Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

Dr Oliveira was in no hurry to talk. As we sat down he fitted his dark-skinned face into a pair of bifocals and searched his desk for something he didn't find. The maid came in and laid out coffee without looking at us. There was a photograph of the dead girl on a shelf squeezed in between some old paperbacks, thrillers, written in English.

Catarina Oliveira was smiling at the camera. Her blue eyes were wide open but they didn't match what her mouth was doing. Something tightened in my chest. I'd seen the same look in Olivia's eyes after I'd told her that her mother was dead.

That's her,' said Dr Oliveira, his white eyebrows jumping over the frames of his bifocals.

He was old for the father of a fifteen-year-old girl-late sixties in his body and more than that in the lines and creases of his face and neck. He should have been trying to remember the names of his grandchildren. He leaned forward and picked out a small cigar from a jade box on the desk top. He licked his lips which became the colour of pig's liver and screwed the cigar between them. He lit it. The maid rattled a coffee cup down in front of him and reversed out of the room.

'When did you last see her?' I asked, putting the photograph back.

'Thursday night. I left my Lisbon house early on Friday morning. I had to get to my office to prepare for a day in court.'

'What sort of law do you practise?'

'Corporate law. Tax. I've never done criminal work if you think that's relevant.'

'Did your wife see Catarina on Friday morning?'

'She dropped her off at school and came down here. It's what she does in the summer at the weekends.'

'And Catarina makes her own way here after school… on the train… from Cais do Sodré?'

'She's usually here by six or seven o'clock.'

'She was reported missing at nine.'

'I got back here at about half-past-eight. My wife had been here about an hour worrying, we phoned everybody we could think of and then I reported her missing at…'

'Does she have any particular friends? A boyfriend?'

'She sings in a band. She spends most of her spare time with them,' he said, leaning back with his coffee. 'Boyfriends? None that I know of.'

'Is that a school band?'

'They're all at the university. Two boys-Valentim and Bruno-and a girl. The girl is called… Teresa. Yes. Teresa, that's it.'

'All of them a lot older than Catarina.'

'They must be twenty, twenty-one, the boys. The girl, I don't know. Probably the same but she wears black and uses purple lipstick so it's difficult to tell.'

'We'll need all their details,' I said, and Dr Oliveira reached for a pad and began leafing through his address book. He scribbled down names and addresses. 'Is she your only child?'

'From this marriage, yes. I have four grown-up children. Teresa…' he let the name drift with his cigar smoke, his eyes glanced at a photograph on his desk.

'Is that your current wife?' I asked, and looked at the same photograph, which was of the four children from his previous marriage.

'My second wife,' he replied, annoyed with himself. 'Catarina's her only child.'

'Is your wife here, Senhor Doutor ?' I asked.

'She's upstairs. She's not well. She's sleeping. She takes… she's taken something to help her sleep. I don't think it would be a good idea…'

'Is she a nervous woman… ordinarily?'

'When it comes to Catarina, when it comes to her only daughter missing the whole night, when it comes to a phone call from the Policía Judiciária first thing in the morning… then yes, she becomes…'

'How would you describe their present relationship? Catarina and your wife.'

'What?' he said, looking across to Carlos as if he might be able to clarify this sort of question.

'It's not always a simple relationship-mother and daughter.'

'I don't know what you're driving at,' he said, coughing a half-laugh.

'The Chinese character for "strife" is represented by two women under the same roof.'

Dr Aquilino Oliveira supported himself with the heels of his palms on the edge of the desk and looked out at me over the rims of his glasses. His dark brown eyes reached in.

'She's never run off without a word before,' he said, quietly.

'Does that mean they have been known to disagree?'

'Strife,' he said, ruminating over the word. 'Catarina has been practising at being a woman, yes, I see what you mean. That's very interesting.'

'By "practising", Senhor Doutor, you mean sexual experimentation?' I asked, easing myself down on to some of my own eggshells.

'It has been a concern of mine.'

'Do you think she might have got out of her depth?'

The lawyer sucked himself in and then sagged to one side of his chair. Was it acting or real? It was surprising the number of people who resorted to soap in times of stress… but a lawyer of this calibre?

'Last summer, Teresa, my wife, doing the usual Friday routine forgot something in the Lisbon house. She drove back around lunchtime and found Catarina in bed with a man. There was a big fight…'

'Catarina would have been fourteen then, Senhor Doutor. What did you make of it?'

'I think that's what kids do given half the chance… less than half the chance. But, for me, it's different. I've had four children already. I've been through all that. I've made mistakes. I've tried to learn. It's made me more understanding… more liberal. I didn't get angry. We talked. She was very straight, very candid, even brazen as they are, kids, these days… showing off that they're adult too.'

Carlos had been sitting with his coffee cup ten centimetres from his mouth for the last two minutes, transfixed by the exchange. I shot him a look and he ducked into his coffee.

'When you said "man", your wife "found Catarina in bed with a man", that sounds as if her companion was older than… than one of the "boys" in the band for instance. Was that the case?'

'You're a careful listener, Inspector Coelho.'

'How old was he, Dr Oliveira?' I asked, volleying his flattery straight back at him.

'Thirty-two.'

'That's very precise. Did Catarina tell you that?'

'She didn't have to. I knew the man. He was my wife's younger brother.'

The ormolu clock nearly missed a tick.

'Didn't that make you very angry, Dr Oliveira?' I said. 'You don't have to be a lawyer to know that your brother-in-law broke the law-that's child abuse.'

'I'm hardly going to run him in, am I?'

'I didn't mean that.'

'I'm a mixture, Inspector Coelho. I was an accountant before I became a lawyer. I'm sixty-seven years old now and my wife is thirty-seven. I married her when I was fifty-one and she was twenty-one. When she was fourteen…'

'But she wasn't, Senhor Doutor, when you knew her. You weren't taking advantage of a minor.'

'That's correct.'

'Perhaps, after this incident, Catarina, in your talk with her, gave you some reason to be tolerant with your brother-in-law?' I said, struggling with the sentence as if it was a giant octopus.

'If, by that, you mean, she wasn't a virgin, Inspector Coelho… you would be right. You might also be shocked to know that she admitted to seducing my brother-in-law,' he replied, copying my syntax.

'Do you think she was telling the truth?'

'Don't imagine that they're thinking like we were when we were fourteen.'

'Did drug-use come up in this conversation?'

'She admitted to smoking hashish. It's very common as you know. Nothing more. She wouldn't… I know,' he faltered. 'I'm beginning to see from your expression, Inspector Coelho, that after a conversation like that you think I should have locked her in a tower until she was twenty.'

I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking a whole turmoil of things but not that. I've got to get this face under control.