The Eyes of Lira Kazan (12 page)

“Does the name Louchsky mean anything to you?”

“Don't tell me you were involved in searching his villa!”

“You've already heard about that?”

“He rang the Minister within the hour. There was a terrible row from the Master of the Rolls's office. Don't say I said so, but your judge is going to be in trouble.”

“I know, his transfer came today.”

“What about you?”

“I'm just an invisible pawn, a humble clerk… Louchsky and the paintings, does that mean anything to you?”

“Stop this, Félix, it's dangerous.”

“Just give me a hint, I'll be all right. No one will know it was you.”

“Stop, I'm telling you. Do something else.”

“Fuck it, Steffy, we can't just let them get away with it. Can't we just set off a few firecrackers before bailing out?”

“You don't understand! Louchsky's not in the same league as your usual clients. He's into big stuff, oil, gas, arms. He deals directly with the Élysée. He gave the President's wife a big cheque for her foundation only last week. Louchsky is super-well protected.”

“I'm not kidding myself, we won't catch him. But I want it to appear in the papers that the judge has been removed from the case. The only track I've got is the paintings.”

“Well you can ring Do if you like. He'll probably say the same as me – lie low.”

Steffy spoke sharply. They said goodbye and Félix remained sitting on the edge of his sofa. He and that man had been lovers and now he felt he was talking to an official. Do was a gossip. Félix had met him when he was with Steffy, at one of those supposedly avant-garde vernissages where the crowd was only interested in filling their glasses with champagne and spotting celebrities. Do at the time was counsellor to the Minister of Culture. He was an old gay man with dyed hair who gave young men of thirty jobs that should have gone to balding fifty-year-olds. And the Minister had fallen, and Do had gone back to run his legal practice on Boulevard Malesherbes, specializing in art.

Félix waited for a while and then dialled his number. There was no answer. He stammered out an unsatisfactory message, and then looked around him at the apartment that had once been so smartly decorated and clean. He went out, slamming the door behind him, hurrying to see if the judge was back at the law courts.

 

Somebody else was waiting in his office. Stephensen's interpreter was sitting in the corridor, the blond boy of uncertain age, perhaps older than he looked. He rose, recognizing the clerk, put out a limp hand and said in a weak voice that he wanted to see the judge.

“He shouldn't be long,” Félix lied. He could always tell when somebody was about to spill the beans.

He asked him to come in, offered him coffee, did everything he could to put him at his ease. He had no qualifications to hear what the young man had to say, and he rang the judge again, still with no answer, and asked anodyne questions to which Eyvin gave evasive answers. He said he had come to settle some of Mr Stephensen's affairs, the boat, the gallery…

“And he gave you a message for us?” Félix asked kindly.

“Not exactly, it's me… But perhaps the judge should be here.”

“We work together… he won't be long. How did you get to know Mr Stephensen?”

“The Faroe Islands are a small place, everyone knows each other. And I went to school with his son before I got the scholarship to come and study in Paris. When I got back I was known as a computer ace, and so one day Mr Stephensen called me at my mother's house and challenged me to test the security of his banking system: ‘If you can withdraw a million krónur from my bank, from your house, I'll give you a job.' I did it and he kept his word. Grind Bank was breaking all records at that time.”

“At that time? You mean it's all over?”

“Yes… do you know what ‘
grind
' means?”

“No.”

“It means dolphin… When will the judge come? I can't talk without some guarantees. I want protection.”

Félix prayed for the judge to come through the door. He couldn't desert so soon, not now!

“Sir, I'm frightened. There's a Mercedes without a number plate that tried to run me down in London two days ago, I'm really scared.”

He was crying now. He looked like a child. Félix walked across the office and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. He said gently:

“Listen, it may surprise you but this place is not as safe as you think. Tell me where you're staying. Or give me your
number. I'll get the judge and we'll come and hear you straight away.”

“Eyvin, 00 44 78 15 54 12.”

For years Félix would regret making that promise. An hour later, Eyvin called. He was out of breath, walking fast.

“It's started again, I'm being followed by a car, I don't know where I am.”

“Tell me the name of the street.”

“I don't know! Er, Rue Blacas – no, Rue de l'Hôtel des Postes.” His accent made it hard to understand.

“On the right or the left?”

“I've taken a right turn.”

“Go on walking, there are some shops a bit farther along. Go in, I'll send the police.”

“They're following me! They're getting nearer!”

“Go in anywhere! Say we're coming!”

But Félix was talking to himself now – the phone had gone dead. He called the police station nearest to where Eyvin had said he was; there was an unenthusiastic reaction so he went upstairs and knocked on the door of another judge's office. The judge was busy, but Félix barged in explaining that an important witness was in danger five minutes away. He begged to get the police to send a team. He would go with them. The judge eventually agreed and Félix ran down into the courtyard, furious with his own judge, who he imagined was at that minute sobbing in the arms of his piano teacher.

All this time Eyvin was creeping through the streets. He eventually went into a shopping mall, ran past a line of cosmetic stands and out by the other door, at random. He felt that every turn he took was crucially important. He hadn't seen the motorbike behind him. He turned left into Rue Paradis, down towards the sea and the big hotels. It was crowded, that was reassuring. He would just melt into the crowds. He called Félix who had just jumped into a police car with flashing blue lights.

“Where are you?”

“I'm going down towards the sea, I think I've lost them.”

“But where?”

“I can see the Méridien hotel.”

“Go in there. The police will be there in five minutes.”

Eyvin jumped at the sound of an accelerating motorbike. It went off in the other direction.

“Everything all right?” Félix asked.

“Yes, false alarm. See you in a minute.”

The bike had dropped a man off on the pavement a bit farther on. Eyvin was not alone as he entered the hotel. He went towards the bar, then changed his mind. He couldn't sit down so he walked up and down and then stood next to a vase full of artificial flowers. He felt that everybody was staring at him, that time had stood still. A man was looking at him. He had thin black hair with a cascade of curls at the back of the neck. He looked as though he might be local. Was he a policeman? No, Eyvin realized, telling himself he should run. But he stood frozen. The man came towards him. Eyvin backed away. The man smiled – he had a cigarette in his fingers and looked as though he was going to ask for a light. Eyvin was about to say something when he felt the butt of a gun against his stomach. It was hidden in the man's pocket. He signalled Eyvin to come along with him.

 

When Félix and the policemen arrived, there was no sign of Eyvin. The staff behind the desk vaguely remembered a young fair-haired man walking up and down. He had gone off with someone, as if they had an appointment, they said. Félix couldn't resist launching a kick at a chrome ashtray that had survived the smoking ban. He heard a bleep in his pocket. A text from Eyvin, that he had prepared in case this happened. The message contained a distant address, and had been sent shortly before he disappeared:

Caliban Towers. Building L. Top floor. Steve
.

Sunleif sat on the edge of his bed with his hands on his thighs. He was still wearing the trousers, shirt and socks from the day before. He stared at the cupboard, at the row of suits, unable to decide what armour to put on for the day ahead. Grind Bank shares had plunged by fifty-two per cent the day before. At this rate it would no longer exist when the markets opened. Failure was imminent and no one was even pretending to save face.

His Blackberry vibrated on the bedside table. Sunleif didn't reply. It was yet another message from the Finance Minister, with whom he had spent part of the night. Sunleif had watched him ringing City financiers, the British authorities, Danish, French, American bankers… He had listened to him begging them to help avoid disaster, to save Grind Bank. He had heard him threaten that “a lot of foreign fortunes are going to be wiped out”. He had seen him stammering, not quite understanding the replies he was getting. He had heard him promising anything, letting himself be humiliated by the bigger fish: he was a little fish in that pond, a minor politician dealing with a minor bank. And when he finally hung up, Sunleif had listened without flinching as the Minister reminded him of what he already knew, the things he had been praised for in that same office six months earlier: the fact that the public pension scheme and a large part of the Faroe economy was invested in Grind shares. “People are going to lose their homes,” he was told over and over again, until one in the morning. It was the first time that real people or proper accounting had ever been mentioned in their conversations. Sunleif had left an hour later without a solution.

He hadn't really slept. He had just lain on his bed reviewing various scenarios. He could put on his funeral suit, still on the back of the chair, and then put a bullet through his head, but that wasn't really his style. Grab the
Falcon
and fly to a palm-fringed beach? They would find him. Anyway, if he was going to live on an island he preferred his own, this one. During the night he had gazed at the silver-framed photo of himself and Linda on their wedding day, remembering the pale cloth lampshade they had had above the bed, before the crystal chandelier. And then he had finally closed his eyes despite the pale light of the midnight sun. His place would be here, at home, when the storm finally broke.

“STEPHENSEN!”

It was Rassmussen shouting from downstairs, drowning out the protestations of Johanna, the housekeeper, who had been unable to prevent him from coming in. He was already on the stairs. Sunleif grabbed the funeral trousers from the chair and buttoned up his shirt. His alarm said 7.16. Rassmussen pushed the door open.

“Get dressed, we're going to the office. We've got some work to do. You fooled us, but it's over… We warned you.”

“Jonas, you're in my house!”

“Not for much longer. Look at yourself!”

“Listen. There's a problem with liquidity. If he could put in two hundred million…”

“Shut up and come along.”

They went downstairs, Sunleif in front, Rassmussen following, their feet sinking into the thick carpet on the steps. Sunleif could have tossed the lawyer over the banisters with one hand, but today the biggest man was no longer the strongest. They were linked by an unbreakable chain of reciprocal corruption, forced on them by their mutual agreement to do things that could then never be spoken about – the time-honoured Mafia way of doing business. The staff in the house could see how serious the situation was. Their boss now looked like a condemned creature going to its death without
a struggle. He had never before left the house without first having his cup of coffee and his boiled egg. Sunleif could feel their stares. Could they even guess at what was going to happen in the next few days? It would all happen very fast. He climbed into the limousine with the darkened windows, and found himself surrounded by armed men. The car roared off. On the side of the road, Eyvin's mother was trudging up towards Sunleif's house, her face ravaged by tears.

 

The bank was still empty. They shut themselves in the office. Sunleif signed everything. He made over the London headquarters, the offices on the Côte d'Azure, the paintings, the
Falcon
. He worked quickly, as though he was pushing through a deal. Fear and euphoria seemed to be the only two emotions possible when it came to financial dealings.

“We financed your losses, it's natural that we should get the first pickings,” Rassmussen said, swivelling around in the rolling chair on the other side of the office. “We couldn't care less how much we get for your assets. The important thing is that you should be stripped bare, reduced to nothing. And don't forget poor Linda's gallery, especially as—”

“Especially as what?” Sunleif said, looking up.

“Nothing. Get on with it!”

Rassmussen was in a hurry. He wanted to be gone by the time all the others started appearing. Government, creditors, investment funds, individuals – they would be besieging the office any minute now. Bankruptcy was imminent. Before he left, the lawyer asked:

“Have you wiped everything clean?”

“It's done.”

“No dirty tricks, Sunleif?”

“No. I'll call a board meeting in an hour, and we'll file for bankruptcy.”

“If you were planning to do a runner afterwards, forget it. I'm taking the
Falcon
now. I hope the tank's full! You've already lost us enough money…”

He left. His departure didn't mean that they were quits, Sunleif knew that perfectly well. An hour later the offices were full of tense, silent faces. The whole staff was there, prepared for the worst.