Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

Filho da puta!' I roared.

'Cabrão!' Carlos shouted back.

I lunged at him again, taking the barman with me and we all went down in a pile by the glass door of the bar. God knows what anybody would have made of it from the outside looking in-another football argument that had got out of hand.

The barman got to his feet first. He kicked Carlos out into the night and hauled me away to the toilets at the back of the bar. I sat down shaking, blood streaming down my wrist, soaking into my shirt cuff. I washed the wound out in the sink. The barman gave me some napkins.

'Never in my life,' said the barman, 'have I seen you like that. Never.'

He went back behind his counter. I picked my jacket up and opened the door.

'Shit!' said the barman, back at the TV, 'how did it get to be 2-1?'

I crossed the road to the Policía Judiciária building and did some first-aid on my hand. I drove home, my blood still fierce, rocketing around my system with bigger and better arguments ripping though my brain. I was approaching a choppy version of calm by the time I parked up in Paço de Arcos and walked to the house.

Olivia was out and the door locked. I searched my pockets for the keys.

'Inspector?' said a female voice behind me.

Teresa Oliveira, the lawyer's wife, was standing a couple of metres down the street, looking different, her hair tied back and wearing jeans and a red T-shirt with the word GUESS on the front. I tried to summon some gentleness from the corner of my brain where it was still cowering.

'Is this important, Dona Oliveira?' I asked. 'It's been a long day and I don't have any news for you I'm afraid.'

'It won't take long,' she said, but I thought it might.

We went into the kitchen. I drank some water. She upset herself over my bloody shirt. I changed and offered her a drink. She went for Coke.

'The medication, you understand,' she felt the need to explain.

I poured myself a glass of whisky from an old bottle of William Lawson's that hadn't seen the light for the last six months.

'I've left my husband, Inspector,' she said, and I lit a cigarette.

'Was that wise?' I asked. 'They say it's better not to make traumatic changes immediately after a tragedy.'

'You might have realized that it's been coming for some time.'

I nodded without commenting. She fumbled in her bag for her own cigarettes and lighter. Between us we got one going for her.

'It never worked, right from the start it didn't work,' she said, referring to her marriage.

'How long ago was that?'

'Fifteen years.'

'That's a long time for a marriage not to be working,' I said, looking for angles here and seeing none.

'It suited us to keep it going.'

'And now you're leaving him,' I said, and shrugged. 'Was your daughter's death the catalyst?'

'No,' she said, flatly, the hand with the cigarette shaking so badly she had to hold it with the other. 'He was abusing her… sexually.'

Her Coke fizzed in its glass.

Now we're getting to it.

'That's a very serious allegation,' I said. 'If you're going to make a formal complaint I would suggest you get a lawyer on your side and establish some strong evidence. And, if it's true, it could also have an impact on my murder enquiry, but I am not the person you should be talking to.'

I laid it out for her so that she knew I knew.

'It is true,' she said, feeling stronger. 'The maid will corroborate it.'

'How long had this been going on for?'

'Five years, that I know of.'

'With you tolerating it?'

Her hand still shook as the cigarette went to her mouth.

'My husband has always been a powerful man, both publicly and privately. He extended that power into his relationships… with me and his children.'

'Was that the attraction in the first place?'

'I never went for men my own age,' she shrugged. 'My father died when I was young… maybe that was it.'

'You were twenty-one when…'

'I was only ever interested in established men,' she cut in. 'And he took an interest in me. He can be very charming. I was flattered.'

'How did you meet?'

'I worked for him. I was his secretary.'

'So you know everything there is to know about him?'

'I used to know,' she said, 'when I was his secretary. As you might know, wives are not so well informed.'

'So you don't know who these few clients are he's working for now?'

'Why do you ask?'

'I want to know who I'm up against.'

'I only know who he used to work for, fifteen, sixteen years ago.'

'Who were they?'

'Big people.'

'For example?'

'Químical, Banco de Oceano e Rocha, Martins Construções Limitada.'

'Very big people,' I said. 'Do you think you, your maid and whatever lawyer you can find for the money are up to taking on this kind of person?'

'I don't know,' she said, her thumb flickering over the filter of her cigarette.

'Is that why you came here tonight?'

She looked up with charcoal-smudged eyes in deep sockets, her face not puffy as it had been in the morning, gravity taking over from fluid retention.

'I'm not sure what you mean by that?'

'I have my work cut out for me in this case already, Dona Oliveira,' I said, shying away from a small but unpleasant truth. 'Your daughter was very promiscuous.'

'Wouldn't you expect that from a girl who'd been abused?' she said, getting a handkerchief out and wiping her eyes.

'The behaviour's been noticed in girls who haven't been abused,' I said. 'But that's your point, not mine. As the day's gone on we've discovered that she's had sex with your ex-lover and she's had sex with two boys from the band in a group session in a pensão in Rua da Gloria. The landlord of that rooms-by-the-hour pensão had seen her before on Friday lunchtimes with other men who he thinks were paying customers. And I've just finished interviewing one of her teachers, who had a six-month involvement with her. Catarina could have gone with anybody and I've got to the point in my investigation where I need some luck to move it on.'

'I know all that,' she said. 'I'm trying to help. I'm trying to show you that there were psychological…'

'I'm not on anybody's team, Dona Oliveira,' I said, quiet and firm.

She stood and chased the ashtray around the table, crushing her cigarette out. She shouldered her handbag. I followed her to the door with half a mind to ask my burning question. Was Catarina your daughter? But I was too exhausted for the reply. The front door clicked shut. I opened it again to call after her, but she was already halfway down the street, walking into the yellow glow of the municipal street lighting, having trouble with her heels on the cobbles.

Felsen looked down into the courtyard from the verandah on the roof of his house. It was full of people he didn't know, friends and business contacts of Abrantes. Some of them were standing, some sat at tables, some picked over the decimated buffet with the bald disappointment of vultures late at the kill.

The day was hot with hardly a breath of wind, which happened about once a year on this weather-blasted point of Cabo da Roca. The sea was in a flat calm, slow and viscous under the sun. Felsen smoked and sipped champagne from a shallow glass. The party was to celebrate his permanent return from Africa. He'd gone back there in the middle of June 1955 and spent almost the entire six years out there. But it was over now. Angola had exploded into war and business had collapsed.

Felsen looked across to the walled garden on the south side of the house. One of his current girlfriends, Patricia, the only one he'd invited, was standing next to Joaquim Abrantes in a group consisting of Pedro, Abrantes' eldest son, Pica, Abrantes' wife, and the Monteiros, Pica's parents. Abrantes had one hand in the small of Patricia's back and the other resting on his wife's waist. He was leaning forward listening to Pedro who, as usual, was charming everyone with one of his long, amusing stories which Felsen had probably heard before but never managed to grasp the humour.