Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'You look tired, Zé,' he said, laying out the coffee and buttered toast.

'I had a long night.'

'You didn't eat properly.'

'No.'

'Maybe I should cook something for you.'

'No, this is fine.'

'What was keeping you up all night?'

'Work… as usual.'

'I heard they raided your house and they've arrested Faustinho.'

I sank my teeth into the toast, sipped some coffee.

'You fell under a tram, too,' he said.

'Fell?'

'I was being diplomatic.'

I wiped molten butter from my chin.

'Is she a girlfriend, the woman who dropped you off just now?'

'The whole world passes before you in here, doesn't it, António?' I said. 'You don't have to go outside. It all comes to you.'

'It's the nature of running a bar,' he said. 'I wouldn't do it if it was just a question of serving drinks.'

I poured more coffee, added milk.

'You were in Caxias, weren't you, at the end there, in 1974?' I asked.

'That was when I used to go out and do things and look what happened.'

'Did you ever hear the name Felsen? Klaus Felsen.'

'We heard about him. He was in for murder. The politicals and the regulars didn't have much to do with each other. They kept us apart.'

'What about a woman called Maria Antónia Medinas?'

Silence. I looked up from my toast. He was pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed.

'I was just thinking,' he said. 'Was she a regular?'

'I don't know. I don't know anything about her. Just the name.'

'She wasn't on the political side… that I know of.'

'Have you still got friends you could ask?'

'Friends?'

'Well, comrades then,' I said, and he laughed.

I went back to the house and found Olivia in the bathroom, brushing her teeth.

'What happened to you?' I asked, in English.

'I did what my Daddy told me to do,' she said and looked back at the sink, annoyed.

'You spent the night here?'

'That's what you told me to do,' she said. 'Have I been a good girl?'

'How did you get back?'

'Senhor Rodrigues brought me back after dinner.'

'On your own?' I said, my hands suddenly ice-cold.

'The others didn't want to come,' she said. 'I felt a complete idiot.'

'What did you talk about with Senhor Rodrigues?'

'I don't know. Nothing much.'

'Try and remember,' I said. 'It would help.'

She spat the toothpaste out and swilled her mouth.

'Oh yes, he was asking me about the Smashing Pumpkins.'

'Smashing Pumpkins?'

'They're a band, Dad,' she said, saddened by my lack of cool. 'A popular singing group I think you used to call them in your day.'

Then I told her, without telling her why, she shouldn't spend any more time with the Rodrigues family.

I was lying in bed unable to sleep, listening to the traffic, smoking cigarettes, reading Fernanda Ramalho's pathology report for the hundredth time. I was two hours away from a media storm that would change my life and now I didn't want it. I wanted the old life back.

It had been a terrible week. I'd assumed when Luísa had said her father, Vitor Madrugada, had a magazine on the blocks that everything was ready and all he had to do was press a button. But he didn't even have a printer and it cost him some very big money to get: one, because printers' presses don't hang around doing nothing waiting for a job-they're running all the time. It took a week. It meant he had time to think.

He'd wanted a big story to launch his new business magazine, and had ended up with something monumental that would stand for as long as the Marquês de Pombal had stood in his Praça. He had to be reassured. I had to make a presentation to him, his board of directors including Luísa, and his editor. I had to lay out my entire case against Miguel da Costa Rodrigues and my reasons for attacking him in this fashion.

The editor was nervous. He was an intelligent man, but one who'd come from an age when the media still had respect for public figures, a hangover, perhaps, from the days when journalists were told what to write. To him the Director-Geral of the Banco de Oceano e Rocha was a very important man with influential friends and a wife, also from an excellent family, and a very religious woman, whereas Catarina Oliveira…

'I'm not convicting him in this article,' I'd replied. 'I'm just making sure that Miguel Rodrigues also known as Manuel Abrantes comes down to the Polícia Judiciária to answer my questions. He's done everything he can to block this investigation. He's used his friends to make sure that I don't get the information I need about his car. He's had me removed from the case. He's had me pushed under a tram. I've had my home invaded by Narcotics agents and your boss's daughter has had hate messages plastered over her car. We do have some justification.'

The editor had looked at Luísa's father.

'I hope you're right,' Vitor Madrugada had said to me. This is a big story-important families, a dynasty based on Nazi gold, a PIDE murderer, sex, drugs and the killing of an innocent, or rather, a young girl who did not deserve to die. This is a story that will go through Portugal like a forest fire in summer.'

'And you don't want to be perceived as an arsonist.'

'No,' he'd said, 'I don't. And I don't think I am one.'

He'd pressed the button.

I'd left the meeting with elation and dread on either shoulder. I drifted around for a few days. JoJó Silva called me about Lourenço Gonçalves who still hadn't turned up. I told him to file a missing-persons report and I'd make sure it was handled. Carlos and I worked in a desultory fashion on the Xeta murder case with little success.

At 7.00 a.m. I made some coffee and already there was a murmur in the street. In less than ten minutes the calçada outside the house was full of journalists and cameramen. I called the PSP station and asked them to send down some men and a car.

At 7.30 a.m. I stepped out into the street and met a barrage of questions and flashlights. I said nothing and set off at a brisk pace to where the PSP were waiting with a car. I led a motorcade into Lisbon to the Polícia Judiciária building, where more newsmen were waiting. The PSP car dropped me round the back and I went straight up to Narciso's office. This time I didn't have to wait and it was a very different Engenheiro Jaime Leal Narciso on the other side of the door.

He asked me to sit down. He sat on the same side of the desk as me. We smoked. The secretary brought in some coffee. He quietly reinstated Carlos and me as the investigating officers in the case and gave me full permission to bring in Miguel da Costa Rodrigues for questioning.

'I'll want to search his property as well,' I said.

'There's a search warrant already prepared,' he said.

At 07.45 there was a phone call in Narciso's office from Miguel da Costa Rodrigues' lawyer, volunteering to bring his client down for questioning in the Polícia Judiciária building.

At 08.15 Miguel da Costa Rodrigues was in the building. His lawyer went out front and delivered an opening statement to the journalists. He denounced the Polícia Judiciáries methods of trial by media and clarified the voluntary nature of his client's appearance in the building. He didn't respond to any of the questions that came back at him.

At 08.25 Narciso clapped me on the back and showed me a reassuring fist with which he would help me smash Miguel da Costa Rodrigues. He put on his jacket and went out to the front of the building. He beat the lawyer's statement to a pulp and took eighty-five percent of the credit for the investigation so far, leaving me with fifteen and Carlos with none. He was doing what he was paid for. He was doing what he did best.