A Small Death in Lisbon

We paid the bill and walked back up over dry, dead leaves to where we'd left the car. The kids had come out in the Arroios park to run screaming through the pigeons which swooped over the old boys playing cards in their woollen hats.

'So, we have a motive now,' said Carlos.

'I don't think we've got all of it yet. This was just the obsession of the man-he was going to bring Miguel Rodrigues down. But I think there's something else in this.'

'And the killer?'

'We'll find the killer.'

'You don't think Dr Oliveira paid someone to kill her.'

'Like Lourenco Goncalves?'

'Possibly.'

'I don't think so. I think his obsession was a little more refined.'

We stopped under a shop's awning while a blast of freeze-dried air shot through the Largo Dona Estefania.

'And what now?' asked Carlos.

'We go to Paco de Arcos and find Faustinho Trindade.'

'You don't sound happy about this.'

'I'm not.'

'If you think some justice has been done, why don't you leave it?'

'Don't you want to nail Dr Oliveira?' I asked, hating myself for asking it.

'We'll be interfering, won't we?'

'We will.'

'They've achieved some kind of result.'

'Are you including the Minister of Internal Administration in "they"?'

'I think I might be.'

'And all those big men who came to watch my first interview with Miguel Rodrigues… those spectators at the coliseum, who enjoy the smell of blood as long as it's not their own?'

He swallowed hard, disgusted by it. I put my arm around his shoulder.

Let's go to Paco de Arcos,' I said. 'And take it from there.'

The traffic was terrible in Lisbon and out on the Marginal there'd been a four-car smash, the blood fresh and bright on the tarmac under the setting sun. It was early evening by the time we arrived in Paco de Arcos, the sea already dark, but choppy in the wind with white caps still visible in the failing light. The horizon was just a crack of light with two long, grey melancholic streaks of cloud. I did a small circuit through the town and came back on to the Marginal heading for Lisbon. We pulled into the car park by the boatyard of the Clube Nautico.

There were a couple of anglers out on the stone quay. I didn't know what they were expecting to catch in this weather but then fishing doesn't always seem to be about catching fish. The lighthouse on Bugio was already flashing. Three ships sat off the Costa do Estoril, their cabin areas lit. Faustinho was in his work shed, wearing a pair of blue overalls and a heavy jacket, working with very little light on a stripped-down outboard motor. His hands were dry and scaly with the cold. His dog got up and sniffed us over.

'When did you get out, Faustinho?' I asked.

'Just under a week ago and I'm not talking about it, Ze. I'm sorry if I caused trouble for you, but I'm not going to say anything. It's finished.'

'You should find a workshop to do this,' I said.

'It's too expensive.'

'You remember that kid…'

'Look, Ze… I told you,' he stopped. 'The kid… what kid?'

'You remember that kid you told me about, who saw something that night before the girl's body was found on the beach?'

'I never saw him again,' he said. 'He used to spend quite a lot of the summer out here… but this year…'

'Is this the one?'

Carlos handed him the photograph of Xeta.

'That's him,' he said, taking it down to the light, looking at it more closely. 'He's dead, isn't he? This is a photograph of a dead person.'

I nodded. Carlos took the photograph back.

'What does that mean?' he asked.

I looked across the Marginal, the town dark behind the trees in the park.

'It means that maybe we're going to have to look closer to home,' I said.

We went through the underpass and up into the public gardens. They were empty. The wind buffeted the trees. The paths were covered in their dry, scratching detritus. I wiped a bench off and we sat down. Antonio's bar was shut, no lights on, and we could have used a drink.

'Remember what I said to you that first morning,' said Carlos, 'about the significance of the body being here, and you living nearby?'

'We've come full circle,' I said. 'We lost sight of that. I lost sight of it.'

A white car pulled up outside A Bandeira Vermelha. Antonio Borrego got out and opened the boot. He lifted out a box of fruit, vegetables and a separate one of meat. He put them back in, opened the door to the bar and turned the light on. He went back to the boot.

'It's nice to see one of those still running,' said Carlos.

And now, finally, you start talking about cars,' I said.

'That,' said Carlos, 'is a Renault 12. Car of the Year back in the 1980s some time. My father had one… but his was a pile of shit. I spent a lot of my youth working on one of those.'

The two ventricles of my heart iced up. Suddenly the blood was only going through in thin spurts and the oxygen in my breathing hard to find.

'Come with me,' I said.

We walked out of the gardens towards where the old faded pink cinema had been, which was now the beginnings of an office block. We turned left and left again and came up behind Antonio's car.

'You remember your handwritten notes. What did the guy say? The one who saw Senhor Rodrigues' Mercedes. What else did he see?'

'I don't remember.'

'What he saw in front of the Mercedes was a brand-new metallic grey Fiat Punto and behind…'

'Was a white Renault 12 with a rusted wheel-arch.'

'Rear wheel-arch.'

In the poor street lighting and with the light coming from the open bar the corroded edges of the rear wheel-arch were visible. Antonio came out to pick up whatever else he had in his boot. He saw us. I waved.

'How is it?' he asked.

'It's fine,' I said.

'You want something to eat? I've got some beautiful spare ribs already marinated.'

'Sounds good.'

Antonio picked up another box and went into the bar.

'When Faustinho took me to meet Xeta and he wasn't there,' I said, almost talking to myself now, 'we went back to A Bandeira Vermelha and Faustinho described the kid in detail in front of me and Antonio.'

Carlos' head didn't move, his eyes stayed fixed on the light coming from the bar. I told him to go in there and talk to Antonio about anything except the obvious while I phoned the local PSP. If he'd already killed Catarina and Xeta, there was no reason why he shouldn't go down fighting. I went round the corner to make the call. It took me a couple of minutes to explain the situation to them, how I didn't want them sprinting in there and provoking him into an attack. By the time I walked back to the bar I was feeling sick, cold and tired, not ready for this, not wanting this.

I walked into the wedge of light coming from the door. Lying face-down on the bar floor, in a pool of blood that I couldn't imagine having got to that size in the short few moments I'd been away, was Carlos. The collar of his shirt showed red above his jacket and coat. The back of his head looked all wrong, his hand twitched, the thumb splashing in his own blood. Antonio was standing between Carlos' feet with the hammer raised above his head. It was the hammer he kept behind the bar, next to the sickle. His relics. His workers' tools. His weapons.

I stepped into the doorway. He turned to me.

'What have you done, Antonio? What the hell have you done?'

His eyes had gone. There was still the tiniest light in them, but it was a pinprick at the end of a four-mile tunnel, as if I was seeing straight through to some nicks of bone on the inside of his cranium.

'Let me call an ambulance,' I said.

He turned to me with his hammer raised and took one step forwards.

'What did he say to you, Antonio? What did he say to make you hit him?'