The Night Watchman (19 page)

‘Dad, you don’t always have to try to be amusing,’ he informed me, as if he were doing me a favour.

‘A playwright named Oscar Wilde once wrote, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” Astonishingly enough, I came to the same conclusion that Mr Wilde did when I was just a little kid.’

‘Was it your father who had the record collection?’

‘What record collection?’ I asked, going for my Oscar award.

‘Mom once said that you know all those old songs because your father had a thousand record albums, even some . . . I forget what they’re called. When they’re played at a different speed.’

‘Seventy-eights. Yeah, he had seventy-eights of a lot of amazing people.’

‘Like who?’

‘The big bands, all the best blues singers . . . But I loved Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson the best. I used to imitate Jolson pretty well.’ I knelt down, spread my arms as if to summon my son into my arms and tossed off a bit of ‘Swanee’.

‘Sounds awful,’ Nati said with a disappointed frown – because I’d performed for him instead of confiding in him.

I was a bit disappointed in myself, too. ‘Awful was very popular during the 1930s,’ I replied. As a concession, I added, ‘We used to listen to Dad’s records all winter. Sometimes we’d dance, too.’

‘Dance?’

‘Yeah, me and Ernie and Dad. He taught us to jitterbug and foxtrot and tango. We had a great time. Dad may have been a drunk but he had
style!
Mom would sometimes dance with me and Ernie, too – but only when my father wasn’t home.’

‘But you
never
dance.’

‘I was a kid, Nati! I did lots of things I don’t do now.’

‘Did you save any of the records?’

‘No. I’m not sure what happened to them.’
We poured gasoline on them and had ourselves a vinyl fire so big that the prairie dogs smelled it all the way over in Utah,
was the reply I kept hidden under my tongue; if I’d said that, Nati would have asked why we didn’t just donate them to a charity or a school, and I wasn’t sure he’d buy the excuse that we were just kids. And maybe I’d have had to explain, too, about my brother not wanting to set them ablaze and crying for three straight days afterward.

By then, I figured I’d used up my daily allocation of lies, so I produced the long sigh I was famous for in our family and said, ‘Have you eaten breakfast yet?’

‘No.’

‘I can scramble you some eggs with piri-piri just like you like.’

‘Nah, I’ll just have Weetabix.’ He started away, looking miserable, then turned back. ‘I’m sorry I was mean to you yesterday.’

I wanted to hug him for being so kind to me, but he would have squirmed. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Listen, Nati, I may not recall much about the way my life was before you came along, but I remember
everything
about you.’

He nodded, trying to hide his continued disappointment behind a smile that seemed so generous that I almost regretted not telling him the truth.

On checking my email, I discovered that Fonseca had sent me a photo of the Asian characters written in blood on the wall of Coutinho’s living room, as well as a link where I could download every page of his address book. Given the victim’s background, I presumed for the moment that the writing was Japanese. On the site for Lisbon’s New University, I located the office number and email for the Japanese language teacher, Yosoi Kimura. When he didn’t answer my call, I left a brief message and asked him to phone me back. I also sent him an email and attached Fonseca’s photograph.

It was nearly nine by then, and I had to leave to interview Sandi.

Susana Coutinho answered my knocks on her front door in khaki trousers and a T-shirt, wearing neither lipstick nor make-up – still convinced, it seemed, she’d fare better by impersonating the woman she used to be. Crescents of skin under her eyes betrayed a bad night, however. After inviting me in with a peeved swirl of her hands, she said, ‘I had a hell of a time getting Sandi to agree to talk to you, Monroe.’

Her nasty frown was an attempt to make me feel guilty. ‘I’ll try to be quick,’ I assured her.

Sandi was seated by the table on the garden deck, in the slanting shade of the palm tree, rigid and glum, as if she’d been punished unfairly. She turned away the moment she spotted me coming out to her. She must have showered just before my arrival: her hair was wet and parted on the side, which made her look like a studious young boy. I suspected her mother had insisted that she comb it. She was still wearing her father’s blue sweater, which hung down from her shoulders to her knees. On her feet were bright pink sneakers with yellow laces. Her socks were emerald green.

At that moment, her need for colour meant that she and Ernie had a lot in common.

I whispered to Senhora Coutinho, ‘I’d like to talk to your daughter alone, if you don’t mind.’

‘Out of the question!’ she shot back.

‘She’ll express herself more freely without you listening in.’

‘Maybe so, but I won’t leave her alone.’

‘You can watch us out the kitchen window. If you see anything you don’t like, you can come right out.’

She heaved a sigh. ‘This is absurd. Sandi doesn’t know anything about her father’s murder. You’re wasting your time.’

‘People are often unaware of what they know.’

She snorted as if I’d spoken an embarrassing platitude. ‘All I know,’ she told me, ‘is that if you upset her, I’ll have the Minister of Justice fire your ass!’

I took her arm, hoping to regain a little of the solidarity we’d achieved the day before. She looked at me long and hard with her bruised eyes – trying to come to terms with the unwelcome surprises I provoked in her, it seemed to me. ‘Tell me, Monroe, are you like this with everyone you’ve just met?’ she asked.

‘Like what?’

‘Invasive. And unpredictable.’

‘I hope so, but I’ll ask my wife just to make sure.’

She showed me a grudging smile – amused and irritated at the same time. Without my asking again, she returned to the kitchen.

‘Good morning,’ I said to Sandi on sitting down at the deck.

She faced me with dull eyes, as if to show me she had no intention of participating actively in our conversation. While driving over, I’d decided to ask her first about hiding her turquoise ring and keeping a knife under her bed, because such protective measures implied that she’d been threatened. To my questions about them, however, she replied, ‘That’s none of your business.’ She used the tone of a teenager trying – and failing – to sound haughty.

‘Maybe we should start over,’ I told her. ‘Did your father seem nervous or worried over the last few days?’

She rolled her eyes. I could easily imagine her deleting me in her mind.

‘I take it that means you noticed no difference in his behaviour,’ I tried.

‘No, none.’

‘Did you ever overhear him being threatened by anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Did you ever lend out your front door key to a friend or to someone who was doing work at your house – carpenter, plumber . . .?’

‘No, never.’

While scanning my notes, I found something that I hoped would jar her out of her defensive pose. ‘Why did you ask your mother yesterday if the bullet hit your father in the back?’

She gazed down as though I’d caught her in a trap. ‘I . . . I don’t remember,’ she said hesitantly.

‘Does a bullet in the back have some special meaning for you?’

‘No, how could it?’ she said.

‘Maybe it would mean your father was betrayed by someone he knew.’

‘But my mother told me he wasn’t shot in the back, so what difference could it make?’

While I was searching for the right way to squeeze past this stalemate, she said in a frail, fading voice, making a first fearful step towards me: ‘I always thought that my father was so strong that nothing could hurt him.’

‘You thought he’d always be able to defend himself. But a person who is shot in the back doesn’t get that chance. Is that what you meant?’

‘I’m not sure – probably.’

‘Do you have any idea why someone might have wanted to hurt your father?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Can you think of anyone who might have hated him?’

‘No one could hate my father,’ she said, as if stating an obvious fact. ‘He wasn’t that kind of person.’

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Senhora Coutinho staring at us out of the kitchen window. She was smoking hard.

‘So you don’t have any idea who might have hurt him?’ I asked.

‘None. I’m sorry. I’d help if I could.’

Anxious to put her more at ease before I asked her another question she might resent, I said, ‘You can sleep back in your own bed tonight, if you want.’

‘Thanks.’

‘There’s something else I need you to tell me,’ I continued. ‘But I’m afraid you’ll get angry at me again, like you did yesterday.’

‘Mom always says I get too angry and upset about things. But I’ll try not to.’

‘I need to know if someone has been threatening you,’ I said.

She shook her head bravely. ‘No, no one.’

‘Sandi, it’s important for me to know if someone has been making your life difficult,’ I said.

‘That’s just it,’ she burst out, moaning. ‘No one was! I wish there had been, but there hadn’t! It was all in my head!’

‘What was?’

‘Terrible dreams! And they wouldn’t stop!’

‘Your mother mentioned them. Someone breaks into your house and hurts you and your parents.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Have you ever been able to see who it is?’

‘No, it’s always at night. I can only see a vague shape entering the house.’

‘A man?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘A ghost – something supernatural?’

‘I don’t know.’

Her face peeled open to misery again, and I suddenly understood more about her guilt. ‘You told your mother about your nightmares, but not your father. Is that right?’

She nodded through her tears. ‘I never had a chance to warn him what might happen to him.’

‘Are you sure your mother never told him about your nightmares?’

‘Yes. She said she didn’t want to upset him.’ Sandi spoke as if she had been trying hard to forgive her mother. And failing.

‘Is there anything else you can tell me about your nightmares?’

‘No, I try not to remember them.’ She began tracing a finger over the wooden grain in the table. I sensed she wanted to ask me something but didn’t dare.

‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know,’ I said.

‘Are you going to catch the person who killed my father?’

‘I’m going to try.’

‘So you’re not sure you’ll be able to do it?’

‘No. I can never be sure.’

‘Do you have any idea yet who it might be?’

‘I suspect it’s someone your father knew. And maybe you and your mother, too. That’s one of the reasons I needed to speak with you right away.’

I was hoping she’d suggest a name without my asking, but she began to trace her finger more determinedly over the table. I looked over my notes in order to give her a pause from the pressure I was putting her under. ‘There was a painting that might have been moved in your living room,’ I finally said. ‘A drawing by Julio Almeida is there now – of Fernando Pessoa. Do you know what artwork was in that spot before?’

She looked up, surprised. ‘The Almeida drawing has always been there,’ she said definitively.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yeah, Dad loved it in that spot,’ she said, as though rising to his defence.

‘It’s just that the rectangle of darker paint on the wall behind the Almeida would indicate that a larger painting had been there. Your mother said you sometimes went to art galleries with your father, so I thought that you might be able to identify it.’

‘I can’t see why it’s important,’ she told me, trying to sound superior again.

‘Anything moved at a crime scene is important.’

‘But nothing was moved!’ she hollered.

Susana Coutinho came rushing toward us. ‘That’s enough!’ she called ahead.

Turning to Sandi, I decided to risk sounding ridiculous. ‘You deserve protection from whoever was menacing you. I’ll be back to talk to you. And I promise to do everything I can to help you.’ I handed her my card. ‘I don’t let vague shapes stop me. Or bad dreams. Or people who get pleasure from hurting young girls!’

On the way out, I asked Senhora Coutinho to think again about what painting might have gone missing and she said, ‘I have the feeling it was a portrait, but that’s really just a guess.’

‘A portrait of who?’

‘An old woman . . .?’ she said, as if it were an open-ended question.

‘Someone your husband knew? A family member?’

‘I don’t think so. Look, Monroe, maybe it wasn’t even an old woman. Like I said, I’m mostly just guessing.’

‘Do you have any photos taken in your living room that might show what the painting was?’

‘Why are you making such a big deal of this one little thing?’

‘I think the killer took it – and for a very specific reason. Because if he was just after artwork he could sell for lots of money, he’d have taken the Paula Rego and the Almeida. And I also think that Sandi is lying about not knowing what was there.’

‘Why would she lie?’

‘I thought maybe you’d be able to tell me.’

‘I’m just her mother, not a mind-reader,’ she said in an irritated voice. In a more conciliatory tone, she added, ‘But I promise to check for photos. And to find out if Sandi lied to you.’

After I thanked her, my phone rang; it was David Zydowicz. He told me he’d just completed his full autopsy and had confirmed all his findings from the day before. He agreed that Coutinho’s body could be released to his wife.

On hanging up, I gave Senhora Coutinho that news and reminded her that Luci and Fonseca would be coming over in the afternoon. I told her I’d be speaking to her again Monday morning, if not earlier. It was five to ten when I stepped again onto the Rua do Vale. I phoned Luci to tell her to question Morel and Senhora Grimault about the painting in the living room that had been moved. With the time left to me, I decided to visit those apartments on the street where no one had answered our knocks the day before, but none of the neighbours now at home had ever met Pedro Coutinho, or heard any gunshot on Thursday morning.