'Not unless you can do it on your own.'
'Which of your father's businesses are you going to run?'
'He owns a publishing company.'
'What does it publish?'
'Too many male writers. Not enough fiction. No genre fiction, like crime or romance. No children's books. I want to change all that. I want to get people who don't read to read. Get them hooked, grow them.'
'The Portuguese take literature like their food-seriously.'
'You're a policeman and you've never read a crime novel?'
'I'm worried it's going to be as boring as the real thing, and if it isn't it won't ring true.'
'You're missing the point. A thirteen-year-old will never read Jose Saramago but give him a crime novel and by the time he's seventeen he will.'
'And then what'll happen to our great footballing nation?'
'They'll be well-read footballers,' she said and laughed a deep, dirty laugh that probably came from smoking Marlboro but what the hell, it made my chest boom, my spine prickle. We ate the crabs, drank more beer and talked about books, films, actors, celebrities, drugs, fame, success and I ordered a lobster split and grilled and Luisa said she'd pay for a vinho verde Soalheiro Alvarinho 96 which had more spunk to it than any vinho verde I've ever tasted. So we ordered a second bottle and drank that down in flashing gulps and two and a half hours after we'd arrived we fell out of the air conditioning and into the hot empty street with no traffic, no people and the trees still in the siesta silence.
We walked arm in arm. At the door of her apartment building she grabbed hold of my wrist and half-pulled me up the stairs. She only let go to get her keys out and then we were in the dark corridor, kissing, and she kicked the door shut with a bang so loud, glasses tinkled in the kitchen cupboards.
She led me through the living room, walking out of her sandals into her bedroom where she turned and yanked the shirt out of my trousers and ran her hands up my chest. She shrugged and the straps fell off her shoulders and the dress to the floor. She tore my jeans down my thighs. I wrestled out of my shirt. She gripped me through my undershorts and looked up with eyes that dared me. She pulled the shorts out and over and stripped down her own panties. I pulled her to me and she jumped and wrapped her legs around my waist, crooked an arm around my neck. She lowered herself slowly, her pubic hair scratching my belly, impossibly hot, heat beyond human tolerance, until we connected and she held herself there until we were both trembling, shuddering. She straightened her arms and leaned back smiling at me, smiling at my agony and, as we fell on to the bed, I felt like the surfer who feels the big wave hump underneath him, tons of ocean drawn up, the surge, the roll, the terrific speed and monumental collapse.
The traffic woke us. The Lisboans coming home at dusk. Wordlessly, we crawled into each other and made love again. The mirror looked darkly on. A red light passed across the scrap of velvet sky visible from the open window, followed by the sound of thumping helicopter blades. The room smelled of sex-sweat, perfume and something sweet like berry juice smeared on skin. Life felt suddenly rich, the city ripe, the room wine-dark and full of easy, complex possibilities.
I don't know how I got myself out of her apartment. There was a brief leaden moment and I was in the car, heading out of the city through the darkening Monsanto park, with her body smell still on me and something unfurling in my chest like the sails of a flotilla setting out.
The earth felt solid under my feet in Paco de Arcos. As I let myself into the house I had that feeling of money in the bank and a fridge full of food, neither of which was true.
It was 10.00 P.M. There was a light on in the kitchen and voices. Olivia was tucked tight under the kitchen table listening to Faustinho, a local fisherman, who was sprawled on a chair well back from the table barely within reach of his beer. He was working himself up into a lather about the government, the European Union's fishing quotas and Benfica in ascending order.
He struggled to his feet when I came in. Olivia looked relieved, tired. We kissed.
'You smell different,' she said and went to bed.
Faustinho, grey as a wolf, tossed his beer back and put an arm around my shoulder.
'Come,' he said, 'you have to see this boy. He saw something the other night. It'll help with your investigation. You must talk to him. Have you got any money?'
We walked to the gardens and through the underpass to the car park on the other side of the Marginal. Faustinho strode ahead, looking under boats, in the sheds. I lagged behind, enjoying some purposelessness.
'What's the rush?' I shouted after him.
'It's been an hour already,' he said.
'I thought you said he was bedding down for the night.'
'He's a street kid, anything could have happened. Maybe he got scared.'
'You didn't tell him I was the police.'
'No, no, but I've been gone an hour and maybe he starts thinking.'
'You know this kid?'
'I've seen him before. Skinny little bugger. He's got some black in him too. Wears a jacket two sizes too big for him.'
We searched the boatyard and car park. Nothing. I sat on the keel of a boat and smoked and looked out to sea, feeling useful. We went back to A Bandeira Vermelha and drank aguardente distilled from vinho verde that Antonio had brought down from the Minho in five-litre flagons.
Faustinho gave another longer description of the kid, having persuaded himself that I didn't believe him. Antonio and I leaned into each other on either side of the bar and looked impassively on as Faustinho measured the kid up with the aid of his own shoulder.
I strolled home in the warm night. I hovered at the bottom of the attic stair, tempted. I went into the bedroom, stripped and got between the sheets naked, still with her smell on me.
Chapter XXIX
16th July 1964, Pensao Isadora, Praca da Alegria, Lisbon Manuel Abrantes woke up with a jerk, staring at the threadbare central panel of the bedside carpet. His moustache was full of sweat, his head confused by alcohol gone bad in his brain. He didn't know the room until the smell of cheap perfume made it through his dense nasal hair and a light snoring at his back reminded him some more. He looked over his shoulder trying to remember a face or a name. Neither came to him. She was young and a little fat. She was lying on her back, the sheet down around her waist. Her breasts were widely spaced and had slipped down her ribs under her armpits. She had a light moustache. Her Alentejana accent came back to him.
He got up, wiped the sweat out of his moustache and was repelled by the smell of the girl still on him. He found a towel and went down the corridor to the bathroom. He showered under a trickle of tepid water standing up in a cast-iron bath. A small headache had emerged which didn't bother him, and a sore penis which did. They always tell you they're clean, but…
He dressed. His shirt was in a ghastly state. Yesterday the weather had been torrid and he'd drunk too much and that had made him sweat doubly. He'd have to go to work via the family house in Lapa and pick up a fresh shirt. A suit, too. This one was trampled to death. He looked like a broken salesman rather than an agente de i° classe in the Policia International e de Defesa do Estado (PIDE) and still not even twenty-two years old.
He clicked a coin down on the bedside table and left. He looked for his car in the Praca da Alegria, until he remembered he'd left it up in the Bairro Alto. He walked down Rua da Gloria and caught the funicular up the hill and found his car parked on Rua Dom Pedro V. He drove to Lapa. The house was silent. The rest of the family were in the Estoril villa for the summer. He shaved, showered, moved his bowels massively and changed into fresh clothes which felt cool around his chafed penis.
He straightened himself up in the mirror, pulled his shirt loose over his gut and then tucked it back in again, undecided which looked better. He had wanted to be at his best for this day's work and it had all started badly, but he hoped he'd pulled himself back on track now.