Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'I haven't…'

'I've heard a taped interview with the suspect of such glaring incompetence that I can't believe the two of you have got your minds properly on the job.'

'Our minds are very firmly on the job, Senhor Engenheiro.'

'What time did you leave this building yesterday?'

'Something like quarter-past-four, we were working the bus queues on Avenida Duque de Ávila, which was where the girl was last seen, getting into…'

'And you didn't come back to the office.'

'I sent agente Pinto…'

'And where did you go?'

'I had nothing further…'

'You were seen going into an apartment building just up the road here in Rua Actor Taborda.'

'The victim's teacher lives there.'

'How long did you spend with her?'

Silence.

'I can't hear you, Inspector.'

'Four hours.'

'Four hours! And what did you have to discuss over four hours?'

'I'm seeing her privately, sir.'

Narciso hardly missed a beat. He'd planned this through to the end.

'Do you have any idea of the pressure I'm under?' he asked.

'I'm sure it's considerable.'

'You asked me to make sure that Inspector Abílio Gomes found out where Dr Aquilino Oliveira was at the time of his wife's death.'

'It was just a thought.'

'He was having dinner in the private residence of the Minister of Internal Administration.'

I shut up. The situation was not calling for my observations on the friendship between the lawyer and the minister. Narciso dropped his head and stared into his desk top.

'I'm taking you off the case,' he said, quietly. 'Abílio Gomes will handle it from now on. I want you to go down to Alcântara and investigate a body that's been found in a rubbish bin at the back of the Wharf One club.'

'But Senhor Engenheiro Narciso, you haven't…'

'You are in no position to defend your professionalism on the Catarina Sousa Oliveira case. "Investigating officer has affair with witness",' he said, stretching his hand out into the possible banner headline in the Correio da Manhã. 'Now take agente Pinto and go down to Alcântara.'

I sat in my office chewing various nails. Carlos had left a note with Lourenço Gonçalves' telephone number and a business address on Avenida Almirante Reis. I tried the number wondering why Narciso had praised me yesterday morning for looking in the wrong direction, and frozen me out twenty-four hours later just when I was getting somewhere. There was no reply. Carlos came in and sat across the desk. I put the phone down.

'We've got a problem,' he said.

I know.'

'Traffic won't give me the information.'

'We're off the case.'

'Do they know that?' he asked, slumping back in his chair.

'Maybe,' I said, and picked up the phone.

I called one of my friends in Traffic who would do favours for me. He put me on hold. Five minutes later he told me the computer had crashed. I hung up.

'We have an internal problem here,' I said.

Carlos looked suddenly bewildered, cold, like a kid on the beach who'd lost his parents. I gave him a résumé of Narciso's conversation.

'What does it mean?'

It means that whereas before we were swimming close to the beach, now the tide has suddenly swept us out over the continental shelf and we've got ten fathoms of dark, cold water underneath us.'

Carlos leaned closer, serious as a headstone.

'What are you talking about?'

I don't know any more.'

It was hot and humid down in the Alcântara docks complex and the body in the rubbish bin was already high enough for people to be holding handkerchiefs to their faces. The photographer had been and gone, and the pathologist, a woman I didn't know, was struggling into a pair of surgical gloves. I took a quick look at the body which was of a male, about eighteen years old, dark-skinned, with black, wavy hair, no fat on him and only wearing a pair of brief burgundy underpants with a smiley face over the genital area. I felt his feet. Soft. The killer had stolen his shoes or somebody else had come along afterwards. The pathologist joined me.

A couple of the staff were finishing cleaning up the nightclub,' she said. 'They emptied the rubbish at five o'clock and by seven when they closed up to leave out the back there, the body was in place. They also told me he's a known male prostitute. Can I move the body?'

I nodded her on. She was fast and thorough. I briefed Carlos on what he had to do and we waited for the pathologist's initial report.

'Right. Cause of death,' she said. 'Severe cerebral haemorrhage caused by savage and multiple blows to the top, back and side of the head. The killer wanted this one unambiguously dead. I'll run an HIV test on the blood, that could be a possible motive. I had a quick look in his rectum and he'd been working. I'll be fuller once I've seen him in my lab.'

I left Carlos with his notebook and dark intelligence and walked to the Alcântara train station. I telephoned my friend in Traffic again while waiting for the train.

'Is your computer still down?'

'Sorry, Zé,' he said.

'Does that mean that it's always going to be down when I call?'

'I can't say.'

I telephoned the lawyer's house and the maid answered. I said I wanted to speak to her. She said she was alone in the house.

I boarded the Cascais train and by 10.00 a.m. I was walking up to the lawyer's house through the old village. I rang the bell. The maid opened the door but Dr Aquilino Oliveira was walking down the corridor behind her.

'Thank you, Mariana,' he said, and ordered her to bring us some coffee. He stood at his desk in his study. I remained standing too.

'I wasn't expecting you, Inspector,' he said. 'I called your office and they told me you were off the case. I was put through to Inspector Abílio Gomes. Not the same calibre as yourself, of course, but no doubt competent. What can I do for you?'

'I came to offer you my condolences. Your wife. It's hard to believe what you've had to go through in the last forty-eight hours.'

He lowered himself slowly into his chair. His eyes didn't leave my face.

'Thank you, Inspector Coelho,' he said. 'I didn't think policemen could afford to care.'

'One of my weaknesses… but possibly a strength, too.'

'Is that what drives you, Inspector?'

'Yes,' I said, 'that… and I still have a belief in the sanctity of the truth.'

'You must be a lonely man, Inspector,' he said, which shook me.

'There's the mystery, too,' I said, papering over my unease. 'Humans need mystery.'

'Speak for yourself.'

'Yes, perhaps lawyers and mystery don't go together.'

'Well, we love to mystify… so I've been told by my clients.'

Mariana brought the coffee in. She poured. We waited. She left.

'Your wife came to see me the night before she died, Senhor Doutor. Were you aware of that?'

His eyes came up from his coffee, blinking but galvanized, searching the inside of my head.

'She'd tried to kill herself before, Inspector. Did you know that?'

'How many times?'

'Check at the local hospital. They've stomach-pumped her there twice before. The first time Mariana found her just in time. That was about five years ago. The second time I did. Last summer.'

'What did you put these attempts down to?'

'I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't know how neuroses work on the human brain. I don't understand chemical imbalances, that kind of thing.'

'A neurosis usually results from an original trauma which the victim is trying to suppress.'

'That sounds about right, Inspector. How do you know such things?'

'My late wife was interested in the works of Carl Jung,' I said. 'Were you aware of anything that could have…'

'Did my…? What did my wife say to you that night?'