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

Chapter Four

Detective Bonita waited on the forecourt of the Hotel Cote d’Or until Eduardo Carlos had driven away. He had told her that he suspected the old city abattoir might provide clues to at least one of the murders and she had agreed to allow him to go over there and take a look. Before getting out of the case, she had also suggested that he call his colleagues at the airport to get passenger lists for all flights to and from major European airports during the two weeks before Christmas. And, she had added as an afterthought, it would be a good idea for him to call Interpol, but she had stopped short of allowing him to lead the investigation. The victim was probably foreign and crime reporters were shadowing their every move. This case was too important and too public to be left in the hands of an agent as young and inexperienced as Eduardo Carlos, however smart he considered himself to be. Instead, she had insisted that he report his findings straight back to her: they would run the case together. He had shown no inclination to respond, but it was clear from the clenched fists, the rigid jaw and the dark frown, how disappointed and frustrated he was at her unwillingness to give him the responsibility he felt he was ready for. Too bad. He had a lot to prove before she would change her mind. Anyway, she wanted to seek the view of her own boss on this so, once Agent Demario was out of sight, she stepped into the twenty-seven storey hotel and dialled Captain Lourenço’s number.
The air inside the reception of the hotel had been dried, cooled and, she noted, waiting for the connection on her phone, very possibly perfumed. The fragrance was, she concluded, most likely emanating from a lavish floral centrepiece blooming extravagantly in the middle of an otherwise conventional marble and chrome lobby. Detective Bonita, who was wet from the rain and sticky from the humid conditions inside her car, edged around the white flowers to see a small delegation of three women and a man making their way towards her. She knew one of them must be the French Cônsul Geral Adjunto and it was quite apparent that they knew who she was. The conditioned atmosphere made her shiver. Soon the delegation was by her side, smiling and ready to make themselves known to her but it was too late: Captain Lourenço’s wife Liliane had already answered the phone. Detective Bonita waved to the party to wait for a moment, she would have to make the call. The diplomats glanced sideways and took a step back. They did not look pleased. Liliane, meanwhile, who had spent the entire holiday with her husband’s family in Rio de Janeiro, also sounded harassed; the kids couldn’t go out to play on the beach because of the rain, her mother-in-law’s empregada was in Bahia so they had to go out every day to eat and the nanny the agency had sent to help her was a sweet girl but completely useless.
‘Then there’s all this wretched shooting stuff going on. I can’t even let my kids out onto the balcony. They’re behaving like caged animals. But Happy New Year to you, Rita,’ she added. ‘I’d sooner be here than looking at a dead person fished from a river. I’ll get my husband.’
‘Rita?’ said Capt. Lourenço. ‘How’s it going?’
‘OK, sir. Well – not exactly brilliantly. The bad news is that we’ve doubled our body count. The good news is that I’m just about to see the French CGA to get an i.d. contact for one of the dead men but we have little to go on the other. Eduardo Carlos is following a lead but Missing Persons have no likely matches.’
‘So why are you phoning me?’
‘To keep you informed, sir, and to – ’
‘Informed about what? That you aren’t getting anywhere? Have you forgotten you’re on Cidade Alerta! at six tonight?’
‘No, sir.’
‘If this is ‘keeping me informed’ then don’t phone me again until you have something more concrete.’
Concealing her dismay that her boss should offer so little encouragement in such a difficult situation, Detective Bonita slipped her phone into her pocket, held out her hand to the only man in the diplomatic delegation and apologised for keeping him waiting, explaining quickly that she had forgotten all the French she had studied at school and hoped that his Excellency wouldn’t mind. The young man, it turned out, was the interpreter. The CGA introduced herself as Sylvie Paroles who, in her thirties, was the youngest of the three women. The next one to give her name was Mlle Marianne Marqué, who was Head of Customer Relations for the Côte d’Or group in South America. All three women spoke in perfectly serviceable Portuguese but had retained the interpreter in case, explained the older woman, a Mme Framboise, ‘things become technical’.
‘We all know Camille Bleu very well,’ Mme Framboise continued. ‘He has lived in Brazil for many years. We are very concerned about –’ she waved her arms around in the air ‘all this. He was very popular with all of us and the staff and visitors at this hotel. We cannot begin to imagine what has happened to him. But we will of course help in any way we can. In return we expect to be kept informed and, of course, to have all media enquiries directed straight to the office of Mlle Paroles in the Consulate.’
‘We don’t know for sure that the body we have in the morgue is Monsieur Bleu, Madame,’ said Detective Bonita, ‘until someone makes a formal identification. I was hoping that you might be able to give me the name of someone I could contact in his family?’
‘But that will be very distressing for his wife, will it not?’
‘Yes it will. But I have no choice.’

13h10
Monsieur Camille Bleu, it would emerge, had lived in Brazil in exceptionally complicated circumstances. Detective Bonita had been able to walk to the apartment of his family which, on Rua Peixoto Gomide, was just around the corner from the hotel. But the rain continued, the drains couldn’t cope and the pavements were submerged so that when she arrived, her feet were so wet she had no choice but to remove her trainers and was embarrassed to reveal a sock with a hole and chipped aubergine paint on her big toenail. Camille Bleu’s wife, who, Detective Bonita reckoned, was about the same age as the man in the mortuary, laughed nervously and immediately produced the most luxurious, soft leather slippers the policewoman had ever seen. Mme Bleu also insisted that she join her for some soup, cheese and French bread.
‘Not the pão frances you Brazilians like to buy in the padarias here but a proper baguette with beurre demi-sel and camembert.’ The tone of Mme Bleu’s voice had darkened but it would slip over Detective Bonita like a blunt knife down the side of a tomato. She watched impassively as Mme Bleu moved around her kitchen. The older woman’s skin was flawless and pale, her figure might be the envy of a woman of any age and her short white hair was as soft as that of a child. But it was her eyes – the colour of a luminous blue sky – the sort of sky that had not been glimpsed in São Paulo for months – that pulled into focus an image of extraordinary beauty. Detective Bonita wondered how Camille Bleu’s wife would react to the news that her husband of – what? – forty years had been found in pieces in a river. She allowed a few moments to lapse whilst she prepared herself mentally to try and form the difficult questions she knew she had to ask in a way that would make them sound less banal. But how she would do this she wasn’t sure. Sensing that something was wrong, Mme Bleu said: ‘You’re here about Camille, aren’t you?’ Detective Bonita nodded. Mme Bleu sighed.
‘Sylvie Paroles has already visited me. I know my husband is dead. He moved out on October 29th. last year - a Sunday. But he continued to phone me every day, even after he –’ Mme Bleu’s carefully assembled outer layers were beginning to crack. ‘I was sure he would come back.’ Mme Bleu was shaking her head. ‘Then the calls stopped. That’s how I know he’s dead.’
‘When did you last see M. Bleu, Madame?’ Detective Bonita found some security in the dull dependability of the questions she had started – and would continue – to ask.
‘Days before his last call. More than a week even. He came round to collect his dress suit and to ask me to –’ Detective Bonita had her notepad in front of her next to her plate of bread and cheese. She was starving but how could she eat at a time like this?
‘His dress suit –’ asked Detective Bonita through a mouthful of baguette. ‘Was it Yves St Laurent?’ Mme Bleu nodded. ‘It was a little tight round the waist. He wanted it to be altered.’
‘Do you remember the day he made the very last phone call?’
‘Of course. Thursday December 21st.’ The day he disappeared, thought Detective Bonita.
‘What time was it?’
‘Late in the afternoon. He didn’t say much because he was in a rush to get to a meeting. There were plans to open a third Côte d’Or in São Paulo. I think that’s what the meeting was about.’
‘Did he say where he was when he phoned?’
‘No. But I knew he was in his office in the Hotel. He always phoned from there because it wouldn’t cost him anything and no one could trace the call.’
‘And why did he phone you?’ Mme Bleu pushed her knife through the chalky skin of the cheese and scraped it off the paper.
‘To check that I would accompany him to the Côte d’Or Christmas Ball in Rio de Janeiro. To make sure that Marianne Marqué had delivered my airline ticket and to tell me that someone would go to meet me at the airport. ‘Someone’ he said. But it would not be him. It would not be my husband.’ Mme Bleu slumped slightly against the table.
‘And did you go? To the Ball I mean?’
‘Non, ma fille. I said I was going to go. But I stayed here. I couldn’t face a party. I couldn’t face the staff. I couldn’t face any of it.’ She started to sob quietly. Detective Bonita paused and bit into the bread.
‘Did you stay here alone?’
‘Oui. Oh – except my empregada was here. Not with me. I was alone in that sense. She was in her room.’
‘Is she here now?’
‘No. She is in Bahia with her family.’
‘Do you have her phone number?’
‘I gave her a mobile. If it’s switched on, this is the number.’ Mme Bleu stood to get an address book then scribbled the number on a piece of paper. ‘Why do you need to speak to her?’
‘I need to speak to everyone connected to Monsieur Bleu, Madame. Do you have children?’
‘Yes, and most of them have children now. I haven’t told them about any of this. My eldest son is married to a Brazilian. They live in Rio. I was supposed to stay with them over Christmas. But I don’t much like my daughter-in-law’s family and, with Rio being so dangerous at the moment I telephoned to say I would prefer to stay here.’
‘You’ve been most helpful Madame. I appreciate this is a very difficult time for you and I have only two more questions: I need to know where M. Bleu went to live after here and also I wondered if you could give me the name of his secretary?’
‘Camille’s secretary was Marianne Marqué and she will be able to answer the first question.’

14h30
After the post-mortem identification of her husband, Mme Bleu was taken back to her apartment by a pleasant military police woman who offered to stay with her until she felt strong enough to phone her son and request that he spend some time in São Paulo so that she would not have to spend any time by herself. Detective Bonita phoned Eduardo Carlos, who was still sulking, but who had ‘some crucial information’ which he was bursting to tell her.
‘Did you get the passenger lists from the airlines?’ she asked.
‘'No boss. They don't keep passenger lists. But I spoke to immigration - they're sending information on travellers coming into Sao Paulo during the period we're interested in. They say it's a huge quantity of information and they're not sure what it will show us. But look - I need you to see what I have discovered here. I need Scene of Crime Officers and the pathologist and – ’
‘What about the flights going out, Eduardo?’ said Detective Bonita
‘Pardon me? Why would I need to check those? The man with no face was killed here and dumped here in São Paulo – he couldn’t have taken a flight anywhere.’ Detective Bonita sighed.
‘Then why hasn’t he been reported missing?’
‘Because he’s maybe from England – or from somewhere – and no one knew he was coming here?’
‘So he arrived anonymously, was shot in the head and had his face removed? Not impossible. But unlikely. Have you checked this with Interpol?’ she paused to allow her subordinate to respond. When he didn’t she said: ‘Whilst you’re getting round to calling Interpol, as I asked you to, Eduardo, I think you should consider the possibility that the people who know this man might think he has taken a flight out of Brazil. The only other alternative is that they are the ones who killed him.’

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

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 - 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