The Night Watchman Read online

  I suspected that we wouldn’t make any further attempts at humour, but a little while later she said, ‘I wonder if Nero also goes bare-chested in gossip magazines.’

  ‘We can hope that he feels confident enough to do so,’ I retorted.

  We laughed together – but a bit too wildly, as people do who were aware that the very bad day they were having is about to get worse.

  My cell phone rang. It was Mesquita, the deputy head of the Judiciary Police for all of Portugal. ‘All right, listen up, Chief Inspector,’ he told me. ‘I hear you’re on your way to the Rua do Vale. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, sir, we’ll be there soon.’

  ‘Good. Make sure you do everything by the book. And if anything is leaked to the press, I’ll have you strung up by your balls. Understood?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘Good. And if you start getting pressured, tell whoever it is to fuck off and call me. I don’t care if it’s the prime minister. Got it?’

  He hung up without waiting for my agreement. When I told Pires who had called and that she wasn’t to discuss the case with anyone, she looked at me uneasily.

  ‘I’m listening,’ I told her.

  ‘Do you think the victim might have some compromising information on people high up in the government?’

  ‘I was just warned that the prime minister might ring, so you tell me, Inspector.’

  We parked on the Travessa do Alcaide, about a hundred yards from our destination; I always liked a few minutes in the open air before seeing blood. As we walked towards the victim’s home, an ancient wooden trolley shivered past us, with a knot of screaming kids leaning out the side, communing with the God of Danger they still had every right to worship at their age. Trash blew over the cobblestones and a radio blared out news about our never-ending economic crisis. Unemployment was up to 15 per cent, and more than half of those without jobs – 500,000 people – were receiving no government assistance. A recent nationwide poll revealed that 69 per cent of Portuguese college students intended to emigrate after graduating. And our miserable salaries – the lowest in Western Europe – had once again been deemed too high by Nobel-prizewinning economist Paul Krugman and a panel of international experts.

  On passing a decaying apartment house with a big hole kicked in at the bottom of the door, two thick drops of liquid plopped onto my head. I prayed that one of Lisbon’s bloated pigeons hadn’t used me for target practice again. On looking up, I discovered festive red geraniums gazing down at me from their canary-yellow window box. It seemed encouraging – after all, some of us could still afford flowers and fresh paint. I dried my hair with the handkerchief that I always keep in my back pocket.

  The wind smelled of heated pavements, olive oil and yeast. Loosening my bolo tie, I discovered my collar was soaked. ‘All summer long I want rain and my kids want more sun,’ I told Pires. ‘Do you think we’ve hit ninety degrees yet, Inspector?’

  ‘We passed a pharmacy a few blocks back and the flashing sign said eighty-one.’

  ‘Only eighty-one? It feels much hotter.’

  ‘Because there’s no breeze at all.’

  ‘If I were Raymond Chandler,’ I told her, ‘I think I’d tell you now that men and women do crazy, violent things on hot summer days without any wind. Especially when they lose their jobs and despise their leaders.’

  ‘Sounds about right,’ she said.

  ‘Do you read mysteries, Inspector?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, sir – mostly the classic American ones. Especially Dickson Carr.’

  So she was a woman who enjoyed closed-door detective novels – which probably meant that she liked nothing better than beating the odds.

  The crumbling sidewalk was only wide enough for one person at a time, so I had Pires walk ahead of me. She turned back now and again to make sure I hadn’t lost my way or been taken advantage of by another leaky geranium. Her concern reminded me of how I’d always have one eye out for Ernie when we were little.

  Pires walked with her hands joined behind her back, leaning slightly forward, as if bent by a heavy locket. It seemed to me that she might have been having continuing doubts about her responsibility for Moura’s death.

  ‘Listen, Pires,’ I said, taking advantage of a break in the traffic to walk beside her, ‘some of the older cops will wish you’d never joined the force. They may even make fun of you. Just ignore them if you can. The younger men will all come to accept you as a colleague if you hang tough. Come talk to me if you have any big troubles.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ she said, but without enthusiasm.

  From the urgent way she looked down the street, I could see I’d embarrassed her. Pity a man entering middle age with so little experience of women. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘do you ever go to the beach at Caparica?’

  She turned around to face me. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Moura, our chemistry teacher . . . He used to take his imaginary kid there.’

  ‘I’ve been to Caparica a few times.’

  ‘Listen, Inspector, when it’s just the two of us, how about calling me Henrique?’

  ‘If . . . if that’s what you want,’ she replied, though her anxious hesitation told me she was unlikely to abide by our agreement.

  I gestured for her to start off again. ‘So is Caparica nice?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, turning around momentarily, ‘though there are too many people on weekends. You’ve never been?’

  ‘No. Where I grew up, there were no beaches. The sound of waves still unnerves me. And all that sand . . . Though my wife takes the kids out near Guincho sometimes. She likes her beaches wild. Like her men.’

  That last comment was meant to win me another laugh, but my American delivery had been too dry. It happens all the time.

  ‘Where did you grow up, sir?’ Pires asked.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because we’ll be working together, sir.’

  ‘Oh, for just a couple of years, Lucinda,’ I told her. ‘It is Lucinda, isn’t it?’

  ‘Luci,’ she said.

  ‘Well, Luci, in no time at all, you’ll be free of me.’

  She gazed off. Did I see disappointment?

  ‘It has nothing to do with you,’ I assured her. ‘The director always substitutes my inspectors every two years. He doesn’t want anyone working with me too long. I’m sure you’ve heard about it.’

  Pires nodded, clearly embarrassed by what she’d been told behind my back.

  The Rua do Vale turned out to be a slender, tired old street – wide enough for only one car at a time – leading up to the imposing columns of the Jesus church, which seemed far too majestic for so derelict a neighbourhood. Whoever built that sanctuary had wanted to remind residents that God was forever around the corner – even if He wasn’t, of course.

  The first house on our left – unpainted, and in a bad state of disrepair – was covered with scaffolding. About a hundred feet up the street, a small group of neighbours was already standing vigil outside the victim’s front door: an elderly man in a soiled undershirt, all crooked angles and bones; and four women, the youngest holding a baby in a blue blanket.

  Pires said, ‘I’d still like to know where you grew up.’

  ‘On a ranch in western Colorado,’ I replied. ‘Go to Google Maps and find Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and move your cursor about twenty miles to the left. Unfortunately, there’s nothing at all for a tourist to do there except get stared at by a few hungry rattlesnakes and drunken shopkeepers.’

  Despite my cynicism, her face brightened. ‘I went to Rocky Mountain National Park four years ago. Filipe and I went camping in the American West for our honeymoon.’

  I almost said, I’ve been there, too, but I didn’t want to discuss my homeland with her; the Portuguese generally resented having to give up their misconceptions about America. ‘So you’re married?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Filipe just got his doctorate in anthropology,’ she sai
d proudly.

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Not yet. And you, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Two – Nathaniel and Jorge. When we’re out of range, my wife and I call them Godzilla and King Kong. God knows what they call us.’

  Luci laughed, which pleased me – and allowed me to imagine for a fleeting moment that the events of this morning would have no lingering effect on my work.

  The neighbours were only fifty paces away now. They faced us with open, curious eyes; they’d guessed we were cops, though we weren’t in uniform. As we reached our destination, the old man said gruffly, ‘You the police?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I answered.

  He chewed over that information while eyeing me suspiciously. If my life had been the 1950s Western I sometimes wished it was, he’d have spat on the ground between us.

  Number 24 Rua do Vale was a three-storey townhouse with pink paint flaking off the stucco. A youthful PSP officer was standing outside, reading one of those giveaway newspapers that invariably end up wafting and rolling across our desiccated streets – Lisbon’s very own tumbleweed. As we shook hands, the young woman with the baby asked me if Pedro Coutinho was dead.

  ‘I’m sorry, senhora, I’m not at liberty to discuss the case,’ I replied.

  ‘If he weren’t dead, then what the hell would you be doing here!’ the old man told me with a venomous frown.

  ‘We’ll be coming round the neighbourhood later today to ask you questions,’ I said to him and the others, ‘and I’ll let you know a little of what I’ve found out at that time.’

  The front door was armoured; six dead-bolts slid into the wall at the turn of a key. After I’d joined Luci in the foyer, she asked, ‘Is your bolo tie from Colorado, sir?’

  I realized with a jolt that I’d left it out.

  ‘Yes, it’s a Thunderbird. A Sioux friend gave it to me.’

  ‘You had Indian friends?’ Her voice swelled with little-girl enchantment.

  ‘Just one – Nathan was his white-man’s name. He was a winkte.’

  ‘A winkte?’

  ‘A clown who’s also a wise man. They’re crazy by profession. They dress up in strange clothing and do everything backwards. Up is down and in is out. And to them, normal is the oddest thing of all.’

  More importantly in my case, they find what’s lost, I might have added if I’d known Luci better. Instead, I said, ‘We sometimes need everything turned inside out. Winktes are the only people resourceful enough to do that.’

  She didn’t laugh or smirk, which was a very good sign – and the one I must have wanted, or I wouldn’t have brought the subject up.

  We stepped into the foyer. The floor was dark parquet, and so polished that it reflected like glass. Two man-size Chinese vases painted with sinuous golden dragons guarded the door to the living room. Beside one of them was a droopy ficus plant in a big white pot and a red watering can filled to the brim.

  As we put on our protective coats, gloves and slippers, Pires said, ‘We had a great time in the Rocky Mountains. Except for the altitude. Filipe got disoriented while hiking at three thousand meters and we almost didn’t locate him in time.’

  ‘You have to keep hydrated at high altitude,’ I told her, but I spoke absently; I’d already spotted the dead man sprawled on the plush white rug centring the living room.

  I stepped inside. A grey sock had been stuffed in the victim’s mouth and kept in place with a necktie wound twice around his head and knotted. It was cobalt blue with scarlet stripes, and it had been tied so tightly that his lips had been stretched far back, making his nose stick out grotesquely, like the proboscis of an insect. He was lying on his belly facing a faded yellow wall covered with museum-quality paintings, including a small one by Paula Rego of a prim-looking girl force-feeding a monkey. A fluffy green towel was tied around his waist, and his blue dress-shirt was unbuttoned. A blood-fringed bullet hole discoloured its back. He was short and stocky, with large, powerful hands. His grey hair was thick and closely cropped. He looked a bit like Pablo Picasso.

  Five characters of Asian writing were scripted on the wall behind him, each letter about the size of my thumb: . They were a familiar shade of brown – the colour of dried blood. As I traced them with my eyes, a pounding headache started in my head, which meant that I might soon lose track of myself. To remain where I was – and who I was – I concentrated hard on the dead man.

  What appeared to be pinkish yogurt had been smeared across his cheek and left ear; two empty Adagio packages – strawberry-flavoured – had been tossed on the carpet. I’d have guessed he was forty-five or fifty, but it was difficult to tell; death always made bodies appear wax-like to me – an illusion my mind conjures up as protection, I’ve been told by our police psychologist.

  The victim’s wrists were bound behind his back with thick, white nylon rope. A pool of blood had soaked into the carpeting.

  Making sure to keep my eyes off the thick stain, I knelt beside him. I lifted his arm. From its level of grudging flexibility, I knew that rigor mortis had reached its peak a few hours earlier and was beginning to ease up. Under the towel I confirmed what my nose already suspected about how deep his final panic had been.

  The tag on the necktie read Zara, a clothing store with shops at nearly every mall in Portugal. The price tag was still on: 19.95 euros. Keeping it on seemed a message sent to me by the killer about the cheapness of the victim’s life.

  I probed at the sock in his mouth with my pencil. It was jammed in tight, which meant it would’ve made it nearly impossible for him to breathe or swallow. The tie had torn both corners of his mouth, which was crusted with blood. He wouldn’t have been able to scream or even beg for his life.

  Sure enough, the bluish-grey tinge to his lips meant he’d suffocated. As I put myself in his place, my balls contracted and my throat went dry, and when Luci touched my shoulder, I jumped. Astonishingly, my headache was gone, and I had the impression that I’d moved back a foot or more from the victim. I looked down into my hands. Gabriel hadn’t written any message to me; instead, he’d drawn a stick figure surrounded by a circle of twelve dots, the Sioux sign for a threat that has you cornered.

  Chapter 3

  The murderer steers me through the house until I stand just where he wants, staring at the finality of his work. Kneeling, I search the dead man’s misshapen face for the why of this death, listening hard for what he is unable to tell me. And although I’m aware that his blue-grey lips will never shape another word, the expectation of hearing a whisper of his final thoughts waits patiently inside me, hands folded in its lap, unwilling to walk away. Proof, I suppose, that I have never been able to accept the cold, one-sided deal that death makes with us.

  A confession: when I tiptoe through my insomnia at night, I occasionally catch myself searching for shapes in Ernie’s paintings that will prove to be coded messages from my mother. If she were still alive, I’d understand her better now – and be able to offer her more than my clowning. So perhaps it is my own wish for another chance that I always listen for when I am unable to sleep. Maybe our second chances are the only ghosts who ever appear to us.

  The police officer who’d been in charge till my arrival introduced himself as Marcos Soutelo and asked if I wanted his briefing.

  I’ve noticed over the years that PSP cops tend to begin their rundowns with an unusual detail, and the more startling the better. My theory was that the surreal atmosphere at the crime scene – the rigid, judgemental silence of the dead under all the commotion – made them need to be reassured that we shared the same notions about what was unusual and unexpected. And reassured, therefore, about what was normal. And yet in comparison to them, I felt fortunate; I’d had the advantage of learning when I was very young that there was no normal.

  ‘The vic doesn’t look fifty-nine years old, does he?’ Soutelo began, and as though hoping to astonish me further, he added that Coutinho had been married to a former TAP stewardess twenty-two years his junior. ‘Her name is
Susana Soares,’ he said, ‘and judging from the photos in the library, she’s a knockout!’

  If Luci hadn’t been next to me, I’d have felt compelled to reply with a remark establishing my manly credentials, such as, Some guys have all the luck, but, as it was, I was able to simply ask if the couple had had any kids. With his voice shifting into a more professional register, probably feeling mildly censured, Soutelo replied that they had one daughter, Sandra. She was fourteen years old and in the eighth grade at the Charles Lepierre French High School. He went on to tell me that the victim owned a construction company with offices in Paris and Lisbon, and that, in addition to this house and one in the Algarve, he kept a large apartment just across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. He’d moved back to Lisbon from Paris four years earlier. His car, a 1967 Alfa Romeo spider, was parked in a private garage nearby. None of the neighbours who’d been questioned so far had heard a gunshot the day before. The housekeeper had discovered the body at ten o’clock this morning. Her name was Maria Grimault.

  ‘I thought you’d want to talk to her right away,’ Soutelo told me. ‘She’s waiting for you in the kitchen. Through that door,’ he said, pointing.

  While I fought the urge to stay where I was, and remain safely outside a case I didn’t yet feel up to investigating, the most experienced of the techs, Eduardo Fonseca, started down the staircase at the back of the room, cradling his Nikon, his face poking fox-like out of his hood. He snapped off two quick photographs – the flash spraying in our eyes – with the glee of a kid testing a brand-new birthday present. ‘Henrique Monroe, caught red-handed at the scene of the crime!’ he exclaimed.

  Like most of the Portuguese, Fonseca pronounced Monroe as Monroy. I forgave him that and his cringingly loud voice because he was the sweetest man I knew.

  He pumped my hand in both of his as he always did. After introducing him to Luci, I told him, ‘I’m guessing you’ve already taken pictures of the body.’

  ‘Yeah. Now I’m photographing anything that catches my eye.’ He tugged off his hood. Sweat had plastered thinning bangs to his brow. He was looking more and more like a chihuahua as he aged – tiny and sunken-eyed, with wrists as slender and pale as celery. I wished he’d eat more. And cut down on his smoking. Though he claimed that tar and nicotine were the only things keeping him standing.