Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'I cracked. Said I was sorry. Asked her to forgive me. All that…'

'What did she do?'

'She turned on her heel and fucked off down the street. I slumped against a car. The alarm went off. She didn't turn round. At the end of the street, by the traffic lights, a car pulled up. She looked at it, stepped off the pavement, talked to the driver for a minute, the light changed, she got in and the car drove off.'

'Tell me about the car.'

'I don't know anything about cars.'

'You haven't got one?'

'I don't even drive.'

'Let's start at the simple end. Was the car big or small?'

'Big.'

'Dark or light?'

'Dark.'

'Any insignia?'

'It was way down the end of the street.'

'Do you think she knew the driver of the car?'

I couldn't tell.'

'Exactly how long did they talk for?'

'Shit. Less than a minute. Forty seconds, something like that.'

'Where did the car come from?'

Down the street somewhere, I don't know. The fucking car alarm was going and I was, you know, upset.'

'You're going to have to do better than that, Mr Gallacher.'

I don't know whether I fucking can.'

You're going to have to, and I'm going to make you,' I said. 'You're coming down to the Policía Judiciária with me and write it all down.'

'Jesus. You're going to make me write a statement? What is all this?'

'Catarina's dead, Mr Gallacher. She was murdered yesterday afternoon about six o'clock and I want to find out whether you did it.'

He didn't look as if he'd done it. He looked as if a trapdoor had just opened up underneath him and he was on his way down into the abyss. When he stood his legs were shaking.

'What about those two in there?' he asked.

'They're leaving.'

I went into the corridor and threw open the door. The black guy was lying collapsed on his back, still breathing heavily, slick with sweat in the airless room. The girl lay face-down with her legs apart. I kicked their clothes at them. The girl twisted round, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unfocused.

'You two. Out!'

'Absinthe eats the brain,' said Abrantes. Abrantes suddenly knowing everything about everything these days, full of his success in the Lisbon business fraternity. Felsen took another sip of the green liquid in his glass and watched the platoons of black umbrellas in the rain-lashed street below. It was ten o'clock in the morning and the second absinthe of the day. Felsen fingered his head wondering where the rot would start and why Abrantes had dragged him out of his apartment before lunch.

Felsen had been back from Africa for two weeks, having spent most of the last decade out there setting up branches of the bank in Luanda, Angola and Lourenço Marques in Mozambique. He was at a low point, as he always was whenever he set foot back in Europe and its unfolding history.

Berlin had been isolated by the Reds, the Iron Curtain was rusting into place across the middle of the continent and the whole of the Iberian Peninsula was as good as cut off and adrift out in the Atlantic with Salazar and Franco, madmen on the bridge, flying their old-fashioned fascist flags. The great empires were breaking up. The British lost India. The French lost Morocco, Tunisia and Indo-China culminating in the humiliation of Dien Bien Phu in May last year. World power transferred to the Americans while Europeans contemplated their own nations, bleakened by the expense of war, their nails torn and bloody from the last desperate attempt to hold on to world domination.

To Felsen the whole place had the stink of death about it, the rotten odour of decline and to keep that stench out of his nostrils, during the second coffee of the morning, he'd let the absinthe trickle greenly into his glass.

After the war the Allies had moved into Portugal. The Americans had set up shop in the Nazi legation's old palácio in Lapa. But Felsen and Abrantes had been lucky. Their wolfram mines had been sealed, but: wolfram had little value. Their stocks of cork, olive oil and canned sardines had been confiscated because they were perceived as future German goods. But the bank, with its curious management structure, had survived several attempts at having its assets frozen by the men in dark suits sent by the Allies. It was Abrantes' connections in the Salazar government that had saved them. As the war ended, construction boomed in Portugal and Abrantes was there, sitting at the table, knowing nothing about building but everything about graft. Officials in the Ministry of Public Works received plots of land and had houses built for them, their sons earned jobs they didn't deserve, planners and municipal architects in Lisbon town hall, the mayor, all suddenly began to find life more affordable. The Banco de Oceano e Rocha developed a property company, a construction arm, eased projects towards friends and earned protection from the highest offices in government.

And the gold was still there, ten metres below Felsen's feet, sitting in the underground vaults with the traffic on the Rua do Ouro thundering above it.

Abrantes sat over his third small half-cup of tar of the morning. He drank these until he moved his bowels which normally happened around number five or six. After a successful movement he'd take an anis, after a poor one, more coffee. He smoked cigars now. They too seemed to help loosen his guts, constipation a problem since he'd moved away from the Beira to worry at a desk, and eat too much meat.

'Haven't they finished that house of yours yet?' he asked Felsen, knowing they had.

'I suppose you need my apartment for one of your mistresses,' said Felsen, turning away from the window, quick to find the acid that morning.

Abrantes sucked on his cigar knowing something Felsen didn't. He stared up at the ceiling looking for inspiration. A stain was developing up there after the winter rains and these April showers. It was fat and broad at the corner where a crack ran through it like a river and tapered off to something like Argentina, and Tierra del Fuego close to the ceiling rose.

'Have you thought any more about Brazil?' asked Abrantes.

'You can have the apartment, Joaquim,' said Felsen. 'I'll move out, really. There's no problem.'

They grinned at each other.

'Brazil's a natural step,' said Abrantes. 'Maybe we should have gone there first. The Brazilians, they…'

'We didn't know anybody… we still don't.'

'Ah!' said Abrantes and took a flamboyant drag of his cigar, enjoying himself, grinding Felsen down. He blew the smoke out extravagantly.

'Tell me,' said Felsen, bored.

'You were always the German who spoke Portuguese with a Brazilian accent. That's how I first heard about you.'

'I told you about that, a Brazilian girl in Berlin taught me.'

'Susana Lopes,' said Abrantes, 'wasn't that her name?'

An image flashed in Felsen's brain-Susana hooking her legs over the back of his knees and pressing her pubis down on to him. He cleared his throat. His penis lumbered in his trousers.

'Did I tell you about her?' said Felsen.

Abrantes shook his head. We're getting to it now, thought Felsen.

'I don't think I told you her name even.'

'I had a phone call last night. Susana Lopes, looking for her old friend Klaus Felsen who she'd heard had become a director of the Banco de Oceano e Rocha.'

Felsen's heart leapt forward and he had to press himself back into the chair.

'Where is she?'

'A very charming woman,' said Abrantes, toying with his cigar clipper.

'She's here?' he said, possibilities suddenly opening up.

'We talked about Brazil.'

'Did I tell you how I met her?'