A Small Death in lisbon (39 page)

24th December 1961, Monte Estoril, near Lisbon

Felsen sat on the edge of a wooden chest with his back to the black, rain-lashed window which in daylight would have shown the grey ocean and, off to the right, the Fort of Cascais, squat, robust, taking on the waves. He was watching Pica's family leave after a Christmas Eve dinner. Pedro, Joaquim's eldest son, was in amongst the guests, kissing and shaking hands. Manuel leaned against the wall, feet crossed at the ankle, hands in pockets, watching. Confident in his watching.

The party broke up, Pica went upstairs, Pedro and Manuel disappeared into the house. Abrantes and Felsen poured themselves some pre-war
Armagnac
and lit a Cuban cigar apiece. Abrantes sat down in his favourite piece of furniture, a high-backed leather armchair with an arched hood. He liked to gently and absentmindedly slap the arm of this chair, and there was a dark patch where the natural grease of his palm had been kneaded in.

You don't look well,' said Abrantes. 'You're not eating properly.'

It was true Felsen hadn't had any appetite for some weeks. He felt as if there was a big moment pending, and to be ready for it he wanted to be sharp, hungry, concentrated. He looked out of the black window watching Abrantes' reflection.

'You put alcohol on an empty stomach, you'll ruin yourself,' said Abrantes, demonstrating his all-round expertise, as if his visits to Harley Street with Pica had been part of his education, and allowed him to pontificate on all things medical. Felsen puffed on his cigar, the coal at the end sending Morse code back to him.

'Smoking's bad too ... unless you eat,' added Abrantes, which tempted Felsen to announce a midnight swim to see if his partner would say that that would kill him too. 'Everything's all right as long as you eat properly.'

Felsen paced the length of the window looking out across the other houses to the ocean.

'You're nervous too,' said Abrantes. 'You can't sit still any more. You're not working. You're spending too much time with too many different women. You should calm down, marry...'

'Joaquim?'

'What?' he asked, looking up from his chair, innocent, put-upon. 'I'm just trying to help. You haven't been yourself since you came back from Africa. If you had a wife I wouldn't have to worry about you ... that's what wives do.'

'I don't want to get married,' said Felsen, for the first time out loud.

'But you have to, you have to have children or ... or...'

'Or what?'

'It all stops. You don't want to be the end of the line.'

'It's not as if I'm the last male Hapsburg, Joaquim.'

Abrantes wasn't sure what a Hapsburg was. It shut him up. They drank. Felsen refilled and went back to the window. He saw Abrantes reflected, craning his neck to see what was worth looking at.

'Manuel is doing very well in PIDE,' said Abrantes.

'You told me.'

'They say he has a natural ability for the work.'

'A suspicious mind, maybe?'

'An enquiring mind,' said Abrantes. 'They tell me he likes to know everything ... they're going to make him an
agente de i° classe.'

'Is that impressive?'

'After less than six months in the job? I think so.'

'What does he do?'

'You know ... he checks up on people. He talks to informers. He finds the worms in the apple.'

Felsen nodded, hardly listening. Abrantes writhed in his favourite chair unable to get comfortable.

'I meant to ask you this,' said Abrantes. 'I meant to ask you this months ago.'

'What?' said Felsen, turning away from the window, interested for the first time that night.

'Did you see the
Senhora dos Santos
about your problem in the summer?'

'Of course I did.'

Abrantes sat back, legs spread, relieved.

'I was worried,' he said. 'That you wouldn't take it seriously. It's a very serious business.'

'She didn't do anything,' said Felsen. 'She said it wasn't her type of magic.'

Abrantes came out of his chair as if a mechanism had thumped him in the back. He took Felsen by the elbow, squeezed it hard to impress upon him the gravity of the matter.

'Now I know,' he said, his eyes staring and wide. 'Now I know why you're behaving in this way. You must see someone. Immediately.'

Felsen eased his elbow out of the man's mechanical grip. He threw back the
Armagnac
remaining in his glass and left the house.

It was 10.30
P.M
. He was drunk but not too drunk to drive himself back out to Cabo da Roca. He drove his Mercedes through the silent streets, black and glistening from the rain. He slowed past a couple of addresses in Cascais but each time moved on—not lacking in any physical appetite, just the talk necessary to get him to that point. He smoked the remains of the cigar and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and it occurred to him out there, in the blustery darkness on the Guincho road with the storms stacked up over the Atlantic waiting to come in, that in a fit of madness Maria might have told Abrantes thai: Manuel was not his child. Was that why she was back up in the Beira? Was that why Abrantes talked about continuing the line, and in the next breath mentioned Manuel and his success in PIDE? Abrantes had made a remark at that party in the summer too, about Manuel not having the same parents as Pedro. He shook his head at the indecisive windscreen wipers, at the rain gusting across the road, slashing and buffeting the car. His thoughts unnerved him. He began to feel uncomfortable between his shoulders and up the back of his neck, suspicious suddenly that the back seat of the car was not empty.

Drunk again, he sighed.

A car approached on a long straight section of the road. They dipped their headlights at each other. As the car drew nearer he took advantage of the light to check the back seat in the rear view. Nothing. He reached behind him and swept his hand across the seats. Stupid drunk.

Red lights receded into the blackness, quickly obliterated.

The road climbed up through the dense darkness of the pine trees, past Malveira da Serra, the road winding, cutting back on itself, the steering wheel shooting through his hands, a little sweat on his top lip from the drink oozing out of his system.

He turned off at the top and dropped down through the village of Azóia and out towards the lighthouse where his house, huddled in its own courtyard, shouldered the weather. He got out to open the gates. The wind inflated his lungs, the rain battered his hot ear. He drove the car up to the garage and went back to close the gates. He'd left a lamp on outside the house on the corner and in the light that shone off the hard wet mud in the courtyard, he saw footprints going to the side of the house.

He put his own foot down over one of the footprints. His were smaller. He squeezed his chin and swallowed. The GNR had warned him that bandits were operating on the roads around the Serra da Sintra. He drove the car into the garage. He opened the glove compartment and removed an old Walther P48 he'd kept from the war. He checked the magazine and tucked it into his waistband. His mind worried over ammunition corroded by the sea air, and he tried to remember when he'd last cleaned and oiled the damn thing. Still, having it in his hand was the important thing.

He stumbled into the house and saw his rubbery face in the hall mirror. Maybe, that was it. He was just drunk and they were the gardener's footprints. That must be it. He took off his coat, shook the rain off it and hung it up. The gardener was small, didn't even come up to his shoulder, had the feet of an elf. His ears strained for movement and returned to him the tinnitus that had developed since coming back from Africa.

He wiped his feet and moved down the corridor. His leather soles sounded loud against the wooden flooring. He turned on the kitchen light. Empty. He crossed to the living room. Flicked that light on. The Rembrandt looked down on him. He went to the sideboard and poured himself a shot of
aguardente
from an unmarked bottle. He sniffed it, the raw alcohol unstuffed his head, the paranoia backed off a notch. He lit a cigarette, took two fast drags and crushed it out. He removed the gun from his waistband and turned.

A man was standing by the door, grey hair swept back, blue raincoat, the wet shoulders glistening in the light. He had a gun in his hand.

'Schmidt,' said Felsen, surprisingly calm, given that the name had come into his head like a lobbed grenade.

Schmidt adjusted his grip on the .38 revolver, and the four-inch barrel performed a small circle. He was surprised that Felsen wasn't thrown against the wall in astonishment at the sight of him. He was surprised to see the Walther in the man's hand. How could he be armed and ready? Did he know things?

'You should put that down,' said Schmidt.

'You could do the same.'

Neither of them moved. Schmidt breathed loudly through his broken nose, his mouth sealed, the stress of the situation working his jaw muscles, his brain calculating as hard as a chess grandmaster's but without the clarity.

'Smoke?' said Felsen.

'I gave up,' he said. 'My lungs didn't like the tropics.'

'A drink then?'

'I had a brandy earlier.'

'I didn't think you drank.'

'I don't usually.'

'Have another then, see if you can get a taste for it.'

'Put the gun down.'

'I don't think so,' said Felsen, his heart pounding in the roof of his mouth. 'Why don't we both put our guns down over here on the sideboard.'

Schmidt moved through the furniture, his gun leading. As he came closer the greyness in his face became more apparent. He was a sick man and more dangerous for it. With a nod they laid their guns down simultaneously on the polished wood. Felsen poured drinks.

'I'm surprised,' said Felsen, not sounding it, a day's drinking and the burst of adrenalin having a curious effect on him. 'I was told you were lying in a river with your pockets full of rocks and a bullet in your head.'

Felsen handed him a glass of the
aguardente.
Schmidt sniffed it.

'Your partner. He never even came after me. I saw him. He stayed close to the house as if he was giving me time to get away, and when he thought I was well gone, he walked out into the poppy fields and let off a round into the air. Not a brave man, but not a stupid one either. I'd have killed him.'

'Why didn't you come into the house after us?'

'Like they do in the films,' said Schmidt, canting his head to one side, sardonic. 'I thought about it, but I decided it was too dangerous, and anyway, killing the two of you wasn't the point at that time.'

'Was that why you sent Eva after me?'

'Eva?'

'Susana. I meant Susana Lopes ... from'são Paulo.'

'Susana got close. She made a beginner's mistake, but then, that was what she was.'

'Are you working for someone, Schmidt?'

'This is a personal thing,' he said.

'Why don't we start with what you want,' Felsen said. 'Let's get that out into the open. You're not after the gold, are you?'

'Gold,' he said, not a question, not an answer.

'You're sick,' said Felsen, disturbed by the man's lack of direction. 'I can see that.'

'Fibrosis of the lungs,' said Schmidt.

'Where are you living now?'

'Back in Germany, Bayreuth,' he said, sipping his drink. 'I was from Dresden. Did you know that? You know what they did to Dresden. I haven't been back.'

'Did your family survive?'

'They're in Dortmund,' he said.

'Children?'

'Two boys and a girl. They're quite grown-up now.'

'I see,' said Felsen, feeling oddly like a bank manager. 'That's an American gun you have there.'

'A souvenir.'

'Does it fire the Stars and Stripes?'

Schmidt smiled. The stress eased. Felsen edged him away from the guns. He sat on the arm of a leather sofa with Schmidt on the arm of one of the chairs, their knees almost touching.

'That painting looks familiar,' said Schmidt.

'Another souvenir.'

'It doesn't look like a cheap print.'

'I bought it on the Bayswater Road in London.'

'Is it a copy of...?' asked Schmidt, starting to get up.

Felsen rested his hand on the man's shoulder.

'It's a Rembrandt, Schmidt. Now tell me the purpose of your social call. I've had a long dinner and I'm tired.'

Schmidt's creased neck turned in its frayed collar. He had a patch of grey bristles visible under the jawline missed in the morning shave. A thicket of dark hair protruded from his ear.

'I'm not the only one with a sensitive past,' he said.

'Ah,' said Felsen, the angle revealed. 'Another of your American imports, Schmidt. I've heard blackmail's very popular over there now.'

Schmidt's eyes switched back to the guns on the sideboard, the old man in the Rembrandt watching.

'They're very interested in certain circles,' he said, his mind not on it.

'You don't think they've got their hands full with the Russians?'

'They've got plenty of hands when it comes to a multi-million-dollar corporation established with wartime SS funding.'

'There's a risk, of course, that it could all blow up in your face, Schmidt. You've got no evidence except your own colourful past.'

Schmidt threw himself at the sideboard. Felsen, who'd been half-waiting for this moment, found that the other half wasn't as alert as it should have been. He lashed out with his foot and caught Schmidt on the shin. Schmidt's arms flailed but his hands managed to come down on the sideboard. A gun clattered across the uncarpeted edge of the floor. Schmidt fell and twisted on to his back. Felsen found himself kneeling and looking down the barrel of his own gun held in Schmidt's hand.

'I thought we were talking, Schmidt.'

'We were, but I changed my mind,' he said. 'Blackmail's a complicated business ... a lot of things can go wrong in it.'

'So is burglary and fencing an old master.'

'I was thinking about murder.'

'Murder?' asked Felsen. 'What do you get from murder? Your health's gone, you should be thinking about your children's future.'