A Small Death in Lisbon

'Anything in her stomach?'

'She hadn't eaten anything for lunch.'

'Is that it?'

'Something, even this quick, is never enough for you guys.'

'Fernanda,' I said. 'You know it's appreciated.'

She hung up.

Teresa Carvalho had long purple hair, dark purple eye make-up, lipstick and nail varnish. She wore a black vest, a black short skirt, black tights and purple calf-length Doc Martens. She sat in an armchair in the corner of her father's study and crossed her legs. Senhor Carvalho left the room and we sat in the silence left over from Teresa's gum-chewing.

Senhor Carvalho's shoes did not move off. Teresa didn't look at either of us but focused on a point above Carlos' head. I opened the door and told Senhor Carvalho that I'd like to talk to him again later. He moved off like a bear back into its cave. There was a micron of trust in Teresa's eyes when I sat down again.

'Nothing said here has to go further than this room,' I said.

'Dad says you're Homicide. I haven't killed anyone so I'm cool,' she said, cracking her gum at us.

'Have you spoken to any members of your band since it broke up on Wednesday night?' I asked.

That opener made it look as if there was plenty more ammunition in the magazine and I could see the implications fidgeting behind her eyes.

'No, I haven't. There wasn't much point.'

'Was that the last time you saw Catarina?'

'Yes it was,' she said. 'Has something happened to her?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Anything could have happened to her.'

'Any reason?' asked Carlos.

'She looks innocent enough, doesn't she?'

'The blonde hair and blue eyes, you mean.'

She cracked her gum again, and brought one of her Doc Martens up on to the edge of the chair.

'Go on, Teresa,' I said, 'tell us what you thought of Catarina.'

'She was badly fucked-up in the head.'

'What does that mean? Crazy, neurotic, drugged-out?'

'I don't think she's even sixteen, is she?'

'That's right.'

'You might find some thirty-year-old putas with her experience but I…'

'I hope this isn't cat talk, Teresa.'

'It's guys' talk. Go out on the campus and ask.'

'You didn't like her.'

'No.'

'Did you envy her?'

'Envy?'

'Her voice, for instance.' She snorted.

'The fact that guys went for her.'

'I told you, she was no better than a puta.'

'What about Bruno and Valentim?'

'What about them?'

'Just answer the question,' said Carlos.

'Where is it?'

'The band,' I said, trying to steady Carlos who didn't seem to like this one either, 'how did the band break up?'

'I didn't like the music any more.'

'I meant, how. Did you all have a row and split in different directions? Did some of you side with others…'

'I don't know what they did. I met up with a friend in the Bairro Alto.'

'That wasn't the saxophonist was it?' I asked, and she went still.

'No, it wasn't,' she said it so quietly we had to lean in.

'What else does he do apart from play the saxophone?'

She didn't answer. Her hand was up by her mouth, and a thumbnail between her teeth.

'This saxophonist… is he your lecturer at the university?'

She nodded. Fat tears formed in her purple eye make-up. She studied her knee.

'You weren't with him the night the band bust up?'

She shook her purple head.

'Did you see him?' I asked.

Her eyes closed and purple tears eased down her face.

'Maybe you saw him with Catarina Oliveira later that night?'

'She stole him,' she blurted along with some snot. 'She stole him from me.'

'Is that why Narcotics got a phone call about a university lecturer manufacturing and supplying Ecstasy?'

She sprang out of the chair and grabbed some tissues from her father's desk and smeared her face around so she looked as if she'd taken a heavy beating.

'Where were you last night?'

'In the Alfama at the festa.'

'When?'

'I was here most of the afternoon working in my room… friends picked me up about seven o'clock.'

I told her to write down the names and phone numbers of her friends.

'You still haven't told me what's happened to Catarina,' she said.

'She was murdered last night.'

' I didn't do anything to her,' she said quickly, the pen hovering.

'Do you think either Valentim or Bruno were involved with her sexually?'

'I'm sure Valentim was… he found her. Not Bruno. He was scared of Valentim.'

'Found her?'

'Heard her voice, brought her into the band.'

'So why do you think they were having sex?'

'That was Catarina's way.'

'But you never saw anything that confirmed it?'

She looked up to see how the truth would go down.

'No,' she said. 'I didn't see anything.'

We got up to leave.

'You're not going to tell the drug squad about my phone call,' she said.

'If your lecturer's innocent I am,' I said. 'Is he?'

She shook her head.

'Are you?'

'They're trying to say I lab-assisted for him but I didn't.'

'What about supplying?'

'No,' she said, her mouth clamped shut.

'Catarina had traces of E in her blood the day she died.'

'Not from me. I didn't give her anything.'

'What about Valentim or Bruno?'

'No,' she said, a terse, hard, rock-sure lie.

I gave her a long look which she couldn't hold. She was thinking how she could salvage something from the situation, how she could make me like her. The unpopular girl. The fraud. The conservative playing in purple and black.

'If you wanted to understand Catarina,' she said, 'you had to hear her sing. She had a direct line to pain.'

We drove through an empty Lisbon on the first hot Saturday afternoon of the summer. We went straight down the normally clogged arterial avenues through Campo Grande to Saldanha, to the huge roundabout at Marques de Pombal and on to Largo do Rato which baked silently in the heat. Carlos was talking like a man with a mouthful of nails who couldn't spit enough of them out.

'The world can do without chatas like Teresa Carvalho,' he said. 'Little senhorinha rica with no personality, playing at being a grunge artist but all the time nurturing and cultivating those piss-weak, middle-class Salazarist values. She's the kind who's always had what she's wanted and when she can't get it, because she's too much of a chata, she makes sure nobody else can have it. She rats on people to save her own ass. She's a liar. She checks you all the time to make sure she's telling you what you want to hear. She dumps on her lecturer, trashes Catarina and then she gives us…' he put on a whiny voice, '"If you wanted to understand Catarina, you had to hear her sing, she had a direct line to pain," and you can bet that she didn't think that up herself. Gah! They're all the same.'

'Who?'

'Middle-class girls. Nothing to them. Chickens without giblets.'

'Was Catarina a chicken without giblets?'

'She must have had more to her than the rest put together… which is why they're all queueing up to shit on her and tell us what a little puta she was, but so far we haven't met anybody associated with her who's worth more than five tostoes.'