Breakdown of O detetive teve de confessar que o suspeito terá fugido.
ter
to have
ter de
to have to
que
that (conjunction)
fugir
to flee
Questions & Answers about O detetive teve de confessar que o suspeito terá fugido.
Why does this sentence use the future tense (terá fugido) to talk about a past event?
This is a special use of the Futuro Composto do Indicativo (Future Perfect). While it can mean 'will have done' something in the future, it is very commonly used to express an assumption, probability, or guess about something that already happened. So, terá fugido literally translates to 'will have fled', but here it means 'probably fled' or 'must have fled'.
Could we use deve ter fugido here instead of terá fugido?
Why use the Pretérito Perfeito (teve de confessar) instead of the Imperfeito (tinha de confessar) for 'had to'?
Because the act of confessing was a completed, one-time event in the past. If you used tinha de confessar, it would describe an ongoing obligation or a state of mind ('he had the obligation to confess, but we do not know if he actually did'). Teve de tells us the obligation peaked and the action was definitively completed.
I often hear people say ter que instead of ter de. Could I write teve que confessar here?