He took Traudl back to his apartment. She talked for the two of them. He hung his coat up, poured himself a drink and found that she'd gone. He was relieved until she called him from the bedroom. He told her to come back into the living room.
'It's cold,' she said.
She was naked walking on tiptoe across the polished floor, the tendons and sinews in her thin legs visible. The unfilled flaps of her breasts with shrivelled nipples hung off the racked ribs of her chest. She hugged them to herself. He took off his tunic and loosened the braces off his shoulders. She shivered with her fists under her chin. He saw her back view reflected in the glass doors of the bedroom—the sad bottom with hip bones protruding. He nearly lost all enthusiasm for the project. He sat down and asked her to massage the front of his trousers. Her teeth chattered. His penis wouldn't stir.
'You're cold, go back to bed,' he said.
'No,' she said, 'I want to.'
'Go back to bed,' he said, with a little blade in his voice and she didn't argue.
He sat in the dark and drank aguardente that he'd brought back with him for Christmas. It tasted like hell. He circled over his meeting with Eva looking for scraps. There were none. In the early hours he decided there was nothing left for him in Berlin and he'd take the next flight back to Lisbon.
He flew back the next day via Rome and spent only enough time in Lisbon for Poser to tell him that something had happened. He didn't know what it was, he had men working on it, but Salazar was not happy.
'He's frothing at the mouth,' said Poser, relishing it, 'completely rabid with fury. Magnificent rage. And the Allies are catching it ... just in time for our negotiations with the Metals Commission.'
Felsen drove up to the Beira and spent the afternoon of the 19th December with the accountant in Guarda. He made a small circuit of his territory and three days before Christmas appeared in Amêndoa on a wind-whipped frozen morning. There was no sign of Abrantes. The old woman was there with her husband, Abrantes' father, sitting in his customary winter position in the fireplace, crying from the smoke. The girl was there too with her son, Pedro, who was four months old. Felsen asked her where her husband was, and she looked embarrassed, which she was only rarely in his company now that she was used to him. Her fingers were ringless. She wasn't married.
Felsen stroked the baby's downy head which fitted neatly into his palm. The girl offered him food and drink and flipped the baby on to her hip.
'Let me take him,' said Felsen.
She hesitated and searched the German's face with her lime-green eyes. Foreigners. She gave him the baby and went to the kitchen. She'd never regained her girlish form. Her bosom had stayed full and her hips swung in her calf-length skirts. When she turned she found Felsen looking at her in that way and she nearly smiled. He tickled the baby. Pedro grinned and Felsen had a cameo of Joaquim Abrantes with his dentures out.
She brought him some wine and chouriço. He gave her the baby who reached for her breasts.
'Is he out on his land?' asked Felsen, thinking Abrantes might be fossicking his twenty hectares now that the wolfram price had peaked.
'He left this morning. He didn't say,' she said.
'Do you expect him back?'
She shrugged—Abrantes didn't talk to any of the women in his house. Felsen drank two glasses of the rough wine and ate a couple of chunks of chouriço and went out into the cold morning. He drove into the next valley and found someone to take him to Abrantes' piece of land. He was right, they were working it. But no Abrantes.
There was a small granite and slate house on the property. Half its roof was fallen in, the unbroken slates stacked in rows on the floor, the shattered ones in a pile of grey shards. A woman was cooking in there out of the wind, stirring a pot on a rusted brazier. She was filthy and haggard, her face sunken with toothlessness.
The door was rotten on the other side of the house. People were living in there. There was a rag-covered pallet and some chipped clay jars. The place smelled of damp earth and urine. Something small was shivering under the rags.
One of Abrantes' peasants from Améndoa came around the side of the house and stopped, surprised to see Felsen. He removed his hat and came forward, bowing. Felsen asked after Abrantes.
'He's not here,' said the peasant looking at the ground.
'And the others? Where are they? Why aren't they here?'
No answer.
'And who are these people living out here on the land of Senhor Abrantes like this?'
The woman left her pot and began talking to the peasant in toothless Portuguese and at some length using her wooden spoon for emphasis.
'What is she saying?'
'It is nothing,' said the peasant.
The woman railed at him. The peasant looked away. Felsen directed his question at the woman. She gave him a very long answer during which the peasant cut in with the short words:
'She is the wife of Senhor Abrantes.'
'And this child in here?'
The peasant beckoned Felsen away from the old crone around to the back of the house where there were three mounds of grass unmarked.
'The children of Senhor Abrantes,' said the peasant. 'A sickness of the lungs.'
'And the one inside?'
The peasant nodded.
'All girls?'
He nodded again.
'Where is Senhor Abrantes?'
'Spain,' he said without taking his eyes from the mounds.
The peasant's name was Alvaro Fortes. Felsen put him in the front seat next to the driver and they went to the border at Vilar Formoso. Felsen drank aguardente from the same metal bottle he used for water in the summer and ran his thumb over the calculations he'd made—28 tons from Penamacor, 30 tons from Casteleiro, 17 tons brought over from Barco, 34 tons up from Idanha-a-Nova. All missing—which was why the Portuguese stocks were 109 tons lower than they should have been.
At the border he drank with the chefe of the alfândega who was pleased to give him the information that the British had been tracking German shipments through the border all last month, and there'd been rumours that Lisbon were going to issue orders to hold up his consignments of wolfram. Felsen gave the man a bottle of brandy and asked after Abrantes. The chefe hadn't seen him in a week.
It started to rain as they drove south along the border to Aldeia da Ponte and then on to Aldeia do Bispo and Foios at the foot of the Serra da Malcata, whose vast low, lynx-patrolled hills crossed the border. Here there was a contrabandista who was going to run a pack mule operation through the serra for him if Dr Salazar decided to make life difficult.
'Have you ever made the journey across to Spain?' he asked the back of Alvaro Fortes' head. No answer.
'Did you hear me?'
'Yes, Senhor Felsen.'
'Have you done it before?'
Again no answer.
'When was the first time?'
Alvaro Fortes answered by not answering. Felsen began to feel the heat of his missing tonnage as the wind strafed the car from the north. They drove through the village to the house and stables of the man who kept the mules. The serra was invisible under low cloud.
At the mule-owner's house Felsen went to the boot and unlocked a small metal trunk. He removed his Walther P48 and loaded it. He told Alvaro Fortes to get out of the car. They went to the back of the granite house, into the stableyard, which had a warehouse at one end, chained and padlocked. There were no mules. Alvaro Fortes jiggled about like a man with a full bladder.
Felsen banged on the door at the back of the house with the heel of his hand. No response. He made Alvaro Fortes hammer continuously, and they heard the old man's voice from inside.
'Calma, calma, já you,' he said. I'm coming.
The rain was slanting across the yard as he opened the door on the German standing in a thick leather coat with his hands clasped behind his back. He knew he was in trouble well before a hand came out and put a gun in his face.
'No mules,' said Felsen.
'Th
ey're out working.'
'Who's with them?'
'My son.'
'Anybody else?'
The old man's eyes flicked across to Alvaro Fortes who was no help.
'Have you got the key to that warehouse?'
'It's empty.'
Felsen put the barrel of the gun right up to the man's eye so that he could smell the oil, see the narrow, dark, escape route from life. The old man produced the key. They walked across the puddled yard. He opened the padlock and ripped the chain out. Alvaro Fortes opened the doors. The warehouse was empty Felsen went down on his haunches and pressed his finger on to the dry floor and came back up with fine black chips embedded in his skin. He stood up.
'Kneel, both of you,' he said.
He fitted the gun barrel under the occipital bulge at the back of the old man's head.
'Who is with your son and the mules?'
'Senhor Abrantes.'
'What are they doing?'
'Running wolfram to Spain.'
'Where do they take the wolfram?'
'A warehouse in Navasfrias.'
He pressed the gun into Alvaro Fortes' head.
'What happens to the wolfram?'
'He sells it.'
'To who?'
'To the highest bidder.'
'Has he sold to the British?'
Silence. The rain lashed the yard and the roof overhead.
'Has he sold to the British?'
'I don't know who he sells to. Senhor Abrantes doesn't talk of such things.'
Felsen went back to the old man.
'When will he return?'
'The day after tomorrow.'
'Will you tell him I have been here?'
'No, Senhor, I will not ... if you don't wish it.'
'I don't wish it,' said Felsen. 'If you do tell him I will come back here and kill you myself. I will shoot you in the head.'
To show a level of seriousness he let off a round past the old man's ear that would leave him deaf for a week. The bullet ricocheted around the slate and granite warehouse. Alvaro Fortes threw his hands over his head and fell to one side. Felsen grabbed him by the scruff and threw him into the yard.
They went back to the car. Felsen sipped liquor from his bottle while Alvaro Fortes shivered with his hair plastered to his white forehead.
He ordered the driver to take them back to Améndoa and as the wind drove the rain over the hills and through the chestnut trees and oaks and on to the granite walls, rather than wolfram or Abrantes he found himself thinking of Eva. A few nights ago he'd been a civilized man sitting with a woman in a Berlin club. She'd lied to him. There'd been a betrayal before the lie, but he hadn't been able to drag up any anger. Out here in this rock-shambled, wind-blasted place, where the houses were carved out of the ground, he could only find a single-minded brutality to drive him through to the next day. He was a primitive, a man stripped down to the essentials.
And now he was going to have to kill Joaquim Abrantes.
It was dark when they arrived back in Améndoa. The girl and Abrantes' parents were eating. He joined them. The rain had stopped and only the wind was left, shifting the tiles on the roof. The old man wouldn't eat. His wife brought the food to his mouth but he wouldn't take it. She ate her own food, wiped her husband's eyes and took him to bed. The girl waited on Felsen. She wouldn't sit with him. He asked after the baby. The baby was sleeping. She offered him apples, but he hadn't finished the stew. He listened to her skirts as she moved around him. He thought about Abrantes grunting over her and that hissing sound she made.
She looked at him while he was eating. Every chance she had. Even when she was behind him he knew she was looking. He was different to look at. He asked for coffee, which they'd never had in the house before the German came. He drank it and poured aguardente on to the grounds and sank that. He said goodnight. She brought him a flat, metal pan of hot coals to take the edge off the cold in his bare room across the courtyard where they used to keep the hay for the animals.
He lay on his bed and smoked cigarettes by the light of the hurricane lamp. After an hour he got up and crossed the courtyard. He went to the girl's room which had just a curtain across the door. She was sleeping. He put the lamp on the floor. She woke up with a gasp. He clamped his hand over her mouth and pulled back the covers. The baby was sleeping at her back. He eased the child to one side. He rolled her on to her back trapping her arms underneath. He pushed his hand up her woollen-stockinged legs. Her thighs were clamped shut. He jammed his hand between them and prised them open by making a fist. Her eyes darted left and right over his hand. He tugged her drawers down to her knees and undid his trousers. He was surprised to slide into her easily and their eyes connected in the leopard light from the lamp on the floor. He was slow and gentle with the baby in the bed. After some minutes she closed her eyes and he felt her heel on his left buttock. He took his hand away from her mouth. She began to tense and shudder against him and the other heel began to kick at his right buttock. He quickened. Her eyes sprang open and he emptied himself into her and stayed there, rammed to the hilt and quivering.
The next day she gave him breakfast. It was no different to any other day except that she looked at him straight, with no shyness.
He stayed out all day, overseeing the loading of a cargo of wolfram into rail cars. He went back to Abrantes' house at nightfall. After dinner the old couple went to bed. The girl remained sitting at the table with Felsen. They didn't talk. He got up to go to bed. She gave him the pan of coals. He asked her name, and she told him Maria.
An hour later she joined him. This time, without the baby in the bed, he could be more robust with her but he was aware that she never hissed in the way that she did when Abrantes was covering her.
In the morning he dressed and checked the Walther P48, which he tucked into his waistband. Her muddy footprints had dried on the floor.
At breakfast he asked her to clean his room. Then he sat in the darkness of the main house, listening to the rain and waited for Abrantes.
Chapter XIII
Saturday, 13th June 199–, Cascais, Portugal
Carlos and I stood outside the apartment block of the lawyer's wife's ex-lover. It was brand-new, finished in nasty yellow, with a sea view over the railway line, over the Marginal, over the car park of the supermarket. Not perfect, but good enough to be way beyond what a policeman could ever afford.
There was a chain across a forecourt of calçada on which was parked a brand-new jeep called something like a Wrangler, with chrome and black roll bars and a high polish finish. It was a lot of jeep to go pavement-hopping in Cascais. Under the apartment building there was a small garage with a silver 3 series BMW and a jet-black Kawasaki 900 motorbike. These all belonged to Paulo Branco, the ex-lover and only occupier of any of the apartments in the block. A salesman's foot wedged open the door to the building while he fitted in his last two metres of bullshit to a young couple leaving. We walked past them and up to the penthouse.
We got Paulo Branco out of bed. He came to the door in shorts and smelled of a recent sexual encounter although we didn't see much of her—a tanned arm over a sheet, a brown foot dangling. He was good-looking in a way that hundreds of guys are—black hair swept back, dark brown eyes, square jaw with regular cleft and a gym-worked physique. Bland but confident, until he saw our identification.
We went into the open-plan living room with a floor-to-ceiling arched window and the view. We sat around a table scattered with photographs and four coloured mobile phones.
'You know Senhora Teresa Oliveira?' I asked.
He frowned.
'She's the wife of Dr Aquilino Dias Oliveira, a lawyer. They have a house here in Cascais,' I reminded him.
'Yes, I know them.'
'How?'
'I sold him a computer last year.'
'Is that your business?'
'It was then. Now I'm at Expo. I installed most of the equipment there.'
'The stuff that didn't work?' asked Ca
rlos, getting his needle in early.
'We had some teething problems.'
'Made some money though?'
The photographs on the table showed a farmhouse in the Alentejo by the look of the land—the cork trees and olive groves. Another fashion accessory.
'This yours too?' asked Carlos.
He nodded. So did we.
'We understand you became intimate with the lawyer's wife. When did that happen?'
He looked over his shoulder at the bedroom door, open a crack.
'May,' he said. 'I think it was May, last year. I'd like some coffee ... would you like some?'
'We won't keep you long,' I said. 'Why did you become intimate with Teresa Oliveira?'
'What sort of a question is that?'
'One of the easier ones,' said Carlos.
He leaned across the table to take us into his confidence.
'She wanted sex. She said the old guy wasn't up to it any more.'
'Where?' asked Carlos.
'In the usual place,' he said, pulling some cockiness together, now that he knew this wasn't a fiscal investigation.
'Geographically.'
He gave Carlos his best false smile.
'In her Lisbon house.'
'Not here?'
'Once or twice when I was home early on a Friday evening she'd come over ... but it was mainly in Lisbon. I'd go out on a sales call and drop by her house. That was it.'
'And the daughter,' I said, 'Catarina?'
He looked like a man whose parachute had just failed to open.
'The daughter?' he said.
'Her name was Catarina.'
Was?'
'That's what I said.'
'Now look, I haven't seen Catarina for ... for...'
'Go on ... for how long?'
He swallowed hard and put his hand through his styled hair.
'We heard you went to bed with her,' I said. 'When was the last time?'
He slapped his thighs, stood up, shouted something inarticulate and strode across the room gesticulating. Suddenly we were in soap opera.
'Sit down please, Senhor Branco,' I said, getting out of my seat and pointing at his.