‘So who did Pedro buy off?’
‘Anyone whose approval we needed and who took Pedro’s hint that he would be happy to help his favourite political cause – every politician’s favourite cause being himself, you understand.’
Sottomayor grinned at his witticism, but I was so far out to sea – with no sign of the landmarks I might recognize as Portugal – that I didn’t find anything he said the least bit funny. Had bribes been offered me many times over the past seventeen years without my even realizing it?
‘I’d like some names,’ I said.
‘Where do you want me to start?’
‘Who got the biggest bribes?’
‘Ministers and secretaries of State. Mayors received less, and city councillors were usually only the price of a week at a four-star hotel in Madeira. These days, however, everyone is on sale. You can get bargains if you shop around.’
‘Did Coutinho pay them directly?’
‘He’d usually pay a relative. Cousins are popular, especially if they have accounts abroad. Pedro made many payments in France for projects he was building in Portugal, and vice-versa.’
Sottomayor went on to name two of the last four mayors of Lisbon and three current city councillors. He also named a former Minster of the Interior and a current Secretary of State. He told me that a former president of a Lisbon football team held the record for Pedro’s largest bribe: forty thousand euros. By way of explanation, he said, ‘The man was a close friend of several well-placed members of the Socialist Party, at a time when they controlled most of the important city halls.’
‘How about the shopping mall Coutinho was building in the Sado National Reserve?’
‘What about it?’
‘Who’d he pay off?’
‘A local city councillor received fifteen thousand euros, as I recall – Jorge something-or-other. But the man was going to use that sum to pay off other officials. Alas, I have no idea who they were or how much they got.’
‘Fifteen thousand is all they received?’
Sottomayor laughed. ‘Tell me, Chief Inspector, how much are you paid for your signature?’
‘But fifteen thousand isn’t much for a multimillion-dollar project.’
‘Like I said, there are bargains out there if you’ll just do a little comparison shopping.’
My next move seemed risky, but his tone of bemusement – with an undercurrent of real contempt – led me to believe that he was telling the absolute truth. ‘What if I were to say that I had your old friend’s entire list of bribes for the last twelve years,’ I told him, ‘but that it was in code.’
‘Neither of those two pieces of information would surprise me.’
‘Because?’
Sottomayor’s pipe had gone out again. As he knocked out the spent tobacco from the bowl into my clamshell, he said, ‘Because I’ve been told you’re competent, and because Pedro was a cautious person. He wouldn’t have wanted the police to find out what he was up to – especially not an upstanding officer like you. You might spoil all his fun!’
‘Do you know anything about the code?’
‘I might. Is it all numbers?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a system we figured out as kids. All you need is what we used to call a master sentence. Imagine the following, ‘My pipe has just gone out.’ The first letter, M is assigned the number one, the second, Y, is given the number two, the third letter becomes three, and so on. It’s easy.’ He took out his tobacco pouch and began filling his pipe. ‘Without the master sentence, it’s extremely hard to crack the code. And we developed ways of distorting it so that it would be virtually impossible for anyone to figure it out.’
‘What was the sentence you used when you were kids?’
‘The first verse of the Lusíadas.’ He sat upright and unfurled his arms to embrace the epic scope of his words: ‘As armas e os barões assinalados, que da ocidental praia Lusitana . . . Arms and heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore . . .’
After declaiming the first verse in triumphant Portuguese, as though playing to the back row of a theatre, Sottomayor leaned back and let out an exhausted sigh. ‘If it’s not that sentence, Inspector,’ he said, ‘then I’m afraid I can’t help you. My advice – forget the code and forget the bribes he made in cash. Track down the transfers to the Caymans. It’s the only way forward.’ He lit his pipe and funnelled the smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Anything more I can do for you?’ he asked.
‘One last thing,’ I said. ‘To your knowledge, had Pedro conducted any business in Japan lately?’
‘Japan?’
‘His killer forced him to write the name “Diana” in Japanese characters on his living-room wall.’
‘Diana? Whatever for?’
‘I don’t know. So did he have any deals in Japan in the works?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Are you aware of any connection the name Diana might have to his stay in Japan when he was a young man?’
‘No, none at all.’
‘How about a connection to his present life?’
He shook his head. I consulted my notes one last time and found a gap I needed to fill in. ‘Where did your old friend get the cash to make his payoffs?’
‘He kept a stash at home.’
‘Where did he keep it?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘And how’d he put together so much cash?’
‘Everybody keeps cash around for emergencies, Inspector.’
‘I don’t.’
He laughed again. ‘Yes, but how many shopping malls or soccer stadiums have you built lately?’
Luci called me shortly after Sottomayor had left to tell me that a limousine service had picked up Susana, Sylvie and Morel, and was taking them to the Ajuda Cemetery for Pedro Coutinho’s funeral. An hour and a half later, I’d just finished with my twelfth sporting goods store – with no leads on the sneakers the killers might have bought – when she rang again to tell me that the limousine had just dropped them at home. ‘And I’ve got some disturbing news,’ she added. ‘Burglars broke in to her house while we were gone. It’s been trashed.’
Getting to my feet, I asked, ‘Has anything obvious been stolen?’
‘No.’
I gazed out through my window as though I were peering through my stunned silence. Then I remembered Coutinho’s French–Farsi dictionary; it was possible that the burglars had been after the flash drive I’d found in its cubbyhole.
‘Did they mess up the library?’ I asked.
‘Yes, the books are all over the place.’
‘And Sandi’s room?’ I was hoping we hadn’t lost the evidence of how she’d spent her last hours.
‘Ever see what a tornado does to a small town?’
‘Any idea how they got in?’
‘No. No doors were forced and no windows were broken. Sir, if I can be perfectly frank, I don’t see how this fits in with your theory about the Frenchmen at Morel’s stables. I mean, if they were responsible, then they did what they came to Lisbon to do – Coutinho is dead. There was no need for them to go back to the house.’
All I could think of was that we were dealing with two separate cases – a murder committed by one or both of the Frenchmen who had raped Sandi, and a burglary ordered by a shady politician. As I explained my theory to Luci, I decided we’d better make sure that the burglars hadn’t merely been petty criminals taking advantage of a grieving family’s absence.
‘Luci, are you in the living room?’
‘The kitchen.’
‘Go to the living room and see if any of the paintings there have been stolen.’
A few seconds later, she told me that the only one missing was the Almeida drawing that Fonseca had taken back to the lab for fingerprinting.
‘Check to see if any of Susana’s jewellery is missing,’ I told her.
Shortly after hanging up on Luci, I realized there was still a chance the crimes were connected and called her back. I told her to look for Les Confes
sions in Coutinho’s library. ‘I should have had you hold onto it,’ I confessed. ‘If Savarin and Mercier burgled the house, then they probably took it.’
‘But why would they want it?’ she asked.
‘Coutinho got Mercier fired by removing it from Morel’s shelves and claiming the Frenchman stole it. If that had happened to me, I’d have grabbed it the first chance I got. That would have seemed fair to me – like rectifying an injustice. Not to mention that the book must be worth a small fortune. I wouldn’t be surprised if a suitcase full of Coutinho’s first editions are missing.’
‘But Mercier could have taken Les Confessions on the day of the murder.’
‘He didn’t want to hang around long enough to locate it – not with Coutinho choking to death in the living room. First-time murderers often lose their cool, Luci.’
‘But why trash the rest of the house?’ she asked.
‘Expect one big goddamn mess where there’s hatred,’ I replied, and for once I didn’t mind sounding like a private eye from the 1940s.
‘So if it was Mercier, then he must have been watching the house,’ she said.
As the consequences of her revelation became clear to me, a shiver shook me hard. ‘Very true, Luci. So don’t waste time on the jewellery for now. Go to the library and look for Les Confessions. It’s the only book that we can be sure was there and that should now be missing.’
‘Locating it is going to take a while, sir,’ she replied in a dispirited voice.
‘Cheer up – this is the best thing that could have happened!’ I told her.
‘Why’s that, sir?’
‘Because if Mercier did this, then he was still in Lisbon as of an hour ago, and he probably hasn’t managed to flee the country yet.’
On the way to Coutinho’s house, I instructed Inspector Quintela to call our contacts at the airlines and at the Portuguese National Railway and to instruct them to stop any passenger named Bernard Mercier or François Savarin from leaving Lisbon. Luci called soon after that. She was in the library, searching for Les Confessions, but had asked Sylvie to check on Susana’s jewellery; none of it was missing.
Twenty minutes later, Sylvie answered my knocks on Coutinho’s front door. She held a tall, pink-tinted flute of champagne and was stirring it with the slender arm of a pair of metal-rimmed eyeglasses. She was barefoot and wore thick gold anklets. Spotting my interest in them, she said, ‘Susana and I travelled to India last year.’ Holding up her champagne, she added with bitter irony, ‘Here’s to taking advantage of the poverty of others!’ She downed it in a single gulp. It was clearly her turn to get smashed.
‘Any ideas what the burglars were after?’ I asked.
‘That’s what I was about to ask you, Inspector.’
‘I see the living room hasn’t been touched.’
‘Is that important?’
‘It leaves two possibilities: either they already knew that whatever they were hunting for wasn’t here, or they found what they wanted before starting to look here.’
‘I see. Any idea how they got in?’
‘I’m betting they had a key.’
‘Except that we had the front door lock changed yesterday.’
‘How about the back door? Did you have the lock changed?’
‘No, not yet, we scheduled that for today. But could they have come through there?’
‘Why not?’
‘The garden is enclosed by a ten-foot wall.’
‘One of the properties behind the garden looks like it has been abandoned for years. With a ladder, climbing over the wall would be easy. I’ll have my Forensics people check for footprints and other evidence.
‘Do you think the same person who murdered my brother is responsible?’
‘That’s certainly a possibility.’
‘And where did he get the keys to the house?’
‘It’s easy enough to make copies. All anyone would have to do is get hold of the key chain belonging to your brother – or Susana or Sandra – for a little while.’
As I said that, I realized that Mercier could have stolen Sandi’s keys after he’d hurt her. She’d have been too upset to notice them missing, which would have given him time to make copies and for them to appear mysteriously somewhere around the house the next day. Even if she’d realized her key chain had gone missing, she wouldn’t have wanted to admit it, because she’d have then been forced to explain how Mercier had had a chance to steal it.
I found Luci sitting on the floor of the library, gazing down into the wings of a leather-bound volume, surrounded by a sea of lost books. It was easy enough to see her as a little kid seated in a sandbox, lost in a children’s mystery.
She pointed to the shelves, where a couple of hundred books were already neatly lined up. She told me that she was arranging them in alphabetical order. She hadn’t yet come upon Les Confessions.
‘What are you reading?’ I asked.
‘Oh, this? It’s the collected stories of Sherlock Holmes in Portuguese – an edition I’ve never seen before. I’m sorry for taking a break, sir.’
‘You’re forgiven, Luci.’
‘There was a time when I’d have given anything to be Dr Watson,’ she said, shaking her head as if to dismiss a silly fantasy.
‘And here you are, just a few years later, impersonating Holmes himself!’
‘Unfortunately, sir, I don’t think Mr Holmes and I have much in common. Everything he finds elementary, I find a mystery.’
‘Maybe so, but we all have moments of insight, Luci. And I’ll need you to tell me when you have yours. I’m counting on you, in fact.’
She smiled gratefully. ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
‘So what story are you looking at?’ I asked.
‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band.’
‘A favourite of yours?’
‘When I was a girl, it terrified me that the villain used a poisonous snake to commit his murders.’
‘Yes, an Indian swamp adder,’ I observed.
‘You even remember the species!’
‘When you grow up in Colorado, Luci, identifying snakes can be a matter of life and death. Though for better or for worse, Conan Doyle invented the Indian swamp adder.’ I sounded as though I were trying to impress her, which made me uncomfortable, so I added, ‘Enough of my tricks of memory. Let’s get back to work.’
Luci closed her book and stood up. A pile of swept glass crowded the corner of the room, near to where the locked case had been smashed open. The classical CDs were missing but it didn’t appear that any of the first editions were gone. When I pointed that out, she said, ‘Yeah, it makes no sense. Unless there was something secretly valuable about the CDs.’
‘Maybe they didn’t contain music,’ I speculated.
‘You think they had some secret information on them, don’t you?’
‘A few decades’ worth of details about bank transfers and payoffs, I’m guessing – maybe direct evidence of criminal behaviour, rather than just a list. Possibly even recordings of conversations with crooked politicians. He probably kept a lot of information for his own protection. I’m getting the feeling that the flash drive we found was just for quick consultation.’
‘The Frenchmen wouldn’t have cared about information on Coutinho’s illegal transactions, so we’re back to your theory about two separate crimes.’
‘At least for now,’ I agreed.
While we were both searching for Les Confessons, Morel stopped by. He was on his way to the kitchen to make more coffee.
‘Is Susana any better?’ I asked.
‘What do you think?’ he said with a sour look.
‘Can she talk to me yet?’
‘No.’
The front door opened and closed. A moment later, Sylvie called upstairs, ‘Your technicians have arrived, Inspector.’
I had Fonseca and Vaz start on the top floor, in Sandi’s room, and instructed them to take a careful look around the garden after that. About an hour later
, at exactly 5.49, I found Les Confessions.
Chapter 23
Finding Les Confessions seemed to rule out my theory that the Frenchmen had burgled the Coutinhos’ home, which left the possibility that a corrupt politician had been after records of shady business deals. He or she might have somehow learned that Coutinho’s flash drive was kept in the French–Farsi dictionary. And it now seemed possible that they also wanted to get their hands on the dictionary itself, which was why I asked Luci to go to the evidence room at headquarters after she was done in the library and to check if any words or sentences in the book had been highlighted in any way.
I left her in the library, intending to ask Fonseca and Vaz if they’d come to any conclusion about how many burglars had been in on the job, but on reaching the staircase, I heard Sudoku conversing in the living room with Sylvie. I started down just as he appeared at the bottom step of the staircase.
He waved, then started up. We met halfway. Since I’d last seen him, he’d cut his hair so short that he looked like an army recruit.
‘Is your cold all better?’ I said.
‘It’s not me, Henrique,’ he whispered. ‘I just told the others that to avoid problems. Maria is back on chemo.’
‘I’m sorry, Sudoku. I hope you get some good results quickly.’
‘One day at a time,’ he replied.
I slapped his arm playfully. ‘Hey, you were supposed to call me about the piece of bloody towel!’
‘I would have, Henrique, but I got a weird result the first time I analysed the sample, so I went back to the beginning. But I got the same result. So I figured I’d better talk to you in person. I just got here.’
‘What’d you find out?’
‘You’re not going to be happy about it.’
‘I’m not happy about anything having to do with this case.’
‘The DNA is the victim’s.’
‘Which victim?’
‘Pedro Coutinho.’
When I came to myself, I was sitting on a bench in a small, shady park circled by a waist-high black railing. I was sweating hard. I’d been in a dark hot room only a moment before – humid and nearly airless.
My lungs felt as though they were flecked with rust, and I was having difficulty breathing. My mouth and tongue tasted of tobacco; three cigarette butts were stubbed out on the pavement near my right foot. I was gripping my kachina. The goddess’s crown had made three perforations in my right palm. I realized I’d been waiting for Nathan to tell me where to hide Ernie.
The Night Watchman Page 28
