A Small Death in Lisbon

'Interesting.'

'And do you know who the company lawyer was?'

'I think I do,' I said. 'Dr Aquilino Oliveira.'

'He completely rewrote the statutes of the bank… excluding our friend Klaus Felsen.'

'How long was he their lawyer for?'

'Until 1983.'

'And then what?'

'He stopped being their lawyer. These things don't go on for ever, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that Pedro Abrantes, who'd taken over from his dead father, died in a car accident.'

'Even I remember that. Those children.'

'And Miguel da Costa Rodrigues became the new Director and major shareholder of the bank. Things change when that happens. Lawyers for one.'

'There's something, but I'm not really seeing a connection here. I'm not seeing a motive for killing Catarina. I don't see how this can…'

'You want to question Miguel da Costa Rodrigues?'

'I want to hit him hard and fast so that he doesn't have time to hide behind his big friends, so that he has to come down to the Policia Judiciaria and face me and a tape recorder.'

'Then you have to get public opinion behind you.'

'Through the media,' I said. 'But I haven't got a story. You should see this guy Jorge Raposo, he's ex-PIDE and the most pathetic, seedy human being in Lisbon.'

'But what about Klaus Felsen?'

The guy's got to be a hundred and ten years old.'

'Eighty-eight in fact.'

'He's still going?'

'And there was an address in the old company statutes. So I did the easiest thing first. I looked in the phone book to see if he still lives in the same place. Klaus Felsen, Casa ao Fim do Mundo, Azoia, and you see that piece of paper on the bedside table? That's his phone number.'

'Have you called him?'

'I didn't really know what I wanted to ask him about. I thought I'd have to do a lot more work to be able to have a decent conversation with him.'

'And now?'

'I think we should both see what he's got to say.'

'Ah,' I said. 'Now I've got it.'

'What?'

'This is your launch story isn't it?'

'Could be.'

'No, no, no.'

'Why not?'

'You said, let me get this right, "Nobody's going to have their trousers down in any magazine I publish." I think that was it, wasn't it?'

'That's your end of the story, my end is that one of Portugal's largest international banks was funded directly by Nazi gold,' she said. 'You can do the trousers-down stuff… I'll let you tag that on the end.'

'You think Klaus Felsen's going to tell you everything… all on your first date?'

'See if he's alive first,' she said, nodding at the piece of paper.

I picked up the telephone and dialled the number. A woman answered speaking in German. I asked for Klaus Felsen.

'He's sleeping,' she said.

'What's the best time to speak to him?'

'What is it concerning?'

'The Banco de Oceano e Rocha.'

Silence.

'And who are you?'

'I'm a detective with the Policia Judiciaria in Lisbon. I'm investigating the murder of a young girl. I think Senhor Felsen might be able to help us with our enquiries.'

'I'll talk to him. But you know he doesn't keep regular hours. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night, other times in the late morning, sometimes he sleeps all the way through. If he agrees to speak to you, you must come when I say.'

I gave her Luisa's telephone number and put the phone down. I paced the room naked, chewing my thumbnail. Luisa smoked at the ceiling. I called Olivia on her mobile and told her I'd be late, and possibly wouldn't come home at all, and that she should get a meal at my sister's.

'Don't worry about me,' she said.

'Are you in a car?' I asked, the signal breaking into static.

'I'm with Sofia and her mother. We're going back to Cascais. They're going to take me out to dinner and I'll stay the night. OK?'

'No.'

'What? I can't hear you.'

'No, that wouldn't be OK,' I said.

'Why… can… please… bloody thing… ga…'

'I want you back at home.'

'But you just said you wouldn't be there.'

'I know what I just said.'

'Then don't be unreasonable. Why should I go back to…'

'Because…'

'I can't hear you.'

'Olivia.'

'The line's breaking up… bye.'

The line went dead.

'Trouble?' asked Luisa.

The telephone, still in my hand, rang. I yanked it to my ear.

'Olivia.'

'Inspector Coelho?' asked a German-inflected voice.

'This is me,' I said.

'Herr Felsen is available now. He will speak to you. Do you know the house?'

'No.'

'It's the last house in Portugal. Just before the lighthouse.'

'It could take us up to an hour to get there.'

'Come as quickly as you can.'

We got into the shower together and dressed. I tried Olivia's mobile again but she'd turned it off. Luisa told me not to worry about it, that nothing was going to happen tonight, but the tension crept into me and stiffened a ridge across my shoulders. My daughter could be spending the night with a murderer, a murderer of young girls.

Luisa drove and talked me down on the way out of Lisbon. I sat with her laptop and camera on my knees and kept the lid on my panic. What could we do? Trawl through every restaurant in Cascais? I didn't even know where the Rodrigues' weekend house was in Cascais, and when I checked the phonebook there was nothing under his name-the property was probably his wife's and the phone still in her maiden name.

We came off the end of the motorway and headed west, through Aldeia de Juzo and Malveira. We climbed the twisting road, the end of the day dying now behind the high chapel of Peninha. The lights of isolated houses suspended in the black velvet of the heather. The ships on the dark Atlantic heading for the last blue-grey moment. We turned off left to Azoia at the highest point of the road, past old windmills transformed into bars, through the village of barking dogs and out again into the heather and gorse, the blades of light from the lighthouse slashing through the now complete darkness.

We came off the tarmac on to a length of beaten track, which took us up to a low walled house, with an enclosed roof terrace on the top in which a little light was burning.

A woman bent into our headlights, opening the gate. A chained German shepherd was barking madly in the courtyard. When he saw us, he took long, pelting runs right to the limit of his chain.

'I am Frau Junge,' she said, in a sweet voice on the brink of a yodel. She shushed the dog, who liked the voice and sat down with his head cocked to one side.

Frau Junge took us up the outside steps to the enclosed roof terrace. By the little light was a huddle in a wheelchair, head down near his chest-not a lively-looking person. One of the blades from the lighthouse swept above the roof of the house.

Frau Junge spoke into the ear of the heavily-blanketed man in the wheelchair. His head came up. Frau Junge dragged two chairs across from the wall and placed them near the wheelchair. A single hand came out from under the blankets and beckoned one of the chairs closer. She sighed as if he was a pesky child and moved the chair closer.

'He wants the girl to sit next to him, that's all. Watch his hand. It's the only one he's got and it can be fast and… intrusive,' she said and left us in the room.

Luisa had the look of a woman who wished she'd worn a longer skirt.

'I suffer from the cold now,' said Felsen in a cracked-china voice, small shards missing.

The bones of his skull, the plates of his cranium, seemed painfully obvious under the thin stretched skin, under which veins operated close to the surface. His eyelids were gathered in swags close to the lashes so that the corners slid down towards the cheekbones, making him look inconsolable. His nose was sharp, pointed and scraped raw.