A Small Death in Lisbon

'Even when she was six years old?'

'I have an understanding of unhappiness, Inspector. That of the rich, is not much different to that of the poor. My husband is a drinker. It changes him and he makes my children unhappy. But at least when he is sober he still loves his children.'

'And Dr Oliveira doesn't?'

She didn't answer. She couldn't bring herself to say such a thing.

'Dona Oliveira tried to give that child all the love she had, but Catarina didn't want it. She hated her mother and, you know, the strangest thing… she'd do anything for her father.'

'Dona Oliveira came to see me the night before she died.'

Mariana crossed herself rapidly.

'She told me that Dr Oliveira had been abusing Catarina sexually.'

Mariana slipped on the cobbles. I grabbed her. She backed into a wall and stood there appalled.

'Dona Oliveira said that you would corroborate this accusation,' I said. 'Is that true, Mariana?'

She swallowed hard and shook her head. The street was hot, bright and empty. The sky was a deep blue against the sunblasted whitewashed walls. The smell of lunch was on the sea breeze. Mariana was looking at me as if I was a man with a knife. She brushed a graze of whitewash off her shoulder.

'I wouldn't have been able to stay in that house,' she said.

I wanted to leave it at that, but I couldn't resist asking the question that I hadn't been able to ask either of the Oliveiras.

'Whose daughter is she, Mariana?'

'Who?' she asked, bewildered now.

'Catarina.'

'I don't understand.'

I stopped it there. A car rumbled up the street, tyres battering the cobbles. I fell in behind Mariana and followed her down to the main street and the cool of the trees. At the door to the supermarket I said goodbye, but with one last easy question. Mariana was relieved to tell me Teresa Oliveira's friend was an Englishwoman called Lucy Marques and gave me an address in'sao Joao do Estoril.

I caught the train back down the Linha to'sao Joao and walked away from the sea and station for a nearly a kilometer until I found myself in front of a traditionally-styled, but recently-built house with gates, a circular drive and wide steps leading up to a portico. It said money to me, but not enough for the real thing. I introduced myself to an intercom and video camera at the gate which opened electronically. There was a large white satellite dish on the roof of the house.

A heavy-set Cape Verdian maid took me across tiled white marble floors towards a living room from which came the sounds of an English soap opera. Lucy Marques was sitting with her feet up on the sofa cradling a remote and a large tumbler of what proved to be a gin and tonic with plenty of backbone. There was a stack of Hello! magazines on the floor beside her. She clicked off the television.

'I'm not speaking any more bloody Portuguese,' she said, fanning me away, 'so if you don't speak gin and tonic you can get lost right now.'

'My gin and tonic's pretty good,' I said.

'Is it? Pass me a nail then.'

'A what?'

'Fallen at the first, Inspector. A coffin nail. A cancer stick. A bloody fag, for God's sake… in the box there on the table.'

She took two cigarettes from the box and put one behind her ear. I lit the one in her mouth.

'Help yourself,' she said. 'Have a drink. Do the necessary. You look a bit sharper than Gumbo Gomes. What a depressing character he was.'

'Abilio…'

'Able was I ere I saw Abilio,' she said and cackled at her own madness.

I put Lucy Marques in her mid-fifties from the back of her hands but her face and body age seemed to have been arrested at around thirty-eight, an achievement given her regime. She wore white jeans and a T-shirt with some nautical applique.

'Can we talk about Teresa Oliveira?'

'Only if you join me with a drink. Gin and tonic. That was the agreed language.'

I poured myself a weak one and lit a cigarette.

'Teresa, Teresa, Teresa,' she sighed, and gulped her drink. 'What a mess.'

'I was investigating her daughter's death.'

'You were?'

'I was taken off it. Internal politics. Gumbo Gomes is working it now.'

'Gumbo Gomes. He's just the kind of Portuguese I detest. So serious. So gra-a-a-ave. You couldn't brighten him up if you offered him a Molotov cocktail and a light.'

'Mrs Marques. I'm sorry, can we…'

'Of course, gin makes me gabble. Teresa. No. Catarina. Yes, well, I'm not surprised she came to a sticky end. She was what we call a little minx that one. Do you know what a minx is, Inspector?'

'I can guess.'

'A flirty, dirty little schemer,' she said, and wriggled herself into the sofa preparing to deliver the dirt. 'You know Teresa had a lover last year.'

'Paulo Branco.'

'Right.'

'And she caught Catarina in bed with him.'

'It was a little more graphic than finding them under the covers, Inspector Coelho. Pumping buttocks. Ankles round the ears. The works, I can tell you. Teresa felt faint for weeks after whenever she thought about it.'

'I understood that Catarina called her to the house so that she would catch them at it.'

'You are well-informed. You must like to gossip, Inspector.'

'I was married to an Englishwoman.'

'Naughty, naughty now.'

'You had a crack at the Portuguese.'

'One all,' she said licking a finger and scoring the air.

'The lover, Mrs Marques?'

'Ah, yes. Teresa was convinced that he put her up to it.'

'Who?'

'Aquilino put Catarina up to it. Finding out about the lover and then taking him to bed.'

'My God,' I said, 'how did she get to think that?'

'Well, I said to her: "You're paranoid, dear." But she told me she'd cornered Catarina one day and confronted her with it, and Catarina's reply? "You shouldn't be having sex with other men." Nice family, eh?'

'Why didn't Teresa leave him?'

'You Portuguese and your marriage contracts,' said Lucy Marques, shaking her head. 'Aquilino and Teresa's agreement was… how do you call that arrangement when everything from both sides is thrown in the pot?'

'Communhao total de bens'

'That's it. Teresa came to him with hardly an escudo to her name. She worked for him, remember. It was all Aquilino's. He wasn't going to divorce her and let her have half his cake, which was what she'd have had to take…'

'But…'

'Exactly. He was crazy about her. He left his first wife for her and she was loaded… money and name.'

'So what happened?'

'Something right at the beginning and I don't know what. Teresa never talked about it. And believe me, I tried,' she said, tapping her Hello! magazines. 'This lot would have paid money for that, I can tell you.'

Suddenly I wasn't sure how much I liked Lucy Marques.

'Teresa came here on Saturday night.'

'She slept here, Inspector.'

'She came to see me first. She told me that Aquilino had abused Catarina sexually.'

'She was always telling me he was impotent, and I don't know how she knew that because she also told me that they didn't have sex again after Catarina was born. So, make of that what you will, Inspector.'

'What did she do on Sunday?'

'She must have taken a rhino-sized sleeping pill because she didn't get up 'til midday. I was worried about her, and checked on her breathing several times in the morning. She left here at one o'clock, saying she was going out to lunch and I didn't see her again.'

'She had a Mercedes, what colour was that?'

'Black.'

'Model, series number?'

'Haven't a clue.'

'Registration number?'

'I might look like a sad old lush to you, Inspector Coelho, but I've got better things to do with my time than remember my friends' registration numbers. Anyway, Gumbo Gomes has the car… ask him.'

I took the train back to Lisbon wondering if it had come to that. The mother killing her own daughter. I couldn't see it. I couldn't feel it. I stared out to sea, mesmerized by the waves breaking over the hump of a sand bank in the middle of the estuary and thought about the Oliveiras, their hopes foundered, the family broken up and dead… because of what? Because it had all gone wrong from the beginning.