Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'Did you speak to anybody?'

'I took one call.'

'From who?'

'The Minister of Internal Administration asking me up to the Jockey Club for a drink. I left my office just after half-past-five and as you may know it's only a two-minute walk to Rua Garrett from there.'

I nodded. It was cast-iron. I asked him to write down the names of the people who were with him at the Jockey Club. Carlos gave him his notebook for the purpose.

'Can I talk to your wife before you tell her what's happened?'

'If you follow me back there, yes. If not, I won't wait.'

'We'll be right behind you.'

He gave me the paper and we walked back towards the cars.

'How did you know to come here, Senhor Doutor ?' I asked, as he threaded his way back to his Morgan.

'I spoke to a friend of mine, a criminal lawyer, he told me that this is where they bring the bodies of those who have died in suspicious circumstances.'

'Why did you think she'd died like that?'

'Because I'd already asked him about you and he told me you were a homicide detective.'

He turned and walked across the cobbles to his car. I lit a cigarette, got into the Alfa, waited for the Morgan to pull away and followed.

'What did you make of that?' I asked Carlos.

'If it had been my daughter in there…'

'You were expecting more distress?'

'Weren't you?'

'What about numbness? Trauma leaves people numb.'

'He didn't seem numb. The look he had on his face when we came out, he was galvanized.'

'Concerned about himself?'

'I couldn't say… you know, I only saw him from the side.'

'So you can only tell me what I'm thinking about when you look at me head-on?'

That was just a bit of luck, Senhor Inspector.'

'Was it?' I said, and the boy smiled. 'What did you think of Dr Oliveira's accountancy? The mathematics between him and his wife.'

'I thought he was a bloodless son of a bitch.'

'Strong feelings, agente Pinto,' I said. 'What does your father do?'

'He was a fitter with LisNave. He installed pumps in ships.'

'Was?'

'They lost some contracts to the Koreans.'

'Your politics might be to the left of centre perhaps?'

He shrugged.

'Dr Aquilino Oliveira is a serious man,' I said. 'He's high calibre ordnance… 125 mm cannon, no less.'

'Was he a colonel in the artillery, your father?'

'The cavalry. But listen. The lawyer has used his brain all his life. It's his job to use his intelligence.'

'That's true, so far he's one step ahead of us all the way.'

'You saw him. His instinct was to check the body. His brain always operates in front of his emotions… until, perhaps, he remembers he's supposed to have feelings.'

'And then he leaves the room to go and collect them.'

'Interesting, agente Pinto. I'm beginning to see why Narciso put you on to me. You're an odd one.'

'Am I? Most people think I'm very normal. They mean boring.'

'It's true you haven't said a word about football, cars or girls.'

'I like the way you see the order of things, Senhor Inspector.'

'Maybe you're a man of ideals. I haven't seen one of those since…'

'Nineteen-seventy-four?'

'A little after that, in the mess that followed our glorious revolution there were lots of ideas, ideals, visions. They petered out.'

'And ten years later we joined Europe. And now we don't have to struggle on our own any more. We don't have to sweat at night thinking where the next escudo is coming from. Brussels tells us what to do. We're on the payroll. If we…'

'And that's a bad thing?'

'What's changed? The rich get richer. The ones in the know go higher. Of course, it's trickled down. But that's the point. It's a trickle. We think we're better off because we can drive around in an Opel Corsa which costs us our entire living wage to run while our parents house us, feed us and clothe us. Is that progress? No. It's called "credit". And who benefits from credit?'

'I haven't heard anger like that since… since FC Porto came down here and put three past Benfica.'

'I'm not angry,' he said, cooling his hand out of the window. 'I'm not as angry as you are.'

'What makes you think I'm angry?'

'You're angry with him. You think he killed his daughter and he's given you the best possible alibi a man can have… and you're angry about it.'

'Now you're reading my face in profile. Next it'll be the back of my head.'

'You know what annoys me?' said Carlos. 'He makes out he's some kind of liberal thinker but you think about this. He's nearly seventy years old. He must have worked the best part of his life under the Salazar regime and you know as well as I do that you didn't work in those days unless you were politically sound.'

'What's happening here, agente Pinto? I've spent the last twenty years of my life not thinking about the revolution other than the fact we get a holiday on 25th April. I've been with you less than half a day and we've talked about it three or four times. I don't think it's any way to start a murder investigation by going back twenty-five years and looking…'

'It was only talk. He was projecting himself as a liberal. I don't believe him… and that's one of the reasons why.'

'Guys like that are too intelligent to believe in anything. They change…'

'I don't think they do. Not this late on. My father's forty-eight, he can't change and now he's scrap in the breaker's yard along with all his old pumps.'

'Don't get fixed ideas about people, agente Pinto. It'll cloud your vision. You don't want to ram somebody into a life sentence just because they're politically disagreeable, do you?'

'No,' said Carlos, innocent as his hair, 'that wouldn't be fair.'

We were shown into the sitting room which, judging by the furnishings, was not Dr Oliveira's side of the house. There was natural light in the room, fancy ceramics and no dark corners of books. The art on the walls was the sort that demanded comment unless you happened to be a police inspector from Lisbon in which case your opinion didn't matter. I took a seat on one of the two caramel leather sofas. Above the fireplace was a portrait of a skeletal figure in an armchair as seen through lashes of paint. It was disturbing. You had to be disturbed to live with it.

Under the thick plate glass of the coffee table was Senhora Oliveira's more human side. Magazines like Caras, Casa, Maxima and the Spanish ¡Hola!. There were plants in the room and an arrangement of lilies but just as the eye relaxed it came across a dark metal figure scrabbling out of the primordial slime or a terracotta head, open-mouthed, screaming at the ceiling. The safest place to look was the floor which was parquet with Persian rugs.

Dr Oliveira showed his wife in. She was probably the same height as her daughter but her hair gave her another ten centimetres. It was big, pumped-up and blonde. Her tanned face looked tight, still puffy from barbiturate sleep and she'd tried to mask it with heavy eye make-up. Her lips were pink and she'd added an extra dark line to the rim of her mouth. She wore a cream blouse and a bra that created cleavage where none naturally existed. Her short silk skirt was five shades off matching her blouse and she was chained with gold about the waist. We shook hands. The jewellery felt crusty.

'We'd like to talk to your wife alone, Senhor Doutor.'

He was going to make a stand, a man in his own home, but the side of his wife's face said something to him which I missed and he left the room. We sat. Carlos took out his notebook.

'When did you last see your daughter, Dona Oliveira?'