A Small Death in Lisbon

We laughed.

'He had a sense of humour, Lourenco,' said JoJo.

'Tap that door again, Carlos,' I said.

It was hollow-sounding at the edges and solid in the middle. It was one of those cheap doors made by slapping two pieces of veneer on to a frame, and those sort of doors normally sound hollow from top to bottom.

'Take the poster off.'

Behind the poster was a panel. Carlos unscrewed it with a penknife. Set into the door was a thick file bound up with rubber bands.

'You know what that looks like,' said JoJo. 'Insurance.'

'You'd better leave now,' I said to him. He didn't want to. 'I'm telling you for your own safety.'

'If that's the bear you've found,' he said, making for the door, 'kill it.'

On the front of the file Goncalves had written Oliveira/ Rodrigues. It was the only work in hand, and we saw why when we opened up the files. It appeared that Dr Aquilino Oliveira was the client and Miguel da Costa Rodrigues the job. In the file there were three thick dossiers containing every movement Miguel Rodrigues had ever made between August 30th of last year and June 9th of this year. Nine months' solid surveillance. In the last five months he'd only missed three Friday lunchtimes in the Pensao Nuno.

'What have you got there?' I asked.

'Photographs. Shots of girls in the street, dates on the back. Presumably girls that Rodrigues had bought. Look at them.'

'They're all blondes.'

'An obsession.'

'And that last one?'

'Catarina Oliveira.'

I shivered badly, shuddered the length of my body, as if I'd just had a trickle of liquid slime down my spine. Carlos raised his eyebrows at me.

'I was just wondering,' I said, 'what sort of a person Dr Oliveira is, to use his own daughter as bait in a murder set-up.'

'Not his own daughter.'

I planted the heels of my hands into my eye sockets and didn't move or speak for five long minutes. When I took my hands away the room was strangely dimmed, as if autumn had moved quickly into winter.

'Do I get to know?' asked Carlos, sitting across from me, looking young and unconcerned.

I had been thinking that I could stop this now, that I could shred the files and walk away. We could accept the original and believed version of events and move on. But I couldn't, I had to satisfy myself, I had to be sure that Luisa Madrugada had not been involved. And if I didn't do that… I could see myself lying in bed watching her sleep, one: of those guys like a million others, wondering why I couldn't make that ultimate commitment, but knowing too.

'What are we going to do?' asked Carlos, sensing the decision crisis.

'Did you keep all your handwritten notes on Catarina's case?'

'They're somewhere, but it's all in the reports.'

'You might think it's all there, but you and I know it's not. Not absolutely everything and that's what I have to have now. I want every single thing on Catarina's case and I'm going to read it all from beginning to end ten times over. And tomorrow we're going to Caxias Prison to see Miguel da Costa Rodrigues.

'What's he going to tell us?'

'Amongst other things, why he would think that somebody would spend nine months on his tail.'

***

I left the office early with the file and Carlos' notebooks and took them back home. I read everything through several times until it was late and dark and I was hungry. I had a quick steak in A Bandeira Vermelha and drank two coffees. I went back home and moved pieces of paper around again. Olivia came in about 11.00 p.m. and went straight to bed. I opened another packet of cigarettes.

By midnight I had the beginnings of three ideas. The first was to do with dates and times, but I didn't have all the information. The second was much more interesting, but I needed a photograph that wasn't in Catarina's case files. The third needed the help of Senhora Lurdes Rodrigues and another photograph I didn't have. I went to bed and didn't sleep.

Carlos was already in the office when I arrived. I'd finished the night with an hour of deep sleep between six and seven and had woken up feeling as if I'd been broken on the wheel. I sent him off to find the marriage date of Dr and Senhora Oliveira while I went to the personnel department and asked for Lourenco Goncalves' old PJ file. I hoped he hadn't grizzled up too much because the latest photograph of him was during his last weeks as an officer with the PJ and was ten years out of date.

Carlos came back with the date of 12th May 1982 for the Oliveiras' marriage. I sent him down to the files to find a usable photograph of Xeta, the murdered male prostitute who'd been found in Alcantara and another of Teresa Oliveira looking as young as possible. I arranged with the prison in Caxias to see prisoner number 178493 at 11.30 a.m. I phoned Inacio in Narcotics and asked him whether he was still holding the fisherman, Faustinho Trindade. He wasn't.

We went first to the Rodrigues house in Lapa. The maid answered the door and left us on the step. Lurdes Rodrigues took her time coming to see us. She didn't want us in the house. Her face was unambiguously hostile.

'And now, Inspector?' she said.

'A question, Senhora Rodrigues. Did anybody you didn't know come into this house between Saturday 13th June and Friday 19th June?'

'What a question, Inspector. Do you really think I'd be able…'

'I'm talking about tradesmen, delivery men, repair men, electricity meter readers.'

'You'll have to ask the maid,' she said, backing into the house. 'She wouldn't even bother to tell me that sort of thing.'

The maid came back on her own. I asked the question again. She thought about it for some time until her eyes widened with memory.

The only one I didn't know was the telephone man, but they're always different.'

'How come you remember him after all this time?'

'He wore a hat, and wouldn't take it off even when he came into the house, even when I glared at him.'

'What did he say the problem was with the phone?'

People in the area had been complaining about static. He wanted to check all our lines.'

'Was he carrying anything?'

'A suitcase of tools and one of those phones they use for testing.'

'Did you see inside the case?'

'He opened it, but I wasn't much interested.'

'Where were you?'

'There are three lines,' she said. 'One in the living room and two in Senhor Rodrigues' study. One is a fax line.'

'Did you leave him alone?'

'Of course I did. I'm not going to watch a repair man for half an hour.'

'Half an hour?'

'Maybe less.'

'Did you see his van?'

'No. He didn't have a van.'

'You left him in the study for half an hour.'

'No. Fifteen minutes in the study.'

I took out the photograph of Lourenco Goncalves.

'Is that the man you saw?'

She glanced over the photograph, with no hint of surprise in her face.

'He was greyer,' she said, 'but that was him.'

We continued down the Marginal to Caxias. The prison, high up on the hill, must have given some of the prisoners one of the most expensive sea views in the area. We parked up outside, watched with casual interest by some T-shirted inmates behind the chainlink.

We sat in an empty interview room while the staff brought the prisoner up from the cells. Miguel Rodrigues' body wasn't looking too bad on the prison regime. He'd lost maybe fifteen kilos. His face, however, was grey with depression, his eyes dull. He'd lost his manicured sleekness, his billion-escudo glow.

'If this is about that General Machedo business,' he said, without sitting down, 'I'm not talking without my lawyer present.'

'That's Spanish business,' I said. 'I just need some help on some dates.'

'I don't have much use for dates any more,' he replied.

'This might help you.'

'Or not,' he said.

'Did you know you were being followed for nine months before your arrest?'

'By the police?'

'Privately.'

'By whom?'