A Small Death in Lisbon

  The shifting stopped and a murmur ran around the square.

  'Go ahead then,' said the captain.

  The troops in the square cheered. The lieutenant held up his hand, splayed his fingers and pointed back to the column. The captain sent a platoon to the fifth tank and four of them clambered up on to its shoulders. The turret opened and an explosive colonel put his head out and found himself looking up at four rifles' barrels.

  On the River Tagus the navy ship Almirante Gago Coutinho cruised to a halt in front of the Praça do Comércio, its guns pointing into the heart of the city. The troops and tanks in the square watched in silence, preparing for the first volley. Several minutes passed. No sound came from the ship. The guns didn't move. There was no signal until slowly one by one the ship's guns turned away from the city and faced the south bank of the Tagus. To the gunners it looked like a flock of pigeons had taken off as a thousand caps were flung into the air on the back of a tumultuous roar in the Praça do Comércio. Joaquim Abrantes turned and walked back up the Rua do Ouro.

  ***

  Zé Coelho didn't get home until 10.00 a.m. He and his friends had taken the wounded man to the hospital and the nurses in the Urgência, on seeing his bloodstained clothes, had singled him out and refused to let him leave until a doctor had examined him which took some time. They'd washed him as best they could but the wolf collar was still badly and irrevocably stained from the man's neck wound. His mother opened the door and screamed which brought his father out of the bedroom. His sister took Zé's coat and went to run a bath for him. The telephone rang. His father took the call. Zé and his mother watched in silence as the colonel spoke quietly and seriously, looking at the floor refusing to catch anyone's eye. He replaced the heavy Bakelite handset. Zé's sister appeared in the doorway.

  'General Spínola,' he said, summoning a grave and quiet voice to communicate the full weight of the occasion, 'has asked me to go to the Largo do Carmo barracks. Prime Minister Caetano is there with his cabinet and I have been asked to persuade them to allow General Spínola to accept the unconditional surrender of the government.'

  'Did you know about this?' asked his wife, her voice quavering with fear and shock at the terrifying implications for her and the children, had the coup turned out differendy and badly.

  'No, and neither did the General. Apparently the coup was organized by the junior officers, but the General knows that Caetano won't surrender to them. The Prime Minister won't want power to fall into the hands of the mob.'

  'He means the communists,' said Zé.

  'And what have you been doing?' asked the colonel, giving his bloodstained son his eagle look.

  'I was outside the PIDE headquarters when they opened fire on us. Some people were hit and we took one of them to hospital.'

  Zé's mother had to sit down.

  'The General said there'd been no casualties.'

  'Well, you can tell him from me when you see him that more than one went down in Rua António Maria Cardoso.'

  'Did they bring anybody else into the hospital while you were there?'

  'They locked me up in a room to prevent me from leaving.'

  The colonel nodded, his forehead creased, but smiling at his son.

  'You stay here now and look after your mother,' he said, pulling his daughter to him, kissing her on the head. 'Nobody leaves this apartment until I say it's safe.'

  'You'll see,' said Zé, teasing his father now, 'they're dancing in the streets out there.'

  'My son ... the communist,' said the colonel, shaking his head.

  At 12.30 p.m. the guard came in to Felsen's cell in the Caxias prison with a tray of food. He put it on the bed. The noise from the rest of the prison, which had been going on all morning, had not abated. The politicals were into their fiftieth rendition of the anti-fascist song Venham mats cinco and the guards had given up trying to quieten them long ago.

  'Anything I should know about?' asked Felsen.

  'Nothing that will affect you,' said the guard.

  'I was just commenting on the different atmosphere in the prison today.'

  'Some of our friends might be leaving soon.'

  'Oh yes? Why's that?'

  'Just a small revolution ... like I said, nothing that will affect you.'

  'Thank you,' said Felsen.

  Nada,' said the guard.

  Dr Aquilino Oliveira should have been happy following the nurse down the corridor of the maternity wing of the'são José hospital. He'd been told that his fourth child was a boy, weighing 3.7 kilos and was completely healthy. The nurse was gabbling at him over her shoulder as she batted her way through the swing doors. She didn't seem to need any response from him to keep herself going.

  '...four dead and three wounded. That's what they said down in the Urgência, only four. They can't believe it. I can't believe it. There are tanks in the Terreiro do Paço and the Largo do Carmo but they're not doing anything. They're just there. The soldiers have rounded up the PIDE agents but not to punish them ... you know ... just for their own protection. The soldiers. I haven't seen it ... but they say the soldiers have put red carnations down their rifles so that the people will know, you see ... they'll know that they're not there to shoot anyone. They're there to liberate them. Only four people dead on a night like this with tanks in the streets and battleships in the Tagus. Don't you think that's just incredible, Senhor Doutor? I think that's incredible. You know, Senhor Doutor, I never thought I'd be able to say this in my lifetime but I'm proud. I'm proud to be Portuguese.'

  She flung open the door to the maternity ward and led the lawyer in. His wife was screened off in the corner of the room with six other women in it. His shoes skidded on the highly polished floor and he had to grab a bed to save himself from falling.

  'Watch yourself,' said the nurse, whose rubber soles squeaked on the floor.

  He went behind the screen. His wife was sitting up, concerned.

  'Are you all right?' she asked.

  'He nearly slipped over on the floor,' said the nurse. 'I've told them before not to polish it so much. It's all right for us, but anybody coming in here with leather soles ... they're in trouble. Do you know what you're going to call him?'

  'Not yet.'

  'Well, you won't have much trouble remembering his birthday.'

  Ana Rosa Pinto sat with her mother in the kitchen. They were holding hands and crying, looking down at the three-year-old Carlos, who was playing on the floor. She'd started off the day annoyed because they wouldn't let her board the ferry to cross the river to get to her doctor's appointment for Carlos in Lisbon. Then they'd pointed out the Almirante Gago Coutinho with her guns up and she'd gone home scared but excited to wait for news.

  In the late morning her father had gone down to the first open meeting of the Partido Comunista Português on the docks in Cacilhas on the south bank of the Tagus. Ana Rosa and her mother were hoping he'd bring back news of the release of political prisoners from the Caxias prison.

  Little Carlos had never seen his father. His mother had been six months pregnant when the GNR had broken up a union meeting at the shipyard and his father had been taken across the river for questioning. Just two weeks before Carlos was born Ana Rosa had heard that her husband had been taken to Caxias to serve a five-year prison sentence for illegal political activities.

  They waited all day, until dusk had just changed to night, when there was a knock at the door of the apartment. Ana Rosa eased her hand out of her mother's and answered it. A boy handed her a message and ran off without waiting. She read it and the tears which had gradually dried through the day sprang back.

  'What is it?' asked her mother.

  'They've taken the boat across. There's a crowd gathering in the Rossio. They're going to march on Caxias prison tonight.'

  At 3.00 a.m. on 26th April the door to António Borrego's cell in the Caxias prison was unlocked. The guard didn't say anything, he didn't even open the door, he just moved on to the next cell and opened that one.
António looked out down the dimly-lit corridor. Other men were doing the same. There was cheering and embracing. António squeezed past them and trotted down the three flights of stairs into the courtyard. There were another fifty-odd men down there all looking expectantly at the gates to the prison. He jogged across the courtyard to the hospital block and ran up the stairs two at a time. He had to catch his breath at the top, more out of condition than he'd thought.

  There were three men in the ward. Two of them were sleeping and the third, Alexandre Saraiva, was sitting on the edge of his bed, trying to get his socks on but only managing to cough. António took the socks and fitted them on his friend's feet. He found the man's boots and pushed Alex's feet into them and tied them up. Alex spat into the metal dish on the bedside and inspected the phlegm.

  'Still bloody,' he said, to no one in particular. 'Have you come to take me home?'

  'I have,' said António.

  'Who's paying the cab fare?'

  'We're walking.'

  'I don't know whether I'll make it. It's damned nearly killed me to get dressed.'

  'You'll make it.'

  António wrapped Alex's arm over the back of his neck. They stood. António hooked his thumb into the waistband of Alex's trousers. They went down the stairs into the courtyard. There were more than a hundred people now. The sound of a crowd clamouring on the other side of the gates reached them. Names were shouted out and lost in the noise. António leaned Alex up against the wall and held him there lightly with a hand on his chest.

  The gates opened to pandemonium from the huge crowd, who'd come up from Lisbon on free train rides. The prisoners came out blinking into the flashlights of cameras, searching for faces that meant something to them.

  António waited for the courtyard to empty before he moved Alex out into a freedom neither of them had known for nine years. They skirted the euphoria and walked down the hill into Caxias. They didn't have to go far. They got a free ride to Paço de Arcos from a tearful cab driver.

  The cab dropped them off at Alex's bar next to the public gardens. The tiled sign set into the wall was still there. It showed a blue line-drawing of the Búgio lighthouse and underneath O Farol. Alex tapped the lighted window of the house next door. A woman sounding old and tired answered.

  It's me, Dona Emília,' said Alex.

  The toothless woman, dressed in black, opened the door and peered out into the night, her eyes not so good any more. She saw Alex and grabbed his face with bent and twisted fingers and kissed him on both cheeks, harder and harder as if she was kissing him back into existence. She produced the key to the bar from her front apron as if she'd been prepared nine years for this moment. She brought them candles from her kitchen.

  Alex unlocked the bar door and António sat him down on a metal chair next to a wooden table in the dark. They lit the candles.

  'There should be something behind the bar,' said Alex. 'Nice and mature by now.'

  António found a bottle of aguardente and a couple of dusty glasses which he blew into. He poured out the pale yellow liquid. They drank to freedom and the alcohol set off a coughing fit in Alex.

  'We'll go to the notary tomorrow,' said Alex.

  'What for?'

  'I want to make sure that when I go, this place is yours.'

  'Eh, homem, don't talk like that.'

  'There's one condition.'

  'Look, forget it, you're...'

  'Pour another drink and listen to me,' said Alex.

  'I'm listening.'

  'You have to change the name of the bar to A Bandeira Vermelha. That way nobody will forget.'

  ***

  On 2nd May 1974 Joaquim Abrantes, Pedro, Manuel and Pica had lunch in a small restaurant in the centre of Madrid. It was agreed that Manuel would fly to'São Paulo in Brazil and open a branch of the Banco de Oceano e Rocha. Joaquim and Pedro would go to Lausanne and track the political situation in Portugal from there. Pica wanted to know why they couldn't do it from Paris, but nobody paid any attention to her.

  On the 3rd May 1974 just as Manuel Abrantes' flight from Madrid to Buenos Aires was leaving the West African coast, thirty-six ex-PIDE/DGS agentes made themselves available to the new regime for traffic control and vehicle registration.

  Chapter XXXII

  Tuesday, 16th June 1998, Polícia Judiciária, Saldanha, Lisbon

  There was a rush on at the office that morning which did not include me. Narciso's secretary was waiting for me in the corridor and led me straight up to see him but, of course, he wasn't ready and the five minutes that his secretary had promised turned into twenty. She wouldn't let me leave.

  At 08.30 I was standing in front of Narciso on the other side of his desk. He was standing too, with his chair pushed back to the wall, his hands spread wide apart gripping the edge of his desk as if he was going to tip it over me. Emotions made rare appearances in his face but that morning there was one—anger. Not the eruptive, volcanic type, more the penetrating, gelid variety.

  'I haven't seen your revised report yet.'

  'I haven't had the opportunity to get behind my desk this morning.'

  'I also haven't seen the report on what happened yesterday.'

  'For the same reason, Senhor Engenheiro.'

  'But I have already heard things,' he said, 'about you and agente Pinto putting yourselves at risk and the destruction of all evidence in a fire.'

  'That was unfortunate.'

  'What have you learnt from the fire department?'

  'I haven't...'

  'I've heard a taped interview with the suspect of such glaring incompetence that I can't believe the two of you have got your minds properly on the job.'

  'Our minds are very firmly on the job, Senhor Engenheiro.'

  'What time did you leave this building yesterday?'

  'Something like quarter-past-four, we were working the bus queues on Avenida Duque de Ávila, which was where the girl was last seen, getting into...'

  'And you didn't come back to the office.'

  'I sent agente Pinto...'

  'And where did you go?'

  'I had nothing further...'

  'You were seen going into an apartment building just up the road here in Rua Actor Taborda.'

  'The victim's teacher lives there.'

  'How long did you spend with her?'

  Silence.

  'I can't hear you, Inspector.'

  'Four hours.'

  'Four hours! And what did you have to discuss over four hours?'

  'I'm seeing her privately, sir.'

  Narciso hardly missed a beat. He'd planned this through to the end.

  'Do you have any idea of the pressure I'm under?' he asked.

  'I'm sure it's considerable.'

  'You asked me to make sure that Inspector Abílio Gomes found out where Dr Aquilino Oliveira was at the time of his wife's death.'

  'It was just a thought.'

  'He was having dinner in the private residence of the Minister of Internal Administration.'

  I shut up. The situation was not calling for my observations on the friendship between the lawyer and the minister. Narciso dropped his head and stared into his desk top.

  'I'm taking you off the case,' he said, quietly. 'Abílio Gomes will handle it from now on. I want you to go down to Alcântara and investigate a body that's been found in a rubbish bin at the back of the Wharf One club.'

  'But Senhor Engenheiro Narciso, you haven't...'

  'You are in no position to defend your professionalism on the Catarina Sousa Oliveira case. "Investigating officer has affair with witness",' he said, stretching his hand out into the possible banner headline in the Correio da Manhã. 'Now take agente Pinto and go down to Alcântara.'

  I sat in my office chewing various nails. Carlos had left a note with Lourenço Gonçalves' telephone number and a business address on Avenida Almirante Reis. I tried the number wondering why Narciso had praised me yesterday morning for looking in the wrong direction, and frozen me out twenty-four hou
rs later just when I was getting somewhere. There was no reply. Carlos came in and sat across the desk. I put the phone down.

  'We've got a problem,' he said.

  I know.'

  'Traffic won't give me the information.'

  'We're off the case.'

  'Do they know that?' he asked, slumping back in his chair.

  'Maybe,' I said, and picked up the phone.

  I called one of my friends in Traffic who would do favours for me. He put me on hold. Five minutes later he told me the computer had crashed. I hung up.

  'We have an internal problem here,' I said.

  Carlos looked suddenly bewildered, cold, like a kid on the beach who'd lost his parents. I gave him a résumé of Narciso's conversation.

  'What does it mean?'

  It means that whereas before we were swimming close to the beach, now the tide has suddenly swept us out over the continental shelf and we've got ten fathoms of dark, cold water underneath us.'

  Carlos leaned closer, serious as a headstone.

  'What are you talking about?'

  I don't know any more.'

  It was hot and humid down in the Alcântara docks complex and the body in the rubbish bin was already high enough for people to be holding handkerchiefs to their faces. The photographer had been and gone, and the pathologist, a woman I didn't know, was struggling into a pair of surgical gloves. I took a quick look at the body which was of a male, about eighteen years old, dark-skinned, with black, wavy hair, no fat on him and only wearing a pair of brief burgundy underpants with a smiley face over the genital area. I felt his feet. Soft. The killer had stolen his shoes or somebody else had come along afterwards. The pathologist joined me.

  A couple of the staff were finishing cleaning up the nightclub,' she said. 'They emptied the rubbish at five o'clock and by seven when they closed up to leave out the back there, the body was in place. They also told me he's a known male prostitute. Can I move the body?'

  I nodded her on. She was fast and thorough. I briefed Carlos on what he had to do and we waited for the pathologist's initial report.