Unfortunately, my newfound clarity about how lost he was made the girls’ reaction to him seem inexplicable.
Once Joana’s tears had subsided, she shuffled back to the table with her head down, apologizing, saying in a thin, frail, self-conscious voice – clinging to smallness for safety – that she hadn’t been herself since learning of the murder of Sandi’s father.
Joana explained to us that Sandi had called both of them the previous afternoon. Sniffling into a tissue, she said that the girl had told them about her father’s death but refused to discuss how she felt.
The three friends agreed to speak again yesterday evening, but Sandi never called either of them. Monica and Joana had both tried to reach her but her cell phone had always been off, so they’d decided to come over.
‘Where’s Sandi’s cell phone now?’ I asked Sylvie.
‘Susana has it with her,’ she told me.
When I asked the girls why Sandi had been so troubled over the last few months, Monica replied that she’d been viciously teased by kids at school for being what they called a ‘spoiled little rich girl’. She’d apparently become an easy target for classmates whose parents had lost their jobs or who’d had their salaries cut since the start of our economic crisis. Sandi began to regard herself as an outcast. She’d decided to make her image more rebellious.
‘Is that why she cut her hair so short?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, she figured it might stop the teasing,’ Monica said. ‘Though it didn’t work,’ she added bitterly. ‘Kids just started teasing her for looking so weird.’ For Morel’s benefit, Sylvie repeated Monica’s words to him in French.
‘Do you agree, Joana?’ I asked. ‘Was the teasing how Sandi’s problems started?’
The girl folded her lips inside her mouth and nodded. Morel must have jumped to the same conclusion I had; he joined his hands into a position of prayer and pleaded in French, ‘Ma petite, if you know something we don’t know, then I beg of you to tell us.’
Joana opened her eyes wide and drew back her head, as if he’d cornered her, and I thought she might just shout an accusation of his having planned the murder of Sandi’s father and menaced her friend. Instead, with an air of abject defeat, she laid her head onto the table and wept.
The look of dashed hope she showed me in the moment before tears washed her eyes made me realize that she needed me to know that Morel was an enemy so far beyond her capabilities that there was no hope for her. To distance myself from her despair and think things out, I said I needed to make another call and went out to the garden. Had Sandi hated the idea of a divorce so much that she’d begged her father not to permit a separation? If so, then Morel would have discovered her responsibility sooner or later, and when he did, he might have threatened her. When the girl still wouldn’t give up her objections to a divorce, he decided to free Susana in the only way that seemed possible: by having her husband killed.
While circling the lawn, I realized that – if all that were true – Sandi would have also concluded that Morel was responsible for her father’s death. She might have told him last night that she suspected him of having planned – or even carried out – his old friend’s murder. Maybe he overpowered her and forced her to swallow an overdose.
When I entered the kitchen, Sylvie was stroking Monica’s hair. The girl’s eyes were glazed with disbelief. Joana was resting with her head on the table; her eyes were closed.
Morel stood by the back window, smoking absently. Nothing in his face or posture indicated that he might be worried about what the girls could tell me about him. I sat next to Joana and placed my hand on her shoulder. When she opened her eyes, I told her I was grateful for her help. Feeling the reticent rise and fall of her back, I saw myself as though I’d entered one of those dreams where you do something you could never do in real life.
When the doorbell rang, Morel volunteered to see who it was. A few seconds later, Luci stepped into the kitchen behind him. The stiff, artificial way she smiled at me made me believe she was having second thoughts about her police career.
I asked Sylvie and the girls to wait in the kitchen while Luci and I examined Sandi’s bedroom. To draw Morel away from Joana and Monica, I asked him to join us.
We found a bottle of Absolut vodka and an empty box of Victan still on the girl’s night table, along with the vampire novel she’d been reading – Queimada – and two of the three CDs I’d spotted there the day before: Day & Age by The Killers and Let England Shake, by P J Harvey. A young woman with pale skin had been pictured on the cover of the missing CD but, for the moment, I couldn’t remember its title or the name of the group.
I could see that Luci was waiting for me to ask her to speak her mind, but there wasn’t time. ‘If you start to feel like you won’t be able to cope,’ I told her, ‘step out of the room for a while.’
‘No, sir, that won’t be necessary,’ she replied in a businesslike tone. ‘I’m okay.’
I put on my gloves and gave Queimada a shake, but no suicide note or anything else fluttered out. Neither of the two CDs contained anything unusual.
According to the blurb on the book’s back cover, it was about a young vampire named Zoey Redbird with a broken heart and ‘shattered soul’.
The bed was unmade. Sandi’s dolls and stuffed animals were grouped neatly on her desk. I took a quick look through them while Luci went through her dresser drawers. I also checked under the bed, but there was no jumble of clothing this time, and no knife taped to the corner of the mattress.
When I emerged from under the bedframe, Morel asked me if he could check on Susana. ‘Fine, but this is an official investigation now,’ I told him sternly, ‘so I don’t want you to talk to Joana or Monica without me around. And bring Sandi’s cell phone with you when you go back downstairs.’
On a hunch, thinking that Sandi had left her ring – or perhaps even a suicide note – where I’d found something valuable of hers before, I lifted the mattress off its platform. Her laptop was in the corner. It seemed to have been waiting for me, which gave me the tingling notion that Sandi knew I’d lift off her mattress after her death because I’d done it once before. I’d underestimated her intelligence.
‘Maybe she wrote her suicide note on her laptop,’ Luci said.
‘My thoughts exactly.’ I handed her the computer. ‘Have a look, but if you don’t find anything useful right away, get it to Joaquim. I want him to check all the files created since Friday.’
While Luci sat at Sandi’s desk with the laptop, I looked through the shelves for the third record she’d had on her night table. A sudden constriction at the back of my head made me realize that Gabriel wanted me.
I didn’t turn up the missing CD. By then, the girl’s clock read 9.47. I checked in the hallway. There was no sign of Morel. ‘Get out your notebook,’ I told Luci.
When I awoke to myself, I was downstairs in the living room. I was holding the CD that had been missing from Sandi’s night table: Lungs, by Florence + the Machine. I realized that it had been night inside me a moment earlier, long after midnight, and I had been running with my brother.
Luci was seated on the couch, holding out Sandi’s turquoise ring to me. She spoke, but I only caught fragments of what she told me. I asked her to wait with a shake of my hand and closed my eyes till I could form words. When I opened them, she said, ‘You asked me to hold the ring for you, sir.’
I took it from her and examined it. ‘Where did I find it?’
‘In the medicine cabinet in her parents’ bathroom. Apparently, it was where Sandi found her mother’s sleeping pills.’
I held up Lungs. ‘And this?’
‘In the liquor cabinet. Where Sandi found the vodka.’
If you take something away, you have to leave something behind in its place . . .
Sandi had been counting on me to remember her last words to me after she was gone – and to find her hidden treasures. Which meant that she’d already decided to end her life when we’d talked in the
kitchen on Friday – and probably already formed a plan. Amazing girl. If only I’d heard what she didn’t dare tell me.
I expected to find a note for me or her mother inside the CD, but not even the lyrics were there. She must have wanted whoever found the record to have to listen to it. She or someone else had scribbled the title of the record on a blank disc, which probably meant that it had been downloaded.
Back in the kitchen, Monica told me that Lungs had been Sandi’s favourite record, and she often used to quote its lyrics, but neither she nor Joana remembered any of the verses their friend had liked so much. Both girls looked miserable and tense. I instructed them not to leave until we’d had an opportunity to talk and asked Luci to walk them outside.
Alone with Sylvie and Morel, I warned them that reporters might start calling them and asked them not to talk with anyone about the case.
‘They’ve already started,’ Syvlie told me with an irritated frown. ‘Though I’ve no idea how they get my number.’
‘It’s a small country. A friend gives out your number on Friday and by Monday half of Portugal has it.’
Outside, Luci was holding Sandi’s laptop under her arm and conversing with the girls. I’d already decided by then to talk to Joana alone, since she’d made her silent despair so clear to me.
‘Where do you live? I asked Monica.
‘On the Alameda.’
I flagged down a taxi for her on the Calçada do Combro, handed the driver a ten-euro note and told him to give the change to the girl. Before leaving, she returned to Joana and engaged her in a brief, whispered conversation. I told Luci to summon someone from headquarters to pick up Sandi’s computer and cell phone because I’d decided she should follow Morel wherever he went. As she walked back up the street toward the house, Monica’s taxi started off.
As soon as I faced Joana, she brought her hair around to her front and held on with both hands. Her eyes were suspicious and apprehensive.
‘Do you live far from here?’ I asked gently.
‘In Estoril, Chief Inspector. I’ll walk to the Cais de Sodré and catch the train.’
‘We’ll take a taxi together,’ I said. ‘It’ll give us time to talk.’
‘I’d prefer to be alone, if you don’t mind.’
‘How about this – on the way to the station, I’ll tell you what I’ve figured out, and you can tell me where I’ve gone wrong.’
I tried to sound inviting, and to make it clear with my expression that I badly needed her help, but she folded her lips inside her mouth once more and looked at me guiltily. ‘Inspector, I don’t live in Estoril,’ she said.
My phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number and turned it off. ‘No, I didn’t think so.’
‘Walk with me,’ she said, and she headed off down the street without waiting for my reply. Her sudden resolve astonished me.
When we were out of view of the Coutinhos’ house, Joana told me her address. It was in the Lapa. ‘Ring the bell in a half-hour,’ she instructed me.
Without waiting for my reply, she walked east, down the hill. She never looked back, though she stopped and shuddered once, as though tossing off an unwanted emotion.
As soon as I turned my phone back on, Mesquita, the head of the Judicial Police, called. ‘Did you disconnect on me, Monroy?’ he snarled.
‘I was interviewing someone.’
‘Don’t do it again! You hear me?’
‘Yes, sir, I’m sorry.’
‘So did you learn anything interesting in your interview?’
‘Possibly. I’ve one more person to talk to, then I’ll know.’
‘Listen, it seems you stopped the press leaks,’ he noted approvingly.
‘I did my best.’
‘Have you received any pressure from anybody important yet?’
‘No, maybe everyone is waiting to see what I come up with.’
‘Could be,’ he replied, but he sounded doubtful.
Exhaustion seemed to weigh me down after I disconnected on Mesquita, and my mouth was very dry, so I decided to drink a quick orange juice. Out front of a cramped café along the Rua da Esperança, a stocky beggar wearing a Yankees baseball cap, with the knotted grey beard of a fairy-tale gnome, was standing guard. After he took my fifty cents, he saluted me. Had he recognized me as a cop?
A black kitten was sleeping on a white pillow on the counter, unsanitary but charming, as though posing for a photograph never to be taken, like half of Portugal. I sipped my juice while petting her cashmere belly, and ordered a cheese and tomato sandwich from the young Brazilian woman at the counter.
In the bathroom, I soaked my head with cold water and slicked back my hair. While I was peeing, the unlikely Elvis I created in the cracked mirror suggested a Valium would cure what was ailing me, but I managed to leave him behind without taking his advice. Back at the counter, I called Joaquim. Luci had already told him that he’d be receiving Sandi’s computer and cell phone. I asked him to start with files from the last three days, then go back one week at a time, all the way to Easter, if necessary. In addition to the suicide note, he was to look for anything the girl might have written about being molested by Morel or anyone else.
Outside, the homeless gnome took the sandwich I’d bought him with another salute. As soon as I passed the next cross street, a hand seemed to grab my coat from behind, and I began to fall . . .
I was kneeling on the sidewalk when I came to myself. I’d lost seven minutes – enough time for Gabriel to enjoy a smoke, judging from the taste in my mouth. I wondered where this would end. And would I be there when it did?
My phone rang. Ernie’s number showed up on the screen. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked as soon as I answered.
‘I wish I knew,’ I replied.
My brother explained that I’d just called him and told him to come to Lisbon. ‘Were you making fun of me?’ he demanded.
‘Why would I make fun of you?’
‘You know I can’t go all the way to Lisbon! Why do you make me say it out loud?’
‘It wasn’t me, it was G,’ I confessed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He told you to get here! It wasn’t me. Now tell me exactly what he said to you.’
‘He said, “Come to Lisbon where I can watch over you!” And then he hung up.’
‘He’s taking over more often than ever before,’ I explained. ‘The border between us is vanishing.’
My brother made no reply, probably thinking of how to reassure me, but my head filled with all the terrible things that could happen to him when we were apart. I asked him to load the pistol I’d bought him and keep it by his bed. ‘If Dad shows up, you have to shoot him!’ I ordered.
‘Jesus, Rico, stay calm. He’s not ever coming to Portugal. It’s over.’
‘Ernie, haven’t you figured out yet, it’ll never be over?’
‘We’re talking about two different things,’ he said.
‘We’re not! Load the gun like I showed you. And shoot. A second will be all he needs.’
I disconnected before he could disagree. My shirt was drenched with sweat, so I bought a bottle of water in a tiny Indian grocery shop. I downed a Valium with the last sip. I reached Joana’s apartment a few minutes later. She buzzed me in. While I was exiting the cramped elevator at the top floor, Inspector Quintela called and told me that the victim’s accountant, Sottomayor, had just shown up at headquarters. ‘When can you get here?’ he asked.
‘I can’t. You talk to him. And I want you to get me the name of at least one person that Coutinho bribed. With one we’ll be able to get more. Threaten him with arrest if you have to.’
‘Can I hit him?’
That was Quintela’s sense of humour, and I tried to laugh, but it came out hollow. When I knocked at Joana’s door, Monica opened it.
‘Hey, I thought I sent you home!’ I exclaimed.
She smiled cheekily. ‘We figured it was best to stick together!’
I realized she and Joana w
ould have been up to summer mischief under more favourable circumstances. I also knew that the sad calculation of three minus one would probably keep them in close touch for the rest of their lives.
Monica handed me a ten-euro bill. ‘I can’t let you pay for my taxi.’
I tried to give her the money back, saying I was the one who insisted on a cab, but she refused to take it.
‘Stand firm!’ Joana exhorted her friend in a mock-heroic voice. She was rushing into the room through the door at the back, playfully eager to win this small battle.
Joana was still in her billowy shirt but had put on plaid shorts that would have looked more appropriate on a middle-aged golfer. She was barefoot and was drying her face with a towel. We kissed cheeks. ‘I was roasting,’ she said. Her hair was dripping wet. She was creating a puddle on the carpet by her feet but didn’t care. The confidence of a girl who has top billing in the story of her own life, I thought.
She invited me into the living room, which was decorated like a desert tent: Oriental rugs in orange and red covered the walls, and hanging from the ceiling was a yellow fabric printed with black and white stars. The cool blast from the air conditioner made me shiver agreeably. I peeled off my jacket and loosened my collar. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told the girls, ‘but Lisbon and I have differing ideas about the ideal climate.’
While Joana fetched mineral water from the kitchen, I gazed up at the stars.
‘Her mom and dad go a lot to North Africa,’ Monica explained. ‘I went with them once – to Marrakech. Sandi came, too. We ate in that big square they have and even rode camels!’
When Joana returned with our drinks, she pointed me to a battered red-velvet armchair. She and Monica sat opposite me, on an equally worn sofa.
‘Listen, Chief Inspector,’ Joana began, ‘I want you to know that I wouldn’t tell you any of this if Sandi were still alive.’
Her self-assurance startled me again. ‘You sometimes seem older than you are,’ I told her.
‘My parents say the same thing,’ she replied with a pleased grin.
She seemed a girl who revelled in defying the expectations of adults. Maybe the three friends had had that in common.
The Night Watchman Page 22
