A tiny old woman with brittle-looking grey hair and opera glasses around her neck stood nearby, dropping breadcrumbs onto the ground from a plastic bag, cornered by a knot of greedy pigeons. I looked from her to my left hand.
I can see now that maybe we didn’t want to know that this was possible.
Gabriel had underlined that message twice, but I didn’t know what he was referring to; for the moment, I’d forgotten what Sudoku had told me.
It was 6.27 p.m. Turning around, I recognized the towering silk-cotton tree behind me. I was in Alegria Square. The tree had a massive trunk that was creased like elephant hide and spiked with thorns. Their brittle sharpness against my fingertips confirmed what I needed to know – that the world outside my head was real.
I turned on my cell phone.
Fonseca: Where the hell are you?
Luci: I need to speak with you.
Mesquita: Turn your damn phone on!
Ana: I send you lots of kisses.
When I checked my outgoing calls, I discovered that G had made two. The first was to Maria Dias. It had only lasted four seconds, which meant that he hadn’t been able to speak with her and had decided not to leave a message. I suspected that he didn’t want to risk another person hearing what he had to tell her, but why not let me know what he wanted from her?
I didn’t recognize the second number. On calling it, I discovered it was the Chiado Health Club. G’s call had lasted seven minutes. He must have been anxious for Maria Dias to tell him more about Sandi.
After speaking with the receptionist at the health club, I remembered my conversation with Sudoku. So many scattered bits of information made sense now. It was as though I could see a complex constellation – in the exact shape of this case – where before I’d only seen points of light. I even knew now why Coutinho had been so desperate to stay married; he couldn’t bear losing Sandi just when he wanted her most.
I was struck then by the odd certainty that this case must have picked me; unlike most people, I knew – in my flesh and heart – that there were men who were able to plan for a very long time to hurt the people they loved. The strat-egizing gave them purpose.
Coutinho must have scared Sandi with a bloody ghost story at Morel’s house in the hope that she’d come to him in the night. Though it’s possible he lured her to him some other way, of course. He had probably been undermining her confidence for months.
Sandi had tried to make herself as unattractive as she could over the weeks that followed his attack. But the knife she kept in her bed told me that that strategy had not worked. Did she become pregnant on that first night or only later?
She had taken off the ring he’d given her as a birthday present, but she couldn’t bear to throw it away. She must have wanted her mother to ask her why she no longer wore it and to insist on a reply. She wanted her mother to tell her that she’d listen to anything Sandi needed to say to her – and to promise that she’d believe anything the girl told her.
Was it a paradox that truths left unspoken ended up taking away your voice?
Sandi never made it back home after her Easter vacation in France. That girl only existed in a before-time that was no longer within her reach.
It had long seemed unforgivable to me that I continued to miss my father every day of my life, and I’d guess that Sandi had felt the same, at least for a while – that she continued to miss the dad she knew in the before-time. And yet, like me, it’s possible that she also prayed every night for her father to die – even to be murdered. And with a bullet in the back.
Sandi cut her hair and purged what she ate down the toilet. She stopped having her periods. Maybe she figured her mom had to put the clues together sooner or later.
And maybe she had. Was Susana Coutinho the greatest actress I’d ever encountered?
If so, then she would probably have told any professional killer she hired to be gentle with her husband. Though maybe he’d just disregarded her orders. Or perhaps she’d given in to her rage and told the man she’d hired that she wanted the son of a bitch to die in a lot of pain. Once I managed to obtain Susana’s bank statements, maybe I’d find that she’d taken out a large sum of cash in the weeks prior to the murder. But given what her husband did to her daughter, did I really want to try to prove that she was guilty?
Chapter 24
On taking out Gabriel’s pack of Marlboros from my coat pocket, I also discovered a list of Sandi’s incoming and outgoing calls over the past week. Sudoku must have handed it to me during our conversation – after G was already in control of me.
A quick call to Inspector Quintela confirmed that he’d given it to Sudoku to give to me.
On Saturday afternoon, Sandi had received three unanswered phone calls from Dias, and one more on Sunday. There was no record of the girl having made any attempt to call Dias back. There was a total of eleven unanswered calls from two other numbers; I suspected they belonged to Joana and Monica.
When I phoned Fonseca, he hollered, ‘You just vanished, Monroe! You can’t do that!’
‘Sorry, Ana called to tell me Jorge was sick.’
‘Does he have a fever?’
‘No, stomach problems. He ate a spoiled hot dog.’ Lying gave my words an easy, confident arc. ‘He’s better now but for a while he was really bad.’
‘Give him a kiss from Uncle Eduardo. So where are you?’
‘I’ve just left my apartment. I’ll be there soon. What have you got for me about the burglary?’
Fonseca confirmed that the intruders had climbed over the back wall to the garden; two small branches on the ruby-red bougainvillea snaking over the wall had recently been snapped. Also, he’d retraced the burglars’ route into the adjoining property and discovered what looked like imprints from the base of a ladder. Unfortunately, he held out little hope that he’d turn up any evidence more useful than that: the intruder or intruders had worn gloves and must have had the back door key, just as I’d suspected. The only evidence that he, Vaz and Sudoku had managed to find in the house was a faint shoeprint stamped on a CD cover in Sandi’s room. It appeared to have been made by a man’s sneaker – size forty or forty-one, according to Vaz. ‘Too small for our murderer,’ Fonseca reminded me.
‘Where would you say the burglar started hunting around?’ I asked.
‘The girl’s room. It was messed up the worst.’
‘And do you think there might have been more than one of them?’
‘That’s my working theory – a lot of damage was done.’
‘Which rooms weren’t hit?’
‘The living room, parents’ bedroom, kitchen and pantry. And the storage room on the top floor.’
We both knew that the burglars must have known that whatever they wanted wasn’t in those rooms. Which meant that either they were working with someone who’d visited the Coutinhos’ house before, or they had been there themselves.
‘You hear about Sudoku’s result?’ I asked him.
‘Yeah, Coutinho was a real piece of work.’
‘Maybe his wife had him killed and paid somebody to destroy whatever evidence the guy may have left behind.’
‘If that’s what happened, she deserves the Fonseca Medal of Honour!’
‘Yeah, except that she should have planned things a whole lot better – Sandi ended up killing herself. Anyway, first thing tomorrow, I’ll try to interview the neighbours we haven’t managed to speak to yet. I’m also going to try to get copies of Susana Coutinho’s bank records and talk to Coutinho’s employees. Depending on what I learn, I may need you again.’
‘Fine. Oh, I almost forgot . . . Luci wanted you to know that nothing was highlighted or dog-eared in the French–Farsi dictionary.’
I left the park in the direction of the Avenida da Liberdade. I was planning on going to the taxi stand in front of the Tivoli Hotel but I never made it there.
When I came to myself I was sitting with Jorge on my lap, in our living room. It was 9.20 p.m. I’d lost almost three hou
rs.
Jorge was drawing on his sketchpad, concentrating hard. I was in my pyjama bottoms and my Colorado Rockies baseball shirt. I was wearing my red slippers, too. I’d misplaced them maybe a year before. I’d thought they were lost.
The Chordettes were harmonizing on Mr Sandman, which was playing softly on the CD player; Ernie and I had sung along with those eerie, harp-like voices when we were kids.
Lifting Jorge off me and standing him up, I got to my feet. A desperate shout seemed to be curled in my chest, waiting for a chance to get out.
I wanted to find Ana and Nati. I figured they were upstairs.
‘Hey, you made me make a mistake!’ Jorge whined, frowning in that puffy-lipped way he does when he wanted me to know he was being treated unfairly. ‘My drawing is all wrong now!’
He looked as if he might throw the blue crayon he was holding at me, so I made a shield with my hands. ‘Where’s your mom?’ I asked.
He sat back down in a huff. ‘She went to bed.’
‘And Nati?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s reading. He’s always reading!’
‘Did you have dinner?’
He squinted at me as if I had interrupted him one too many times.
‘Jorge, be nice to me, please,’ I said.
‘I’m not Jorge, I’m Francisco.’ He lifted his toy giraffe out from between the cushions of the sofa and jiggled him.
I rolled my eyes, so he rolled his. My miniature clone again. As I started off for the kitchen, he yelled, ‘I want a cookie – chocolate! And cherry juice!’
I stopped, turned around and glared at him. ‘You have five minutes for your juice and a cookie, and then I’m putting you and Francisco to bed.’
‘That’s not fair!’
‘Jorge, I’ve had a very long day and you’re just making it longer.’
He flapped his hands at me, impersonating Roger the cross-dressing alien from American Dad. He was eager to get one of my laughing reprieves but I shook my head in warning. He grunted and went back to his drawing.
In the kitchen, I discovered that G hadn’t written me any message. Just as I grabbed the container of cherry juice, Mr Sandman came to an end. And so did I.
I awoke in bed with Ana. She was sleeping on her side, facing away from me. It has finally happened, I thought. I’ve come to the end of the slow, uphill race that I’d been running since I was eight. The hollow sense of loss in me seemed linked to my not having anyone to turn to. I wanted to ask my wife for help, but feeling the restful rise and fall of her in my fingertips – her physical separateness from me – only reminded me that she might not believe me and that, in any case, I’d sworn to Ernie that I’d never tell her the truth. I leaned away from her and sat up.
I knew I needed a plan I could carry out quickly. I took a pen from my night-table drawer and wrote a message to G on my hand for the first time in my life, though as I was scribbling I realized I’d always known that this would happen one day: You need to let go of me. Ernie and I will be all right. Don’t wreck my life.
I stood up, tiptoed downstairs and sat at Ana’s desk. I took a sheet of paper from her printer tray. I wanted to write a note that would explain what was happening to me, but I soon realized that anything I told her now would only confuse her. I had to speak to Ernie, because proving to Gabriel that he was safe was my only hope of remaining who I was – and of re-establishing the borders around myself.
I intended to call my brother from the small laundry room off our kitchen so that I wouldn’t wake Ana or the kids, but a few seconds after I stood up I found myself seated again. I was in the armchair in Jorge’s room, and he was fast asleep, naked from the waist down and wearing only one of his socks. His Tweety Bird pyjama bottoms and his second sock were lying on the floor. Francisco was standing guard on his night table. In my lap, a long red candle pointed up out of Aunt Olivia’s star-shaped holder. Cottony circles of light contracted on the ceiling when I stood up.
I was panting with a fear that seemed to cling to my breathing. The clock said 3.40 a.m. I looked at my hand; Gabriel had washed off my message.
When I closed my eyes to think things out, the world shifted again.
Jorge was now seated on his bed, fully awake, glaring at Ana, who was standing in the doorway, barefoot, draped in her orange Denver Broncos nightshirt, looking impatient and upset.
‘Don’t yell at him, Mom!’ Jorge hollered.
I was standing behind my son’s armchair as though for protection. My candle had burned down another inch. I sneaked a look at the clock: it was 4.17.
My wife looked from the boy to me. Her face swelled with rage. ‘Hank, what the hell were you thinking?’ she demanded.
Before I could make a reply, Nati came up behind her, bare-chested, scratching his belly. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked in a sleepy voice.
‘I need a minute,’ I said. I cringed on hearing the puny, useless sound of my voice.
‘You can have all the time you want!’ Ana snarled, each word a threat. ‘But I want you out of this house!’
Jorge burst into tears. I knelt down and opened my arms, and he ran to me. Feeling his solidity – and the quick pulsing of so much need for me in his little body – brought me back to myself. ‘Everything is okay,’ I told him, but he spotted the doubt in my eyes and began to sob.
‘You don’t even know what you did wrong, do you?’ Ana said contemptuously.
I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m confused. Let me just help Jorge and then we’ll talk.’
Nati pushed past her to me. ‘So did you vanish for a while, Dad?’
He spoke calmly, which was odd. I lifted Jorge into my arms and stood up. I pressed my lips to his cheek. ‘It’s okay, baby, I’m here now.’
Nati exclaimed, ‘Dad, listen to me! What happened?’
As he glared at me, I said, ‘I was gone for a little while.’
‘And you’re back now? It’s you?’
‘It’s me.’
He turned to his mother. ‘It’s okay, Mom. He’s back.’
‘I don’t get it,’ she told him.
‘The excitement is over, folks, keep on moving,’ Nati said, imitating a TV cop urging onlookers to leave the scene of an accident. It was one of his comedy routines. When no one laughed, he snorted. ‘You’re a great audience, folks, but I’m going to the kitchen now to get myself a doughnut.’
‘Nati, are you crazy?’ Ana asked. She looked from him to me to Jorge as if we’d formed a united front against her. I held Jorge tightly because he’d started to shiver.
‘I’m sorry for whatever I did,’ I told her.
She frowned coldly.
‘What did Dad do?’ Nati asked her.
Ana hugged her arms around her waist protectively. ‘This is between me and your father,’ she said darkly.
Nati shrugged, as if his mother were unfathomable. The four of us seemed to be cut off from the rest of the world – on an island I’d made for us. Or that G had.
‘I thought you were going to the kitchen,’ Ana told Nati.
‘Look, Dad just disappears sometimes,’ he said, choosing his words carefully. He looked at her, then at me, trying not to take sides. ‘I thought you knew, Mom.’
‘Nati, you’re not making any sense,’ she said.
He turned to me with an astonished expression. ‘You never told her?’
‘No,’ I replied, because lying – for the first time in recent memory – seemed a bad idea.
To his mother, Nati said, ‘Dad goes away and someone else comes.’ Biting his lip, he looked unable to come up with the right words. Facing Jorge, he said, ‘Dingo, do us all a favour and stop crying, and tell Mom what happens!’
Jorge dried his eyes with his fists.
‘Força, diz lá,’ Nati said more gently, since Portuguese often had a calming effect on the little boy. Go on, tell her.
‘Dad watches me sometimes,’ he replied, wriggling in my arms so he could face his mother.
�
�When?’ she asked.
I’d have liked to disappear into my little boy at that moment.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Whenever he does.’
‘And what does he do?’
‘He sits and watches me.’ The boy pointed to the armchair on which he tossed his dirty clothing. ‘He sits right there.’
Neither Jorge nor Nati had ever said a word to me about Gabriel. I didn’t dare move for fear my legs would give way.
Nati said, ‘He used to watch me, too – when I was younger. He’d always sit with that star-shaped candlestick he has. Dad, you inherited it from Aunt Olivia, right?’
I nodded.
‘Once or twice he said hello to me. But mostly, he never talked. Sometimes, when I was little, he’d pick me up and stroke my hair. And kiss me all over. We had a game where we’d count my toes together, one by one. He’d cry, too, at least at first – but I could tell it wasn’t because he was unhappy. Although he never told me why.’
Turning to me, he smiled the same generous, amused smile he’d had since he was a baby. Now, it made me go stiff.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked me.
‘Many good things have happened to me, but I don’t know why,’ I whispered. ‘There’s so much I can’t explain.’ I looked at Ana and mouthed I love you.
She looked away, as though measuring her options.
‘You know, Dad, sometimes I don’t get you at all,’ Nati said.
‘Maybe you’re not supposed to. You’re only thirteen.’
‘Whatever,’ he said, with the ease that kids show when dismissing the oddness of adults. ‘Sometimes I caught him smoking, too,’ he told Ana. ‘He’d just sit there watching me and smoke. Dingo and I call him the Night Watchman.’
‘Okay, Hank, so you pretend to be someone else,’ Ana told me definitively, as if she’d finally heard something that made sense. ‘But would you mind telling me what the point is? If it’s just so you can smoke in the house . . . Because, if that’s all it is, then—’
The Night Watchman Page 29
