Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

' Puta ' said Maria Abrantes, quietly.

The word thudded into the actress's back and turned her round. Her bosom inflated. Maria Abrantes was hoping for a spew of abuse but the hatchet she'd set her face into must have been too sharp. The actress only managed the kind of hiss she must have heard from the back stalls on a slow weekday night.

Joaquim Abrantes appeared at the bedroom door, sensing wildlife in his living room. He was in the grey trousers from a suit, a white shirt with cuffs already linked up, and a silk tie in his hands which Maria had never seen before.

'What are you doing here?' he asked.

Pica turned, her heels rapped the floorboards and the apartment door opened with a gust of wind and closed, gun-shot loud. Abrantes slowly made up his tie and stretched his neck free of his collar. Everything Maria had rehearsed scrambled and fled from her mind, leaving neat spite and no words.

'I thought you said you were going to be in Estoril today,' said Joaquim Abrantes, who left the doorway, went into the bedroom and came back in a grey suit jacket.

'I was…' she started.

'What brought you back into the city?' he asked, performing as if Pica had never been in the apartment. 'Shopping?'

He took a seat in front of her and shot his cuffs. He opened a silver box on the table and removed a cigarette, which he tapped on the lid. He lit it and sat back, inhaling the smoke grossly into his snarling mouth. It maddened her.

'No, it wasn't shopping,' she said. 'Oh?'

'It was because I can't stand any more talk in Estoril about the whores you're entertaining down here.'

'They talk in Estoril about whores down here? I don't think so.'

'They do. They might not call them putas, they might call them… actresses, maybe, but they're paid in presents and dinners just as surely as the whores at the docks get cash.'

Abrantes wondered who'd helped her rehearse that. He didn't think those words were her own. In the cafés of Estoril they might see tie Parisian cut of her suits, the American nylons, the millinery in from London, but he saw a girl from the Beira with an urn of water on her head.

And you?' he asked, the imitation Lisboeta making him cruel.

'I'm your wife!' she shouted, and flung the kiosk card of Pica in his lap.

He picked up the card, checked it and snapped it down on the table next to him. He gave her a flat, level stare with dull black onyx eyes. She froze and corrected herself.

'I'm the mother of your children, your two sons,' she said, thinking this would weaken him, but this time it didn't.

'I've had some news,' he said. 'From the Beira. Two weeks ago.'

'Two weeks ago?' she repeated automatically, a strange darkness settling on her like the shadow on an X-rayed lung.

'My wife died.'

'Your wife?' she said, momentarily confused.

'Don't repeat everything I say. I know what I'm saying. My wife died. You remember her, don't you.'

She did. The old hag on the hill who'd been moved out for her. She nodded.

'She died,' said Abrantes. 'Do you understand?'

'I understand,' she said, the realization creeping up her like hemlock.

'I am going to marry again,' he said, getting to his feet and walking away from her. 'I'll be announcing my intention to marry Senhora Monteiro at the end of this week.'

She yelled something at him which was incoherent. It turned him. The large, slow head, blacker than a bull's inside.

'And me?' she shrieked. 'What about me?'

'You will continue to look after the boys in Estoril.'

'Like a nanny,' she said, leaping to her feet. 'Like an English nanny!'

'You're their mother,' he said, icily. 'They need you.'

'And you're their father,' she yelled, stamping her foot, 'and we…'

The words stopped. There were no more inside. Abrantes saw a flit of pure malevolence behind her eyes. She was puce, her fists clenched by her hips. He thought he might have to slap her to bring her out of this little fit and took two steps towards her for the purpose.

'You remember Christmas 1941?' she asked, and he stopped mid-stride.

'No,' he said, weighing his hand.

'You were out selling your wolfram across the border when Senhor Felsen came back early and caught you.'

'How would you know this? You were still a child then.'

'You were trying to cheat him… I knew that much and so did he. I saw him waiting for you all day, furious,' she said, slowing down now to deliver. 'But he cheated you too.'

'Cheated me?'

'He raped me in our bed that night and the night after and it…'

She saw what it did to him. She saw that momentary self-pitying shallowness in his eyes and the muscles in his face slackening, punched silly by her words. She felt suddenly strong, too strong, because she was enjoying herself. She leaned her face out at him.

'Manuel is not your son,' she said quietly, and laughed, the emotion in the room too high for her. The giggle grated over her larynx like claws screeching down glass. Abrantes' head lowered, his eyes blinkered by his thick forehead. The big spaces in his head were suddenly filled and directed. His fist came up slowly and then snapped into her face. Her nose crunched. She felt the splintering of it in the bones of her face and cranium. Warm, thick blood spread in a fast gush over her lips, the metallic taste creeping into her mouth. She fell flat on her bottom, her head kicked back into the arm of the chaise longue, stunning her. A wide cravat of red opened down her blouse. She felt another blow coming and managed to get her hands up. Abrantes' fist slammed the back of her own hand into her mouth taking her two front teeth with it and shattering her knuckles. She fell sideways, choking, and saw the blood pool out and soak into the edge of the carpet.

'You're going back to the Beira and live with the pigs.'

I arranged for a car to pick us up. I let Jamie Gallacher buy cigarettes and he smoked all the way to the Polícia Judiciária and played with the door lock until the driver couldn't take it any longer. I hadn't let him wash or shave. He was still in the creased T-shirt and beer-stained jeans but with a brand-new pair of Nikes on his feet which might not be his for very much longer in the tacos, which is what I had in mind for him after he'd made his statement. It wasn't that I didn't believe him. It was that I didn't like him.

The big, dark car possibility coincided with the way my thoughts were leaning, that a creep had turned up after Valentim and Bruno, after Jamie Gallacher, and had sodomized her and killed her for being someone out there who knew the type of person he really was. It felt right, too, that the victim had had a spat and stormed off. It could happen to girls-they got emotional, became vulnerable and that was when a creep might pick them off and rape or kill them. I've seen them, not many of them, Lisbon's not a violent city. They're cruel these creeps. They offer comfort-a hug, a stroke, a little kiss, a small squeeze, an ugly grab and then mayhem.

It was possible that the driver of the big dark car knew her already. Maybe he'd been waiting outside the school, seen Gallacher hit her and moved in. My stomach was telling me things. The only problem was that it had been telling me things since I'd been in Luisa Madrugada's apartment.

Jamie Gallacher made his statement and I sent him down. He protested, telling me he had to teach on Monday morning.

'You're under suspicion of murder, Mr Gallacher. You've admitted to a sexual relationship with an underage girl who was one of your pupils,' I told him. 'I can keep you in a police cell for a year without charge while I carry out my investigations. This is Portugal. It's our system of law. You're guilty until proven innocent. Have a nice weekend.'