Robert Wilson: A Small Death in Lisbon

'She was hit hard on the back of the head,' said Fernanda, behind me. 'I can't say what it was yet but something like a wrench, a hammer or a piece of pipe. The blow propelled her forward and her forehead connected with a solid object which I'm ninety percent certain was a tree but I'll do some more picking around back at the Institute. The blow must have knocked her unconscious and would have killed her in time but the guy made sure with his thumbs on her windpipe.'

'The guy?'

'Sorry, my assumption.'

'It didn't happen here, did it?'

'No. Her left clavicle was broken. She was dropped from the harbour wall and I found this in her hair, in the wound.'

The sachet contained a single pine needle. I called a PSP officer over.

'Sexual assault?'

'There's been sexual activity but no evidence of assault or violent entry but I'll be able to tell you more later.'

'Can you give me a time of death?'

'About thirteen to fourteen hours ago.'

'How do you work that out?' asked Carlos.

His aggression got the full reply.

'I checked with the meteorological office before I came out. They told me the temperature didn't get much below 20°C last night. The body would have cooled at around 0.75 to i°C per hour. I recorded her body temperature at 24.6°C and found rigor mortis in the smaller muscles and just beginning in the bigger ones. Therefore my deduction, based on experience, is that you're looking for someone who murdered her between five and six yesterday afternoon but it's not an exact science as Inspector Coelho knows.'

'Anything else?' I asked.

'Nothing under her nails. She was a nervy type. Hardly anything left of them. The nail on the index finger of the right hand was torn, by that I mean bloody… if that's any help.'

Fernanda left followed by the ambulance men who were staggering across the beach and up the steps of the harbour wall, the body zipped up in its bag. I asked the PSP men to search the car park and then take a squad up the Marginal towards Cascais to the nearest pine trees. I wanted clothing. I wanted a heavy metal object or tool.

'Give me your ideas, agente Pinto,' I said.

'Knocked unconscious in some pine woods, stripped, raped, strangled, thrown in a car, driven down the Marginal, ultimately from Cascais direction, which is the only way in to this small car park, and dumped off the harbour wall.'

'OK. But Fernanda said no violent entry.'

'She was unconscious.'

'Unless her murderer had the foresight to bring his own lubricant and condom there would be evidence… abrasions, bruising, that kind of thing.'

'Wouldn't a rapist think of that?'

'He hits the girl from behind, smacks her head against a tree with a blow hard enough to kill her but he strangles her for good measure. My gut tells me that he was intending to kill rather than rape but I may be wrong… let's see what Fernanda says in her lab report.'

'Murdered or raped they took some risks.'

'They? Interesting.'

'I don't know why I said that… fifty-five kilos isn't that much.'

'You're right though… why dump her here? In full view of the Marginal… cars going up and down all night. Not that this part is particularly well lit…'

'Somebody local?' asked Carlos.

'She's not a local girl. The contact addresses for Catarina Oliveira are Lisbon and Cascais. And anyway, what's local? There's quarter of a million people living within a kilometre of where we're standing. But if she did come here and meet a creep, why kill her in the pine trees and dump her on the beach? Why kill her in any pine woods in the Lisbon area and bring her here to this spot?'

'Is it relevant that you live near here?'

'I suppose you don't know why you said that either?'

'Possibly because you were thinking it.'

'And you can read my thoughts… all on your first day?'

'Maybe you're revealing more than you think now your beard's gone.'

'That's a lot to read off any man's cheeks, agente Pinto.'

15th February 1941, SS Barracks, Unter den Eichen, Berlin-Lichterfelde

Even for this time of year night had come prematurely. The snow clouds, low and heavy as Zeppelins, had brought the orderlies into the mess early to put up the blackout. Not that it was needed. Just procedure. No bombers would come out in this weather. Nobody had been out since last Christmas.

An SS mess waiter in a white monkey jacket and black trousers put a tea tray down in front of the civilian, who didn't look up from the newspaper he wasn't reading. The waiter hung for a moment and then left with the orderlies. Outside the snowfall muffled the suburb to silence, its accumulating weight filled craters, mortared ruins, rendered roofs, smoothed muddied ruts and chalked in the black streets to a routine uniform whiteness.

The civilian poured himself a cup of tea, took a silver case out of his pocket and removed a white cigarette with black Turkish tobacco. He tapped the unfiltered end on the lid of the case, gothically engraved with the letters 'KE', and stuck the dry paper to his lower lip. He lit it with a silver lighter, engraved 'EB', a small and temporary theft. He raised the cup.

Tea, he thought. What had happened to strong black coffee?

The tight-packed cigarette crackled as he drew on it, needing to feel the blood prickling in his veins. He brushed two white specks of ash off his new black suit. The weight of the material and the precision of the Jewish tailoring reminded him just why he wasn't enjoying himself so much any more. At thirty-two years old he was a successful businessman making more money than he'd ever imagined. Now something had come along to ensure that he would stop making money. The SS.

These were people he could not brush off. These people were the reason he was busy, the reason his factory-Neukölln Kupplungs Unternehmen, manufacturer of railcar couplings-was working to full capacity, and the reason why he'd had an architect draw up expansion plans. He was a Förderndes Mitglied, a sponsoring member of the SS, which meant he had the pleasure of taking men in dark uniforms for nights out on the town and they made sure he got work. None of this was in the same league as being a Freunde der Reichsführer-SS , but it had its business advantages and, as he was now seeing, its responsibilities as well.

He'd been living with the institutional smells of boiled cabbage and polish in the Lichterfelde barracks for two days, snarled up in their military world of Oberführers, Brigadeführers, and Gruppenführers. Who were all these people in their Death's Head uniforms, with their endless questions? What did they do all day when they weren't scrutinizing his grandparents and great-grandparents? We're at war with the whole world and all they need is your family tree.

He wasn't the only candidate. There were other businessmen, one he recognized. They all worked with metal. He had hoped they were being sized up for a tender, but the questions had been strictly nontechnical, all character assessment, which meant they wanted him for a job.

An assistant, or adjutant or whatever these people called themselves came in. The man closed the door behind him with librarian care. The precise click and satisfied nod started the irritation winding up inside him.

'Herr Felsen,' said the adjutant sitting down in front of the wide, hunched shoulders of the dark-haired civilian.

Klaus Felsen shook his stiff foot and raised his hefty Swabian head and gave the man a slow blink of his blue-grey eyes from under the ridged bluff of his forehead.

'It's snowing,' said Felsen.

The adjutant, who found it difficult to believe that the SS had been reduced to considering this… this… some ruthless peasant with an unaccountable flair for languages, as a serious candidate for the job, ignored him.