Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

I got off the Metro at Martim Moniz and took a number 12 tram full of Spanish tourists, all talking as if they were due to go on a Trappists' retreat for a month the next day. The tram groaned up the steep hill, bored to death. I got off early and walked to the Largo das Portas do Sol to catch the breeze and a beer perhaps, and to look out across the red roofs of the Alfama to the blue Tagus, wide as a sea at this point. The Spanish herd followed me, and sat down at the café that I'd wanted to and ordered fifty drinks between them. The barman soaked up the order without changing his expression.

I retraced my steps and followed the Rúa das Escolas Gerais around the corner and dropped into the medina of alleyways that made up the Alfama. The old Arab quarter wasn't smelling so fresh after the night of ¡santo António, after a night when half a million sardines have been grilled and consumed. Jamie Gallacher lived just off the Beco do Vigário, above a barber's shop in which an old boy was having his weekly shave, lying down on an old black leather hydraulic chair. A crew-cut kid stood beside him taking an interest, and the old guy ran his hand down the boy's shirt, reminding himself what it felt like to be young.

I walked up a narrow staircase barely wide enough for my shoulders, and knocked on the only door at the top. It took some time for Jamie Gallacher to open it. He was unshaved with hair like an exploded mattress. He was wearing a wrinkled and faded Led Zeppelin T-shirt, and a pair of rucked-up boxer shorts gathered in a twist around his crotch. He had a joint, unlit, in his left hand.

Yeah?' he said in English, with a very slight Scottish inflection, one eye gummed up. 'Who are you?'

'Police,' I said and showed him my ID.

He cupped the joint, ungummed his eye.

'You'd better come in,' he said, polite, apologetic. 'Sorry about the mess. Bit of a session last night.'

Every surface in the room was covered with empty bottles of wine and beer, plastic cups and glasses stuffed with cigarette butts, piled ashtrays, and empty packs of cigarettes. Pictures nose-dived down the walls. The carpet was freshly stained. A kitten nosed through the debris, looking for something non-alcoholic.

I'll get dressed. Be with you in a sec.'

He scooped up the kitten and left the room. Voices started up further in the apartment. I followed him to a door in the corridor open three inches. A naked girl with a mass of frizzy hair was sitting cross-legged on a mattress on the floor. She was rolling a joint and looking unconcerned. Slowly a black foot appeared in her lap and the toe rubbed up against her pubic hair. She breathed in sharply.

'For fuck's sake,' said Jamie, and ripped open the door.

The owner of the black foot was slumped across the mattress, eyes half-closed. The girl stroked the black leg. Jamie slammed the door shut behind him.

'Fucking people.'

'Friends of yours?' I asked in English.

'Can't even sleep in my own bed without strangers fucking in there, all day and night.'

We went back into the living room. Jamie searched the ashtrays for a usable butt. He found one, lit up and pulled a face.

'Where did you sleep?' I asked.

'Where I fell.'

'Tell me what happened yesterday… after you left school.'

'I came back here about fiveish, had a few hours ziz.'

'On your own?'

'On my own, yes. I don't have a girlfriend at the moment.'

'When did you last have a girlfriend?'

He dragged on the butt, winced and stuck it into a half-glass of red wine with a hiss.

'I'd call that a pretty unusual question, Inspector Coelho,' he said, spitting out the smoke. 'Zé Coelho. Good name that, for a detective. Joe Rabbit. Did you ever think of that?'

'Tell me about the girlfriend.'

'Depends on what you call a girlfriend. I had sex with a girl last night, but she wasn't my girlfriend.'

'Where?'

'What?'

'Your bed was occupied… where did you have sex?'

He leaned against the wall, crossed his legs at the ankle and scratched his cheek with a nail.

'In the bathroom. She knelt on the toilet seat. I'm not proud of it, Inspector, but you have to know and there it is.'

'You were seen leaving the school with Catarina Sousa Oliveira yesterday afternoon, about four-thirty.'

A rhythmic grunting came from next door.

'Jesus Christ,' said Jamie, hammering on the wall. 'I bloody told them I've got the fu… the police in here 'n' all.'

'Come on, Mr Gallacher. Four-thirty, yesterday… what happened?'

'What the fuck's all this about? What do you want to know about Catarina for? What sort of police are you?'

'Answer the question, Mr Gallacher.'

'We were just talking, for Christ's sake.'

'What about?'

'I was trying to persuade her to come to the party.'

'To practise her English?'

He started poking in the ashtrays again. I gave him a cigarette. He sat in the single available chair and hunched over his knees. The pressure next door seemed to be rising. Skin slapped against skin. Jamie looked over his shoulder and back down again. The girl was shouting out.

'I'm at the aftermath of your party, Jamie. I've got a pretty good idea of the scenario. So why don't you tell me about you and Catarina and what you had in mind?'

'I'd been seeing her.'

'Seeing her. Is that like knowing someone in the biblical sense?'

'Your English is pretty fucking good for a cop,' he said. 'All right, I was sleeping with her.'

'Did she ever stay the night?'

He took a deep breath.

'I'd been seeing her pretty regular for six months until a couple of weeks ago. And no, she didn't stay the night. Ever.'

'Did you ever give her money?'

He eyed me from the side of his head.

'When she asked to borrow some, yes.'

'And she gave it back?'

'No.'

'What happened a couple of weeks ago?'

The couple next door reached the end of the road-the man groaning and hissing as if he was being hosed down with cold water, the girl whimpering.

'I told her I was in love with her.'

'So there was more to it than sex as far as you were concerned?'

'It was great sex. We hit it off in bed.'

'But you talked as well.'

'Sure.'

'What about?'

'Music.'

'Anything personal?'

'Music is personal.'

'What about families, relationships, friends… feelings, emotions.'

He didn't reply.

'Did she talk about her parents?'

'Only to say she had to get back to them.'

'What did she say when you told her you were in love with her?'

'She didn't.'

'Nothing?' 'Nada.'

'Wasn't that disappointing?'

'Of course it was fucking disappointing.'

'Let's go back to Friday afternoon. You're outside the school talking. You've asked her to your party What does she do?'

'She turned me down. She said she had to get back to Cascais. Her parents were expecting her. I told her to call them, tell them that she wanted to stay in town and go to the festa de Santo António in the Alfama. She wasn't interested. I told her I was in love with her again and she started to walk off. I grabbed her by the wrist. She twisted it out of my hand.'

'Where are you by now?'

'Just up from the school on Duque de Ávila.'

'On your own?'

'Yes. Most of the other kids had gone, or just hanging around on the corner.'

'And?'

He squeezed his forehead and took a fierce drag of one of my non-cigarettes.

'I hit her.'

'What with?'

'I slapped her face.'

'How did she take that?'

'Well… it was weird… because she just fucking smiled at me. She didn't put her hand to her face. She didn't say anything. She just smiled.'

'As if she was saying "That's how much you love me"?'

He nodded, without thinking that.