A Small Death in Lisbon

'And I had some good news today, too.'

'You don't have to do your doctorate any more?'

'Not that good,' she said. 'My father's offered to let me launch this magazine he's had on the blocks for the last two months.'

'I thought you wanted to publish books.'

'I do, but this lets me burst on to the Lisbon publishing scene, which will be good for the book-publishing business. There's always more interest in a new magazine and I'll get a lot of attention…'

'But…?'

'I have to come up with the launch idea. What's going to make this magazine stand out from the rest.'

'And your father couldn't find the answer?'

'So he's made it sound like a present in that I get all this free publicity, but there's just this little Gordian knot I have to untie.'

'You need a good old-fashioned sex scandal. People caught with their trousers down.'

'Something a little more serious than that, Ze. It's a business magazine for the Iberian Peninsula not a tabloid rag for the hairdresser's.'

'You didn't say. Had I known…'

'What?'

'I'd have suggested a businessman with his trousers down.'

'Nobody's going to have their trousers down in any magazine I publish.'

'Then you might have circulation problems because that, as far as I know, is all people are interested in these days.'

'You're depressing me.'

'Then let's drink to the rise of frivolity.'

It was close to 9.00 p.m. and still light, with the days getting longer and the time shorter, as I walked down through the blocks of flats from Paco de Arcos station. A siren was blaring and men were running to the Bombeiros Voluntarios building. Moments later two fire engines blasted out into the street, leaving me with the impression that nothing ever stops. There are no blank spaces any more to colour in at your leisure.

I hovered at the street corner, contemplating a beer with Antonio Borrego. I was earlier than expected. I'd felt too tired to have dinner with Luisa, but I'd come alive on the journey back. I needed a shower first. Inside the house I knew I wasn't alone. The cat was sitting on a chair in the darkening kitchen, paws and tail neatly tucked away. She closed her yellow eyes at me and I left her to contemplate her night's killing.

I went up the stairs and stood at the top and thought I heard the faintest sound of someone in pain. There were no lights on. I walked the strip of carpet to Olivia's room and opened the door straight into her wide-open eyes and mouth just beginning to gape with horror. I shook my head and stepped back but the image kept coming at me. She was lying on her back, her bare legs wrapped around Carlos' rib cage, her ankles crossed and resting on his buttocks. He loomed over her, naked, board-straight on outstretched arms. His head snapped round. I slammed the door shut and reeled back two small steps as if I'd been hit in the face.

And then, like someone who has been hit in the face, I was furious. Mad enough that my eyeballs pulsated. I reached for the door handle, the blood thumped in my forearm, as a tremendous hammering started on the front door. I gripped the door handle and felt it gripped from the other side. The hammering at the front door didn't stop. I thought of the fire brigade, my mind going for an odd link.

I ran down the stairs. The cat had vacated the kitchen chair. I ripped open the front door. There was a man I knew, but not in this context, standing with six men behind him and a van behind them.

'Inacio?' I said, my mind in pieces now, holding out my hand.

'I'm sorry, Inspector,' he said, ignoring the hand. 'But this is business.'

'Narcotics business? Here?' I said, hearing movements up the stairs behind me.

'That's right,' he said. 'I'm still with Narcotics.'

'But you said this was business. I don't…'

'We've come to search the house,' he said, holding out a warrant, which I didn't read. 'You know a local fisherman called Faustinho Trindade?'

'I know Faustinho,' I said, looking through the warrant now. 'He was…'

'He's a well-known drug-smuggler. He was seen going into this house. You were seen leaving with him and going down to the boat club.'

'Search the house, Inacio. Search the house. Take your time,' I said.

Inacio stepped into the hall and gave the men their instructions. Two went back to the van and returned with large tool boxes. Olivia and Carlos met them on their way down the stairs. Inacio directed us into the kitchen. The three of us sat around the table with an agente standing over us while the rest thundered around the house. Olivia engaged me in some direct eye contact.

'Who are these guys?' she asked in English.

'Narcotics agents. They're searching the house. If you've got any in your room you'd better tell me now.'

'No, I haven't,' she said, unblinking.

'Are you sure?'

'I'm sure.'

Only then did I become aware of each blood cell, every platelet in my veins. My stomach went into free fall. The bag of grass in the attic room.

Carlos looked like a dog who'd regretted eating some green meat from the bin. There was a loud cracking noise from above. I asked the agente what was going on.

'Floorboards, I imagine,' he said. 'Empty your pockets on the table.'

We emptied our pockets. Carlos', I noted, contained 4000 escudos, some change, four condoms, which I was glad about, a pen, his ID card and his Policia Judiciaria card.

'I didn't know you were a cop,' said the agente looking at Carlos' card. 'Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?'

Nobody said anything. The agente shrugged. He picked up Olivia's card and measured the birthdate against Carlos'.

'Maybe not,' he said.

They were in the house for forty minutes. They found nothing. Inacio apologized and this time shook my hand which was running with sweat. The men left. I stood in the darkened hallway and looked into the lit kitchen. Olivia and Carlos were standing together like some movie couple who'd survived a hurricane. I pointed a finger at Carlos.

'You can leave now,' I said. 'Go on! Get out! Fuck off out of here!'

He came towards me and slipped out of the door. I had nothing to say to my little girl. Nothing to say to my daughter. I went up the stairs one at a time all the way to the attic room. I turned on the table lamp. I sat at the desk. I opened the drawer. No bag of grass. No papers. I took out my late wife's photograph which was face-up and not how I'd left her. I closed the drawer. I put her photograph on the desk facing me. I felt betrayed, defiled, rifled, my world shaken up so that I was reduced to the one constant-the unflagging image of my dead wife.

Half an hour passed and three ships in the night.

Olivia appeared, reflected in the dark panes of the window.

'Your bag of grass is outside in the bougainvillea… and the papers.'

'You've been in here before?' I said, tired, not angry any more.

'After school… just to look at Mummy,' she said. 'But I don't talk to her like you do.'

'You think a year is a long time, but it isn't,' I said.

'I sat here the other day and wondered what it would be like to have her back… whether I would want to have her back.'

'Wouldn't you?'

'I've never stopped thinking "Mum would be interested in that, I'll tell her when I get home",' she said. 'And then I get home, and there's nobody here and there's never going to be anybody here. Absolutely never. And that's when I miss her. I want to have her back, but it would have to be as it was before. This gap. This one year without her has changed everything.'

I nodded, slightly exaggerated, like a drunkard. I lit a cigarette, Olivia took it. I lit another and played with the tin seashell ashtray.

'Loss is like a shrapnel wound,' I said, 'where the piece of metal's got stuck in a place where the surgeons daren't go, so they decide to leave it. It's painful at first, horribly painful, so that you wonder whether you can live with it. But then the body grows around it, until it doesn't hurt any more. Not like it used to. But every now and again there are these twinges when you're not ready for them, and you realize it's still there and it's always going to be there. It's a part of you. A still, hard point inside.'