Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

He thundered down the stairs without a word. The girl, framed in the hole left by the mirror, looked from one chained wrist to the other.

'How long have you known him, Jorge?' I asked. 'You must be old pals by now.'

'Thirty-five years or so.'

'Thirty-five years or so,' I said. 'Early sixties. A very old pal.'

I looked him up and down-this tired, ruined man.

'I think I need a cigarette, Inspector. Mine are downstairs.'

I gave him one and lit it for him, his hands trembling now. He lowered himself on to the end of the bed.

'You and Miguel,' I said, 'it looks like your trains got separated, went off on different tracks.'

'He had some advantages that I didn't.'

'Family?'

The room was stuffy, airless. Jorge sucked on the cigarette, pulled his shirt off the rolls of empty skin around his belly. His face, already grey and broken-down, began to take on a green tinge in the weak forty-watt light. His eyes, unshifting, stared into a deep waterless hole, silted with bitterness.

'His father owned a bank.'

'Banco de Oceano e Rocha?' I asked, and he nodded. 'Is that where you met?'

'No, no. We met in Caxias… in Caxias prison.'

I looked at the torn-out picture of the sleek Miguel da Costa Rodrigues at his charity function at the Ritz.

'You don't look like communists,' I said. 'I mean he doesn't.'

Jorge shook his head.

'Were you crooks?' I asked. 'That'd be more like it.'

'We were with the PIDE,' said Jorge brushing some ash from his fly. 'We worked in the interrogation centre…'

'Wait a second here, Jorge,' I said. 'His father owned the bank? Fifteen years ago. I remember it. It was a big thing. It got into the newspapers all over the world. The owner of the bank was killed in a car crash on the Marginal. The whole family was killed. I don't remember the name but it wasn't Rodrigues.'

'It was Abrantes. His name is Manuel Abrantes.'

'Why did he change his name?'

Jorge dumped his cigarette in the sink. It hissed and stuck.

'You've come this far, Jorge.'

'He did some things, Inspector. We all did some things. Manuel Abrantes did some bigger things than most. He was an Inspector de Polícia, how about that?'

'What sort of things are we talking about?'

'He killed a woman in Caxias prison. It was an accident, I think. She miscarried. I don't know. Maybe he kicked her… anyway, after that he was promoted to chefe de brigada.'

'That sounds like pretty regular stuff for PIDE. I'm sure there are a lot worse…'

'He was the leader of the squad that shot General Machedo in Spain.'

A drop of sweat travelled the length of my spine.

'Now you see,' said Jorge, 'how you have to be careful.'

I lit myself a cigarette this time and the hand was not so steady.

'I'm finished with him now. I've protected him over this thing. This girl. And now I'm done with him. Look at me, Inspector,' he said, and I turned my eyes away from the floor, not really wanting to look at him. 'Do I look like someone who's ever eaten at Manuel Abrantes' table?'

I started out of the room and looked back at him from the door. A collapsed human being, he stared into the niche above the sink without seeing further than his own head.

'Don't rush it, Inspector,' he said. 'It's not over by a long way.'

'Don't worry, Jorge. I'm not ready yet… but if anything happens to me, I'll know where to come looking.'

'You don't have to worry about me.'

'Where does he live? Abrantes.'

'Somewhere in Lapa. Where else? He took over his brother's old house. I don't know the address.'

There was a faint cry for help from next-door. Jorge's eyes suddenly registered what he was looking at. He shook his head and hauled himself to his feet.

I ran down the stairs two at a time. It was after five o'clock now. I called Olivia and asked for Miguel da Costa Rodrigues' address in Lapa. I called Carlos.

At a quarter-to-six we were standing outside a house in Rua Prior, leaning up against an old wall on the other side of the street.

At 6.15 p.m. an old guy opened up the gates to the house. One of two garage doors opened electronically and a black Mercedes C200 backed out into the street. I could smell the petrol engine and the registration number was 18 43 NT, but it did not have tinted windows. Lurdes Rodrigues was clearly visible through the glass. She parked up in the sunny street and got out. She went back into the house and returned with an envelope. In those few minutes the windows turned to black.

We were lying on the bed. She was at right-angles to me, with her head on my stomach. We were both naked, not even a sheet over us. The windows were open and the faintest cool breeze and late light were coming into the room. We smoked and shared a heavy glass ashtray which sat in one quarter of the bed and a glass of whisky which lay in another. We stared at the ceiling. I'd spent the last forty minutes telling Luísa Madrugada everything I knew about the murder of Catarina Oliveira. We hadn't exchanged a word for the last quarter of an hour. I fingered a small pool of whisky spilt between her breasts and put it in my mouth.

'I've been interested in the Banco de Oceano e Rocha for the past couple of months,' she said.

'Don't open an account there.'

'I've been trying to find a link between them and Nazi gold.'

'Leave your money under the mattress like a good peasant.'

'Listen to me.'

'I am listening,' I said, fingering more whisky into my mouth. 'Why are you looking at Nazi gold?'

'Because it's a hot topic. All these commissions are forcing banks to open up their archives all over the world. It'll look good in my thesis if I can pull something off here in Portugal. And anyway, a study of Salazar's economy without looking at wartime gold transactions would be a serious omission.'

'Carlos read a piece out to me on Sunday about our reserves going up sevenfold during the war.'

'On the back of sales of wolfram, tin, sardines, olive oil, blankets, hides… you name it, we sold it. To both sides.'

'Some people see a problem in that, or are surprised by it,' I said. 'To me, it's just the way business works. There's no morality in money.'

'My theory is that all Salazar's public building works-the motorways, the roads, the 25th April bridge, the national stadium, all the urbanization in and around Lisbon-I think it was funded, not: just by his successful playing of the market during the Second World War, but also by his acquiescence towards the end of the war in allowing the Nazis to move their loot out of Europe. And somewhere in all that is the Banco de Oceano e Rocha.'

'That could be a dangerous conclusion,' I said. 'Maybe you should tell me how you got there.'

'Just on the other side of the Banco de Oceano e Rocha building, near the Anjos Metro, in Rua Francisco Ribeiro, is a very ugly building belonging to the Banco de Portugal. In there they have all the bank and company information, all the statutes from all the companies registered in Portugal since the nineteenth century. If you're a really boring, sad person you can go in there and leaf through all the statutes of the Banco de Oceano e Rocha and you'll find that the three original directors of the bank were Joaquim Abrantes, Oswald Lehrer and Klaus Felsen.'

'When was this?'

'During the war,' she said, taking another sip of whisky. 'By 1946 there were only two directors-Joaquim Abrantes and Klaus Felsen with a fifty-one/forty-nine split in the shareholding.'

'I thought they confiscated all German assets in Portugal after the war.'

'They did. But Joaquim Abrantes' share was fifty-one percent. He was the owner. It was a Portuguese bank,' she said. 'Another interesting thing is that I've been looking through an old archive which belonged to a Belgian businessman. I'm a friend of the granddaughter. Guess whose name turns up there?'