A Small Death in Lisbon

I took a pool car and drove out to Odivelas and sat outside Valentim's apartment block. He surprised me by not keeping me waiting long-another man, perhaps, who wasn't sleeping so well at nights. He banded up his swag of ringlets and I rolled down the window and told him to get in the car.

I cruised into the heavy traffic heading south into town.

'Did you ever meet a guy called Lourenco Goncalves?' I asked.

He repeated the name to himself and frowned, preparing to lie. I stopped the car in the traffic. Space built up in front of us and noise behind. I gave him the photograph of Goncalves.

'He was a Security Consultant,' I said, 'which is a perfumed word for Private Investigator. He followed people around. That kind of thing.'

'Why should I know him?'

'Wasn't he the one who told you to put on an interesting little sex show in the Pensao Nuno? You know, something unusual like you, Bruno and an underage blonde…' I said. 'Do you remember what happened to her after that, after you made sure she was in the Pensao Nuno having sex with two guys at the same time?'

'She… she,' he faltered, as a guy from the car behind came and hammered on my window. 'She went back to school.'

I slammed my foot on the accelarator, floored it, and kept looking at Valentim. I threw his seat belt off. He put his hands out. I slammed on the brakes. His forearms buckled against the dashboard, his head smacked into the windscreen. Blood appeared in a line on his brow. He slumped back into the seat, his fingers feeling along the split skin. I picked up the photograph, pulled his hands away from his face.

'Tell me, Valentim and you're out of here.'

'He offered me money.'

'How much are we talking about?'

'Initially it was a million escudos.'

'Your new computer edit suite.'

He nearly looked ashamed, but that would have drawn on reserves he didn't have.

'Then he told me that I'd probably have to take some heat from your people and… and I doubled it.'

'Nice job, Valentim,' I said. 'Tell me your conscience is clear.'

'I thought…'

'You thought it was an interest-free gift?' I said. 'You should take a look at the cost of money these days.'

I pulled up and kicked his bony arse out of the car. He cringed over the pavement like a village cur.

I turned round and went back up to the 2 0 Circular and took the motorway out to Cascais. I drove to Cabo da Roca, to the last house on mainland Europe. The wind was stronger up there and the house looked sharpened, honed clean in the freezing air.

Felsen was in his enclosed terrace, his head folded down on to his chest like a dead bird. He came to as I sat down.

'Ah,' he said, but he couldn't quite place me.

'Inspector Coelho,' I reminded him, and gave him a few seconds to digest it. 'Who's your lawyer, Senhor Felsen?'

'Am I being charged with something?' he asked, confused for a moment. 'I don't know that I have one any more.'

'Did you have a lawyer in prison?'

'I didn't need one. The damage was done. Once you're in… it's the devil to get out.'

'And when you got out?'

'Not for some years. Then one came to the house. Or did I go to him? His name was…' a shaky finger came out to place the name, but didn't find it.

'Dr Aquilino Oliveira?'

'Yes, that was him. He was my lawyer for… maybe ten years. I don't know. He may still be now.'

'Did you tell him your stories?'

'He was a very good listener… unusual for a lawyer. They always like to tell you how it is, don't they? With the law and that-how damned complicated it all is and how much you need them.'

'You never mentioned that you knew a political called Antonio Borrego in Caxias prison.'

'A political cleaned out my cell for several months. He asked me about this woman… I used to know her name too.'

'Maria Antonia Medinas,' I said. 'The last time we talked you couldn't get her name out of your head. Can you tell me what Antonio Borrego wanted to know about her?'

'He asked if I'd seen her or heard anything about her.'

'Had you?'

Well, I knew she was dead.'

How?'

'She'd been murdered… if that's what they call it in prison.'

'And did you see who did it?'

'I saw him. I called out to him. Manuel. He was my son, you know, illegitimate son. But he didn't hear me, and the next morning they carried her out,' he said, and he looked as if he might cry, until I realized he was, in fact, disgusted. 'There was so much blood in her skirt, the weight of it… it dragged along the ground. It left a brown trail.'

He drifted back into sleep. I sat for a moment looking at the brilliant clarity, the purity of cold winter sunshine. The visibility was stunning but hard-edged, unforgiving.

I asked Frau Junge about the lawyer. She said he'd looked after a few things for Senhor Felsen back in the early eighties, but it wasn't for very long.

'He said it was for ten years.'

'He's an old man, but he still draws on his vanity,' she said.

I'd made the connections, now I was brisding for a fight. The lawyer's Cascais house was empty, closed up for the winter. I called at his Lisbon home but nobody was there either. It was late afternoon when I dropped back in at the hospital. Olivia and Carlos' parents were still sitting almost where I'd left them. There was no news, except that two men had been looking for me.

They found me in the corridor outside the toilets, two men in dark blue raincoats. At a glance you might have thought they were clones-something to do with the way they'd been trained.

'Can we talk?' said one of them. 'Outside would be better.'

'Who are you?'

'We're from the Ministry.'

'Which one's that?'

'Let's go outside.'

The three of us, hands jammed into our coat pockets, sat on an ice-cold bench in the dark courtyard of the hospital with lights all around. Only one of them spoke. The other looked around with the wary eye of a hen that knows what's happened to other hens.

'We've come to tell you to drop your investigation into the disappearance of Lourenco Goncalves.'

'He used to be a detective with the Policia Judiciaria. I have a duty…'

'You have a duty, Inspector Coelho,' he said, quietly, agreeing with me that far. 'You have a patriotic duty, which now, is to keep quiet. A result has been achieved and it is the correct one and you must leave it that way.'

'I missed that result,' I said. 'I wasn't aware of anybody winning anything. Did I lose? I feel as if I lost.'

They leaned forward on their elbows and looked at each other across me. The one who didn't speak closed his eyes momentarily.

'We have a scapegoat,' said the talker.

'The Banco de Oceano e Rocha?'

He nodded to see if that was going to be enough.

'There's a police officer in there who might never wake up again,' I said. 'I think his parents might want to know what patriotic duty their son has been involved in.'

'You're the Inspector Dourado,' he said, sticking it in. 'You should know what it's about.'

'I'll start then,' I said. 'Nazi gold… now you finish.'

He sighed and looked around the dark patch of lawn.

'All the neutral countries during the Second World War,' he said, clasping his hands, 'are being asked to give their pound of flesh. You might have noticed that some Swiss banks recently awarded $1.25 billion to the victims of the Holocaust. The Banco de Oceano e Rocha has an estimated worth of $2.3 billion. We think we now have the potential to be generous.'

'Miguel Rodrigues,' I said, 'there's a guy who ran out of friends.'

The man unclasped his hands and showed me they were empty.

'Those gold bars,' he said, 'with their little swastika stamp on them, next to your sweet face. That wasn't just a publicity stunt for the Policia Judiciaria. That has saved us a lot of grief. That showed the world that we'd found the pound of flesh and we were prepared to surrender it. You've got to admit, Inspector Coelho, there's some justice in it.'