There was a sudden convulsive stirring of the yogurt in the vat. The surface of it erupted like a miniature volcano of rich white cream, a sudden frothing and bubbling and splashing that turned out to be the dripping figure of a man, his hair, his face, his shoulders draped in thick and clinging wet yogurt, the tall, cadaverous man from the Bocca do Inferno, still spluttering and gasping for breath, but his hands reaching out for my throat none the less. I heard the shot as Loureiro fired, and was glad to see that it was a warning shot, no more, fired into the ceiling. And then, the wet ghost was on me.

I let him grab my throat just as he wanted, and felt his fingers sink in tight, professionally, like a steel vise. With my left hand I stopped him from reaching the ground by grabbing hold of his greasy, slippery belt, and with my right I swung a haymaker up from down by my knees somewhere and hit him so hard in the solar plexus that his feet went up in the air and almost reached the ceiling.

His grip on my throat broke, and he fell headfirst towards the ground; but, before he landed, I hit him again, one for the General, a blow to the side of the descending head that sent him slithering along the concrete floor in his own lubricant, to crash into the wall on the other side and then, thereafter, lie quite still.

Fenrek came rushing down the stairs, followed by a crowd of worried policemen, and I told him calmly:

“Down on the bottom of the river, with a reed between his lips. He’s one of the men who killed the General.”

Fenrek stared at him. “My God, what a mess, where the devil was he hiding...? Oh, I see, the copper tube, I noticed it and thought nothing of it.”

He said plaintively, excusing himself: “I’m not a dairy farmer, how should I know that vats of yogurt don’t have copper tubes sticking out of them under normal circumstances?”

I said: “What, just one of them?” He grunted.

The Lieutenant was already slipping handcuffs onto the cadaverous man’s wrists.

I said to Fenrek: “Why don’t we leave them to clean up in here? Presumably they know what they have to do?”

“Indeed they do, Cain.”

“And when our friend of the floor comes round he just might give us a lot of information.”

“And he just might not.”

I said easily: “I don’t suppose he’ll want to very much. So we’ll have to persuade him, won’t we?” I said to Lieutenant Loureiro: “Can I take you up on that coffee offer later?”

“Of course, Senhor, anytime.”

“Don’t forget to fish that train case out of the vat.”

“No, I won’t forget.”

“Have you had your inoculation?”

“Sim, Senhor.”

“Well, anything looks suspicious to you, leave it alone. Just call in the Army doctors, they’re waiting at the station. But I’ve a feeling they’re not going to be needed. Not yet.”

Fenrek, at the door, said impatiently; “We’ll stake out this place, of course, but...”

“After the horse has bolted? If he was ever here at all?”

“He still might come blundering in here, not knowing what’s happened.”

I said: “You’ve never lived in the African bush, Fenrek. That’s the first thing you learn there; you don’t blunder into anything, it just might kill you. I’m afraid well have to look for Major Loveless somewhere else. But now, we’ve got a guide, haven’t we?”

Fenrek looked back at the slimy, dripping white form on the floor. He said moodily: “And everything he tells us will be a lie.”

I said: “That’s what you think.”

CHAPTER 7

I was eight o’clock in the morning, and the small backroom in the Alfama police station was crowded with observers; an observer from the Army, another from the Medical Service, another from the State Security Force, and no less than three from the Department of Public Health.

The tall, cadaverous man had been cleaned up now, and was sitting stolidly, his face expressionless, on a wooden chair close by the desk that Fenrek had taken over. He was wearing the grey and yellow Portuguese prison garb already, and someone had given him a cigarette. A police stenographer was taking notes on a stenotype machine. There was an armed soldier at the door, another at the window, and two more in the corridor outside. But I noticed, none the less, that the prisoner’s eyes constantly wandered over the room, calm and appraising, as though he wanted to know exactly where everything and everybody was. It was the young Lieutenant who conducted the interrogation, and it was polite and formal and quite routine; at first.

“Name?”

“Gerald Histermann.”

“Age?”

“Thirty-four.”

“Marital status?”

“Single.” (That was a lie; there’d been a brief pause.)

“Nationality?”

“Australian.”

He spoke quite good Portuguese, with a strong Angolan flavor to it. The Lieutenant surprised me by switching to English.

“And you came to this country...when?”

“Three weeks ago.”

“For what purpose?”

Histermann said laconically: “Just looking for work.”

“And you bought the Lateria Agosta for the sum of thirty-five thousand escudos, paid in cash. For what purpose?”

“I didn’t buy it. I’m an employee there.”

“You have a work permit for Portugal?”

“No.”

“And your employer is...?”

He shrugged. “I seem to have forgotten.”

“The name of the man you shot is...?”

The prisoner snorted. “I didn’t shoot nobody. I let him in when he knocked, there was a commotion outside, he slammed the door, grabbed the shotgun I was carrying, and killed himself.”