Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'Come with me,' I said.

We walked out of the gardens towards where the old faded pink cinema had been, which was now the beginnings of an office block. We turned left and left again and came up behind António's car.

'You remember your handwritten notes. What did the guy say? The one who saw Senhor Rodrigues' Mercedes. What else did he see?'

'I don't remember.'

'What he saw in front of the Mercedes was a brand-new metallic grey Fiat Punto and behind…'

'Was a white Renault 12 with a rusted wheel-arch.'

'Rear wheel-arch.'

In the poor street lighting and with the light coming from the open bar the corroded edges of the rear wheel-arch were visible. António came out to pick up whatever else he had in his boot. He saw us. I waved.

'How is it?' he asked.

'It's fine,' I said.

'You want something to eat? I've got some beautiful spare ribs already marinated.'

'Sounds good.'

António picked up another box and went into the bar.

'When Faustinho took me to meet Xeta and he wasn't there,' I said, almost talking to myself now, 'we went back to A Bandeira Vermelha and Faustinho described the kid in detail in front of me and António.'

Carlos' head didn't move, his eyes stayed fixed on the light coming from the bar. I told him to go in there and talk to António about anything except the obvious while I phoned the local PSP. If he'd already killed Catarina and Xeta, there was no reason why he shouldn't go down fighting. I went round the corner to make the call. It took me a couple of minutes to explain the situation to them, how I didn't want them sprinting in there and provoking him into an attack. By the time I walked back to the bar I was feeling sick, cold and tired, not ready for this, not wanting this.

I walked into the wedge of light coming from the door. Lying face-down on the bar floor, in a pool of blood that I couldn't imagine having got to that size in the short few moments I'd been away, was Carlos. The collar of his shirt showed red above his jacket and coat. The back of his head looked all wrong, his hand twitched, the thumb splashing in his own blood. António was standing between Carlos' feet with the hammer raised above his head. It was the hammer he kept behind the bar, next to the sickle. His relics. His workers' tools. His weapons.

I stepped into the doorway. He turned to me.

'What have you done, António? What the hell have you done?'

His eyes had gone. There was still the tiniest light in them, but it was a pinprick at the end of a four-mile tunnel, as if I was seeing straight through to some nicks of bone on the inside of his cranium.

'Let me call an ambulance,' I said.

He turned to me with his hammer raised and took one step forwards.

'What did he say to you, António? What did he say to make you hit him?'

'Maria Antónia Medinas,' he said, each name separate.

'Is that what this is all about? Is that why you killed the girl?'

'He murdered her. That PIDE bastard… he murdered her.'

'And what was Maria Antónia Medinas to you?'

'She was my wife ,' he said, viciously. 'And he killed her and he killed our child inside her.'

'Let me call the ambulance, António. It can still be all right, if you let me call the ambulance.'

I moved. He tensed the hammer in his hand.

'Are you a girl-killer, António? Is that what you do? How did they get you to kill the girl?'

'She was his.'

'Did she kill Maria Antónia Medinas?'

'She was his.'

'She was an innocent.'

'She was his.'

'Just let me call the ambulance.'

He ran at me, the hammer raised, his teeth bared, the eyes now dead, black, lightless. I shut the door on him. His hammer smashed through the glass. Blood ran down his wrist. He wrenched the door open. I fell back into the street, half at a run, half staggering. He swerved away from me and ran to his car.

He pulled away in the rusting Renault, the boot still open. He crashed across the public gardens, through the flower beds, over the grass and directly on to the Marginal. The oncoming traffic screeched and squirmed. The Renault slashed straight across two lines of cars into the Lisbon lane. The PSP came running. I told them to call for an ambulance and to get a hospital prepared to receive a policeman with a serious head injury. I ran across the gardens, through the underpass and got into my car. I ran every red light on the way into the city.

I saw the Renault's boot flapping up and down as it went over humps in the tarmac around Caxias. I pulled in tight behind him and flashed my lights. He put his foot down.

Our two ancient cars roared through Belém and thundered under the whining 25 th April bridge. He swung to the left, up towards the Largo de Alcântara where there was a sliproad to the bridge, but not accessible from our direction. António crashed through the lights which had just changed to red and swerved across the two cars and a truck which had just taken off. The two cars missed him and slewed to a halt, but the truck clipped him on his rear wing and the car was jolted sideways a full metre. I stormed over the crossroads after him with my forearm on the horn and one hand raised out of the window. People were already out of their cars. We hit the ramp up to the bridge. António crunched through the gears and found one low enough to get him up the steep turn. I stuck on his tail. We were going slower and slower.

The Renault hit the main road to cross the bridge. We couldn't have been going more than fifty kilometres per hour and I saw the problem. His back tyre was flat, and the stoved-in rear wing was derinding the rubber, until the tyre was entirely stripped off and he was running on his wheel rim, sparks showering off it into the night. He stopped and got out, the hammer still in his fist. He started running.

The cars howled over the expandable metal lanes in the centre of the bridge and horns blared behind us. The ice wind, even stronger up here, blustered from the west and whistled at a high-pitched scream through the support cables. I ran after him. He turned occasionally, his face lit up-white with two black eye sockets-by the lights of the oncoming traffic. Suddenly he got up on to the bridge's rail and jumped over the edge as if it was nothing, as if he had no statement to make. I bellowed after him but my voice went nowhere over the hellish noise.

I got to the point where he'd jumped and saw him pacing about on a small platform a few metres below. What did I want from him? Did I want to catch him, bring him in? Was that what I wanted? And I realized that it hadn't been police work making me run. I had to talk to him. I had to tell him. I had to make him believe. He was part of the cycle. We were all part of the damaging cycle.

I swung my leg over the rail, my foot searched for the first rung. The platform was all that remained of the bridge works. It was for the men painting the new rail link. There was a lift that ran on a box rail down one of the concrete support columns to the docks below. The lift wasn't operating. António was contemplating climbing down the box rail. I shuddered as trucks crashed past, their weight undulating the road like a sea swell, the wind booming against their sheer sides. It was high enough up there that I could feel myself flying and, with that strong, knifing wind, I felt I could be at any moment. I screamed his name at him.

He responded by climbing over the rail of the platform and fitting his foot into the box rail. He dropped down a few rungs. I jumped down on to the platform. The wooden sheets bounced me and I fell to my knees. I crawled towards the lift and pushed my face over the edge. António was three metres down the rail. To the west the lights along the Marginal stretched out into the blackness. We were as good as night gliding.