'Check your list,' I said to Carlos, who'd disassociated himself from me. 'See if there's a fifteen/sixteen-year-old girl, blonde hair, blue eyes, 1.65 metres, fifty-five kilos… Any distinguishing marks, Fernanda?'

She held up her hand. Muttering into her dictaphone she inspected the abrasion on the girl's forehead. Carlos flicked through the missing-persons sheets, plenty of names in the black hole. More cars flashed by on the Marginal. Fernanda minutely inspected the girl's pubic hair and vagina.

'Start with the ones who've gone in the last twenty-four hours,' I said. Carlos sighed.

Fernanda unrolled a plastic sheet in front of her. She removed a thermometer from the girl's armpit and eased her over on to her front. Some rigor mortis had already started. With a pair of tweezers she picked her way through a mash of hair, blood and sand at the back of the girl's head. She reached for a plastic evidence sachet and fed something into it and marked it up. She sheafed the girl's hair and kissed the dictaphone again. She looked down the length of the girl's body, parted the buttocks with finger and thumb speaking all the time. She clicked off the dictaphone.

'Mole at the back of the neck, in the hairline, central. Coffee-coloured birthmark inside left thigh fifteen centimetres above the knee,' she shouted.

'If it was her parents who reported it, that should be enough,' I said.

'Catarina Sousa Oliveira,' said Carlos, handing me the sheet.

An ambulance arrived. Two paramedics walked to the back. One pulled out a stretcher, the other carried the bodybag. Fernanda stood back from the body and brushed herself off.

I walked down the harbour wall to the sea. It was barely 7.15 a.m. and the sun already had some needle in it. To my left, looking east, was the mouth of the Tagus and the massive pillars of the 25 th April suspension bridge which floated footless in a heavy mist.