Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

We stood there nodding. The seriousness too big and awkward to be commented on. I felt like a man who'd joined hands with someone around the trunk of a massive tree. I steered him into the kitchen and sat him down with some coffee. He put the well-read newspaper down on the table.

'Anything interesting in that?' I asked.

'Catarina Oliveira's in there.'

'Is she?'

'You wouldn't have thought…'

I read the article. It was the facts of the case-where her body was found and when, the time of death, the school she went to, her Friday routine after school, the way she was killed, and most surprising of all, I got a mention.

'What do you make of it?' asked Carlos.

][shrugged. I didn't know. It was very unusual. If I was of a suspicious mind I might think it was Dr Aquilino Oliveira telling his friends to be careful who they talked to. I began to sense a higher profile to the case, a public face.

'It might throw up something we can use,' I said. 'What else?'

'There's a long article about this gold business.'

'I wasn't aware there was any gold business?'

'We're setting up a commission to look into it. There's been a lot of pressure from the United States, the European Community and Jewish organizations and we've been trying to squirm away from it but: now, finally, we've got to do something about it.'

'We? Who? What?' I said. 'You sound like a Portuguese reporter, they say everything except the nugget you want to hear.'

'The government has set up a commission to look into Portuguese complicity in accepting looted Nazi gold in exchange for raw materials during the Second World War and, towards the end of the war, laundering the gold out to South America.'

'The government?'

'Actually no,' he said spreading out the newspaper, 'it's the governors of the Banco de Portugal. They've appointed a guy to look into their archives.'

'Who?'

'Some professor.'

'That's going to be a carefully managed exercise,' I said. 'Who's making us wash our linen in public?'

'The Americans. One of their senators says he has proof of Portuguese involvement… listen… our gold reserves in 1939 were nearly fifteen hundred million escudos, by 1946 they were nearly eleven thousand million. How about that?'

'So we sold a lot of raw materials in the war. That's not laundering. Where did all this gold come from?'

'Switz…' he started and stopped.

I followed his eyes. Olivia had come into the kitchen and sat down sideways on a chair at the table. She was in her shortest mini-skirt and a pair of her mother's strappy high heels. Her legs were long and honey-coloured already from a day on the beach. She crossed them and poured herself a cup of coffee. Her hair was brushed to a glossy blue blackness. Her lips were chilli-red. Her young breasts strained against a midnight-blue top which ended two inches above the waistband of the skirt showing the taut, brown skin of her belly.

'Going somewhere?' I asked.

She tossed her hair over her shoulder as if she'd been practising.

'Out,' she said. 'Later.'

'This is my new partner, Carlos Pinto.'

Her head turned as if there was a very expensive mechanism in her neck for smoothing things out. Her tongue was attached to her top lip.

'We met at the door.'

Carlos cleared his throat. We looked at him. He hadn't intended to draw attention to himself but he had to say something now. Remember the holding pattern.

'I had a fight with your father last night,' he said.

Never mind.

'Brawling in pubs,' she said in her fanciest English accent, 'I thought you were the police,' she finished in Portuguese.

'It was just the two of us,' he said.

'What about the barman?' I said. 'Don't forget the barman.'

'My father was fighting with everybody last night. You, me, my dead mother, the barman… did I miss anybody?'

'It was my fault,' said Carlos.

'What were you fighting about?' she asked.

'Nothing,' I said quickly.

'What about you?' asked Carlos.

'Me?' she said, and somehow stopped a blush from creeping along her jawline. 'Nothing too.'

'It was important at the time,' I said.

'And what was all that noise up in the attic last night?' she turned on me.

Carlos frowned. The cat loped in.

'I fell over in the dark,' I said. 'Where did you say you were going… later?'

'I've been invited to lunch by Sofia's parents.'

'Sofia?'

'The banker's daughter. The guy who gave you all that money for your beard.'

'You see a lot of them… the Rodrigues?'

'Sofia's in my class. She's…' Olivia hesitated, looked across at Carlos, whose eyes hadn't left her face. 'She's adopted. The past year we've been getting on. You know how it is.'

Carlos seemed to.

'I'll be in Lisbon this afternoon,' I said.

'I'll be going home,' said Carlos.

'If you're going to the station,' said Olivia, with a grab in her voice, forgetting that 'later' hadn't quite arrived. 'You could walk me up there.'

Olivia kissed me on the cheek and rubbed the lipstick in, something she liked doing, something she saw as grown-up.

'Don't forget to shave,' she said, rubbing her fingers together.

They left. I shaved and went down to the café and drank a bica widi António Borrego. I felt relaxed after Olivia's performance. If a sixteen-year-old can manipulate two grown men then I might as well deliver myself into the hands of Luisa Madrugada and let her make a monkey or a man out of me.

I drove into Lisbon wrestling with my octopodial conscience. Should I really be taking a possible witness out to lunch when I didn't know her level of importance to the case? It was an ugly argument. That word possible became very important, and for once I let the impetuous personal beat the responsible professional into the ground.

I spent twenty minutes in Rua Actor Taborda sitting in my car waiting for the time to get less embarrassingly early. I was watching the entrance to a porno cinema, faintly interested in the type of people who would have the strength for sessões contínuas on a Sunday lunchtime. Apparently no one.

I rang the bell at 1.00 P.M. and to my slight disappointment Luísa came down to meet me. I didn't know what my subconscious had been hoping, but my stomach was telling me it wasn't to miss lunch. I wanted her to grab my arm, as Olivia would, and march down the street, which finally made me rein in on hope and instigate some equanimity. We went to a cervejaria on Avenida Almirante Reis, one in a chain well-known for their seafood. I wanted to stand at the bar because I liked to eat seafood in an informal way, but the bar area felt cheap and sleazy even with the magnified tanks of puzzled crayfish and lobster.

The waiter sat us in the window of the restaurant. There were two other couples and the rest of the cavernous interior was empty. We ordered a plate of large prawns and a couple of dressed crab and two beers.

'I have to admit you surprised me,' she said.

'By calling you up? I surprised myself, too.'

'Well, yes, that… but I meant you surprised me by being a policeman.'

'I don't look like one?'

'The ones you see are taken over by their jackboots and sunglasses. The ones you don't, people like you in the Policía Judiciária, I don't know. I imagined them to be stern, hard men… weary too.'

'I was weary.'

'Weary of life… weary of the worst aspects of life. You were tired.'

The beers arrived. I offered her a cigarette and she sneered at the Ultralights and took out a pack of full-strength Marlboro. She lit the cigarettes with a petrol Zippo, which she buffed on the tablecloth as she looked into the tree-lined street outside. She rested her chin on the heel of her hand and smoked and thought about something that made her eyes greener.