“Oh? How’s that?”
I shrugged. “The night train from Madrid got in ten minutes before he turned up, and we’re ten minutes’ walk from the station, so it’s a likelihood he was on it. He was carrying a small case too, didn’t you see?”
“Oh.”
“Which seems to have gone. And he was talking to someone, so where’s that someone now?”
Fenrek made a silent signal to the Lieutenant, and the young officer went to the door that led upstairs and stood there for a moment, listening. He went to the door they had broken down, and called in a squad of men and said to them:
“Upstairs, there’s probably a murderer hiding up there somewhere. Two sergeants looking for him, but if he knows he can’t get through our cordon he’ll turn and fight, so watch out.”
The squad stomped noisily up the stairs and left us there, the three of us, looking around the room and wondering. Fenrek went back to searching the cupboards, pulling everything out and examining it carefully before putting it back precisely in its place again.
I went to the big copper pots and admired them, huge gleaming’ cauldrons of thick milk, turning sour with the bacteria and curing overnight at room temperature. Two of them had mechanical stirrers gently rocking back and forth; one of them had a half-inch copper pipe hooked over its rim, the other end disappearing down into the pungent, creamy-white yogurt like a vent for excess gas; three of them were covered with cheesecloth to keep out the flies, the yogurt that was ready for bottling tomorrow when the day’s work should begin.
Fenrek said: “I suppose we might as well take a sample from each of these vats?”
I shrugged. “You’ll find no botulinum there. This stuff’s getting ready for local delivery, not what we’re looking for at all.”
The Lieutenant was busily going through the dead man’s pockets; a handkerchief, a bunch of keys, a small box of tablets, a pocket comb, a perfectly blank notebook with a ballpoint pen in its spine, a torn railway ticket (Madrid-Lisbon one way), a pack of Spanish cigarettes and a book of matches, a fountain pen with no ink in it, a stub of pencil, a handful of silver and copper coins. He laid them all out on the table, and I said:
“Where’s his wallet?”
The Lieutenant shrugged. “Ninguem, Senhor, he doesn’t have one.”
Fenrek interrupted his searching and came to the table and looked down at the mutilated body. He said at last: “Well, that makes it certain, doesn’t it? No one travels without identity papers. Someone doesn’t want us to know who he was.” He looked towards the stairway. “Just two small rooms up there, they’d have found him already.” He said, exploding: “But he can’t get through that cordon, it’s impossible!” He didn’t sound very convinced.
At that precise moment, the two sergeants came back from the stairway. One of them said: “Nothing, Senhor Colonello, nobody there. The men are continuing to search for...for whatever they may find.”
I said: “And there is no one hiding there? Are you sure?”
“Certo, Senhor, absolutely sure. Two small rooms only, a bed in one and some office furniture in the other. A lavatory with a small window, but heavily barred like all the others.”
Fenrek stamped his foot on the floor two or three times, listening to the ring of it. He said: “Concrete underfoot. If there’s a cellar anywhere, an entrance in the floor, it’s up there somewhere on the other level.” You can never tell with houses built on slopes as steep as these. On one side of a house there can be three, four, or even five stories, while on the other there’s nothing but a single floor, with a perfectly level roof running from one side to the other.
Fenrek turned to the Lieutenant: “Street level on that side, Tenente?”
Loureiro said: “About two meters above us here, Senhor Colonello.” He said dubiously: “There may be a trapdoor in the lower part of the wall up there leading into the sewer that runs along the building, but I don’t think so. I would know about it, unless it had been opened up recently. This is my quarter, I’ve lived in Alfama all my life. There is a sewer, but it’s more than ten meters away, with no way into it from this building. If a passage had been drilled, even in secret...I think I would have known about it, Senhor Colonello.”
Fenrek said, exasperated: “God dammit, there must be one, that’s the only possible way out, and it means he’s gone!” He looked at me and said: “Well, let’s go and find that damned passage, shall we?”
I said pleasantly: “You go. I’d like to look around here a bit more.” He nodded, and went off with the two sergeants to join the others searching upstairs.
The Lieutenant stayed behind, meticulously noting down on his pad the contents of the dead man’s pockets. I watched him for a while as he counted out the coins carefully, one by one, thirty-eight Spanish pesetas and fifteen Portuguese escudos. I went and stood over by the copper vats, admiring them some more, leaning against one of them while I watched him, the one with the half-inch copper pipe in it. I said to him:
“All your life in the Alfama, Tenente?”
He smiled. “Sim, Senhor.”
“In most parts of the world they don’t allow a policeman to work his own territory. You’re lucky.”
“Sim, Senhor, I am indeed. My house is quite close to here, just off the Largo Sac Miguel. When we have finished here, if you would care for a cup of coffee...I should be honored.”
“You are very kind.” I put up my left hand and took the bent end of the copper tubing between my first two fingers, slipping my thumb over the end of it and closing the vent. I said: “Perhaps I’ll be able to do that, it’s a cool night, and a cup of good strong Portuguese coffee is always very welcome. I drink ten or twenty cups of coffee every day, almost my only weakness. But a comforting weakness, isn’t it?”
He smiled and looked briefly at my left hand, wondering idly what I was doing, then turned away to go on with his work. And then, suddenly, he realized what it was all about. He made a startled sort of exclamation and swung round, quickly pulling out the pistol he’d slipped back into its holster. He stared in astonishment at the vat, the pistol held level with its top, and I said:
“I don’t suppose you’ll need that, Tenente, but it’s good to be careful, isn’t it? Let’s see how long he can hold out down there without air. Another thirty seconds? Forty, perhaps?”
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?”
