Chapter Six

Detective Bonita and the Unexpected Death of a Very Important Man

The story so far: Detective Inspector Rita Bonita and Agent Eduardo Carlos Demario of the São Paulo Department for Homicide are investigating the gruesome discovery of two dead bodies found floating in the Pinheiros River. Who are the men and are their deaths connected? We rejoin the story shortly after Detective Bonita concludes a disastrous interview on the live Cidade Alerta! crime show and takes a difficult call from her boss …

18h30
Several million Brazilians had switched on their TV’s to watch the Cidade Alerta! crime show broadcast live at six o’clock on New Year’s Day. In a country which has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and where more than fifty thousand people are killed every year, the fact that two bodies had been recovered by firemen from the Pinheiros River would not normally warrant any media attention other than a listing in the Cotidiano crime section of the Folha de São Paulo. But TV reporter Tatiana Nunes had been shadowing the bombeiros as they pursued their grim duties on New Year’s Eve, and when two of the corpses turned up wearing suits, instinct told her she was on to a story. She had phoned her good friend Captain Antônio Lourenço Limeira, a senior and influential officer in the São Paulo Homicide Department, and asked him who would be dealing with the two deaths. He had, without a moment’s hesitation, given her the name of his most capable – and loyal – delegada Rita Bonita. At seven a.m. the next morning he assigned the task to Detective Bonita, informing her that she and her deputy Eduardo Carlos had until six o’clock to prepare to give a statement on Cidade Alerta!

Seconds after the broadcast had finished, Detective Bonita caught sight of Captain Lourenço’s name flashing on her phone. She knew why he was calling. She had snapped at the journalist live on air because she hadn’t liked her reckless speculating and now her boss would want to know why. Turning your back on difficult to answer questions was like walking away from a snarling dog and expecting it not to attack. Police men and women these days who wanted a successful career in law enforcement were supposed to be media savvy. She had looked a fool.
‘Rita?’ His tone was inauspicious. ‘Tell me how you think it went.’ His words, at least, were conciliatory. What could she say?
‘I…I…it’s difficult to know, sir,’ she said, wiping unexpected tears from her face with the back of a shaking hand as the Cidade Alerta helicopter lifted Tatiana Nunes and her crew away.
‘Well then I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘You were an aperitivo, Detective. For Tatiana’s millions of fans. A taste of what is to come. She is an amazing woman, you must agree.’ Detective Bonita was unable to respond so Capt. Lourenço continued: ‘I love to see her in action,’ he said, warming to his theme. ‘She gets her viewers excited and they want more. More answers and more of her. It’s why she is so successful.’
‘But the stuff about a serial killer – it was speculation, sir,’ insisted Detective Bonita. ‘Dangerous speculation. For a start, there are only two bodies. And –’ she gasped for breath ‘- whilst it is possible that their deaths are connected, two possibly linked murders don’t give us a serial killer, sir. That’s just –’ what was it, she wondered, ‘– that’s just movie hype.’
‘She wanted the headline slot and she got it! So from her point of view it was worth it. But, escuta Rita,’ pressed Captain Lourenço, ‘escuta bem. Tatiana’s job is to expose the truth as she sees it but it is also to entertain. You’re the one who has to find the evidence. Don’t let her distract you but don’t dismiss her theories without testing them first. She will use extreme language, of course she will, to ramp up her story, but you must accept the possibility that the victims met their deaths at the hands of the same killer. Prioritise your facts and, next time, advise Ms Nunes in advance that you won’t be taking any questions. Otherwise she’ll be offering her viewers the main course which will be you, my darling, served up like blackened chicken hearts on a rodízio spear. What I suppose I am saying is that she made a fool of you and you mustn’t let it happen again. Now, tell me what you know so far.’

Detective Bonita bit her lip and, swallowing her tears, set out briefly and clearly those parts of the case she knew to be certain. They had two bodies, she said. One they knew to be a French hotelier in his sixties. In addition, they had recovered two wallets from inside the abattoir. One belonged to the Frenchman, the other to a board member of a British bank who, if the body in the morgue turned out to be his, was a white man aged seventy wearing an English tailored suit. Eduardo Carlos had followed a lead from Doutor João Augosto Magalhães, the man who reported the first victim, and had been able to confirm the Fondía Abattoir as the place where one or more people had been held, possibly tortured, eventually killed, butchered and put into cold storage. She had cordoned off the area and DNA and ballistic evidence were being gathered by a forensic team right now. She had personally interviewed the wife of Monsieur Camille Bleu and was about to confirm the address of Mr John Henderson so she could visit his next of kin too.
‘But not to identify the body, sir,’ she added, hurriedly, ‘because it has no face. But it is very tall, with large feet and distinctive hair. With the DNA and remaining teeth there is enough to get a positive i.d.’
‘What about motive?’ asked Capt. Lourenço.
‘It’s difficult to know at this stage. Monsieur Bleu had complicated domestic arrangements and had recently left his wife for a much younger woman. I haven’t found out who, though, yet. It’s possible that his planned second marriage might have meant a change of inheritance…’ she trailed off to think, then added: ‘but it’s difficult to link that with the evidence uncovered here at the abattoir. It’s a truly horrific scene, sir. I can’t see his wife being involved in this type of crime. She seemed to be very –’ she hesitated again ‘– anxious but also very… fragile. She gave the impression that they were on good terms, anyway, from what she said.’ There was a pause.
‘Given the gruesome circumstances of the deaths you must have considered, then,’ suggested Capt. Lourenço, ‘that ACA are involved?’ Alto Comando Azul were a new and formidable organised crime network operating out of the jails and slums of São Paulo with the aim of gaining market share from their more established rivals. Kidnapping wealthy businessmen was a niche but lucrative source of revenue for them and torture and death a means of branding their activities to give them an edge in an over-crowded market.
‘That would be an intelligent assumption to make, sir,’ said Detective Bonita, in a way she knew would please her boss. ‘The crimes bear many of the hallmarks of ACA involvement but there are inconsistencies. The freezing of the bodies suggests planning and forethought. That’s not something I would normally associate with ACA.’
‘Fair enough. Well, Detective, it’s been nice talking to you but I must go. I have a sensitive kidnapping to deal with and Liliane and I have the Mayor’s Masked Ball tonight at the Copacabana Palace. But I’ll be heading up to São Paulo first thing tomorrow to welcome our new recruit.’ Detective Bonita sighed. She had forgotten about her new trainee.
‘Consider carefully what I have said,’ said Capt Lourenço before adding: ‘oh, and Rita – had you considered putting Eduardo Carlos in front of the camera?’ Detective Bonita was shocked.
‘No, sir,’ she said quickly, marshalling her composure. ‘He’s not ready to go in front of the cameras.’
‘I beg to differ. He’s more than a match for Tatiana. Which it seems you are not, Detective. Look, he’s young and punchy and sexy. He’d be good in front of a camera.’ Detective Bonita nearly choked.
‘It would be very risky, sir.’
‘Not at all. Anyway, I like risk. Let him have a go. He couldn’t be worse than you. Keep me informed of developments please, Detective and tchau – you’re doing well.’

19h00
Detective Bonita had a very strong urge to light a cigarette, but it was teeming down, so she walked back inside the abattoir and pulled out a fresh packet of Fortuna. Pedro Maciel, the forensic technician, was dismantling some equipment and reminded her that, as she was standing inside the cordon, smoking a cigarette there would corrupt the scene. Detective Bonita sighed. She couldn’t leave the scene because the Bombeiros had disappeared, she would later discover, to deal with a pregnant woman who had thrown herself into the water upstream. Tears were flowing freely down her face now and she was soaked to the bone. She planned to phone Eduardo Carlos to find out the extent of the confidential information she suspected he had given to Tatiana Nunes but hesitated. She would leave the call until she was less emotional and do something useful. She would take a look around the back of the abattoir; she couldn’t possibly get any wetter, after all.

The first thing to catch her eye as she approached the rear entrance was how easy it was to access the site from the Rua José Lopes, a dirt track which led in one direction past the barbed wire perimeters of a range of electronic goods manufacturers, the threadbare shacks at the edge of the São Bernardo slum and the high metal enclosure of a hypermarket car park and in the other to a small wooded park known locally as the trading floor of the São Paulo drug exchange and the outer wall of a minor football stadium. The area between the abattoir, the slum and the various buildings comprised rough scrub criss-crossed by deep tyre tracks and littered with the sort of debris – beer cans, burnt out abandoned cars, syringes, condoms and tissues – you would expect to find in a space used for joy-riding, drug-taking, prostitution and other nocturnal pursuits common in this part of the city. The building itself was overlooked only from the front and only by residents such as Dr Magalhães and visitors to the towering, glass-clad hotels on the east side of the river. But all this rubbish strewn at the back meant that there had to be traffic passing along the road here, too, she thought. There was a high, chain-link fence around the Fondía premises but the gate had been pulled off its hinges leaving the whole site completely unsecured. Some of the vehicle tracks came right up to the back door of the abattoir. There were footprints, too. The surface mud was very soft but she would ask Pedro to take impressions. As she approached the building she saw that a padlock, bracket and chain had been forced off a wooden door which now stood ajar. She pushed it carefully and noted an unpleasant smell – was it cooked food? – coming from inside. Leaning further inside she nearly collapsed with shock as a huge rat bolted over her foot and down an open drain a few feet away. The interior was quite dark but she could see that the rat had been feeding on the bones of a discarded fried chicken meal; not only that, the place was strewn with human waste and a filthy blanket showed someone had been sleeping there.

She must act quickly and request Pedro Maciel gather all available evidence. But how could she track this person down? She immediately called Central Resources to request a twenty-four hour discreet surveillance. She’d be lucky, said the desk sergeant in charge of resource allocation, had she forgotten it was New Year’s Day? No, said Detective Bonita. But had the desk sergeant seen the Cidade Alerta broadcast that night? He laughed – of course, he watched it every night! That’s my investigation, said Detective Bonita. Tatiana Nunes and the abattoir killings? asked the desk sergeant. The same, said Detective Bonita. I’ll send a man over right away, said the desk sergeant. Send two, said Detective Bonita, happy to exploit what she would come to know as the ‘Tatiana Effect’. It’s pretty grim here at night and there’s no escape now the bridge is down. Tell them to book a crossing with the bombeiros.

19h30
Detective Bonita did not want to leave the site until the surveillance team arrived. She couldn’t, anyway. Whilst helping Pedro Maciel to strap a plastic cordon tape to a series of aluminium pins around a twenty metre square behind the abattoir, she had admitted out loud that, after all the police and media activity of the last few hours, the person living rough at the back of the premises was unlikely to return.
‘But that doesn’t mean we don’t try to find them,’ she said, using her teeth to cut the tape and knot it around the thin pole. ‘He could be a vital witness.’
‘If he’s the one who found the bodies, why didn’t he come forward before now?’ asked Pedro Maciel dropping a blackened, broken crack pipe into a plastic bag.
‘He’s a drug user, maybe a dealer. He’s got a place to stay out of the rain. He doesn’t trust the police so he shunts the bodies into the river. He may be involved,’ replied Detective Bonita.
‘I’d say he’s definitely involved,’ said Pedro Maciel. ‘I might even go on to say he’s potentially your killer, Detective.’
‘Then you’d need to find me a gun, or a knife or matching DNA, or a scalpel or a plastic tag or something that would link this individual with the activity at the front of the building,’ said Detective Bonita, a headache starting in the back of her neck.
‘No, Pedro,’ she said, sighing. ‘If a drug user kills someone, it’s rarely pre-meditated. Anyway, the surveillance team sound like they have arrived.’ The chug of an outboard motor could be heard through the rain. ‘I have to go and get some dry clothes and I’ll have to find Mr Henderson’s family before I finish tonight.’
The surveillance team had indeed arrived and Detective Bonita asked if the two bombeiros would mind waiting until she had de-briefed the officers to transfer her back to the east bank. They would not, but said they had hoped they would be able to finish soon as they had been on duty since seven that morning. Just as the dinghy was almost touching the opposite bank, the older of the two officers, whose name was Rui Santos Alves, put his hand on her shoulder to stop her climbing out.
‘Doutora Bonita,’ he said, his face folding with exhaustion. ‘Eduardo Carlos told us that one of the dead men our colleagues pulled out of the river last night was a British man called Mr Henderson.’
‘It seems he’s told everyone, then,’ she replied.
‘No,’ continued Rui Santos Alves quickly, ‘he showed us some cards inside the wallet we found at the scene earlier and asked us if we had heard of the company. We have. It’s a British bank called TWBC. There was a major security alert at their office a few weeks ago and we were called to attend.’
‘What sort of alert?’ she asked.
‘A small nail bomb in the post addressed to Mr Henderson. The bomb was diffused and no one was hurt. But the point is that Mr Henderson does not work at the bank or their head office. The bank calls him a non-executive board director. We had to visit him at his house. Well, we – Rafael here and me – didn’t personally, but we –’ the younger of the two bombeiros nodded in recognition of his involvement ‘we had to drive over with the Federal Police in case there was a security risk at the house too.’
‘And was there?’ asked Detective Bonita. Both bombeiros shook their heads.
‘Well, thank you for this information. I’ll talk to the Feds to get the address and work out if there’s a link.’ The hand on Detective Bonita’s shoulder tightened.
‘There something else,’ said Rui.
‘Yes,’ added Rafael quickly. ‘Something maybe much more important, Dra Bonita!’
‘Well?’
‘When we went to the house we were outside talking to Mr Henderson’s driver and one of the girls who worked as a maid in his house. We had to wait a long time whilst the Feds checked the house and talked to everyone. The girl brought us some coffee and pão de queijo. She was really nice. The driver and the girl were namorados – they planned to get married. Her name was Marta. I can’t remember his.’
‘Good,’ said Detective Bonita, wondering why she was being given the information.
‘But this is the main thing - the woman we pulled out of the river a couple of hours ago. The pregnant one. It was her, Marta. We took her to the municipal hospital but I don’t think they’ll be able to save the baby. She was really distressed. You need to talk to her straight away.’

© Emília Shap: Lisbon June 2007

Chapter Five

15h10
The police driver told Detective Bonita he would be taking her south, and then west, down the Avenida Brigadeiro Luís Antônio towards the Marginal Pinheiros. He wanted her to know because it was the long way round. She didn’t care, she said. Whatever was quickest; he could use the siren if he wanted to. He would, he added, normally have used the Avenida 9 de Julho, but the underpass was flooded with the rain. Whatever, she replied. But what, he asked, was Doutora Bonita going to do once they reached the river? The Emergency Management Centre had closed five bridges including the Ponte João Dias. The old Fondía abattoir was on the other side; the Marginal and all the approach roads were gridlocked. 'Don’t worry,' she said. 'Get me as near as you can; there’s a boat waiting for me.'

São Paulo has no river police force as such: the Pinheiros is not a Thames or a Seine and, in its normal state, is a shallow, stagnant, foul-smelling canal; home only to rats and the odd capivara. But the continuing precipitation had caused so many problems for the city’s inhabitants that the Bombeiros had scrambled a River Division of officers to transfer emergency service personnel across the water. Detective Bonita got out of the patrol car a block east of the Marginal and quickly located the two fire officers waiting for her on the river. With the outboard motor of their dinghy accelerating against the current, they apologised to Detective Bonita for the fact that there was nowhere dry in their vessel to sit down, gave her a life-jacket and sailed quickly across to leave her with Agent Demario on a mooring fifty metres or so in front of the Fondía slaughterhouse. She had a strong sense that the investigation was about to move into a new, significant stage.

Eduardo Carlos offered his hand to help her out of the boat but she ignored the gesture and used a greasy wrought iron ladder to clamber up the low brick embankment.
‘I called the Fondía company, boss,’ he said, as the two of them hurried through the rain towards the sliding wooden door which formed the entrance to the derelict building. Fondía S.A. was a huge food processing conglomerate whose corporate logo still stood proud in faded red lettering from the roof of the property. ‘They still own these premises, but they transferred all abattoir operations out to Guarulhos in 1991. They were expanding distribution overseas and needed more cold storage space and a more accessible location.’
‘What are their plans for this building?’ enquired Detective Bonita once they were inside.
‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Phone them back then, Eduardo. It may have a bearing on this case.’
‘How?’ Eduardo Carlos was nettled.
‘I don’t know. It just might.’

The Fondía abattoir was three stories high and from where Detective Bonita was standing she could see some twenty metres up to a broken glass casement through which a little grey light and a lot of rain now fell. Under a suspended ceiling nearby she found a tarnished brass light switch and put out her finger to see if it worked. Her arm shot up with a jolt and she stumbled back onto the wet floor.
‘Deus me livre!’ she exclaimed, rubbing her arm. ‘Eduardo! Don’t touch anything. The place is wired and live.’ With so little light, visibility would be very poor, but Eduardo Carlos had borrowed a torch from the bombeiros, who were waiting and gossiping in the yard outside.
‘Can’t they help us?’ said Detective Bonita climbing back to her feet.
‘I haven’t asked them to. Look, come with me. There are things you must see.’

The two walked through the shadows towards the rear of the building. As Detective Bonita’s eyes became accustomed to the dark, she could make out stalls, racks, lines of sharp but rusting hooks hanging from tracks along the side of the central section and rows of steel tables at the far end. Eduardo Carlos left a message on the voicemail of his contact at Fondía S.A. to phone him back.
‘This is where they would put the live animals,’ he explained, slotting the phone into his pocket and indicating the holding pens next to the door. ‘Then they would move them to this part here, where they would stun them and then hoist them up by the back legs onto one of these hooks where main artery would be severed to drain the blood.’ Detective Bonita did not reply so he continued: ‘And that’s where my theory falls down….’ he crossed his arms, ‘..a bit. One of our men was shot in the head. That’s what killed him, not blood loss, which is how the pigs used to die. The French man was shot in the heart then butchered. But it could still be symbolic. Look, come and see something else.’

Agent Demario led Detective Bonita to the end of the line of hooks. There were clear signs that four hooks had been used; rust had been worn away and the aspect of the metal differed from those left idle over the fifteen or so years since Fondía S.A. had departed. But it was difficult to see in the gloom and Detective Bonita’s attention had transferred to an unsettling scraping noise she could hear towards the back of the building.
‘The forensic pathologist is on her way,’ said Eduardo Carlos, anticipating correctly Detective Bonita’s next question.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I don’t like it here. We could do with some light. But the pathologist will need more than a few hooks and a theory to establish a crime scene, Eduardo. I hope we’re not wasting her time.’
‘Wait,’ he implored, ‘there’s more.’ They continued, stumbling frequently, holding onto each other for support, along a white painted brick corridor. Agent Demario pointed out several brown blotch marks on one of the walls and the floor, which, he argued, could possibly be human blood, surely?
‘The problem is, boss, that the water from the river rose so high it flooded the entire ground floor. Look,’ he added, indicating a grainy line on the wall about fifty centimetres up from the floor. ‘This is the high water mark. And this,’ he continued, striding carefully round fallen lumps of mortar and leaning against an immense steel door, ‘is the freezer room. It’s not working anymore. Not today, anyway. But we know that there is a supply of electricity. And look at these marks here, boss, on this table. This has to be the place the bodies were stored.’ Agent Demario’s arms swept through the air. Detective Bonita was studying the door.
‘I agree that it’s possible,’ she said. Eduardo Carlos beamed, his eyebrows opening to allow the smile to spread up across his face.
‘And it is really all that we’ve got. But,’ added Detective Bonita, pushing her index finger against her lips. ‘How did the bodies subsequently get into the water? Was the door open or closed when you arrived?’ Eduardo took out a small digital camera and checked through each image. ‘Open,’ he said.
‘Let’s suppose this freezer room was functioning at a temperature low enough to freeze and store two dead bodies. One had both legs severed post-mortem – which suggests to me that he was put in some sort of smaller unit – the other had his face removed. Then the water rises, the bodies float away and we find them a few hundred metres down-stream. But the water can’t open this door, Eduardo. And if this door is open, the temperature goes up, the rats get in….We would have a completely different set of circumstances. If this is where the bodies were stored, forensics will find evidence. But someone must have set the bodies free because we think – no, we know that they were still frozen when they entered the water. We’re trying to get the facts to fit your theory, Eduardo. It should be the other way round. What else have you found?’
‘Just this,’ he said, pointing to some letters painted on the wall which read, in English, ‘So it goes’.
‘What does it mean?’ asked Detective Bonita.
‘No idea,’ he replied.

15h45
The sound of the boat engine echoed once more through the empty building. Either the fire officers had got bored or there was another emergency. Detective Bonita felt a strong urge to return to the daylight and walked as quickly as she could to the entrance. In fact, the forensic team had arrived and needed to get across the river. Dra. Angé Fonte do Amaral greeted Detective Bonita and Agent Demario and introduced them to Pedro Maciel, her assistant, who would be setting up the scene.
‘There is not much to go on, Angé,’ said Detective Bonita, casting her eyes over the lamps, generator, photographic paraphernalia and folded aluminium frames. ‘But Eduardo had a hunch. And I will have to say something to Cidade Alerta! at six. How quick do you think you can be?’
‘As quick as I can be, as quick as I always am, querida,’ said the pathologist without feeling.
‘I hate the way journalists are allowed to set our agenda,’ added Detective Bonita. ‘But Captain Lourenco promised Cidade Alerta! an exclusive statement at six. He says it keeps us on our toes.’
‘Well, Rita, Eduardo’s hunch is good enough for me. In any case, I estimated how long it would take the bodies to defrost which, allowing for river temperature, current movement, time taken to pull them out and other environmental factors, could place our two men within one to two kilometres from where they were found. So here is as good a start as any. Move inside quickly, Pedro!’ she said, gently pushing her assistant. ‘We don’t want to attract attention until we are ready.’

The search proved Eduardo’s hunch to be a good one. The forensic team could not, of course, determine at that stage what sort of blood had splattered around the inside of the building but they were able to ascertain that it had not been there for very long and, judging by the pattern on the wall, that it could also have come from a gunshot wound. They also agreed that the graffiti had been drawn recently enough to be interesting. With the help of the light and the additional assistance of the bombeiros, they found and retrieved a single bullet from a .38 calibre pistol wedged in the wall. Just outside the room was a heavy wooden table with a locked drawer. One of the firemen forced it open. Inside was a plastic bag tied with a cord the same width as the ligature marks on the ankles of the unidentified man. But it was the contents of the bag that gave Detective Bonita and Eduardo their most significant lead yet. With the crashing roar of television helicopters coming in to land outside the abattoir, the two police officers carefully opened and examined the two wallets inside the bag. One contained credit cards and documents belonging to Monsieur Camille Bleu, the other to a Mr John F Henderson. Detective Bonita hugged Eduardo Carlos.
‘Can I make the statement to Cidade Alerta! boss?’ he asked.
‘No Eduardo.’ Detective Bonita could see anger rising out of the expression in his face.
‘Why?’ he demanded.
‘It wouldn’t be appropriate.’
‘But it was me who brought you here! It was my questioning and my hunch!’
‘I know. You’ve done really well. But you’re not ready to talk to the media.’
‘Then at least let me lead the Mr Henderson part of the investigation.’ Agent Demario thrust his hands down to emphasise the ‘at least’.
‘No Eduardo! Go back to the station and see what you can find on this Mr Henderson.’ The younger man stalked out.
Detective Bonita watched him briefly then turned to Dra Angélica to raise the question of how the frozen bodies had floated into the river.
‘You’re right, amiga. The water alone could not have opened this door. Someone must have set them free.’
‘A witness?’ thought Detective Bonita out loud. ‘Or someone who wanted them to be found?’
‘Or the killer,’ added Pedro Maciel from behind his forensic mask.

Detective Bonita walked out into the rain where Eduardo Carlos and the bombeiros were chatting with Tatiana Nunes. Wearing impossibly high heels, the journalist was, as Agent Demario had implied, effortlessly good-looking, a pierced navel just showing over low-cut trousers and a tight white shirt. She was also at least ten years younger than Detective Bonita.
‘What have you got for us, Detective?’ the journalist shouted across.
‘Are we on air?’ Detective Bonita replied, sheltering from the rain under a huge umbrella held over both women by a media ‘boy’.
‘Counting down. Try to talk over the helicopter engine – this is our camera here – stand with your back to the building please…’ Tatiana Nunes pushed Detective Bonita roughly against the door through which thousands of pigs had walked and breathed their last. The irony was not lost on the policewoman. Tatiana Nunes turned to camera.
‘We are at the former Fondía abattoir for an exclusive statement by Detective Inspector Rita Bonita of the Department for Homicide who is investigating the deaths of two foreign businessmen pulled out of the River Pinheiros yesterday. What can you tell us Detective?’

Detective Bonita blinked. How did Tatiana Nunes know that the two men were foreign? She had only just found out for certain herself. She knew Dra. Angelica had not said anything because she had been present when the pathologist had taken the call. The bombeiros couldn’t have known, either. In the distance she could see Eduardo Carlos climbing down into the dinghy to take him back across the river.
‘At this stage I can tell you that the identity of one of the men is…’ Detective Bonita read out the details from her notebook, including the cause of death and the fact that inside the abattoir was being treated as a crime scene.
‘But you know who the other man is, don’t you Detective?’ Detective Bonita froze.
‘I do know who the other victim is but I cannot disclose any information about him until we have spoken with his family.’
‘And can you confirm for our viewers, Detective, that this victim has had his face removed by the killer?’ Detective Bonita’s eyes opened wide with disbelief.
‘I cannot confirm anything until I have spoken with the family.’ She could hear her voice shaking with rage.
‘We’ll have to finish here,’ she snapped, ‘because I have nothing more to say.’ Detective Bonita began to turn away from the camera but Tatiana Nunes’ hand was on her shoulder.
‘Wait! You’re hunting a serial killer, aren’t you Detective? Our viewers have the right to know.’ Detective Bonita shook the hand off her shoulder.
‘This is an irresponsible line of questioning,’ she said, adding: ‘and I have nothing more to say.’ The camera moved back to the journalist.
‘But you’re not denying it, are you, Detective Bonita?’

© Emília Shap: Lisbon May 2007