Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'I thought we were talking, Schmidt.'

'We were, but I changed my mind,' he said. 'Blackmail's a complicated business… a lot of things can go wrong in it.'

'So is burglary and fencing an old master.'

'I was thinking about murder.'

'Murder?' asked Felsen. 'What do you get from murder? Your health's gone, you should be thinking about your children's future.'

'They don't know me. I've seen them… but they don't know me.'

'What is this?' asked Felsen. 'I don't know what this is about any more.'

'This is about loyalty,' he said.

Felsen gasped as Schmidt pulled the trigger. There was a dry click. Schmidt racked the slide. Felsen leapt towards the corner of the room, his hand reaching out for Schmidt's gun. There was a head-ringing explosion, far louder than a detonating bullet in a confined space, and Felsen's ear and arm burnt white hot. The next sound he heard was the horror sound from Prinz Albrechtstrasse, the sound of a man on the brink of orgasm. He picked up the gun and rolled over.

Schmidt was slumped against the sideboard, his legs out in front of him, his eyes wide and staring at the bloodied stump at the end of his right arm. Blood covered his chest and lap. His raincoat was torn open, his face and grey hair flecked with red. Schmidt wanted to scream but, like a man having a nightmare, his mind shuddered but his voice only whimpered.

The quantity of blood that had spurted from his severed brachial artery was creating a creeping stain through the carpet towards the leather furniture.

'I'm going,' he said in a strange polite voice, as if he'd got what he'd come for and he'd be running along now.

Felsen got to his feet. His reflection in the window showed dark streaks across his face. The mirror showed him that he'd lost half an ear. His left arm burned from shoulder to wrist. He eased the fingers of his right hand around there and they disappeared into a deep wound in his triceps. His knees went and he nearly fainted.

He stripped off his jacket in the bathroom and washed himself as best he could. He ran water over his arm. It made no difference. It felt as if he had a white hot lump of charcoal in there. He hung his head over the sink. Not only did he have Schmidt to move, but he also had furniture and a large antique Arraiolos carpet to shift. He wrapped a towel around his arm.

He went back to the living room. He reached over Schmidt and uncorked the aguardente bottle and drank heavily from it. He sat on the divan with the bottle in his crotch and with the most westerly telephone in Europe put a call through to Abrantes. The operator connected him.

The maid answered and refused to disturb Abrantes. Felsen worked on her for half a minute. He knew what Abrantes was doing. He drank again and found a new packet of cigarettes. Abrantes finally picked up the telephone.

'I need your help,' said Felsen.

'Can't it wait?' he said, irritated.

'I need help from your friends… the ones Manuel works for.'

Silence now. He had the man's attention. He gulped more spirit, blinked back the tears.

There's been a development from that situation I had with Susana Lopes. There's a man dead up here.'

'That's enough,' said Abrantes. 'Shut up now. I'm sending somebody. Are you hurt?'

Felsen's face was burning from the alcohol. His lips, with the cigarette stuck to the bottom one, itched. Sweat sprang from the sandpaper of his moustache.

'My arm.'

'Leave the door open,' said Abrantes.

Felsen raided the phone back. He made it to the front door and halfway back. He fell across the threshold to the living room, Schmidt's white face was his last image.

He was vaguely aware of people in the room. Shadows and light in his eyes, furniture scraping, voices remote and indistinct and the wind still driving into the house, rattling the windows. He was being moved. Something flashed in the dome of his cranium and he floated out again, his raft creaking under the heave of a big sea.

He woke up several times over a period he could not judge. Each time the heat inside him was tremendous as if his body was burning fossil fuels. On the last occasion there was a smell, a terrible smell, one that frightened him and left him as weak as the runt cub in a litter of twelve.

There was morning light when he came round. The very first inch of the day when the earliest grey seeps out of the black. His head was too heavy to lift off the pillow. Was he awake this time? Was he conscious? He waited to see where he was, to make sure that he wasn't still inside his own head. More light leaked into the room, a little white, the colour of bone. He felt cool. Not so much pain in his bad arm, a saline drip in the other. Not parched as before. He heard voices talking in the corridor about a coup attempt in Beja, the name of General Machedo, but it was too much effort to listen and he tuned out.

He lifted his right arm. It was secured to the bed frame by a pair of handcuffs. He lifted his left, gingerly, the pain still there. The arm came up easily. He looked down his chest at it, but it wasn't there. It felt there. But it wasn't. The hand was there but it wasn't. The wrist. The elbow. The biceps. All there, but not. He yelled loud enough to split the two sacs of his lungs.

Two guards, both with rifles, crashed into the room.

'What the hell's going on?' said the first and older one.

'My arm,' roared Felsen. 'My arm's gone.'

They looked at him dumbly from across the room.

'That's right,' said the younger one. 'They cut it off.'

The older guard nudged him with his elbow.

'What?' said the younger one.

'He's lost his arm, for God's sake.'

'He smells a lot better now than when they brought him in.'

The older guard gave him a dead-eyed look and went to get a doctor. The younger one paced the room.

'Why am I chained to the bed?' asked Felsen.

'You killed a guy,' said the guard. 'You were completely drunk and you killed a guy. As soon as you're fit to move we're taking you back to Caxias.'

'I don't remember the trial.'

'That'll come.'

Felsen dumped his head back on the pillow and did some blinking at the ceiling.

'Will you do something for me?'

'You don't look as if you've got much money on you.'

'If I give you a number will you call Joaquim Abrantes? He'll give you money.'

The guard shook his head. Not worth the bother.

Two weeks later Felsen was moved back to the Caxias prison. A week after that he was taken out of his cold damp cell to a room with a table, an empty sardine tin for an ashtray and two chairs. Abrantes was shown in by a prison officer. He and Felsen shook hands. Abrantes clapped him on the shoulder and tried to nod some encouragement into him. Felsen tried to keep the coldness out of his eyes-Abrantes the only man on the outside who could help him. They sat down. Abrantes produced some of Felsen's favourite Turkish cigarettes and a hip flask of brandy. They lit up and drank to each other.

'So what's happening?' asked Felsen.

'A very difficult and now, bureaucratic, situation.'

'I don't remember very much after I called you.'

'That was the first problem. You came through to an operator in Cascais. By the time I'd contacted my friends in PIDE another squad had already been advised by the telephone exchange that a death had occurred and that you weren't phoning the police to report it. Suspicious. Very suspicious.'

'He broke into my house. He was armed.'

'So were you. Your fingerprints were on the unregistered gun. A bullet from that was found in the dead man.'

'I don't…' Felsen drifted, and chewed on his remaining thumbnail.

'You see how complicated it has become.'

'That wasn't my gun. He had my gun. My gun blew up in his face.'