Pirate King: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

I opened my mouth to object, or perhaps to enquire, but in the end could come up with no graspable point. He did not notice, but went on, speaking (so it appeared) to the burning end of his cigarette. “The dimensions of a single life, the many levels of artifice within a reality, can only excite the mind of a person tuned to that chord. Thus the philosophy behind Mr Fflytte’s moving picture, the men and women who are simultaneously artifices and real- artifices, as well as being real-real outside of the realm of the camera. But what I wish to know is, why pirates? Is piracy a thing that speaks to the English soul as well as my own Portuguese one?”

“Er,” I said.

“That is to say, the multiple natures of ‘pirate’ within the bounds of this single piece of art is akin to a room filled with mirrors, is it not? Here on this wall, one sees the image of pirates as buffoons, silly and easily outwitted and ultimately proven to be empty of any piratic essence. On the next wall, one sees the piratic image of the interior director, the handsome boy who pretends to be a pirate, as well as the image held in the mind of the overall director, Mr Fflytte, the invisible God-figure in this story. And just when one thinks to grasp the duality of piracy, another set of mirrors comes up and the play-pirates become true pirates, doing battle with their own natures in the person of Frederic, who is at one and the same time an outsider and a true pirate.”

All this talk about pirates had made Mr Pessoa’s gaze go far away. Two lengths of ash had dropped unnoticed as his monologue unfurled. Then he looked at me, as if in expectation of an answer, to a question I could not begin to recall. I felt an absurd urge to lay my head down on the table and go to sleep. Or to weep.

“Mr Pessoa, I do not know. Could you tell me, what are the plans for this evening?”

He was greatly disappointed, that I had not leapt to my feet and declared my undying love for buccaneers and corsairs – perhaps I ought to have brought Miss Sim along, they could have recited Byron at each other. He brushed off his coat, emptied his glass, and assembled his thoughts. “As I mentioned, Mr Fflytte’s desire for actors who look like pirates drew to mind a local … character, I suppose one would call him.” As opposed to Senhor Pessoa, an everyday Lisboan with multiple personas? “A … colourful man I met some years ago. It may take a little time to locate him precisely; however, the evening shall not be wasted. I shall be your … cicerone to one of the most picturesque sections of Lisbon, where we are sure to find him.”

The optimism of my note to Holmes began to shrink.

I asked Pessoa about Lisbon’s literary community, which diverted him until Fflytte bounced into the lobby, followed by his tall shadow, some twenty minutes late. Pessoa eyed the director’s dramatic hat and white fur coat, but merely tamped out his third cigarette and led us to the door.

* * *

The evening air smelt of coming rain. We made to step from the hotel’s forecourt onto the pavement proper, then Pessoa’s arm shot out, a barricade to progress. Three armed police trotted by, intent on something up the road, and I became aware of a crowd noise from the Rossio, the wide rectangular plaza that formed the centre of the town.

Pessoa seemed unconcerned, once the intent constables had passed, and set off in the direction from which they had come. I glanced over my shoulder, and decided that if a riot erupted, we were as well off in the town’s outskirts as in the central hotel.

Our path took us along gently sloping cobbled pavements through a district of expensive shops and white- linened restaurants discreetly scattered with banks – not for nothing was the street named Rua do Ouro, or Gold Street. Fflytte’s head turned continuously, scanning alleys and the buildings’ heights for potentially scenic shots, paying no attention to Pessoa’s scrupulous narration. At the bottom of the street (“This triumphal arch displays Glory crowning Genius and Valour.”) another vast plaza spread out, this one perfectly square and lined on three sides by what could only be municipal buildings. A tall bronze equestrian statue stood in the centre. As he led us across the space, Pessoa’s running commentary told us that this was the Praca do Comercio, known as Black Horse Square to Englishmen; that the gent on the horse was King Jose; and that the statue had been put up to mark the rebuilding of Lisbon after it was more or less levelled by an earthquake in 1755 (an earthquake that was felt throughout Europe and caused a major tidal wave along the English coastline).

Which served to remind me that we were not only in a city where police-attended riots were commonplace, it was also liable at any minute to be reduced to rubble.

Across the square, we followed the river east for a few minutes before veering uphill, into a dark jumble of buildings. Pessoa’s narration never faltered, although the pace he set kept Fflytte at a near-jog, and even Hale and I had to move briskly. This, Pessoa’s trailing voice informed us, was the most ancient part of Lisbon, the Alfama, which oddly enough was spared much of the 1755 destruction. Oddly because it had been long abandoned by the wealthy, left to the fishing community – who must have been amused at the irony. It was a place with ancient roots, felt in the labyrinth of narrow streets and featureless buildings: the architecture of the Moors – the district’s name was from the Arabic for springs-with its life and beauty turned inward, away from public view.

Not, I imagined, that there remained much beauty here, not after centuries of working class practicality, but life there most certainly was, even if one only judged by a constant sequence of cooking odours. Most of them seemed to involve fish.

We travelled in Pessoa’s wake, Fflytte’s head rotating left, right, and upwards until it threatened to come loose from his shoulders. After a while, Pessoa turned into an alley that had been invisible an instant before we entered it. A door came open.

The interior of the building was little lighter than the alleyway had been; as we patted our way inside, Fflytte’s coat was the brightest thing in the room. Pessoa gestured us to a table, held out a chair for me, and asked what we would drink.

I said I would try a glass of white wine; Fflytte wanted a cocktail; and Hale, a glass of brandy. Pessoa went to the bar – a journey of five steps – and described our request in lengthy detail. From the time it took, he might have been talking about the weather and the state of the nation’s politics, but the regular gestures at the bottles behind the bar suggested a debate about the nature of the requested cocktail.

He came back and lit a cigarette. After a great deal of activity, the man behind the bar brought us our libations: vinho verde for me, something called ginjinha for Hale, and a cloudy glass for the director. Fflytte looked dubiously at his drink, which contained an object that might have been an olive or a maraschino cherry, or a smooth stone. He took one sip, and put the glass down with an air of finality. My wine was not too bad, although Hale’s startled expression suggested that his palate had never encountered a drink quite like that ginjinha.

Pessoa, on the other hand, took a hefty swallow from what appeared to be a light port, and looked satisfied.

“So, is he here, your man?” Fflytte asked.

“I haven’t asked. It is always best to blend in a little before asking questions.”

I blinked: How long would it take before a young blonde woman nearly six feet tall, an Englishman wearing an Eton tie and a vicuna overcoat, and a midget in white sealskin would blend in here?

“Er, perhaps we shouldn’t wait for that,” I suggested. “Could you just ask him now?”

Pessoa finished his drink and carried his empty glass back to the bar. My eyes having adjusted somewhat to the gloom, I noticed that two customers stood there, slack-jawed.

I couldn’t blame them a bit.

Fflytte gingerly lifted the object out of his drink, examined it, then allowed it to slip back under the murky liquid. Pessoa launched into conversation with the barkeep while the man refilled his glass. The customers soon chimed in. A tiny, wizened woman with a scarf around her hair poked out from a set of curtains at the back. The Portuguese conversation, as always, sounded furious to the edge of violence, but I had already learnt to suppress the urge to draw my knife, and indeed, the shaken fingers seemed mostly to be pointed at the walls rather than into the face of an opponent. Still, agreement seemed either to be unreachable, or not to the point. Eventually I stood up and approached the bar with my note-case in my hand.

Nodding and commenting all the while, yet another cigarette dangling from his mouth, Pessoa plucked the money-purse from my hand and pawed through the dirty bills, dropping a remarkably small amount of money on the bar. He handed me back the case and drained the glass (his third?) as the consultation wended its way to a close. I blew a gobbet of ash from the remaining bills, and we went out into the night.