Dra Angélica Fonte do Amaral tapped the end of her Biro on the laminated surface of the map of Central São Paulo. ‘The second man appeared just here, hooked onto what remains of the Ponte João Dias. One of his legs was found further up stream. I’ll have to check the police report to tell you where exactly. We’re still missing the other. He is foreign, too – of European Mediterranean appearance. Other than the fact that they are foreign there is nothing I can tell you at this stage that suggests the two deaths are connected.’
Detective Bonita uncrossed her arms to take out a notebook and pencil.
‘OK, Angé,’ she sighed. The appearance of another body was thoroughly unwelcome. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got. Our man first, please.’ The pathologist walked to a steel autopsy table, flicked on the light and pulled back the cover. Detective Bonita focussed her attention briefly on the cadaver and then concentrated on recording what she could see. Agent Demario remained close to the way out, his eyes fixed on his mobile, his right thumb trembling as it hovered over the keys. Detective Bonita held up a hand to delay the account the forensic pathologist was about to give to them.
‘So, Eduardo Carlos,’ she said, turning to her subordinate. ‘I am sure that what you are doing is important,’ she said, indicating the phone, ‘but, please, as we are here, study this dead man. Tell me what clues his body gives you and what questions you must be burning to ask.’
Agent Demario pocketed his phone, put his hand over his mouth and nose, looked towards the body and started to shake his head.
‘Come on,’ insisted Detective Bonita. ‘You won’t see anything from there.’
The young man inched a few paces forward.
‘I…’ He hesitated. His eyes were watering. ‘I need to know why he has no face.’
‘And?’ pressed Detective Bonita, leaving her hand in the air.
‘And.. I need to know when he died, and.’ He turned away, pressing thumb and finger into closed eyes.
‘And? Come on, Agent Demario,’ insisted Detective Bonita. ‘Dra Angélica hasn’t got all day.’
‘No,’ replied Eduardo Carlos, blinking. ‘I can’t look any more.’ The doctor remained silent but her eyes implored Detective Bonita not to push her young colleague any further.
‘This is basic stuff, Eduardo Carlos,’ snapped Detective Bonita. ‘Angé, I apologise. Agent Demario didn’t get home until five this morning. There’s a strong possibility that he has a bad hangover.’
‘I didn’t know that I’d be coming to the morgue!’ he shouted back, then: ‘This is too much.’ He started to back away. ‘I’m sorry, boss. I can’t stay here.’ And with that he fled from the room.
‘Rita!’ cried the pathologist. ‘He’s barely out of law school! You are so hard on him.’
‘He’s a homicide detective, Angé. He needs to toughen up or he needs to transfer. I am always hard on them at the start. It’s my way. He’ll be OK once he’s been to the bathroom. In my last case a cleaning lady found the heads of two policemen in the sinks in the toilets in Eldorado Shopping. Imagine! Eduardo Carlos would faint at the sight of a severed little finger. I can’t have that.’
‘You know best. This is a gruesome business, though, Rita. I haven’t seen anything quite this –’ the pathologist paused to choose the right word ‘– complicated for a few years.’
She drew breath and turned to her subject. ‘OK,’ she started, ‘so far we know him to be a white male aged 70, height one metre ninety, weight around 108kg with most of his hair remaining, as you can see, and almost all his teeth. He was a heavy drinker and an occasional or light – maybe a cigar – smoker and he had a ring mark on the wedding finger. These,’ continued the pathologist, pulling still wet items from a forensic sack, ‘are what’s left of his clothes…’
Dra Angelica’s phone was ringing so Detective Bonita pulled on a vinyl glove to inspect the labels and make notes. ‘…which tell us something about the man. His feet,’ continued the pathologist, holding her phone to her chest, ‘I must tell you about his feet, but let me deal with this first.’
Detective Bonita listened to the call. Tatiana Nunes from Cidade Alerta! had discovered from the Bombeiros that two bodies had been registered at the morgue. Dra. Angelica did not confirm this either way, but it was clear from the shortness of her replies that the reporter wanted more. Detective Bonita knew that her friend was very experienced in dealing with journalists and so was surprised to hear panic rise in her voice when she said: ‘No, Tatiana, it is not reasonable to assume at this stage the police are hunting a serial killer.’ She disconnected the call.
‘She’s onto something, Angé,’ said Detective Bonita, ‘isn’t she? As much as I don’t want to admit –’ The pathologist stopped her with a sweep of her hand and added: ‘Now, what was I going to tell you about? The feet? Well, they measure almost three hundred millimetres. If there had been shoes, which there were not, they would have been a size forty-eight – that’s the equivalent of an English size thirteen, or thirteen-and-a-half in the U.S. They exist in this size, here, but they would be very rare.’
‘So he was, basically, a very tall, broad man with massive feet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was English?’ The M.E. shook her head.
‘No, not necessarily. You’re right, the clothes labels suggest he could be, but there’s nothing definite and there’s no wallet.’
‘Can you say when he died?’ Angélica Fonte do Amaral did not answer straight away.
‘I can say with greater certainty how he died.’ She moved to stand behind the dead man.
‘Look: a single shot to the forehead. Here. I’ve taken out the bullet and it is being processed. I can’t say for certain but it looked to me to have been shot by a .38 revolver.’
‘Did you find any signs of a struggle?’
‘Yes. His wrists and ankles were bound with plastic ties. The marks on his ankles suggest that he may have been hoisted up post-mortem. But the tears in his trousers and abrasions on his knees also suggest that he had been dragged, quite a distance, ante-mortem. The scar tissue will give us lots of information about where the man was killed. The face seems to have been cut with a very sharp knife or surgical instrument then torn away in an upwards direction, that is, from chin to hairline.’
Detective Bonita put the end of her pencil in her mouth and shook her head.
‘Why would the killer remove the face? To take away the identity?’ The pathologist shrugged.
‘But what about the time of death, Angé?’ continued Detective Bonita. ‘You can give me something approximate, can’t you?’
‘No. In fact I can’t.’ Detective Bonita stopped scribbling and looked up.
‘This is the complicated part. His body temperature and the rigor in his muscles suggest that he had been dead between three and eight hours prior to being found. Luckily the Bombeiros thought to take his temperature and the river temperature. So I can be accurate about that. But there is a problem. The decomposition process was slowed right down by freezing. And I can’t tell you – just yet – exactly for how long.’
‘So – no precise time of death. Do you see a way round that?’ The pathologist shrugged again.
‘You know me.’
‘Just to check that I understand - you are saying that this man was killed and stored in a deep freeze until he fell or was dropped into the river, where he defrosted, bloated up and was found by Dr Magalhães?’
‘More or less. The freezing has been helpful in some ways. For example, I can tell you that he had had nothing to eat for some time, days possibly, before being killed, and that he was very dehydrated.’
At the lab. She located Eduardo Carlos just around the corner of the bruised aluminium door post. He had been listening to the conversation between the two women inside and was now scribbling anxiously, his notebook close to his face.
‘It is good to see you writing things down, but I hope you don’t think that I find your absence from the presentation of forensic evidence acceptable, Eduardo,’ she said, pushing an unruly strand of hair behind her ear.
‘No, boss,’ he said, looking up and blinking as though headlights were shining into his eyes. ‘But I thought I would take notes anyway. I have a theory, you see.’
‘Well keep it to yourself. Go back in and see what Dra Angé has to say about the other man. I’m going out for a smoke.’
‘Very little, amiga,’ shouted the pathologist from inside the lab. ‘Only observations. I haven’t really started yet.’ Agent Demario pushed back through the plastic curtain and walked to join Dra Angélica, who was now leaning over what was left of the body of the second man.
‘OK, young man, here’s what I know. Time of death - looks from what we know already to be ten days ago or so. Leg severed post mortem. Cause of death most likely to be this –’ she pointed, ‘– a bullet through the heart…right here…’ She paused but her eyes continued to hunt around the dead man for signs she could treat as certainties.
‘As to identification, well, he’s European Mediterranean, late sixties, about one metre seventy, he has only the lower set of teeth, he is wearing a dress shirt and jacket which –’ the pathologist paused to open and lift the left side of the garment ‘– appears to be Yves Saint Laurent and…’ Dra Angélica hovered over the head ‘dyed. Definitely. Dyed hair.’
11:15 a.m.
Detective Bonita asked Eduardo Carlos to drive her unmarked Opel Astra estate car so that she could lecture him on path. lab. protocol without the distraction of having to negotiate seven lanes of surface flooding and queuing cars along the marginal. He repaid the gesture by driving as recklessly as he knew how. With a hand covering her eyes from fear, she asked him what information the pathologist had given him and he told her as much as he could remember.
‘Dyed hair?’ thought Detective Bonita to herself. Where had she seen something about dyed hair?
‘He’s Sergeant Yamamoto’s missing Frenchman, Eduardo! Head towards Avenida Paulista. There’s a Côte hotel there, isn’t there? I’ll phone the French Consulate again.’
Eduardo Carlos jumped across a lane and hit the accelerator. He was confident that she would let him take one of the cases. He might have appeared green and ridiculous in the lab., but the truth was that there were two bodies now and Detective Bonita simply had no one else to do the work. Yes, there was another agent starting tomorrow, the wife of some big shot in the Military Police but so what? This woman had no experience in homicide investigation at all, had she? Hadn’t she, literally, got the promotion by sleeping with the boss? She would be doing the paperwork and making the coffee if he had his way. Bloody women!
‘So what did you think of my theory, boss?’ he asked, increasing the speed of the windscreen wipers to deal with the surface spray from an overtaking truck. When it had passed, Detective Bonita wound down her window a few centimetres and lit a cigarette.
‘Remind me again - that you thought the first victim was a man of great importance who had been ‘slaughtered’?’ Eduardo Carlos slammed the brakes suddenly.
‘Exactly!’
‘Do you want to elaborate on this before I call Interpol?’
‘His clothes say he was important. And the way he was killed, boss, with a single shot to the head, then hoisted up by his ankles. Upside down. Like a carcass. God help him, with his face cut away. Then frozen!’
‘The pathologist was speculating about the ligature marks, Eduardo. And so are you. We don’t have any certainties. I don’t believe in investigating theories. It’s facts we look for, Eduardo. Evidence.’
‘Yes, but boss. You don’t know when he died and you don’t have a crime scene. You need someone to take on this investigation.’
‘Yes, but – ’
Agent Demario jumped in. ‘Let it be me, boss. I have evidence. When I was at Dr. Magalhães’ apartment I overheard him describing the buildings on the other side of the river from his condominium. I wrote it down. Take a look.’ He pulled the small green notebook from his breast pocket and passed it to Detective Bonita. She read the notes out loud.
‘Chem. process. plant - closed, favela – São B, O Menino Jesus crèche, yard and buildings for municipal tannery…sugar-cane distillery, city slaughterhouse – no longer in use…’
© Emília Shap: Lisbon, February 2007
Wednesday 21 March 2007
Wednesday 14 March 2007
Detective Bonita - Chapter Two
Just about every street corner in the district known as ‘down-town’ Santo Amaro had an establishment where you could get a beer, a coffee, an empada or a bread roll. Some offered an ultra contemporary setting and were the choice of advertising executives and secretaries from banks and law firms in the financial district nearby. Pastelaria do Rosário, by contrast, was a stalwart of the heroically unfashionable type of enterprise, and would be considered acceptable by more or less everyone else. The shop and office workers, corpulent taxi drivers and elderly ladies with statuesque hair who together comprised Dona Piedosa’s loyal brigade of regulars would congregate there every day, knowing exactly what to expect and expecting that nothing would ever change.
Detective Bonita preferred O Rosário in particular because it was open when she needed it to be, because it had the sort of clientele that did not include senior police officers, lawyers’ secretaries or people who wafted their faces when she lit a cigarette. Most importantly, it was because anything that Dona Piedosa hadn’t heard about wasn’t worth knowing. She arrived today to find large groups of men and women filling the air with morning-after gossip, smoke and overwrought cheerfulness and condensation on the windows was denying everyone the possibility of seeing either out or in. Nodding a greeting to Dona Piedosa’s son, Detective Bonita shook the water carefully from her umbrella, looked around and found a space in a corner booth where she could go, light a cigarette and wait for Agent Demario to arrive.
Dona Piedosa brought over a coffee and placed a plump hand to steady herself on Detective Bonita’s arm. Detective Bonita described the situation in the Rio Pinheiros. Had Dona Piedosa heard any rumours? She had not closed all night, the old woman exclaimed, her capacious bosom swelling with every breath. She had not heard anything about a foreign man in the river! But she would keep her nose to the ground.
‘Like a bloodhound, filha. Nothing happens in this neighbourhood without me knowing. You’ll be the first to find out.’
Less than five minutes later, Agent Demario was negotiating his way through the knot of customers standing around the high tables next to the bar.
‘I hate this place,’ he said, slumping down at the very end of the booth and signalling for two coffees. ‘I have Italian blood. I want a latte in stylish surroundings, not a média in a lanchonete.’
‘I know,’ replied Detective Bonita. ‘But I’m paying.’ As he had chosen to sit so far away from her, she had been forced to shout her reply. He always did this; she did not know why. She cast her eyes sideways to see small white teeth tearing lumps off the buttered bread roll in his hand. Short for a man of twenty-five, he had narrow but pronounced shoulders, a muscular neck and short black hair with a perfectly straight parting. His face was clean shaven but grey; his thick brows had locked the contours of his forehead into a steep and permanent scowl that opened only when he laughed which, fortunately, was fairly frequently, but generally only when he said something he considered funny himself. His dark eyes sat deep and slightly askew to either side of a long and rather patrician nose; his blink was frequent and laboured, particularly when required to create more than one whole sentence in front of the open and unflinching pale green gaze of Detective Bonita.
She would not thank him for coming in, she would not! It was his job! She ripped open a packet of sugar with a shaking hand and tipped it into her cafezinho. He had still been in bed, he explained, when she had called him, having not returned from a party until five a.m. He would not have been there at all, he continued, winking, if his scheme to conclude the New Year’s festivities connected to some heavenly inner part of his cousin’s friend Ana-Paula had worked out as he had planned.
‘Well,’ said Detective Bonita, shuddering slightly at the thought, ‘your scheming didn’t work and you’re the only agent in São Paulo available for work, so too bad.’ She paused to light another cigarette. ‘Our dead body is foreign, Eduardo, and Cidade Alerta! already has the story. Because he’s foreign you can expect the global news networks to want to join the party too. It feels to me like we’re in a race with the media to discover who this man in the river is, and how he died. If we don’t find out first, I will be on the six o’clock edition explaining why.’ Agent Demario was studying his mobile phone. Detective Bonita continued: ‘So I expect it will be a long day. If you’ve got a problem, talk to Captain Lourenço.’ She realised her tone had become sharp. ‘Look,’ she continued, ‘I’m sorry you didn’t get your girl. But I can’t do this by myself.’
‘OK, boss,’ conceded the young man, shrugging. ‘You know me. Fearless by name, fearless by nature.’ Detective Bonita sighed.
‘Where do you want me?’ he asked.
‘Go and have a conversation with the guy who made the call. Get every detail. The Military Police will have his address. They might even accompany you to clear the reporters out of the way.’
‘Do you think he’s involved?’ She shook her head.
‘I shouldn’t think so. Just unlucky that the body got stuck at the end of his condo. He may want to speculate of course. Don’t worry about his niece if she’s not there. I’ll call Missing Persons and some of the Consulates.’ She drained her coffee and put five reais on the table. ‘Meet me at the morgue at about eleven.’ Putting her hands on the table to push herself up to her feet she added: ‘Don’t talk to any journalists, Eduardo. Tell them we’ll issue a statement tonight.’
‘What if they have information for us?’
‘Then listen to what they have to say. But don’t trade. Just don’t talk Eduardo! I can’t be clearer.’
Detective Bonita knew that reporters would be waiting for her outside the station and guessed that they would also have a pitch where the body was found. Could she trust her subordinate to stay silent? For her, for now, the task was easy. She would drive straight down to the underground car park and avoid the cameras. And, fortunately, Sergeant Henrique Yamamoto of Missing Persons had a number of options he considered worth exploring.
‘Ah! I have many missing male persons from foreign lands,’ he explained to Detective Bonita when she called.
‘But very few Caucasians of European origin registered missing in the last few weeks. Now – of the ones I can recall from memory, one is from New York. Let me locate the file. New York is a city in the United States of America, detective....’
‘I know,’ said Detective Bonita.
‘...so it is possible he has European ancestors. But – oh – I have his file with me now. He is a black man. You want a white skin and white hair, don’t you? So we’ll put him to one side. The second is a businessman from Buenos Aires and – looking at the photograph – is probably of northern European descent...he has very yellow hair. A possibility, don’t you agree, for your man?’ Detective Bonita remained silent. ‘Now, the third…,’ continued Sergeant Yamamoto. ‘No. Not interesting at all.’ She sighed.
‘Can you tell me who it is anyway, Sergeant? I don’t really have a lot of time.’
‘He is a French Hotelier. CEO of La Côte d’Or in Rio de Janeiro. Born in 1939. Went missing on the eve of a huge reception to celebrate one hundred years of French hotels in Brazil. But he has black hair. A lot of very black hair. More than you would expect, in fact, in a man of his age.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant, you have been most helpful. I would like to see the files on the second and third individuals. Do you have someone you can send round?’
‘On New Year’s Day, Detective? Why don’t I fax them? The photos won’t show but you will at least have the details.’
‘That sounds good. Thanks again.’
Detective Bonita’s ‘office’ comprised three shoulder-height screens, a desk, computer and phone in the middle of the fifth floor of a dingy seventies-built block situated at one corner of the Largo 13 de Maio. Her internal location was probably about as far from any source of natural light as it was possible to be, but she consoled herself with the knowledge that in summer she was protected from the sweltering heat of the sun and in winter from inhospitable draughts which forced those situated near the windows to keep their coats on. There were only three other individuals, all men, working in her section today; she knew their names but did not know them well enough to exchange small-talk and, after a brief greeting, sat down at her desk to get on with the task of identifying her corpse. She was not permitted to smoke inside the building so, when she heard the first pages of Sergeant Yamamoto’s files grinding through the fax, she stepped out onto the fire escape and lit a cigarette.
As she suspected would be the case, the Missing Person files gave her little of substance but lots of questions that she hoped the forensic pathologist would be able to answer when they met later that morning. She put calls, nevertheless, into the Argentinean, British and French Consulates, but in every case the telephone service was for emergencies and the individuals concerned promised that they would check the information and call her back. The British Consulate was not aware of anybody reported missing; the blond man was not Argentinean, but his business was based in Buenos Aires and the French Consulate confirmed that M. Camille Bleu of the Côte hotel group had been reported missing but no further information was available. She phoned Eduardo Carlos.
‘How are things, Eduardo?’
‘The place is crawling with cameras, boss. This guy is media mad. He’s a lawyer with his own practice. I think he sees it as an opportunity to promote his business. He’s getting on really well with Tatiana. She’s the journalist from Cidade Alerta. She’s really nice. Honestly, boss, he’s told her everything.’ Detective Bonita sat back in her chair and covered her eyes.
‘What have you said to her?’ Agent Demario did not reply.
‘Eduardo?’
‘Just that… Nothing. I haven’t said anything to her.’
‘Well, then, what information does your witness have? You have talked to him, haven’t you?’
‘Of course. He described what he saw. It sounds completely repugnante, boss. He saw a bloated corpse with no face. He said he will have nightmares about it for the rest of his life. He is telling the media he thinks he knows who the man was but he’s going to make some checks first.’
‘What?’ Detective Bonita couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘What’s his name?’
‘João Augusto Magalhães.’ ‘Put Dr. Magalhães on the phone, Eduardo.’
Detective Bonita and Agent Demario met less than an hour later just inside the main door of the city morgue. Both were full of disquiet and both knew that what they were about to see would burn an image on their memories they would take to their graves. Eduardo Carlos asked if he could be excused the task; they didn’t both need to see the body, did they? Detective Bonita shook her head.
‘This is a crucial part of the investigation, Eduardo,’ she said, already overwhelmed by waves of cleaning fluid and decomposing human remains rolling towards them down the long, gloomy corridor, ‘and you have much to learn.’ Both officers showed their passes to a desk clerk who smiled amiably and directed them to Lab.101.
‘The last room on the right. At the very end.’ As they walked, Agent Demario asked to know what Detective Bonita had said to Dr Magalhães.
‘That he should think carefully about what he disclosed to the media. That he would know, of course, that anything he might say to them before speaking to us would be viewed as an attempt to distort the course of our enquiries. Which would lead to his arrest. In actual fact, he has no idea who the dead guy is. But like you said, he wants to keep the media interested. We should keep a very close eye on him, nevertheless, Eduardo. Now,’ said Detective Bonita, pushing through the heavy plastic curtain of pathology laboratory 101, ‘you must meet my friend Dra Angélica do Amaral.’
The two women embraced warmly, the surgeon turning next to shake the hand of Agent Demario, who smiled. He felt he might faint at the sight of a dead cockroach, let alone a dead human, but he would never let these women see a weakness, never!
‘Before we take a look at our two friends,’ the surgeon explained, lifting a black plastic file with handwritten notes attached off a nail above her desk, ‘I will tell you what I know.’
‘Wait, Angé,’ said Detective Bonita, grasping her friend by the arm. ‘Two bodies?’
‘Two, querida. Both came in last night. Both from the Rio Pinheiros. Both foreign and-’
‘No!’ cried Rita Bonita. ‘We’re investigating one suspicious death. Not two! Where was the second pulled out?’ The Medical Examiner twisted round her poise-angle desk lamp and invited the policemen to study a city map on the wall.
ends
Detective Bonita preferred O Rosário in particular because it was open when she needed it to be, because it had the sort of clientele that did not include senior police officers, lawyers’ secretaries or people who wafted their faces when she lit a cigarette. Most importantly, it was because anything that Dona Piedosa hadn’t heard about wasn’t worth knowing. She arrived today to find large groups of men and women filling the air with morning-after gossip, smoke and overwrought cheerfulness and condensation on the windows was denying everyone the possibility of seeing either out or in. Nodding a greeting to Dona Piedosa’s son, Detective Bonita shook the water carefully from her umbrella, looked around and found a space in a corner booth where she could go, light a cigarette and wait for Agent Demario to arrive.
Dona Piedosa brought over a coffee and placed a plump hand to steady herself on Detective Bonita’s arm. Detective Bonita described the situation in the Rio Pinheiros. Had Dona Piedosa heard any rumours? She had not closed all night, the old woman exclaimed, her capacious bosom swelling with every breath. She had not heard anything about a foreign man in the river! But she would keep her nose to the ground.
‘Like a bloodhound, filha. Nothing happens in this neighbourhood without me knowing. You’ll be the first to find out.’
Less than five minutes later, Agent Demario was negotiating his way through the knot of customers standing around the high tables next to the bar.
‘I hate this place,’ he said, slumping down at the very end of the booth and signalling for two coffees. ‘I have Italian blood. I want a latte in stylish surroundings, not a média in a lanchonete.’
‘I know,’ replied Detective Bonita. ‘But I’m paying.’ As he had chosen to sit so far away from her, she had been forced to shout her reply. He always did this; she did not know why. She cast her eyes sideways to see small white teeth tearing lumps off the buttered bread roll in his hand. Short for a man of twenty-five, he had narrow but pronounced shoulders, a muscular neck and short black hair with a perfectly straight parting. His face was clean shaven but grey; his thick brows had locked the contours of his forehead into a steep and permanent scowl that opened only when he laughed which, fortunately, was fairly frequently, but generally only when he said something he considered funny himself. His dark eyes sat deep and slightly askew to either side of a long and rather patrician nose; his blink was frequent and laboured, particularly when required to create more than one whole sentence in front of the open and unflinching pale green gaze of Detective Bonita.
She would not thank him for coming in, she would not! It was his job! She ripped open a packet of sugar with a shaking hand and tipped it into her cafezinho. He had still been in bed, he explained, when she had called him, having not returned from a party until five a.m. He would not have been there at all, he continued, winking, if his scheme to conclude the New Year’s festivities connected to some heavenly inner part of his cousin’s friend Ana-Paula had worked out as he had planned.
‘Well,’ said Detective Bonita, shuddering slightly at the thought, ‘your scheming didn’t work and you’re the only agent in São Paulo available for work, so too bad.’ She paused to light another cigarette. ‘Our dead body is foreign, Eduardo, and Cidade Alerta! already has the story. Because he’s foreign you can expect the global news networks to want to join the party too. It feels to me like we’re in a race with the media to discover who this man in the river is, and how he died. If we don’t find out first, I will be on the six o’clock edition explaining why.’ Agent Demario was studying his mobile phone. Detective Bonita continued: ‘So I expect it will be a long day. If you’ve got a problem, talk to Captain Lourenço.’ She realised her tone had become sharp. ‘Look,’ she continued, ‘I’m sorry you didn’t get your girl. But I can’t do this by myself.’
‘OK, boss,’ conceded the young man, shrugging. ‘You know me. Fearless by name, fearless by nature.’ Detective Bonita sighed.
‘Where do you want me?’ he asked.
‘Go and have a conversation with the guy who made the call. Get every detail. The Military Police will have his address. They might even accompany you to clear the reporters out of the way.’
‘Do you think he’s involved?’ She shook her head.
‘I shouldn’t think so. Just unlucky that the body got stuck at the end of his condo. He may want to speculate of course. Don’t worry about his niece if she’s not there. I’ll call Missing Persons and some of the Consulates.’ She drained her coffee and put five reais on the table. ‘Meet me at the morgue at about eleven.’ Putting her hands on the table to push herself up to her feet she added: ‘Don’t talk to any journalists, Eduardo. Tell them we’ll issue a statement tonight.’
‘What if they have information for us?’
‘Then listen to what they have to say. But don’t trade. Just don’t talk Eduardo! I can’t be clearer.’
Detective Bonita knew that reporters would be waiting for her outside the station and guessed that they would also have a pitch where the body was found. Could she trust her subordinate to stay silent? For her, for now, the task was easy. She would drive straight down to the underground car park and avoid the cameras. And, fortunately, Sergeant Henrique Yamamoto of Missing Persons had a number of options he considered worth exploring.
‘Ah! I have many missing male persons from foreign lands,’ he explained to Detective Bonita when she called.
‘But very few Caucasians of European origin registered missing in the last few weeks. Now – of the ones I can recall from memory, one is from New York. Let me locate the file. New York is a city in the United States of America, detective....’
‘I know,’ said Detective Bonita.
‘...so it is possible he has European ancestors. But – oh – I have his file with me now. He is a black man. You want a white skin and white hair, don’t you? So we’ll put him to one side. The second is a businessman from Buenos Aires and – looking at the photograph – is probably of northern European descent...he has very yellow hair. A possibility, don’t you agree, for your man?’ Detective Bonita remained silent. ‘Now, the third…,’ continued Sergeant Yamamoto. ‘No. Not interesting at all.’ She sighed.
‘Can you tell me who it is anyway, Sergeant? I don’t really have a lot of time.’
‘He is a French Hotelier. CEO of La Côte d’Or in Rio de Janeiro. Born in 1939. Went missing on the eve of a huge reception to celebrate one hundred years of French hotels in Brazil. But he has black hair. A lot of very black hair. More than you would expect, in fact, in a man of his age.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant, you have been most helpful. I would like to see the files on the second and third individuals. Do you have someone you can send round?’
‘On New Year’s Day, Detective? Why don’t I fax them? The photos won’t show but you will at least have the details.’
‘That sounds good. Thanks again.’
Detective Bonita’s ‘office’ comprised three shoulder-height screens, a desk, computer and phone in the middle of the fifth floor of a dingy seventies-built block situated at one corner of the Largo 13 de Maio. Her internal location was probably about as far from any source of natural light as it was possible to be, but she consoled herself with the knowledge that in summer she was protected from the sweltering heat of the sun and in winter from inhospitable draughts which forced those situated near the windows to keep their coats on. There were only three other individuals, all men, working in her section today; she knew their names but did not know them well enough to exchange small-talk and, after a brief greeting, sat down at her desk to get on with the task of identifying her corpse. She was not permitted to smoke inside the building so, when she heard the first pages of Sergeant Yamamoto’s files grinding through the fax, she stepped out onto the fire escape and lit a cigarette.
As she suspected would be the case, the Missing Person files gave her little of substance but lots of questions that she hoped the forensic pathologist would be able to answer when they met later that morning. She put calls, nevertheless, into the Argentinean, British and French Consulates, but in every case the telephone service was for emergencies and the individuals concerned promised that they would check the information and call her back. The British Consulate was not aware of anybody reported missing; the blond man was not Argentinean, but his business was based in Buenos Aires and the French Consulate confirmed that M. Camille Bleu of the Côte hotel group had been reported missing but no further information was available. She phoned Eduardo Carlos.
‘How are things, Eduardo?’
‘The place is crawling with cameras, boss. This guy is media mad. He’s a lawyer with his own practice. I think he sees it as an opportunity to promote his business. He’s getting on really well with Tatiana. She’s the journalist from Cidade Alerta. She’s really nice. Honestly, boss, he’s told her everything.’ Detective Bonita sat back in her chair and covered her eyes.
‘What have you said to her?’ Agent Demario did not reply.
‘Eduardo?’
‘Just that… Nothing. I haven’t said anything to her.’
‘Well, then, what information does your witness have? You have talked to him, haven’t you?’
‘Of course. He described what he saw. It sounds completely repugnante, boss. He saw a bloated corpse with no face. He said he will have nightmares about it for the rest of his life. He is telling the media he thinks he knows who the man was but he’s going to make some checks first.’
‘What?’ Detective Bonita couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘What’s his name?’
‘João Augusto Magalhães.’ ‘Put Dr. Magalhães on the phone, Eduardo.’
Detective Bonita and Agent Demario met less than an hour later just inside the main door of the city morgue. Both were full of disquiet and both knew that what they were about to see would burn an image on their memories they would take to their graves. Eduardo Carlos asked if he could be excused the task; they didn’t both need to see the body, did they? Detective Bonita shook her head.
‘This is a crucial part of the investigation, Eduardo,’ she said, already overwhelmed by waves of cleaning fluid and decomposing human remains rolling towards them down the long, gloomy corridor, ‘and you have much to learn.’ Both officers showed their passes to a desk clerk who smiled amiably and directed them to Lab.101.
‘The last room on the right. At the very end.’ As they walked, Agent Demario asked to know what Detective Bonita had said to Dr Magalhães.
‘That he should think carefully about what he disclosed to the media. That he would know, of course, that anything he might say to them before speaking to us would be viewed as an attempt to distort the course of our enquiries. Which would lead to his arrest. In actual fact, he has no idea who the dead guy is. But like you said, he wants to keep the media interested. We should keep a very close eye on him, nevertheless, Eduardo. Now,’ said Detective Bonita, pushing through the heavy plastic curtain of pathology laboratory 101, ‘you must meet my friend Dra Angélica do Amaral.’
The two women embraced warmly, the surgeon turning next to shake the hand of Agent Demario, who smiled. He felt he might faint at the sight of a dead cockroach, let alone a dead human, but he would never let these women see a weakness, never!
‘Before we take a look at our two friends,’ the surgeon explained, lifting a black plastic file with handwritten notes attached off a nail above her desk, ‘I will tell you what I know.’
‘Wait, Angé,’ said Detective Bonita, grasping her friend by the arm. ‘Two bodies?’
‘Two, querida. Both came in last night. Both from the Rio Pinheiros. Both foreign and-’
‘No!’ cried Rita Bonita. ‘We’re investigating one suspicious death. Not two! Where was the second pulled out?’ The Medical Examiner twisted round her poise-angle desk lamp and invited the policemen to study a city map on the wall.
ends
Detective Bonita - Chapter One
Detective Bonita and the Unexpected Death of a Very Important Man
Prologue
A child is leaning over the wall of her uncle’s ninth-floor terrace catching rain drops in the palm of her hand. A sudden rip of lightning causes her to glimpse a silver ball, spinning jauntily along the river beside the Jardim de São Bernardo slum towards the heavily fortified borders of her uncle’s condominium in the centre of São Paulo. The river has filled to bursting and is flowing very fast. It must be frightening, she reflects, for the families living in the shacks along its banks, but her attention stays with the ball. She watches, captivated, as it navigates first the upturned root of a tree, then the wrecked, jagged remains of a bridge, finally coming to rest near the rusted rear end of an old pick-up she decides must have been crossing the bridge the very minute it was swept away. Wiping her hand down her dress she studies the ball for a few seconds more then shouts: ‘Look, uncle, there’s a fat man swimming in the river!’ The uncle, who is inside organising cocktails and canapés for his New Year’s Eve party, laughs out loud. A man swimming in the river? Impossible!
‘The Rio Pinheiros is so polluted, querida, no living creature would survive in its smelly, toxic waters! You must have made a mistake!’ And anyway, he thinks to himself, seven weeks of incessant rain have turned the normally stagnant, putrid canal into a torrent which has caused havoc everywhere, even flooding his own underground car park! No one would be swimming now, surely?
‘No,’ insists the little girl. ‘I didn’t make a mistake. There is a man, tio. Look.’ She points to where the Ponte João Dias once crossed the river. Heavy rain and dark strata cover the city like a shroud. Whilst visibility is undoubtedly very poor, he is forced to accept that a human being may be in difficulties in the water. He must act quickly. Placing an index finger on his lips, he whispers to his niece to keep her discovery a secret, excuses himself from the function and makes his way outside.
The rain is now beating down and thunder bolts rupturing the sky cause him to quicken his steps to the boundary of the condominium where he will take a closer look, perhaps even see if there is anything he can do to help. With shoulders hunched he grips a bar of the perimeter fence and peers through. As the waters heave and plunge, he can see the thing straining against its temporary anchor and can see that it is, or at least has been, human. It is a wretched, ghastly sight. There is a thick clump of silver hair, but no face, just gruesome black holes for eyes and the skeletal remains of a jaw fixed in a state of morbid terror. Lightning exposes a swollen, bloated body, and, whilst he feels incapable of looking any longer now, he will recall to the police later, the disquieting memory of a collar and tie stretched around the throat of the corpse.
He turns to walk back to his apartment, stopping briefly to steady himself against a wall and contain his nausea. Perhaps the current will detach the cadaver and float it off downstream? He narrows his eyes before glancing around again. No. It is stuck fast. Damn! He will have to involve the authorities. He uses his mobile phone to contact the São Paulo Military Police, who thank him for the call, they will ask the Fire Brigade to deal with the body. The fizzy Reveillon atmosphere has all but evaporated from his party when he returns; his niece has told everyone about her amazing discovery and the guests are beginning to make their excuses and leave.
When a knock comes to his door, it is not the police, but a very young journalist from the evening Cidade Alerta crime programme. Holding a microphone to his face, she asks if they can film his daughter on the balcony describing exactly what she has seen. No, he replies, it was his niece, not his daughter, and she has gone home with her parents. He declines to give an interview saying he will only talk to the police. The journalist returns an hour later with the bombeiros who have come to remove the body from the water. It will be their eighth today! It isn’t pleasant, they agree, to have something like that spoiling your party on New Year’s Eve!
Seven weeks of endless rain had left Delegada Rita Sofia Bonita de Jesus feeling like moss might grow on the skin of her face if it didn’t feel the warmth of the sun very soon. On New Year’s Day, when first light inched around the shutters of her third floor window, she pulled a fleece over her head and peered out to see if there were any signs of change. She was disappointed.
The colour, definition and cheerfulness normally associated with daybreak in the Largo 13 de Maio, were so diluted, in fact, by the continuing precipitation that Detective Bonita could barely make out the edges or corners of the buildings just across the street. Even the graffiti, which hustled brazenly onto every square centimetre of reachable flat surface in between, looked as though it might be washed away. Dampness meanwhile had seeped through the walls of her apartment. She could smell its clammy presence in the air, feel it clinging to her clothes and shuddered at the sight of green mould leaching down from the ceiling. She wanted to reach up and clean it away but her joints seemed to be as stubborn and stiff as the ventilator which had stopped functioning the day after the rains began; she didn’t want to risk the pain and anyway the fungus would only grow back.
A clatter of hailstones, as hard as glass, had awoken her at three a.m. and she had not been able to get back to sleep. At five she had given up trying and switched on Radio Eldorado to listen to ‘An Eye on the City’ with Geraldo Nunes. Once national headlines (Troops on the Streets of Rio! Bus Hi-Jacked in Espírito Santo! Lula Sworn In for Second Term!) had been despatched, local news comprised little more than the rescue of the son of a supermarket owner from kidnappers in Vila Sonia and gloomy reports from the Centre for the Management of Emergencies on the state of the roads. The weather had all but ruined Reveillon celebrations, said a spokesman. No one could expect a smooth journey back to work tomorrow and every traveller should make allowances for long delays. Detective Bonita yawned.
The River Tietê, which tumbled down from the Serra do Mar to thunder along a monstrously swollen furrow on the northern edge of the city, had caused chaos for drivers trying to enter São Paulo on the Fernão Dias and Ayrton Senna highways. Its tributaries Pinheiros and Tamanduatei, which cut through the West and Central districts respectively, had sent water gushing over ineffectual flood defences to demolish the concrete supports of the Ponte João Dias and completely submerge the 9 de Julho tunnel with all the vehicles and their occupants trapped in a traffic queue inside.
And while she was genuinely saddened to hear about lives claimed by the treacherous downpours (and in particular of the mother who lost two sons in a mud slide on Christmas Day), the absence of the João Dias Bridge across the Rio Pinheiros would, she knew, almost certainly lead to a temporary drop in crime for the Department for Homicide and Protection of Persons 11th District (Santo Amaro). The forced separation of East and West banks was bad news, of course, for law-abiding commuters but it was not good either for the PCC gang leaders in the São Bernardo slum, who liked to send their boys across the bridge to rob the wealthy in their cars and on the pavements of the prosperous East ‘Manhattan’ embankment. As Detective Bonita was, as usual, several agents short of the full complement needed to make a proper and forensic investigation of the forty-odd unsolved murders already on her district’s books from the previous year, she welcomed any slowing down of criminal activity for whatever reason, good or bad.
So she was not pleased at all to receive a call from Captain Antonio Lourenço Limeira, her boss, at seven a.m., demanding that she cancel her leave and go directly to the station as a body had been pulled out of the river in their district which would require her immediate attention.
‘Why, sir? Would that not be a job for the Bombeiros?’
‘Normally, yes, Detective. But you can go to the station today, can’t you? I’m with my family in Rio and so is João Cesar. Eduardo Carlos said he thought he would be around and I’ve arranged for a new agent to start with you tomorrow. She’s good. I met her at a function at the Hyatt Hilton last week. She’s young and… and enthusiastic. And I like her.’
‘‘Her’, sir?’ As a matter of professional honour, Detective Bonita knew, personally, all the women homicide agents in São Paulo Central and she had not heard any gossip about a transfer.
‘‘Her’. Gisele-Thérèse Bueno da Silva. Recently married to Frederico Rocha do Campo.’
‘The Military Police Commander Rocha?’
‘The same. It will be very useful to have her on the team.’ For you, maybe, thought Detective Bonita, switching on the gas to heat some milk for coffee, phone propped on shoulder.
‘You couldn’t describe Commander Rocha as ‘young’, sir,’ she observed. ‘Where did Sra Gisele-Thérèse gain experience as a homicide investigator?’ There was silence.
‘And about the body,’ said Captain Lourenço, ignoring his subordinate’s question and returning to the reason that he had phoned in the first place. ‘It’s not Brazilian. Northern European or North American, they think, but they’re not sure. There’s not so much of the face left but the pathologist said from the poor state of the teeth he would make a guess at English.’
‘Anything else I need to know?’
‘Mmmm – yes. The news of our gringo will go out on Cidade Alerta at six. So work out what we’re going to say. And phone me when you get in. Tchau! And Happy New Year!’
A dead foreigner with no face, a military police commander’s new wife wanting to play detective and all of it on Rede Globo tonight. Detective Bonita resolved to break her only New Year Resolution and lit a Fortuna cigarette.
ends
Prologue
A child is leaning over the wall of her uncle’s ninth-floor terrace catching rain drops in the palm of her hand. A sudden rip of lightning causes her to glimpse a silver ball, spinning jauntily along the river beside the Jardim de São Bernardo slum towards the heavily fortified borders of her uncle’s condominium in the centre of São Paulo. The river has filled to bursting and is flowing very fast. It must be frightening, she reflects, for the families living in the shacks along its banks, but her attention stays with the ball. She watches, captivated, as it navigates first the upturned root of a tree, then the wrecked, jagged remains of a bridge, finally coming to rest near the rusted rear end of an old pick-up she decides must have been crossing the bridge the very minute it was swept away. Wiping her hand down her dress she studies the ball for a few seconds more then shouts: ‘Look, uncle, there’s a fat man swimming in the river!’ The uncle, who is inside organising cocktails and canapés for his New Year’s Eve party, laughs out loud. A man swimming in the river? Impossible!
‘The Rio Pinheiros is so polluted, querida, no living creature would survive in its smelly, toxic waters! You must have made a mistake!’ And anyway, he thinks to himself, seven weeks of incessant rain have turned the normally stagnant, putrid canal into a torrent which has caused havoc everywhere, even flooding his own underground car park! No one would be swimming now, surely?
‘No,’ insists the little girl. ‘I didn’t make a mistake. There is a man, tio. Look.’ She points to where the Ponte João Dias once crossed the river. Heavy rain and dark strata cover the city like a shroud. Whilst visibility is undoubtedly very poor, he is forced to accept that a human being may be in difficulties in the water. He must act quickly. Placing an index finger on his lips, he whispers to his niece to keep her discovery a secret, excuses himself from the function and makes his way outside.
The rain is now beating down and thunder bolts rupturing the sky cause him to quicken his steps to the boundary of the condominium where he will take a closer look, perhaps even see if there is anything he can do to help. With shoulders hunched he grips a bar of the perimeter fence and peers through. As the waters heave and plunge, he can see the thing straining against its temporary anchor and can see that it is, or at least has been, human. It is a wretched, ghastly sight. There is a thick clump of silver hair, but no face, just gruesome black holes for eyes and the skeletal remains of a jaw fixed in a state of morbid terror. Lightning exposes a swollen, bloated body, and, whilst he feels incapable of looking any longer now, he will recall to the police later, the disquieting memory of a collar and tie stretched around the throat of the corpse.
He turns to walk back to his apartment, stopping briefly to steady himself against a wall and contain his nausea. Perhaps the current will detach the cadaver and float it off downstream? He narrows his eyes before glancing around again. No. It is stuck fast. Damn! He will have to involve the authorities. He uses his mobile phone to contact the São Paulo Military Police, who thank him for the call, they will ask the Fire Brigade to deal with the body. The fizzy Reveillon atmosphere has all but evaporated from his party when he returns; his niece has told everyone about her amazing discovery and the guests are beginning to make their excuses and leave.
When a knock comes to his door, it is not the police, but a very young journalist from the evening Cidade Alerta crime programme. Holding a microphone to his face, she asks if they can film his daughter on the balcony describing exactly what she has seen. No, he replies, it was his niece, not his daughter, and she has gone home with her parents. He declines to give an interview saying he will only talk to the police. The journalist returns an hour later with the bombeiros who have come to remove the body from the water. It will be their eighth today! It isn’t pleasant, they agree, to have something like that spoiling your party on New Year’s Eve!
Seven weeks of endless rain had left Delegada Rita Sofia Bonita de Jesus feeling like moss might grow on the skin of her face if it didn’t feel the warmth of the sun very soon. On New Year’s Day, when first light inched around the shutters of her third floor window, she pulled a fleece over her head and peered out to see if there were any signs of change. She was disappointed.
The colour, definition and cheerfulness normally associated with daybreak in the Largo 13 de Maio, were so diluted, in fact, by the continuing precipitation that Detective Bonita could barely make out the edges or corners of the buildings just across the street. Even the graffiti, which hustled brazenly onto every square centimetre of reachable flat surface in between, looked as though it might be washed away. Dampness meanwhile had seeped through the walls of her apartment. She could smell its clammy presence in the air, feel it clinging to her clothes and shuddered at the sight of green mould leaching down from the ceiling. She wanted to reach up and clean it away but her joints seemed to be as stubborn and stiff as the ventilator which had stopped functioning the day after the rains began; she didn’t want to risk the pain and anyway the fungus would only grow back.
A clatter of hailstones, as hard as glass, had awoken her at three a.m. and she had not been able to get back to sleep. At five she had given up trying and switched on Radio Eldorado to listen to ‘An Eye on the City’ with Geraldo Nunes. Once national headlines (Troops on the Streets of Rio! Bus Hi-Jacked in Espírito Santo! Lula Sworn In for Second Term!) had been despatched, local news comprised little more than the rescue of the son of a supermarket owner from kidnappers in Vila Sonia and gloomy reports from the Centre for the Management of Emergencies on the state of the roads. The weather had all but ruined Reveillon celebrations, said a spokesman. No one could expect a smooth journey back to work tomorrow and every traveller should make allowances for long delays. Detective Bonita yawned.
The River Tietê, which tumbled down from the Serra do Mar to thunder along a monstrously swollen furrow on the northern edge of the city, had caused chaos for drivers trying to enter São Paulo on the Fernão Dias and Ayrton Senna highways. Its tributaries Pinheiros and Tamanduatei, which cut through the West and Central districts respectively, had sent water gushing over ineffectual flood defences to demolish the concrete supports of the Ponte João Dias and completely submerge the 9 de Julho tunnel with all the vehicles and their occupants trapped in a traffic queue inside.
And while she was genuinely saddened to hear about lives claimed by the treacherous downpours (and in particular of the mother who lost two sons in a mud slide on Christmas Day), the absence of the João Dias Bridge across the Rio Pinheiros would, she knew, almost certainly lead to a temporary drop in crime for the Department for Homicide and Protection of Persons 11th District (Santo Amaro). The forced separation of East and West banks was bad news, of course, for law-abiding commuters but it was not good either for the PCC gang leaders in the São Bernardo slum, who liked to send their boys across the bridge to rob the wealthy in their cars and on the pavements of the prosperous East ‘Manhattan’ embankment. As Detective Bonita was, as usual, several agents short of the full complement needed to make a proper and forensic investigation of the forty-odd unsolved murders already on her district’s books from the previous year, she welcomed any slowing down of criminal activity for whatever reason, good or bad.
So she was not pleased at all to receive a call from Captain Antonio Lourenço Limeira, her boss, at seven a.m., demanding that she cancel her leave and go directly to the station as a body had been pulled out of the river in their district which would require her immediate attention.
‘Why, sir? Would that not be a job for the Bombeiros?’
‘Normally, yes, Detective. But you can go to the station today, can’t you? I’m with my family in Rio and so is João Cesar. Eduardo Carlos said he thought he would be around and I’ve arranged for a new agent to start with you tomorrow. She’s good. I met her at a function at the Hyatt Hilton last week. She’s young and… and enthusiastic. And I like her.’
‘‘Her’, sir?’ As a matter of professional honour, Detective Bonita knew, personally, all the women homicide agents in São Paulo Central and she had not heard any gossip about a transfer.
‘‘Her’. Gisele-Thérèse Bueno da Silva. Recently married to Frederico Rocha do Campo.’
‘The Military Police Commander Rocha?’
‘The same. It will be very useful to have her on the team.’ For you, maybe, thought Detective Bonita, switching on the gas to heat some milk for coffee, phone propped on shoulder.
‘You couldn’t describe Commander Rocha as ‘young’, sir,’ she observed. ‘Where did Sra Gisele-Thérèse gain experience as a homicide investigator?’ There was silence.
‘And about the body,’ said Captain Lourenço, ignoring his subordinate’s question and returning to the reason that he had phoned in the first place. ‘It’s not Brazilian. Northern European or North American, they think, but they’re not sure. There’s not so much of the face left but the pathologist said from the poor state of the teeth he would make a guess at English.’
‘Anything else I need to know?’
‘Mmmm – yes. The news of our gringo will go out on Cidade Alerta at six. So work out what we’re going to say. And phone me when you get in. Tchau! And Happy New Year!’
A dead foreigner with no face, a military police commander’s new wife wanting to play detective and all of it on Rede Globo tonight. Detective Bonita resolved to break her only New Year Resolution and lit a Fortuna cigarette.
ends
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