A Small Death in Lisbon

'You're not going in?' asked the tick.

'Not without a search warrant.'

' I'm not going to tell.'

'I don't give a shit,' I said. 'If there's something in there I don't want to risk not being able to use it. And I don't know what your game is either. Maybe you'll change sides.'

We dropped the tick at a bar close to the apartment block. He wen't in there and hooked his buttock up on a stool and flicked his finger for a beer. We drove back to Saldanha and did the paperwork for the key. Carlos was sulking so I took him across the road and bought him a beer in the only place open, the city dead on its feet around here after a long week and the heat. We sat in silence under the glare of neon and sipped Super Bock with our jackets hooked over the chair backs. The barman was watching football. I asked him the score, not that interested.

'Zero-zero,' he said, barely listening.

'You can watch that stuff all year round now,' I said.

No answer. I turned back to Carlos who was weighing things in his head.

'You speak English like an Englishman,' said Carlos.

'1 was there for four and half years, four and a quarter of them in the pub,' I said. 'I only spoke to my wife in English and I still use it with Olivia.'

'You didn't tell me why you were in England.'

I lit a cigarette and gave him a direct look.

'Aren't you tired?' I asked.

'Something's got to happen while I drink this beer.'

'You don't want to talk about football.'

'I don't know anything about football.'

'Shit!' said the barman.

We looked up in time to see the ball sailing into the stands.

'My father was in the army, you know that already. He was serving in Guinea fighting those good old colonial wars under General Spinola. Maybe you know this too…'

'Carry on.'

'They were unwinnable wars. Guys your age were getting killed every day for no very good reason other than that Salazar wanted to be an Emperor. General Spinola had a brilliant and unconventional idea. Rather than killing people in order to make them Portuguese citizens why not be nice to them. He decided to wage what was called a "hearts and minds" war. He improved medical care, education, supplied books, that kind of thing and suddenly the Africans loved him and the rebels lost their cause. It meant that my father's men didn't get killed any more, and it also made him a big Spinola fan.'

Carlos sat back, a little resistance building already. It made me feel tired.

'So after the revolution, after the euphoria had worn off, when Portugal was a seething mass of dozens of different political parties and agendas, with the communists cornering a fair amount of the functionary power, my father decided that his old pal Spinola's solution to the problem of this chaos was the right one.'

'A second coup,' said Carlos.

'Exactly. And as you know, it was uncovered and my father had to get out fast. He had friends in London so we moved there. That's it.'

'He should have been shot,' said Carlos, into his beer.

'What was that?'

'I said… your father… he should have been shot.'

'That's what I thought you said.'

'There'd been a revolution. The democratic process was in hand, chaotically in hand, I agree, but that's the process. What it didn't need was another coup and the installation of a military dictatorship. I think, without absolutely any doubt at all, that your father and all the rest of them, should have been shot.'

It had been a long day and a hot one. I'd had a beer on an empty stomach. I'd spent a day having my new, exposed face read by people who didn't know me. There were all sorts of reasons why hearing this kid calmly condemning my father, my dead father, to death… well, it brought something out in me that hadn't been aired for some time. To use an English expression-I lost it. I'd never been sure what the 'it' had been until then. Now I know. It's the control that makes us human. I lashed out claws exposed for once.

I slammed my fists down on the table, the two beers jumped and hit the deck, the barman braced himself against the steel counter.

'Who the fuck do you think you are!?' I roared. 'Are you the prosecutor, jury and judge rolled into one? You weren't even out of your nappies when all this happened. You didn't even have your own teeth. You didn't know my father. And you have no fucking idea what it's like to live under a fascist dictatorship, to see men getting killed, to see them saved by the ideas of one man, to see your country dropped in the shit by a bunch of power-seeking, self-aggrandizing bastards. So who the fuck do you think you are condemning men to death? You're the whole bloody reason this kind of shit happens in the first place.'

Carlos tipped back on his chair and saved himself on the front window, beer down his shirt and trousers, but his face calm, impassive, not cowed.

And you think that's part of the democratic process, do you? To get back into your tanks and drive down the Avenida da Liberdade. You think that's the proper way to address political differences in a modern world? Maybe they should have shot you as well.'

I went for him, crashed straight through the table, tripped over it, cut my hand on some broken glass, slipped on the beer, got back on to my feet, lunged at him and found myself connecting with the fat, porky shoulder of the barman, who must have seen this sort of thing happen before and had vaulted his hundred kilos over the bar faster than a Chinese gymnast. He grabbed my flailing arms.

Filho da puta!' I roared.

'Cabrao!' Carlos shouted back.

I lunged at him again, taking the barman with me and we all went down in a pile by the glass door of the bar. God knows what anybody would have made of it from the outside looking in-another football argument that had got out of hand.

The barman got to his feet first. He kicked Carlos out into the night and hauled me away to the toilets at the back of the bar. I sat down shaking, blood streaming down my wrist, soaking into my shirt cuff. I washed the wound out in the sink. The barman gave me some napkins.

'Never in my life,' said the barman, 'have I seen you like that. Never.'

He went back behind his counter. I picked my jacket up and opened the door.

'Shit!' said the barman, back at the TV, 'how did it get to be 2-1?'

I crossed the road to the Policia Judiciaria building and did some first-aid on my hand. I drove home, my blood still fierce, rocketing around my system with bigger and better arguments ripping though my brain. I was approaching a choppy version of calm by the time I parked up in Paco de Arcos and walked to the house.

Olivia was out and the door locked. I searched my pockets for the keys.

'Inspector?' said a female voice behind me.

Teresa Oliveira, the lawyer's wife, was standing a couple of metres down the street, looking different, her hair tied back and wearing jeans and a red T-shirt with the word GUESS on the front. I tried to summon some gentleness from the corner of my brain where it was still cowering.

'Is this important, Dona Oliveira?' I asked. 'It's been a long day and I don't have any news for you I'm afraid.'

'It won't take long,' she said, but I thought it might.

We went into the kitchen. I drank some water. She upset herself over my bloody shirt. I changed and offered her a drink. She went for Coke.

'The medication, you understand,' she felt the need to explain.

I poured myself a glass of whisky from an old bottle of William Lawson's that hadn't seen the light for the last six months.

'I've left my husband, Inspector,' she said, and I lit a cigarette.

'Was that wise?' I asked. 'They say it's better not to make traumatic changes immediately after a tragedy.'

'You might have realized that it's been coming for some time.'

I nodded without commenting. She fumbled in her bag for her own cigarettes and lighter. Between us we got one going for her.

'It never worked, right from the start it didn't work,' she said, referring to her marriage.