Craig cut in. “What about air and rail tickets?

  “The returns aren’t in yet,” said Pessoa. “I shall only get them after midnight. The Rio air traffic is very heavy, as you know, and not only from the two civilian airports. Quite a lot of people get lifts in the Service planes. But he hasn’t left on any of the international flights. That we do know because we have an automatic check system. But we shan’t know about the others until tomorrow. It’s a great pity we have no line on the girl.”

  “Yes,” said Craig, feeling guilty. He liked Pessoa and already regretted the promise which had been wrung from him.

  “If you see her,” said Pessoa, “will you please, try and find out all you can and telephone me at once. I’m sorry to bring you into this but we must get hold of Graben.”

  “The trouble is,” said Craig, now feeling disloyal to both Pessoa and Alcidia, “that there are so many of these pretty garotas around. So don’t count on me. What about the favela?”

  Pessoa’s eyes brightened. “We are on to something there. I found out that the S.N.I.—the Intelligence Service—have an undercover agent in the Dona Marta favela. His job is to keep his ears open for signs of political subversion, but I asked them to get him out, on some pretext, and interrogate him.”

  “But that’s good,” said Craig, glad to be on firmer ground. “What had he got to say?”

  “Not very much, but significant.”

  “How? Did he see anything?”

  “No,” said Pessoa, “because he wasn’t in the favela last night. But he got back to his hut early this morning and found everybody was talking about a respected member of the community who had disappeared in the night. He is an old cafuso—”

  “What is that?”

  “Half Indian and half black. He came from Amazonas and had been living in the favela for some years. He is a trader in—” Pessoa paused, his eyes sparkling, “guess what—Indian carving, head-dresses and weapons. Yes. Bows and arrows, as well as spears. He has his but full of the stuff, which his truck driver friends bring down the new road from Belem to Brasilia and then to Rio. He goes the rounds of the hotels and dealers and sells them—for about a quarter of the price the tourists pay.”

  “Did he have any fishing bows?”

  “The agent doesn’t know, but that’s precisely what we are going to find out. The cafuso—Ze Franki, his name is—apparently left his shack in the early hours of this morning—somebody thinks he saw him. Now we know that a jeep was waiting on the road, where the main path to the favela comes out, at two o’clock this morning. It was empty. A patrol car of military police stopped to have a look, but just then two men came down the path. One of them was little and old and had a big bundle on his head. It sounds like Franki. The other, a big man, saw the patrol car and ran to the jeep. The old man just had time to throw in his bundle and scramble in before the big man drove off fast. By the time the patrol car, which was facing the wrong way, got going in pursuit, the Jeep had turned a comer, and they lost it. The corporal of patrol is being disciplined,” added Pessoa grimly.

  “What should he have done?”

  “Opened up with his machine-pistol of course,” said the Colonel. “He had called on the men “to stop.”

  “Then why didn’t he?”

  “Because,” said Pessoa bitterly, “he thought the men in the Jeep might have mistaken the patrol in the darkness for bandits, and got scared and stepped on the gas.”

  “It was a humane reaction on the part of the corporal,” observed Craig, mildly.

  “In my country,” said Pessoa, too many people indulge in humane feelings in times of crisis. Especially the judges. They’ll let off a self-confessed murderer, if they see half a chance.”

  “Well,” said Craig, “if we’re going to argue about justice and jurisdiction we shall take a long tune. Are you going to the favela now?”

  “At once. Would you like to come with us? You will be welcome.”

  “Yes, I should. I should like to have a look at that hut.”

  “Then let’s be on our way,” said Pessoa, getting to his feet.

  “Have you got the troops?” asked Craig, smiling.

  “Don’t pull my leg, Senhor Peter. You know I don’t need troops for a little visit to an empty hut, although we shall be prepared for minor trouble. But a search of the whole favela, believe me, that would be something different.”

  “What makes you think the cafuso is not there?” asked Craig as they went down to the waiting car. “He could have made an early start, taking a bundle of things to a shop, and have got back by this time.”

  “He wouldn’t have started out as early as two o’clock, and besides, many people were looking for him this morning. He had a lot to organise today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told you he was a well-respected man in the favela. He is a judge at the rehearsals of the Samba School, and this is the day when they hold a rehearsal for the desfiles—the grand parades which take place next month, at Carnival. The Dona Marta School was third last year.”

  “And that’s why he’s so important today,” said Craig, smiling.

  “The desfiles are what the favelas live for,” said Pessoa. “From October onwards they spend all their spare time and money preparing for the four days of Carnival. And a judge is a very important man. Ze Franki would never be able to show his face in the favela again if he deserted the School on the day of the rehearsals. That’s why I think he must have gone for good; which makes me think we are on the right track.”

  He got into the mini-bus and found room for Craig beside him on the front seat. They drove up the Rua Sao Clemente, following the one-way traffic, and set off on the long circuit necessary to bring them back to the point in the same street where the turning to the favela led off. It would have been quicker to walk, thought Craig, but he guessed that Pessoa was taking no chances. He had brought the little bus so that he could accommodate unwilling passengers, if necessary.

  “Do the people who live in a favela call it by that name,” he asked.

  “Oh no. You don’t use the word except in a pejorative sense,” said Pessoa didactically. “For instance, the Dona Marta people call themselves “The Association of the Inhabitants of Dona Marta,” and that’s the name of their Samba School. But other Schools are called all sorts of names, like the “Academics,” the “Students,” and so on.”

  There was a block in the traffic and the car was stationary for several minutes while the sweating traffic police tried to sort it out.

  “I haven’t told the Press anything yet,” said Pessoa, “about the arrow attack, but it may be very difficult to keep it quiet any longer. The visits of my men to the Residence have caused a lot of comment already, and somebody is bound to tip off the journalists. It’s a nuisance, because I still think it possible that Graben was involved in that, as well as the Gomes murder, which of course will be in all the papers tomorrow. If he is on the run it would have been useful to let him continue to think you are dead.”

  “But what on earth would he want to kill me for?” said Craig. “I admit that he has a grudge against me for what I did to him in Bangasa, and he obviously thought I was somehow on to the secret of his diamonds. But why run all the risk of trying to knock me off? Or even getting one of his favelado friends to do it? I still can’t think how, even if he did want to kill me, he could possibly have arranged it all in the time. He didn’t even know where I was staying—” He stopped. Graben did know. Alcidia had told him, at Craig’s own request. That, he thought, was an odd irony of fate, if Graben really had had something to do with the attack.

  Pessoa was looking at him curiously. He said: “You have just remembered that you asked the girl to tell Graben, if she saw him, where you were staying so that he could get in touch with you. But we don’t know whether she did see or speak to him again before the attack took place. Or do we?”

  “How can we tell?” said Craig, getting deeper into the mire. “But even if she did tell him, I don’t see how he could have known that I was going to sit out on that terrace last night. Yet that is just what the—the abominable bowman did know. He must have been waiting for me or I should have heard him. Although he must have been very near, it was as dark as hell and he couldn’t possibly have seen my face. I still think it was a random attack, as I told you.”

  Pessoa thought. “You’re probably right. It seems quite impossible. But the Gomes affair is a different matter. There is Graben’s connection with Gomes, and his violent reaction when you mentioned it to him. And that remark he made to you—‘You know nothing and you’re not going to learn anything either’—that’s just what he meant; he was going off to stop Gomes’s mouth before it was too late.”

  “It’s all very circumstantial, you know,” said Craig.

  “You’d be surprised what we can do with circumstantial evidence,” said Pessoa smiling, “if we can get the right judge.”

  * * * *

  The minibus turned off the road and began to climb a narrow street, at the end of which Craig could see the high silhouette of the morro rising above the roof-tops. The sun was bright on the lower slopes ahead, covered with grass and mato, and on the sheer wall of rock behind and to the left, where the morro joined the shoulder of the towering Corcovado. The street ended, petered out into a wide, bare track, beaten hard by the daily passage of thousands of shod and naked feet. The car was passing them now, mostly black people, some gay, some morose, going downwards to the city and jobs and suckers with pickable pockets and vulnerable flats; and upwards with weary feet, carrying bundles and pails of water and babies, towards the few sticks of wood and sheets of corrugated iron which meant home. Every woman of over fifteen seemed to be carrying a baby, either in her arms or on her back or nature’s way—inside. Most of them looked cheerful enough.

  The men’s clothes were an extraordinary mixture—some in quite smart beach shorts and sandals, others in brightly coloured suits and some—presumably the beggars—in scanty and filthy rags. The children were half naked and barefoot, for the most part, carrying water or school satchels or more babies and chattering happily. The older girls, so far as Craig could see, all seemed to be wearing freshly washed and ironed dresses, tight around bust and buttocks, in white or gay colours. They were an attractive lot and some were beautiful, walking straight-backed with their pails on their heads, eyes and teeth flashing white in the dark, passionate faces as they screamed jokes and gossip and abuse at each other. Work was over for the day, and there was food ahead, and then the magic samba music and more laughter.

  The police bus caused a ripple of excitement and a lot of giggling comment, and Craig noticed that some of the men disappeared as the car approached, while others strolled past, staring with a look of insolent unconcern. But they had stopped talking and there was an undercurrent of tension, which he could feel reflected in the occupants of the police car.

  Where the track ended in a flight of rough steps, which led up through the mato to the lower part of the favela the corporal stopped the minibus and reversed it into position facing down towards the approach road. He got out and unslung his machine-pistol, and remained standing by the side of the bus with his gun in a position of readiness. Pessoa, Craig and the two military policemen, their weapons also held ready for action, started to climb the steps.

  Craig looked ahead. As he had expected, half-way up the steps there was a scamper of little black legs, climbing fast to give the alarm in the favela.

  Seen from below, it looked, as the Ambassador had said, picturesque and romantic. The wooden huts, some solidly built with brick foundations and lower walls, but mostly mere shacks and lean-tos, appeared at first sight to be stacked on top of each other, so steep was the slope of the mountain. Since the foundations of each irregular line of dwellings had been built out from the slope, with the help of walls of dry stones and wooden props, the houses stood in effect on shallow ledges, and often the supporting wall of one house provided the rear wall of the shack below. Craig had heard of the appalling landslides caused by the abnormally heavy rains in 1966 and 1967, and was puzzled to see so little evidence of damage. Most of the shacks looked twenty or thirty years old, at least. He asked Pessoa.

  “They were lucky,” said the Colonel. “Two things saved them. One was that there was no cloudburst directly above Dona Marta. In other parts of the city ten inches of rain fell in five hours. If that had happened here nothing could have saved the favela, or at least this part of it. The foundations of these huts, where they exist at all, only have a friction hold on the shallow layer of earth that covers the granite of the morro. Really intensive rain, kept up for several hours, would wash away the foundations and bring one house after another crashing down on those below. But the worse danger is what happened in the Laranjeiras district in February 1967, when the whole covering of earth slid down the mountain side, just like a snow avalanche, and knocked two apartment houses together into one great heap of rubble. That comes of interfering with the earth covering. If you don’t cut into it, it seems to stick in place by some curious balance of forces. At least these favelados had the sense, when they put up their shacks, to build out from the slope. And so the favela, so far, has weathered every storm and still exists to make my task more difficult. It’s a well-run favela, as they go, but there are a lot of very dangerous men living here.”

  “How do you mean, well-run?” asked Craig.

  “There is a president of the Association, whom we shall go to see first. I imagine he is like the headman of one of your African villages, with absolute power, although he pretends to rule through his council. He is a wise, strong and highly unscrupulous old man and he rules the favela with an iron hand. If anybody doesn’t pay his dues or causes any kind of trouble—I mean of course from the president’s point of view, not ours—the council simply cancels his licence to live here, and that is the worst threat imaginable. A man will crawl on his face and ask to be beaten instead. There is just nowhere else for these people to live inside the city limits. We are making settlements for them outside with new factories to give them employment, but most of the favelados have no intention of moving until they’re pushed out. And that’s a long process, and a painful one.”

  They had been climbing one long flight of steps after another, with short stretches of level path between the top of one flight and the bottom of the next. Evil-smelling runnels at both sides of the steps drained off the family middens, but Craig noticed that some houses had electric wires leading into them, and there were even a few television aerials. Some of the inhabitants were obviously making enough money to provide themselves with creature comforts, even if these did not run to flush closets.

  The sun was still very hot, and Craig was relieved when they came at last to the end of the fourth flight of steps where there was a broad ledge. This led to a place where the slope levelled off sufficiently to provide room for the village square, if such it could be called. It was an assembly ground of beaten earth, with a long wooden building at one side with a broad verandah protected from the “square” by a wooden rail. Small groups of men, surrounded by rows of silent, intent children, were practising their drum rhythms in the corners of the assembly ground. The West African beat struck a nostalgic chord in Craig’s heart, and the whole scene reminded him irresistibly of visits he had made to villages way out in the bush. And yet this place was less than half a mile from a busy street in the heart of Rio de Janeiro.

  The tall, grey-haired man who was sitting at a table on the verandah of the wooden house, with a bottle of cachaça and glasses in front of him, stood up slowly, very dignified, when they went to meet him. He greeted Pessoa, whom he obviously knew well, with a grave smile and a formal abraço, each man’s left arm around the other’s shoulders in a half-completed hug. The two policemen stayed in the background. Pessoa introduced Craig.

  “Senhor Presidente,” he said formally, this is my good friend Senhor Peter, an Englishman, who is interested in visiting your well-conducted community. I was sure that the President would welcome his visit.”

  “It is an honour,” said the President, but looking wary. He poured out small glasses of the fiery cane spirit and offered them. “Let us sit down. You must be tired after your climb. When it is cooler I will show Senhor Peter our assembly hall, and then he must stay for the rehearsal of our batucada.”

  “It is a great pity,” said Craig, “but I cannot give myself that pleasure tonight. Saudes!” He bowed to the old man and raised his glass, trying not to cough as the fierce stuff went down his throat. He felt it was no use spending too much time on formalities, and went on: “But I should like to see your hall, and is there not one of your members who has a fine collection of Indian weapons? I am anxious to buy some spears, but the prices in the shops are far too high.”

  There was silence, while the President turned bloodshot eyes on Pessoa and sniffed delicately at his glass. “How extraordinary,” he said finally, “how very extraordinary that you should have heard about Ze Franki in London. Yes, yes. Too extraordinary.” He set down his glass and addressed Pessoa. The polite tone had disappeared from his voice.

  “Coronel Luiz,” he said, “if you have a reason of your own for coming here, please speak out. You want to see Ze? I’m afraid he’s gone on a trip.”

  “Today?” said Pessoa, in affected astonishment, “but of course he will be back for the rehearsal?”

  “I don’t know. He left without telling me, which is most unusual. But I should be very surprised if he has done anything to justify your attention. But then,” he added, with a half-concealed sneer, “even the police have been known to make mistakes.”

  Pessoa was unruffled. “Sometimes people make denunciations out of malice,” he agreed. “But I should like to go with Senhor Peter to see Franki’s house, if we may.”

  “A denunciation?” said the President thoughtfully. “That is a dirty business. If anyone here is responsible I will see that he is punished. Who was it who told lies about Franki?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24