Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'But…'

'In this matter there is no argument. The orders have come down from the Director himself. You are to head a team responsible for bringing that charlatan General Machedo to justice. We've had an intelligence report that he is over in Spain preparing another coup attempt. You are being promoted to chefe de brigada with immediate effect and you will be briefed by the Director himself this afternoon in Lisbon. There. What do you think of that? You don't look very happy, agente Abrantes.'

Manuel still found himself staring into the cold crevasse of his own thoughts.

'I'm honoured,' he stammered. 'I thought I was too young for such a promotion.'

The major closed an eye and looked at him shrewdly.

'Caxias is no place for a man of your ability.'

'I thought you wanted to see me about the Medinas girl.'

'Who's she?'

'She died in her cell last night. Miscarried. Internal bleeding.'

The beat of silence was broken by the phone ringing. It jolted them both and the major yanked it to his ear. His secretary informed him that his son, Jaime, had been taken to hospital with a broken wrist after falling out of a tree. Major Narciso hung up, mesmerized by the space between himself and Manuel until he re-focused once more. Manuel tried and failed to swallow.

'Ah,' said Narciso, finally crushing out the cigarette, whose end was stinging his nail, 'one less communist for us to worry about.'

On February 19th 1965 Manuel Abrantes was having dinner in a small restaurant in Badajoz in Spain, no more than two kilometres from the Portuguese border. His two fellow-diners were enjoying themselves and Manuel himself was a mask of geniality. In two hours' time he and his two companions would be taking a short walk to a dark place for a meeting with a Portuguese army officer from the barracks in Estremoz, who would outline the strategy which could be the beginning of a new life for eight million Portuguese. Manuel's two dinner companions were General Machedo and his secretary, Paulo Abreu.

This meeting had taken six months to bring off, not to mention the four previous years PIDE had spent infiltrating the top echelons of General Machedo's entourage. Manuel had arrived at the best possible time. He'd brought fresh ideas to a man who'd spent the best part of a decade in exile. He'd cured the melancholia that surrounded the General and had infected him with a new optimism. Around Manuel, the General had begun to believe in a future.

The February night was cold and the heating in the restaurant inadequate. They sat in their coats and drank brandy to quell the shivers. At 11.00 p.m. a man came in and drank a coffee at their table. Fifteen minutes later they put on their hats and made the short two-hundred-metre walk to the churchyard, where the meeting was supposed to take place. There was a half-moon in a freezing clear sky and they had no trouble seeing their way. The man who'd come to their table walked a few metres ahead of them. The men didn't speak. The General's shoulders were hunched against the cold.

Inside the churchyard the man told them to wait in a narrow passage between some marble mausoleums. The General looked through the window of one and remarked on the smallness of the coffins.

'They must have been children,' said his secretary, which were his last words. A hammer struck him on the back of the head and his forehead broke the glass in the mausoleum door. The General stepped back, shocked, and found two men on his shoulders. His hands were lifted out of his pockets and held behind him. He watched in horror as his secretary was strangled in front of him. Even in his unconscious state Paulo Abreu struggled to hold on, his legs straightening and straightening until they were still and the feet slack.

The General was forced to his knees. The man who'd come to the restaurant removed a handgun from one pocket and a silencer from the other. He screwed them together and handed the piece to chefe de brigada, Manuel Abrantes, who looked down at the General whose hat had fallen off in front of him. The face, the whole body of the old man was suddenly completely exhausted. The General shook his head but his neck couldn't support it and it sank on to his chest.

'We must have been children,' he said, bitterly.

Manuel Abrantes placed the muzzle of the silencer on the back of the General's head and squeezed the trigger. There was a dull thud and the man shot forward with such force that his arms were torn from the grip of the two PIDE men.

Manuel handed the gun back to the agente. He reached down to the General and felt for a neck pulse. There was nothing.

'Where are the graves?' he asked.

The man with the gun walked down the corridor of mausoleums and turned left to a corner of the churchyard. The holes were barely a foot deep.

'What the hell is this?' said Manuel.

'The ground was too hard.'

'Bloody idiots.'

By 7.00 a.m. I was washed, inexpertly shaved, suited and standing outside the Liceu D. Dinis on the corner of Duque de Ávila and República, enjoying the early cool of the day. I'd woken up at 5.00 a.m. wanting it to be my summer holiday, with nothing to think about other than book choice, beach position and lunch. The photos in my pocket of Catarina Oliveira jolted me back on to the rails. I was going to work on the streets around the school to see if there was anything in Jamie Gallacher's car pick-up story.

I had a bica in the Pastelaria Sequeira on the corner opposite the art nouveau school building and asked myself if I felt lucky. I had to after a weekend like that and immediately I drew a blank from the staff of the pastelaria. I went up to the café Bella Italia whose barman had seen Catarina come in for a coffee after the session in the Pensão Nuno. It wasn't the same barman as on Saturday, but he pointed me to an old woman who sat in the window.

'It's her first shift,' he said. 'Morning, lunchtime, end of the afternoon. Nothing happens on that stretch of pavement that she doesn't know about.'

I spoke to her. The skin of her face was like crépe paper. She wore white gloves with a single button at the wrist, a heavily pleated blue dress and hefty white, leather low-heeled shoes. She nodded at the photo of the girl. She'd seen her with a man that fitted Jamie Gallacher's description.

'They were not happy,' she said, and returned the photo.

Fifty metres down the street from the Bella Italia was the traffic light where Avenida 5° de Outubro crossed Duque de Ávila. This was the point where Jamie Gallacher said Catarina got into the car. The crossroads was surrounded by apartment and office buildings. This was a place of work. At that time of the afternoon there must have been plenty of people on the street heading for their weekend. I went to the bus stop opposite the Bella Italia. As the time approached 8.00 a.m. more people arrived. If Gallacher had hit the girl there must have been someone on this side of the street who'd been at the bus stop and seen it.

Marshalling Portuguese people is not an easy thing to do, even when they're from the same family and heading for lunch, but when they're getting off a bus on the way to work they become a thunderous herd. But I was lucky that day, and so was Jamie Gallacher. I found a twenty-five-year-old marketing executive who worked for an international computer company on 5° de Outubro. She'd seen the man hit the girl and walk away down Duque de Ávila. She saw three cars pull up at the traffic light. The first was small and silver, the second one was large and dark, the third white. The driver of the second car, dimly visible behind tinted glass, had leaned across the seat and shouted out of the window. The girl had come off the pavement. They'd talked briefly. The lights had changed, the silver car took off and the girl got into the passenger seat. The car had crossed Avenida 5° de Outubro and headed in the direction of the Gulbenkian Museum and the Museum of Modern Art complex.