A Small Death in Lisbon

'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 Abilio 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?'

'She said your marriage hadn't worked from the beginning. I thought fifteen years was a long time for a relationship not to be working. She seemed to be scared of you and dependent on you. Your small exercise in humiliation at the beginning of the investigation confirmed that.'

'And you don't think I was humiliated by her having an affair with a boy ten years her junior, Inspector?' he said, fast and fierce, almost hissing it.

'When did you find out about the lover?'

'I don't remember.'

'Last summer possibly?'

'Yes, yes… it was last summer.'

'How?'

'I found a receipt for a shirt from a shop I don't use.'

'Did you confront her with it?'

'I watched and waited. The shirt could have been for her brother, after all. I knew it wasn't, but my profession demands that I am certain.'

'So how did you confront her with it?'

The question knocked him back. He tried to cover his reaction by an elaborate alteration of position. It snapped him out of the cosiness of our dialogue. His finger had brushed the truth and found it razor-sharp. His surface temperature dropped quickly to sub-zero.

'None of this is relevant to the investigation of my daughter's death, Inspector. More especially now that you are no longer working on the case.'

'I thought we were just talking.'

He leaned forward and sipped his coffee. He removed a small cigar from a box on his desk. He offered me one. I declined and lit a cigarette of my own. He smoked and uncreased himself. My question burned inside me.

'You were telling me what my wife said to you that night,' he said.

'She said things, very important things, without explaining them and I was very tired after a long day. She said your marriage had never worked but not why. She said you were a powerful man and that you extended that power into your intimate relationships but she didn't say how. She made a very serious allegation but offered no evidence to back it up. It was not…'

'…a conversation with somebody of sound mind,' he finished.

'There were traces of the truth, I thought.'

'What was the serious allegation?'

'She said you were abusing Catarina sexually.'

'Do you believe that?'

'She offered no evidence…'

'But do you believe it?'

'I'm a homicide detective, Senhor Doutor. People lie to me, not just occasionally, they lie to me all the time. I listen. I cross-reference. I probe further. I examine evidence. I find witnesses. And if I'm lucky I can put together enough facts to make a case. But one thing I can assure you of, Senhor Doutor, if somebody tells me something, I don't automatically believe them. If I did, we could empty our prisons of all those innocents and refurbish them into pousadas.'

'What did you say to her?'

My insides winced at that. A nagging memory. A prickling responsibility.

'I told her to proceed with extreme caution… to get a lawyer and some evidence would help.'

He sucked on his cigar, the lawyer observing the weak point.

'Sound advice,' he said. 'Did you tell her you were not the right person to be speaking to, that if…'

'I did.'

'So why do you think she came to you, Inspector?'

I didn't answer.

'Do you think she was trying to influence you perhaps… your attitude to me, for instance?'

Still I didn't answer and the lawyer came across the desk at me.

'Perhaps she offered as evidence our daughter's promiscuity, her complete disdain for any sexual morality brought about by what…? A confusion. The man, in whose unconditional love she completely trusted, took advantage of her innocence… Yes. I imagine that would do it. That would qualify as a trauma and the promiscuity as a neurosis. Am I right? Was that my wife's thinking?'

The pressure of the man's intelligence, its rapacity, had the boiling intensity of a piranha shoal stripping a body down to its skeleton. Why did you marry her? I thought. Why did she marry you? Why did you stay with each other?

'I'm right,' he said, slumping back. 'I know I'm right.'

He crushed out his cigar with venom, until he felt himself observed. I stood, annoyed and confused, my initiative gone. I opened the door to l eave, my question still unanswered, the weight not with me to ask it yet.

'There are two forms of child abuse, Senhor Doutor,' I said. 'The one you read about is sexual abuse. It's more shocking. But the other type can be just as brutal.'

'What's that?'

'Withholding love.'

I went into the corridor, closed the door and then reopened it.

'I forgot to ask, Senhor Doutor. Do you have another car apart from the Morgan? I imagine that's your fun car and you have something more formal as well.'

'A Mercedes.'

'Was that the car your wife was driving on Sunday night?'

'Yes it was.'

I sat in the public gardens outside the lawyer's house and waited for Mariana, the maid, to come out, which she did at lunchtime. I followed her. She was a small, thick-set woman not much more than a metre and a half tall. She had dark shiny hair curled tight around her head. She was the type of person you take one look at and trust completely, the kind of woman, perhaps, that Dr Oliveira didn't deserve to have working for him. I caught up with her on a steep cobbled street, startling her.

'Can we talk for a few minutes?' I asked.

She didn't want to.

'Let's walk,' I said, and stepped into the road to let her have the narrow shaded pavement. 'You're upset.'

She nodded.

'Dona Oliveira was a good person?'

'She was,' she said. 'An unhappy woman, but a good person.'

'Will you carry on working for Dr Oliveira?'

She didn't answer. Her low heels clattered on the cobbles.

'Was Catarina a good person, Mariana?'

'I've worked for Dr Oliveira for nine years. That's how long I've known Catarina, every weekend and every summer for nine years, Inspector… and no, she was not a good person, but it wasn't her fault.'