It was over in less than a minute. She slid off the bed on to the floor. Her face cold against the rough concrete floor. She vomited the cheese sandwich and water. He tried to pull her up but she was a dead weight. He kicked her in the stomach, harder than he'd intended. Something like an organ seemed to break inside her. He grabbed hold of her leg and hair and pushed a knee into her belly and heaved her up on to the bed. The pain reached right up to the top of the inside of her head.
He rolled her over, strapped her down, replaced the earphones. Breathing heavily, he pinched his nose with thumb and forefinger and flicked a hank of sweat and snot on to the floor. He turned on the sound machine. Her body strained. He zipped up his fly with a short, sharp jerk. He picked up the pitcher and left the cell.
As he relocked the door the flesh at the back of his neck began to crawl. He heard his name whispered softly over and over. Manuel. Manuel. Manuel. The cell corridor was empty. He shuddered, picked up the pitcher and nearly ran back to the guard's empty chair.
He drove back to the house in Lapa needing to be quiet and alone. He drank heavily, aguardente directly from the bottle. He slept deeply and horribly until late. He was woken by the sun streaming through the undrawn curtains, the clap of the palm trees in a nearby garden, the noise of children playing. His face was hot, swollen and sweaty. His insides felt black.
He showered and soaped himself until his body squeaked, but he couldn't get shot of the blackness in his gut. He drove to Belem and had a coffee but couldn't get a pastel de nata down his constricted throat. He was an hour and a half late getting to work. Jorge Raposo was waiting for him.
'We've got a problem,' he said, and Manuel's black guts ran cave-cold.
'Do we?'
'The Medinas girl. She's dead.'
'Dead?!' he said, the blood vacating his head so that he had to sit down.
'The guard found her this morning. Blood everywhere,' he said, waving a hand distastefully around the genital area.
'Has the doctor seen her?'
'That's how we know she's dead. She miscarried. Died of internal and, by the looks of it, external bleeding.'
'Miscarried? Did we know she was pregnant?'
'No, we didn't, and by the way, the boss wants to see you.'
'Narciso?'
Jorge shrugged and looked at Manuel's hands.
'No cakes today?'
Major Virgilio Duarte Narciso eased the phone back on to its cradle and smoked the last inch of his cigarette as if each drag was lacerating his lungs. Manuel had been trying to cross his legs but he was in such a sweat that the material stuck to every inch of his lower limbs and he just couldn't get one over the other. His boss, the major, rubbed the end of his large, brown nose, as thick as the thumb of a bo:dng glove with every pore visible, as if they'd been pricked there.
'You're being transferred,' he said.
'But…'
'In this matter there is no argument. The orders have come down from the Director himself. You are to head a team responsible for bringing that charlatan General Machedo to justice. We've had an intelligence report that he is over in Spain preparing another coup attempt. You are being promoted to chefe de brigada with immediate effect and you will be briefed by the Director himself this afternoon in Lisbon. There. What do you think of that? You don't look very happy, agente Abrantes.'
Manuel still found himself staring into the cold crevasse of his own thoughts.
'I'm honoured,' he stammered. 'I thought I was too young for such a promotion.'
The major closed an eye and looked at him shrewdly.
'Caxias is no place for a man of your ability.'
'I thought you wanted to see me about the Medinas girl.'
'Who's she?'
'She died in her cell last night. Miscarried. Internal bleeding.'
The beat of silence was broken by the phone ringing. It jolted them both and the major yanked it to his ear. His secretary informed him that his son, Jaime, had been taken to hospital with a broken wrist after falling out of a tree. Major Narciso hung up, mesmerized by the space between himself and Manuel until he re-focused once more. Manuel tried and failed to swallow.
'Ah,' said Narciso, finally crushing out the cigarette, whose end was stinging his nail, 'one less communist for us to worry about.'
On February 19th 1965 Manuel Abrantes was having dinner in a small restaurant in Badajoz in Spain, no more than two kilometres from the Portuguese border. His two fellow-diners were enjoying themselves and Manuel himself was a mask of geniality. In two hours' time he and his two companions would be taking a short walk to a dark place for a meeting with a Portuguese army officer from the barracks in Estremoz, who would outline the strategy which could be the beginning of a new life for eight million Portuguese. Manuel's two dinner companions were General Machedo and his secretary, Paulo Abreu.
This meeting had taken six months to bring off, not to mention the four previous years PIDE had spent infiltrating the top echelons of General Machedo's entourage. Manuel had arrived at the best possible time. He'd brought fresh ideas to a man who'd spent the best part of a decade in exile. He'd cured the melancholia that surrounded the General and had infected him with a new optimism. Around Manuel, the General had begun to believe in a future.
The February night was cold and the heating in the restaurant inadequate. They sat in their coats and drank brandy to quell the shivers. At 11.00 p.m. a man came in and drank a coffee at their table. Fifteen minutes later they put on their hats and made the short two-hundred-metre walk to the churchyard, where the meeting was supposed to take place. There was a half-moon in a freezing clear sky and they had no trouble seeing their way. The man who'd come to their table walked a few metres ahead of them. The men didn't speak. The General's shoulders were hunched against the cold.
Inside the churchyard the man told them to wait in a narrow passage between some marble mausoleums. The General looked through the window of one and remarked on the smallness of the coffins.
'They must have been children,' said his secretary, which were his last words. A hammer struck him on the back of the head and his forehead broke the glass in the mausoleum door. The General stepped back, shocked, and found two men on his shoulders. His hands were lifted out of his pockets and held behind him. He watched in horror as his secretary was strangled in front of him. Even in his unconscious state Paulo Abreu struggled to hold on, his legs straightening and straightening until they were still and the feet slack.
The General was forced to his knees. The man who'd come to the restaurant removed a handgun from one pocket and a silencer from the other. He screwed them together and handed the piece to chefe de brigada, Manuel Abrantes, who looked down at the General whose hat had fallen off in front of him. The face, the whole body of the old man was suddenly completely exhausted. The General shook his head but his neck couldn't support it and it sank on to his chest.
'We must have been children,' he said, bitterly.
Manuel Abrantes placed the muzzle of the silencer on the back of the General's head and squeezed the trigger. There was a dull thud and the man shot forward with such force that his arms were torn from the grip of the two PIDE men.
Manuel handed the gun back to the agente. He reached down to the General and felt for a neck pulse. There was nothing.
'Where are the graves?' he asked.
The man with the gun walked down the corridor of mausoleums and turned left to a corner of the churchyard. The holes were barely a foot deep.
'What the hell is this?' said Manuel.
'The ground was too hard.'
'Bloody idiots.'
Chapter XXX
Monday, 15th June 1998, Avenida Duque de Avila, Saldanha, Lisbon By 7.00 a.m. I was washed, inexpertly shaved, suited and standing outside the Liceu D. Dinis on the corner of Duque de Avila and Republica, enjoying the early cool of the day. I'd woken up at 5.00 a.m. wanting it to be my summer holiday, with nothing to think about other than book choice, beach position and lunch. The photos in my pocket of Catarina Oliveira jolted me back on to the rails. I was going to work on the streets around the school to see if there was anything in Jamie Gallacher's car pick-up story.