The Night Watchman Read online

  When Moura put his glasses back on, I realized he preferred looking younger than he was; it was his camouflage. Maybe he was even a lot more dangerous than I imagined. It was possible that he’d even invented his fantasy son to win me to his side – that he’d sensed from the moment we’d first met that he could trick me with that particular strategy.

  Since 1994, when I joined the Judicial Police, at least two sociopaths have fooled me completely. Both sat right where Moura was sitting. Number One was a young bank teller with a winning smile who lived with his parents in Almada. He’d been a spellbinding storyteller. We ended up talking mostly about his collection of rare coins. I was sure he was innocent until sniffer dogs led us to the bodies of his father and mother under the paving stones of his patio. Number Two was a pretty nurse who worked at the Santa Cruz Hospital in Estoril. She could laugh, weep and flare into self-righteous anger on command: Meryl Streep dubbed into Portuguese. I thought she was the victim of a hateful conspiracy, but it turned out that she had killed at least nine patients with morphine injections.

  One certainty police work has taught me is that, if you think you can’t be fooled, you’re wrong.

  Moura went on to tell me that he’d poured his cyanide powder into the spicy tomato sauce he’d made for dinner one evening. ‘My wife liked really hot food,’ he explained.

  A knock came on my door. Moura gasped as though he’d heard a bomb go off.

  ‘It’s okay, nothing’s wrong,’ I told him.

  Inspector Pires poked her head in. She’d joined the Judiciary Police only a week earlier. ‘Sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘There’s been a murder.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In São Bento. On the Rua do Vale.’

  It was my week to be on call, which meant I was given all the major crimes reported by the Public Security Police, the PSP. Their officers were nearly always the first on the scene because all emergency calls to 112 were directed their way.

  ‘Okay, Pires, get the techs from Forensics over to the Rua do Vale ASAP. I’ll get there as soon as I can.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Pires agreed, but in a tone of warning, she added, ‘the PSP says that the victim was wealthy and well-connected, with lots of friends in the government.’

  I came out to talk to her, closing the door behind me. ‘I know you’re just trying to protect me, Inspector, but a cadaver isn’t likely to phone any of his big-shot buddies to complain that I took a few extra minutes with a suspect. Don’t let the PSP spook you.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

  I’d spoken gently, but she looked as if she might burst into tears, so I took her shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to sound harsh. This suspect has put me off-balance. One thing you can do for me is call Dr Zydowicz. I want him on this case.’

  Zydowicz was the chief medical inspector. He’d just returned to work after two months on sick leave. We weren’t required to have a medical expert on hand, but I preferred having one around for high-profile cases.

  I slipped back into my office to finish up with Moura. He was finishing his glass of water when I stepped in. A few minutes later, we’d reached an agreement on the exact wording of his statement. Once he’d added his tiny, careful signature, he handed me back my pen and said in a hopeful tone, ‘I don’t think I’m really such a bad person.’

  I considered what to tell him; I wanted to be honest but hurting him seemed pointless. ‘Sometimes people get so lost that they can’t find their way back to themselves. I think that’s maybe what happened to you. Though you should keep in mind that nobody who ends up being interrogated in my office ever thinks of himself as a bad person.’

  I was tempted to say more, but he’d wrecked his quiet little life in a way that could never be repaired, and that seemed to earn him the right to hold on to an illusion or two. Still, he sensed that I had more on my mind. ‘Go ahead, I can take it,’ he told me.

  I looked at him hard to make sure he meant it. He nodded decisively.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to say this, but do you really think your fantasy son will believe you’re a good dad when he finds out you poisoned his mom?’

  ‘I thought of that, too,’ he acknowledged, sitting up straight. He seemed gratified that our minds worked alike. ‘That’s why I’ve made it so he’ll never find out.’

  ‘You’re never going to think of him again?’ I asked sceptically.

  Passing over my question, he said in a grateful voice, ‘You’re a nice guy. And you listen well – thanks. I’m lucky I got to speak to you last.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of people to talk to in prison. And more than a few of them will be thrilled to have a friend who’s an expert chemist. You might even—’

  Reaching up to his chest, he swallowed a sharp intake of breath, then coughed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  He gazed down and took a fish-out-of-water gulp of air. ‘I didn’t want to have to tell my kid,’ he said in a choking voice. ‘Or anyone else.’ He leaned over my desk, his hands gripping its edge, his knuckles white.

  ‘What did you do?’ I demanded, jumping up.

  He closed his eyes. His grip slackened. ‘Don’t bother calling an ambulance.’

  ‘Merda!’ I hollered.

  As I rushed to him, his head fell forward and hit the surface of my desk with a thud. His right hand shot out at the same time and sent my I ♥ BLACK CANYON mug and all my pens flying. His eyes were open but not seeing anything in our world. A rivulet of blood trickled out of his nose.

  Inspector Pires came rushing in from next door. I shouted for her to call an ambulance. ‘And tell the medics to bring an antidote for cyanide!’

  I found a faint but steady pulse in Moura’s wrist. Lifting him up out of his chair, I eased him down to the floor, positioning him on his back so his heart wouldn’t have to work so hard. I noticed a tiny square of foil glimmering by one of the legs of my desk.

  ‘Don’t you do this to me!’ I told him, but a few seconds later his chest stopped rising. Sensing that this was a test around which my own right to be alive was turning, I knelt beside him and pressed down hard over his sternum, then tilted his head back and gave him two of my breaths.

  Chapter 2

  After the medics confirmed what I already knew, I lost my breakfast in the toilet. Washing my face with hot water at the sink, staring into the mirror at the shocked fragility in my eyes, I rewrote my conversation with Moura over and over, giving him all the reassurances he needed to keep from taking his own life.

  The sensation of breathing life into him still coated my lips, like a salty crust. Was it guilt that tugged me back to my childhood? Maybe it was simply that any man looking long enough into his own lost face will eventually find the boy dwelling inside him who first realized he would commit many wrongs over his lifetime.

  I locked myself in a stall because I wanted to be alone with the ten-year-old that I’d been. In there – in my memory – the crescent moon shone lantern-bright over our Colorado home. Gusts of frigid wind were bending the barren branches of our apple trees, and I could hear the broken-bone crunch of Dad’s feet tramping across the ice towards the porch, where I’d concealed my six-year-old brother Ernie behind a stack of firewood.

  ‘Hey, look what I’ve got here!’

  Dad grabbed Ernie and flung him into a snow bank by the stairs leading up to our front door, then waved to me. ‘Get on over here, Hank!’

  When I reached him, he took my arm and hugged me to him. He trembled. At first I thought he might be crying, but as he held me away, he showed me a mocking smile. ‘You know what, son,’ he told me, ‘I’m going to do to Ernie what the Colorado winter does to our apple trees!’

  He pushed me hard, and I fell next to my brother. As I looked up, Dad took a clear plastic bag out of his back pocket . . .

  From inside my stall, I phoned my brother. He heard the panic in my voice right away.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Trouble at work.’<
br />
  ‘But you’re okay?’

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ I told him. ‘Is everything okay with you? I suddenly got worried about you.’

  ‘Everything’s fine. The roses are gorgeous right now. Oh, and you should see the—’

  ‘You don’t think Dad could find us after all these years?’ I cut in.

  ‘Jesus, Hank, where’d that come from?’

  ‘Just answer the question!’

  ‘You know it’s impossible. Even if he’s still alive, which I doubt, he doesn’t speak a word of Portuguese. And neither of us is in the phonebook. If he could’ve found us, he would have. We’ve been here more than twenty-five years now.’

  It often infuriated me how Ernie could be so sure we were safe from our father and so insecure about nearly everything else, but for the moment it was what I needed to hear. ‘Remember how he said the worst things real softly?’ I said. ‘To show us how at peace he was with himself and God.’

  Ernie drew an alarmed breath. ‘You haven’t told Ana or someone else about what happened to him, have you?’ he asked, thinking he’d figured out more of what was wrong with me. ‘The police back home might still think he didn’t just disappear – that we did something we didn’t do.’

  ‘I haven’t said a thing. Don’t get so upset.’

  ‘Tell me what’s happened,’ he said in a gentler voice.

  Given Ernie’s history with pills, I didn’t dare mention Moura’s suicide, so I said, ‘A suspect got killed here at headquarters.’

  In the slow-passing silence between us, I realized I’d expected Ernie to die on that December day when Dad found him under our porch. Sometimes, when my brother and I didn’t speak for a few days, it even seemed to me as though Dad had suffocated him, then or at some other time, and that all of my adult life has been a dream.

  ‘Stay away from the blood,’ my brother told me now. ‘And look both ways before you cross the street.’

  His last advice was our childhood code that meant: be careful at all times. When I agreed, the time came to hang up, but I couldn’t; I was stopped by all that I didn’t dare say but needed to. Most of all, I wanted to tell Ernie that if Dad showed up, I’d kill him – and not only that, but that I’d trained as a cop to be sure that I’d stay calm enough to put a bullet right between his eyes and dispose of his body without anyone finding out.

  Pires had picked up all the pens that had scattered across my floor by the time I got back to my office. After thanking her, I went to Director Crespo’s office to explain what had happened with Moura. His impatient, get-on-with-it look disoriented me so badly that I forgot the word for CPR in Portuguese and I had to say it in English. I hated the way I sounded far away and helpless – as if I’d fallen off the edge of the world.

  ‘Where did he keep the cyanide?’ Crespo asked me when I’d finished my story.

  I held up the square of aluminium foil I’d found. ‘In this. He dropped it on the floor.’

  ‘Careful with that!’ he said, thrusting up his hand. ‘It may still have poison on it.’

  While folding the foil in four, I told him I’d ask Forensics to dispose of it. I tucked it in my shirt pocket for safekeeping.

  Crespo took a stick of gum from his pack – he’d been trying to give up cigarettes for more than four years, ever since the new legislation against smoking indoors had come into effect. ‘Look, Monroe,’ he said in the overly patient tone he adopted when he was trying not to show how annoyed he was with me, ‘there was nothing you could do. Just write up your report and get on with your day.’ He came around his desk and patted my shoulder. ‘The guy was a nutcase – a total loser. Just forget about him.’

  My anger, quick and demanding, made me lean away from him. ‘I don’t see what made him a loser,’ I said.

  While chewing greedily on his gum, Crespo sized me up, wondering how honest he could be with me. ‘We all know life sucks half the time, Monroe, but we keep fighting. The losers give up. It’s as simple as that.’

  I knew that giving up wasn’t simple at all, but I was afraid I’d shout something rude if I started to argue with him. I told myself that Crespo wasn’t worth the effort to make him understand how many years of despair you needed to suffer in order to find the courage to walk to the end of your life and jump off.

  In a conciliatory tone, he said, ‘Look, you aren’t going to win any medals by taking these things personally. Go have a shot of brandy at the Açoriana after you get the paperwork out of the way. You’re white as a sheet.’

  ‘I don’t drink, sir.’

  ‘Christ, Monroe, a shot of brandy isn’t drinking, it’s coping!’

  I scrubbed my hands and typed up my report. By then, it was almost 11 a.m. Ana would be at her gallery. Liliana, her assistant, answered. When my wife took the line, I told her about Moura. ‘I really fucked up,’ I concluded. ‘I didn’t need to be so clever.’

  ‘Listen, Hank, if he hid the cyanide, it meant that he decided he was going to take his own life long before he started talking to you.’

  She spoke in that no-nonsense voice of hers that’s usually my road out of hell, but not this time. ‘I . . . I identified with him,’ I stammered, and I explained how he’d invented a son to oblige himself do the right thing.

  ‘Look, he told you he was lucky that you were the one who questioned him,’ she said. ‘So stop blaming yourself.’

  Comforting words, but death was still lodged in the pulsing at the back of my head and in the fatal numbness of my hands; the blood and skin remember what the mind forgets.

  A Valium might have helped but I tried to avoid taking any medication in the morning. I couldn’t put off going to the Rua do Vale, so I promised Ana I’d do my best to make it home early and grabbed my gun. I reached our parking lot before I realized I’d forgotten my bolo tie and dashed back for it; counting on a three-inch-tall silver bird to keep me safe was idiocy, but Ernie insisted on it.

  When I reached our car, Pires was sitting behind the wheel, scanning the movie listings in the Público. Hearing me, she looked up. Her eyes were red and glassy. She’d already told me – choking up – that she’d never before watched anyone die..

  We didn’t speak. As she navigated through the noisy traffic, her hands gripped the steering wheel as though she’d just learned to drive. The accumulation of opening lines I wanted to try – but didn’t – ended up making me jittery. ‘So, is there anything of interest at the movies?’ I finally asked.

  ‘Someone told me a new Angelina Jolie movie just came out, but I couldn’t find it.’ In an urgent voice, she added, ‘Listen, sir, I’m really sorry about what happened in there.’

  ‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ I told her.

  ‘If you hadn’t had to come out to talk to me, then it’s possible that—’

  ‘He’d have taken the cyanide anyway,’ I interrupted, repeating what my wife had told me.

  ‘Maybe.’ She grimaced.

  ‘Let’s just get to the crime scene. Nothing we say can change what’s happened.’

  ‘Okay, sir.’

  She seemed resigned to her dissatisfaction, but I must have needed more convincing; as we rumbled down the Calçada do Combro, I said, ‘We all need to tell our story to someone, and once Moura did that, his life stopped making sense.’

  Pires took a deep breath and held it. I had the feeling she needed to hold onto a last, unkind thought about herself.

  ‘Everyone your age seems to think Angelina Jolie is the greatest,’ I told her.

  ‘And I take it you don’t, sir,’ she replied, clearly as glad as I was to welcome trivialities into our conversation.

  ‘I watched Lara Croft with my wife and kids once. It was like a bad cartoon. She seems like a good person, but I thought she was absolutely terrible in the film.’

  ‘Acting may not be one of her strong points,’ Pires admitted.

  I laughed. A reticent smile crept over her lips – her first since we’d started working together. I realized that Moura’s
death had probably changed the shape and scope of everything that would now happen between us.

  ‘Do you want to hear what the PSP officer on the scene told me about the murder?’ she asked.

  ‘Good idea.’

  She spoke quickly and decisively about the case without having to consult her notes. Impressive. But I was unable to catch most of what she said. When I closed my eyes to ease the throbbing at my temples, she stopped talking.

  ‘I think you’re going to have to start over,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  She told me that the victim’s name was Pedro Coutinho. He’d been shot in his living room. His body had been discovered about an hour and a quarter earlier by his housekeeper. His wife Susana and daughter Sandra had been on vacation in the Algarve, along with the family dog, a poodle named Nero. They’d closed up the house and left for Lisbon on being informed about the murder.

  I watched Pires furtively as she spoke. She had a secretive profile. With her skullcap of black hair and rigid, upright posture, she looked like a flamenco dancer. If I’d have been younger, I’d have asked leading questions in the hopes of getting a glimpse at the mysteries inside her, but I was forty-two and sick of training new inspectors.

  Pires went on to tell me that PSP officers on the scene had found Coutinho’s address book in the bottom drawer of the desk in his library, and in it were the cell-phone numbers of a number of ministers. They’d also found an issue of Ola! on his night table with a showy story about his family’s vacation in Goa last February. Apparently, he liked being photographed without a shirt, probably to show off his boxer’s build.

  Finishing up, Pires told me that the wife and daughter were expected back in Lisbon by mid-afternoon.

  ‘How old was the victim?’ I asked.

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘I forgot to ask that, sir,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No problem. And how’s Nero holding up?’

  ‘The poodle?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She looked at me as if I were mad.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘My wife and kids tell me that I try to be amusing at inappropriate moments, but it’s really just to keep myself afloat.’