Adérito and the Dock Mice

Adérito Fonseca was one of the first agents to be recruited to the Department in 1919, and he progressed rapidly: sub-inspector in 1920, inspector in 1921.

Born in one of Oporto’s poorest neighbourhoods, his escape from a life of delinquency was the result of a recommendation from his schoolmaster to his parents to put him in the Seminary. After a few years, he realised that priesthood wasn’t his vocation, but he had acquired a general culture that would be very useful to him in later life.

Once he was an agent of the Department, he realised that it wasn’t very difficult to get information about what was happening in the upper and middle classes, but the social dynamics of the poorer areas were completely beyond the Department’s control. He began to set up a network, recruiting small-time vagrants who lived on the street and survived on various exploits. Their ability to go unnoticed meant that people were comfortable talking when they were around. Fonseca called them the ‘dock mice’, and the ease with which they slipped in through a window or chimney allowed them access to documents or objects, which would later become valuable knowledge to inspector Adérito. His power grew, and his presence in a public place sent a shiver down the spine of many of those present, who wondered what he knew about them.

But such power creates enemies. Adérito Fonseca ended up absent from the Department for three days, until his body was found by some fishermen on an abandoned barge by the river. The Department’s officers called to the scene found a corpse with obvious signs of torture: the ears had been cut off and the eyes gouged out. Pinned to his bloodied shirt, a piece of paper read: ‘Knowing too much kills’.

Adérito Fonseca was quickly buried in a shallow grave and the Department prevented any news from getting out.

The investigation carried out failed to find the perpetrator or perpetrators of the crime, despite the considerable mobilisation of resources. Subsequent attempts to reactivate the ‘dock mice’ network were unsuccessful.