The Night Watchman (2 page)

I underlined that hope twice, because it seemed to be Moura’s way of saying that he’d been worried for a long time that his wife and friends might catch up with
him
and figure out that he wasn’t such a boyish, sweet-natured guy after all.

At this point in his zoo fantasy, Moura picked up Miguel, hugged him with all the relief of finally having found a trustworthy companion and told him that he, too, had always wanted to be big and powerful, but that he’d never dared tell anyone before.

Holding my gaze, asking for my understanding with the shadowed depth of his eyes, Moura confessed that it was a great comfort to tell his son that he never thought he was strong enough. ‘Ever since I was ten or eleven, that’s what I’ve wanted to tell someone. Though I was only ever able to confess it to Miguel. I couldn’t trust anyone else.’

Tears caught in his lashes, and I was convinced that this was what he’d most wanted to tell me since the moment we’d met. A week ago, I’d come to his flat to question him about his wife’s death, and he must have spotted something in my face that gave him hope that I’d be sympathetic. And by now he must have also realized that this might be his last chance to explain something important about himself to another person.

‘Now you’ve confessed your secret to me, as well,’ I pointed out.

‘Because my life is over,’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘So it doesn’t much matter. I’ll probably be . . . I don’t know, fifty, before I get out of prison. Maybe even older.’

He waited for me to contradict him with a more optimistic assessment. When I didn’t, he gazed off into what he thought his future might look like. His jaw throbbed; he was steeling himself for a long battle.

The phone rang next door. Through the glass window separating my office from the room where two of my inspectors have their desks, I saw the new officer on my team, Lucinda Pires, take the call.

Moura took a deep, calming breath and said, ‘I really thought Miguel had changed everything. It was stupid for me to believe he could make things different, I guess.’

His despairing tone touched me and, with a jolt, I realized that he had used his fantasies about a son not just to put himself to sleep, but also to try to prevent himself from committing murder. He’d wanted to do the right thing. He’d fought and failed.

I wanted to help him – to make his stay in prison more bearable. ‘It wasn’t stupid,’ I told him. ‘But maybe . . . maybe you needed to hide even deeper in your fantasies – and to stay there until you were sure you could talk with your wife without hurting her. They might be able to still help you in some way – to get through all this, I mean.’

Hearing the solidarity in my voice, he turned towards the wall and began to sob. His desolation caught me off guard, and I sensed Gabriel creeping up behind me, which was odd, because I wasn’t in any danger. At least, that was what I then thought.

‘Listen, Mr Moura,’ I said softly, hoping to bring him back to me, ‘do you think that your fantasy son will age along with you? I mean, twenty years from now, when you get out of prison, will Miguel be nearing thirty or still only seven?’

He rubbed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath. ‘I’d prefer he stay a little kid,’ he replied. ‘Though I’m not sure it matters that much any more.’

Knowing we’d both appreciate a safe subject for a few minutes, I got him talking about his teaching. As he told me about his difficulties with kids cheating in exams, I sensed Gabriel withdrawing. A feeling of lightness eased through me. And then he was gone, leaving a hollowness behind in exactly the shape of my curiosity about him.

As Moura and I spoke, I understood from his laboured search for the right words that he hadn’t had anyone to reveal his heart to for a long time. Maybe he never had.

When I reached the ins and outs of the murder itself, Moura told me he’d synthesized cyanide because it was a poison that was quick and sure. ‘I didn’t want my wife to suffer unnecessarily,’ he told me. ‘And it didn’t matter that it would show up on your tests.’ He shrugged as if to say that foiling our efforts was never the point.

‘Still, you could have tried to get away afterwards,’ I said.

‘I thought of flying to Brazil. But seeing my wife dead, looking at her face . . . I found something in its stillness, its forced silence – something about the two of us and our destiny. About how things started and how they’d turned out. And what being married meant. I understood then that there was no point in fleeing.’

His words made me uneasy. Maybe because he’d understood something important about his marriage too late. ‘Is cyanide hard to cook up?’ I asked, a bit disappointed in myself for retreating from a conversation that might have been more meaningful.

‘É canja,’
he replied, flapping his hand.
A piece of cake.

He fought a smile. He clearly thought it wouldn’t look so good if he showed too much pride in his abilities. He was a strange guy – one minute in despair, the next seemingly ready for a starring role on his own TV drama. On a hunch, I asked, ‘Are you on any medication?’

‘An antidepressant,’ he replied. ‘My doctor thought it would help. I used to think about suicide pretty much all the time. Though now I’m here at police headquarters and about to go to prison. I’m not sure I would call that progress.’

He laughed mirthlessly – the laugh of a man who hasn’t ended up anywhere near where he’d always expected to be. I drank my tea. I was tired of talking to suspects who’d ruined every chance for happiness they had once had. And who betrayed their loved ones. Their destructive impulses exhausted me.

When Moura put his glasses back on, I realized he preferred looking younger than he was; it was his camouflage. Maybe he was even a lot more dangerous than I imagined. It was possible that he’d even invented his fantasy son to win me to his side – that he’d sensed from the moment we’d first met that he could trick me with that particular strategy.

Since 1994, when I joined the Judicial Police, at least two sociopaths have fooled me completely. Both sat right where Moura was sitting. Number One was a young bank teller with a winning smile who lived with his parents in Almada. He’d been a spellbinding storyteller. We ended up talking mostly about his collection of rare coins. I was sure he was innocent until sniffer dogs led us to the bodies of his father and mother under the paving stones of his patio. Number Two was a pretty nurse who worked at the Santa Cruz Hospital in Estoril. She could laugh, weep and flare into self-righteous anger on command: Meryl Streep dubbed into Portuguese. I thought she was the victim of a hateful conspiracy, but it turned out that she had killed at least nine patients with morphine injections.

One certainty police work has taught me is that, if you think you can’t be fooled, you’re wrong.

Moura went on to tell me that he’d poured his cyanide powder into the spicy tomato sauce he’d made for dinner one evening. ‘My wife liked really hot food,’ he explained.

A knock came on my door. Moura gasped as though he’d heard a bomb go off.

‘It’s okay, nothing’s wrong,’ I told him.

Inspector Pires poked her head in. She’d joined the Judiciary Police only a week earlier. ‘Sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘There’s been a murder.’

‘Where?’

‘In São Bento. On the Rua do Vale.’

It was my week to be on call, which meant I was given all the major crimes reported by the Public Security Police, the PSP. Their officers were nearly always the first on the scene because all emergency calls to 112 were directed their way.

‘Okay, Pires, get the techs from Forensics over to the Rua do Vale ASAP. I’ll get there as soon as I can.’

‘Right, sir,’ Pires agreed, but in a tone of warning, she added, ‘the PSP says that the victim was wealthy and well-connected, with lots of friends in the government.’

I came out to talk to her, closing the door behind me. ‘I know you’re just trying to protect me, Inspector, but a cadaver isn’t likely to phone any of his big-shot buddies to complain that I took a few extra minutes with a suspect. Don’t let the PSP spook you.’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

I’d spoken gently, but she looked as if she might burst into tears, so I took her shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to sound harsh. This suspect has put me off-balance. One thing you can do for me is call Dr Zydowicz. I want him on this case.’

Zydowicz was the chief medical inspector. He’d just returned to work after two months on sick leave. We weren’t required to have a medical expert on hand, but I preferred having one around for high-profile cases.

I slipped back into my office to finish up with Moura. He was finishing his glass of water when I stepped in. A few minutes later, we’d reached an agreement on the exact wording of his statement. Once he’d added his tiny, careful signature, he handed me back my pen and said in a hopeful tone, ‘I don’t think I’m really such a bad person.’

I considered what to tell him; I wanted to be honest but hurting him seemed pointless. ‘Sometimes people get so lost that they can’t find their way back to themselves. I think that’s maybe what happened to you. Though you should keep in mind that nobody who ends up being interrogated in my office ever thinks of himself as a bad person.’

I was tempted to say more, but he’d wrecked his quiet little life in a way that could never be repaired, and that seemed to earn him the right to hold on to an illusion or two. Still, he sensed that I had more on my mind. ‘Go ahead, I can take it,’ he told me.

I looked at him hard to make sure he meant it. He nodded decisively.

‘I’m sorry to have to say this, but do you really think your fantasy son will believe you’re a good dad when he finds out you poisoned his mom?’

‘I thought of that, too,’ he acknowledged, sitting up straight. He seemed gratified that our minds worked alike. ‘That’s why I’ve made it so he’ll never find out.’

‘You’re never going to think of him again?’ I asked sceptically.

Passing over my question, he said in a grateful voice, ‘You’re a nice guy. And you listen well – thanks. I’m lucky I got to speak to you last.’

‘Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of people to talk to in prison. And more than a few of them will be thrilled to have a friend who’s an expert chemist. You might even—’

Reaching up to his chest, he swallowed a sharp intake of breath, then coughed.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

He gazed down and took a fish-out-of-water gulp of air. ‘I didn’t want to have to tell my kid,’ he said in a choking voice. ‘Or anyone else.’ He leaned over my desk, his hands gripping its edge, his knuckles white.

‘What did you do?’ I demanded, jumping up.

He closed his eyes. His grip slackened. ‘Don’t bother calling an ambulance.’

‘Merda!’
I hollered.

As I rushed to him, his head fell forward and hit the surface of my desk with a thud. His right hand shot out at the same time and sent my
I
♥
BLACK CANYON
mug and all my pens flying. His eyes were open but not seeing anything in our world. A rivulet of blood trickled out of his nose.

Inspector Pires came rushing in from next door. I shouted for her to call an ambulance. ‘And tell the medics to bring an antidote for cyanide!’

I found a faint but steady pulse in Moura’s wrist. Lifting him up out of his chair, I eased him down to the floor, positioning him on his back so his heart wouldn’t have to work so hard. I noticed a tiny square of foil glimmering by one of the legs of my desk.

‘Don’t you do this to me!’ I told him, but a few seconds later his chest stopped rising. Sensing that this was a test around which my own right to be alive was turning, I knelt beside him and pressed down hard over his sternum, then tilted his head back and gave him two of my breaths.

After the medics confirmed what I already knew, I lost my breakfast in the toilet. Washing my face with hot water at the sink, staring into the mirror at the shocked fragility in my eyes, I rewrote my conversation with Moura over and over, giving him all the reassurances he needed to keep from taking his own life.

The sensation of breathing life into him still coated my lips, like a salty crust. Was it guilt that tugged me back to my childhood? Maybe it was simply that any man looking long enough into his own lost face will eventually find the boy dwelling inside him who first realized he would commit many wrongs over his lifetime.

I locked myself in a stall because I wanted to be alone with the ten-year-old that I’d been. In there – in my memory – the crescent moon shone lantern-bright over our Colorado home. Gusts of frigid wind were bending the barren branches of our apple trees, and I could hear the broken-bone crunch of Dad’s feet tramping across the ice towards the porch, where I’d concealed my six-year-old brother Ernie behind a stack of firewood.

‘Hey, look what I’ve got here!’

Dad grabbed Ernie and flung him into a snow bank by the stairs leading up to our front door, then waved to me. ‘Get on over here, Hank!’

When I reached him, he took my arm and hugged me to him. He trembled. At first I thought he might be crying, but as he held me away, he showed me a mocking smile. ‘You know what, son,’ he told me, ‘I’m going to do to Ernie what the Colorado winter does to our apple trees!’

He pushed me hard, and I fell next to my brother. As I looked up, Dad took a clear plastic bag out of his back pocket . . .

From inside my stall, I phoned my brother. He heard the panic in my voice right away.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘Trouble at work.’

‘But you’re okay?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ I told him. ‘Is everything okay with you? I suddenly got worried about you.’

‘Everything’s fine. The roses are gorgeous right now. Oh, and you should see the—’

‘You don’t think Dad could find us after all these years?’ I cut in.

‘Jesus, Hank, where’d that come from?’

‘Just answer the question!’

‘You know it’s impossible. Even if he’s still alive, which I doubt, he doesn’t speak a word of Portuguese. And neither of us is in the phonebook. If he could’ve found us, he would have. We’ve been here more than twenty-five years now.’