell him this week's lottery numbers. I blocked out his light. He looked up.
'Do they let you take your own calls yet, Inspector?' he asked.
'I stopped being a demi-god as from yesterday.'
'Welcome back to mortality.'
'What's going on, JoJo?'
'Nothing… as usual.'
'You didn't file a missing-persons report on your friend.'
'Lourenco Goncalves?' he said. 'I did, Inspector. Oh yes, I did that. It was the least I could do for him. Why do you think I've been calling you and been told you're not available for the last three months? I even tried you yesterday.'
'Yesterday?' I said, knowing his name hadn't appeared on the message list.
'You want to know why I called you yesterday… of all the days?' he asked. 'The rent is up on Lourenco's office. He's not in a position to renew the lease, so the landlord is going to clear the place and rent it out to someone who exists. And once that's happened, Inspector… he really is lost. Wiped clean.'
The three of us crossed Avenida Almirante Reis to a 1960s featureless office building. Carlos and I went up to the second floor, while JoJo found the landlord and the key. It took him some time.
'Are you doing anything tonight?' I asked, leaning up against the wall outside the unnamed office, looking for something to take my mind off the monster that was forming in my head.
'Just taking Olivia to the movies.'
'To see what?'
' City of Angels'
' Again?
'She likes it,' he shrugged.
'It's a romantic movie.'
'It's not the romance she's interested in,' he said. 'She likes the idea that there's something bigger than all of us out there, acting in an unpredictable way. Not always good, not always bad. She says it makes her feel secure.'
'Maybe you have to be young to have that kind of faith in things.'
'Bad night, last night, was it?'
'I just have the feeling that there's something big on the other side of that door.'
'Why?'
'Lourenco Goncalves… that name… whenever I've thought about it I've felt a need to do something but I've never cracked it. And now… somebody's thought it's important enough to delete the name from the missing-persons file. That never happens, not even if he's found.'
The landlord opened the door and left us to it. JoJo sat in his missing friend's chair. The office wasn't crowded out with furniture. There was a desk, another chair and a filing cabinet. There were four files in the filing cabinet and three empty drawers. The files were old. All dating to work the previous year. Carlos began taking the desk to pieces. JoJo didn't move.
'Was he working when you last saw him?' I asked.
'He always said he was working,' said JoJo. 'He just grumbled about not getting paid.'
'None of this work is current.'
'The desk is empty,' said Carlos.
I moved the filing cabinet away from the wall. There was nothing behind it. I tipped it on its back. Carlos went to the door. I fiddled with the surround of the cabinet.
'Something big on the other side of the door,' said Carlos, tapping it.
There was a large poster covering most of the door. It was a movie poster of a massive Kodiak bear in mortal combat with a man.
'He was obsessed with that movie,' said JoJo. 'It gave him his catchphrase.'
'What was the line?' asked Carlos.
'I'm going to kill the bear.'