A Small Death in Lisbon

'That was a good day's work, Inspector. Let's see what Valentim Almeida's garage unit produces. I want to see your report on that and the interview with him afterwards.'

I grabbed Carlos, signed out a car from the pool and headed north to Odivelas. We sat in a traffic jam on Campo Grande for half an hour. I told him about Teresa Oliveira which silenced us for several minutes. Horns blared, indifferently. Techno music thumped loudly from behind tinted windows adjacent.

'You're right about Olivia,' he said, seeing as we were following a van with that name on the back.

'Are we talking about my daughter now?'

'She's different.'

'Half-Portuguese, three-quarters English,' I said. 'What did she talk to you about?'

'She told me about a kid at her school who has his own Range Rover.'

'That doesn't sound like her to be impressed.'

'She wasn't. That's what I meant. She's different. She asked me what I thought a seventeen-year-old kid with a Range Rover could aspire to.'

'A test question-what did you say?'

'I said it could leave him free to aspire to greater things than more material wealth.'

'Did she buy that?'

'No,' he said. 'She thought he'd already been corrupted. It was good. I found I was arguing against myself for once.'

'She likes that,' I said, looking across at his face staring resolutely out of the windscreen. 'Ideas. Arguing. Intellectual aggression… it's something she rarely sees in girls her own age. What would you call her…?'

I got his attention.

'A chicken with giblets?' I asked.

The traffic jam unlocked. The vertebrae of metal snake stretched. The techno music behind the tinted glass took off. Other things were playing on Carlos' mind.

'You were in there a long time,' he said.

'What are we talking about now?'

'With Narciso,' he said. 'Was that all you talked about… Senhora Oliveira's suicide?'

And her allegation against her husband.'

'Anything else about the investigation in general?' he hedged.

'He asked how we were getting on, too.'

Carlos' hand tightened around the ceiling grip.

'I suppose he knew about the fight,' he said.

'Not your first by all accounts.'

'I had one with Fernandes in Vice.'

'I don't know Fernandes,' I said. 'What happened?'

'Fernandes is a pig,' he said, jutting his face at the windscreen. 'He had something going with some pimps and their girls. He wanted to initiate me into his little score. I refused. He asked me if little boys was more my thing and I hit him.'

'You've got to try and lengthen that fuse of yours, you know.'

'I overdid it, too. I punched him in the gut and he didn't get off the floor for fifteen minutes. I was transferred away from him the next day.'

'I'm glad we didn't get that far.'

'I'd never have hit you. You had every right to be angry. When I told my father what I'd said to you, he damn nearly beat me up himself.'

'He sounds a good man.'

'He's a hard, proud Alentejano who still eats pig's tail and ears at Christmas.'

'Boiled or what?'

'No, no, grilled.'

'He must be a hard man.'

It was lunchtime when we arrived at the garage units and most of the others were closed. Only a tyre shop was doing any business. We let ourselves in through the small door and walked into a black partition wall and the smell of death.

The lights didn't work. We took out pen torches. Carlos squeezed past a wooden staircase and went through a black curtain underneath. I went up the stairs. Carlos gagged at the smell getting stronger. I came out on to a platform in the roof gable. I still couldn't find the fuse box for the unit. There was an expensive piece of computer equipment, a video camera and a television. Along the wall were seven polystyrene heads with wigs. All the eyes had been burnt out with cigarette ends.

'Porra!' said Carlos. Fucking hell.

'What?'

'This stink. I've found it. There's some dead chicks down here.'

'Chicks?'

'That's what I said… and a snake. A very unhappy snake.'

'I don't like snakes. Is it in a cage?'

'Do you think I'd be talking like this if it wasn't?'

'I'm coming down.'

I joined him in a three-walled stage set. At the back of the set there were seven pairs of stilettos, three rubber dresses, a bed, a chest, a moped, a spare can of petrol and a tool board.

'Have you seen what's missing from the tool board?' asked Carlos.

From the outline, a short-handled heavy lump hammer was missing.

'Let's find the electrics.'

'There's a box over there by the moped, near the floor.'

'Turn it on and let's take a look at Valentim's oeuvre.'

Carlos stepped over the chest and opened up the box. He flicked the main switch and dropped four others. There was a loud crack and four powerful halogen lights came on overhead.

'Shit!' yelled Carlos. 'This is… Out! Get out!'

The studio lights suddenly went out, sucking us back into a more intense darkness, except the darkness wasn't total. Around the electrics box were yellow flames. Carlos crashed over the moped. I ran at the black partition and dropped my shoulder into it. It collapsed and I tore it away from the wall. Carlos was at my back when I heard the low thump of the spare can of petrol catching alight and I ripped the door open. We fell out into the parking area followed by smoke and flames. I got into the car and reversed it away from the unit. Carlos called the fire brigade. I sat on the car bonnet in the shade of the units opposite and watched 7D burn. Carlos was wild, sweating, still scared and pacing up and down in front of the car.

'He booby-trapped it.'

'Are you sure?'

'No, I'm not sure. I didn't have enough time to check the fucking wiring diagram…'

'Calma pa, calma.'

'You saw what happened.'

'I'm asking you.'

'I threw the switches. The thing started fizzing. Sparks everywhere. There seemed to be petrol, the smell of petrol.'

'From the moped or a booby-trap?'

'Why don't we go and ask him.'

At 3.00 p.m. we were sitting in an interview room with Valentim playing the air guitar, his eyes closed in simulated ecstasy. I introduced the cast to the tape recorder and asked Valentim to give his full name and address. He complied without stopping his guitar practice.

Do you like film?' I asked.

'Movies?'

'Making them with film… or do you prefer video?'

'I like film.'

'I didn't see any in your studio… just video. I suppose it's cheap, but it gives an ugly effect. You have to light everything or you lose it, that's the problem. Film's more subtle. Even 16 millimetre.'

'But it's expensive.'

'There are other problems too, aren't there?'

Valentim stopped playing his guitar. He tapped a single finger on the table, keeping time in his head. Waiting.

'What other problems?'

'You have to develop the film. Edit it. Make a master print. Telecine that on to a videotape and then make your copies.'

'Like I said, it's expensive,' he nodded.

'And not private, either.'

'That's true.'

'But if you go the video way, there's a heavy initial investment. You have to come up with what? Thirty million escudos?'

'You don't know anything about computer equipment, do you, Inspector?'

'Tell me.'

'That edit suite was a million escudos,' he said. 'Cheap, isn't it?'

'You'd be a long time working in McDonald's to put that sort of money together.'

'If you thought that was the best way of raising it.'

'How did you?'

'Like normal people. I went to the bank.'

'And they don't mind lending to a student.'

'I'm not a policeman, Inspector Coelho. It's not a compulsion of mine to be totally honest about who I am and what I do. Banks want to lend money. They've got a lot of it. Interest rates are going to come down when we join the Euro. I'll make the repayments. What do they care?'

'How many movies did you make of Catarina?' asked Carlos.

Silence.

'Don't make us go through your whole collection.'