A Small Death in Lisbon

'How long ago was that?'

'Fifteen years.'

'That's a long time for a marriage not to be working,' I said, looking for angles here and seeing none.

'It suited us to keep it going.'

'And now you're leaving him,' I said, and shrugged. 'Was your daughter's death the catalyst?'

'No,' she said, flatly, the hand with the cigarette shaking so badly she had to hold it with the other. 'He was abusing her… sexually.'

Her Coke fizzed in its glass.

Now we're getting to it.

'That's a very serious allegation,' I said. 'If you're going to make a formal complaint I would suggest you get a lawyer on your side and establish some strong evidence. And, if it's true, it could also have an impact on my murder enquiry, but I am not the person you should be talking to.'

I laid it out for her so that she knew I knew.

'It is true,' she said, feeling stronger. 'The maid will corroborate it.'

'How long had this been going on for?'

'Five years, that I know of.'

'With you tolerating it?'

Her hand still shook as the cigarette went to her mouth.

'My husband has always been a powerful man, both publicly and privately. He extended that power into his relationships… with me and his children.'

'Was that the attraction in the first place?'

'I never went for men my own age,' she shrugged. 'My father died when I was young… maybe that was it.'

'You were twenty-one when…'

'I was only ever interested in established men,' she cut in. 'And he took an interest in me. He can be very charming. I was flattered.'

'How did you meet?'

'I worked for him. I was his secretary.'

'So you know everything there is to know about him?'

'I used to know,' she said, 'when I was his secretary. As you might know, wives are not so well informed.'

'So you don't know who these few clients are he's working for now?'

'Why do you ask?'

'I want to know who I'm up against.'

'I only know who he used to work for, fifteen, sixteen years ago.'

'Who were they?'

'Big people.'

'For example?'

'Quimical, Banco de Oceano e Rocha, Martins Construcoes Limitada.'

'Very big people,' I said. 'Do you think you, your maid and whatever lawyer you can find for the money are up to taking on this kind of person?'

'I don't know,' she said, her thumb flickering over the filter of her cigarette.

'Is that why you came here tonight?'

She looked up with charcoal-smudged eyes in deep sockets, her face not puffy as it had been in the morning, gravity taking over from fluid retention.

'I'm not sure what you mean by that?'

'I have my work cut out for me in this case already, Dona Oliveira,' I said, shying away from a small but unpleasant truth. 'Your daughter was very promiscuous.'

'Wouldn't you expect that from a girl who'd been abused?' she said, getting a handkerchief out and wiping her eyes.

'The behaviour's been noticed in girls who haven't been abused,' I said. 'But that's your point, not mine. As the day's gone on we've discovered that she's had sex with your ex-lover and she's had sex with two boys from the band in a group session in a pensao in Rua da Gloria. The landlord of that rooms-by-the-hour pensao had seen her before on Friday lunchtimes with other men who he thinks were paying customers. And I've just finished interviewing one of her teachers, who had a six-month involvement with her. Catarina could have gone with anybody and I've got to the point in my investigation where I need some luck to move it on.'

'I know all that,' she said. 'I'm trying to help. I'm trying to show you that there were psychological…'

'I'm not on anybody's team, Dona Oliveira,' I said, quiet and firm.

She stood and chased the ashtray around the table, crushing her cigarette out. She shouldered her handbag. I followed her to the door with half a mind to ask my burning question. Was Catarina your daughter? But I was too exhausted for the reply. The front door clicked shut. I opened it again to call after her, but she was already halfway down the street, walking into the yellow glow of the municipal street lighting, having trouble with her heels on the cobbles.

Chapter XXV

23rd August 1961, Casa ao Fim do Mundo, Azoia, 40 km west of Lisbon Felsen looked down into the courtyard from the verandah on the roof of his house. It was full of people he didn't know, friends and business contacts of Abrantes. Some of them were standing, some sat at tables, some picked over the decimated buffet with the bald disappointment of vultures late at the kill.

The day was hot with hardly a breath of wind, which happened about once a year on this weather-blasted point of Cabo da Roca. The sea was in a flat calm, slow and viscous under the sun. Felsen smoked and sipped champagne from a shallow glass. The party was to celebrate his permanent return from Africa. He'd gone back there in the middle of June 1955 and spent almost the entire six years out there. But it was over now. Angola had exploded into war and business had collapsed.

Felsen looked across to the walled garden on the south side of the house. One of his current girlfriends, Patricia, the only one he'd invited, was standing next to Joaquim Abrantes in a group consisting of Pedro, Abrantes' eldest son, Pica, Abrantes' wife, and the Monteiros, Pica's parents. Abrantes had one hand in the small of Patricia's back and the other resting on his wife's waist. He was leaning forward listening to Pedro who, as usual, was charming everyone with one of his long, amusing stories which Felsen had probably heard before but never managed to grasp the humour.

He had no desire to be down there with them. He was used to Pedro's brilliance and, like good brandy, he didn't need too much of it. He looked around for Manuel, the second son, the one with his eyes. He found him there, in the walled garden, but four metres back from the group, standing on his own under the shade of a bougainvillea, perhaps hiding, merging into the shadows, ignored by all, invisible to them, waiting for something to happen of particular interest to him. Felsen had seen him in that position before at another party he'd thrown. Some of Pedro's friends had been standing near the bougainvillea, one a girl with blonde hair. Manuel's hand had stretched out from the shade, touched her on the head and half-frightened her to death.

Where Pedro was the tall, confident, light-haired, brown-eyed, football-playing eldest son, leader in his economics class at Lisbon University, the nineteen-year-old Manuel was shorter, fatter, and already losing his dark hair in a strange way that had left a straggling fuzz across his brown scalp. His jaw had merged into his neck, his breasts pouched in his shirt, and his trousers were inexorably drawn up the crack of his arse, however big he bought them. He had a magnificent moustache though. Compensating for what he was losing on top, it was thick, luxuriant, shining, as if all the energy in his head was drawn to it. And there were the eyes-long-lashed, blue with the faintest green in them from his mother. His best feature.

Manuel was a morose boy. He'd suffered from his mother's absence more than his brother had. School was torture. The reports on his academic ability were poor. He couldn't kick a football without sending a clod of turf after it, and the memory of his attempt at roller hockey still brought tears to people's eyes. He didn't even have the distinction of being very unpopular. He was just mildly so-not reviled, just overlooked.

If there was harsh treatment coming from his father's hand, and there was plenty of it at school report time, it found its way to the back of his head or his backside and never to Pedro's. This didn't make him hate his brother. He liked him too much, as everybody else did, and his brother always stood up for him. He didn't hate his father either, but he became watchful and sly to avoid confrontation. It was women that he found difficult. He had no way of talking to them, couldn't find anything inside himself that might interest them and, as a result, they didn't like him. He wanted to learn about them and underwear drawers seemed as good a place as any to start.