Chapter Three

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