The Eyes of Lira Kazan (11 page)

 

Two hours later Linda Stephensen was in her grave and the house was full of people. The servants had prepared a huge buffet, wine was poured: they had followed her usual instructions and colour codes. But the guests didn't linger. They drank one glass and looked at the paintings without for once feeling obliged to exclaim about them. The most beautiful thing here anyway was the view of the sea and the hundreds of inlets through the windows.

The Prime Minister had made a formal appearance, and the Finance Minister was still there, in the office. Voices were raised.

“I'm sorry Sunleif, but there's never going to be a good time. So, one more time. What's your plan?”

“Don't worry…”

“Don't treat me like an idiot. The London regulators have been onto us: your bank is failing. The markets have sensed it, the cost of credit default swaps on your paper has soared, the shares are going to collapse at any minute. We should have looked into your books ages ago. We've supported you for much too long.”

“It seems to me that I've supported you too.”

“If that's your only response, we'll have to remove your banking licence and call in the administrators; there's going to be quite a racket when they lift the lid on your business.”

“You'll go down with me.”

“In any case we'll all go down if you can't save the bank. The fishermen, the shipbuilders, the pension funds. The whole island will collapse. And the depositors all over the world will be wanting their money back.”

“I need five hundred million.”

“The government hasn't got that.”

“Just five hundred million to avoid the receivers.”

“Well, find it yourself, Sunleif! Ask your Russian friends. You've got fifteen days. After that you lose your licence.”

The door slammed behind him. Those still in the drawing room pretended not to have heard anything. They soon gathered up their coats and followed the Minister. Quietly they walked away from the fine house that they had so envied in the past, with its splendid gateway whose two columns, with their pediment carved with fish, had once seemed like the entrance to Poseidon's kingdom.

“Say something,” Félix muttered.

But the judge didn't reply. He had just read the letter out loud.

He had put it down, walked around the office, and then sat down with a haggard expression. His head had fallen between his hands. He was like a robot whose circuits were being disconnected one by one. He was fading from sight, they were shutting him down. The transfer would take place the following month. Officially, of course, it wasn't any kind of punishment. But eight days after seeing the prosecutor he was being sent to deal with children – he whose tragedy was never having had any of his own.

“What a gang of bastards,” Félix said.

“That's enough,” the judge sighed, his head still lowered. He hated coarseness even when things were going badly.

“They're a gang of bastards who'd prefer to have you pursuing thirteen-year-olds selling dope than looking into their mates' crooked dealings!”

Félix was almost shouting. But the judge did not reply.

“We've got a month left – we'd better get a move on!” Félix was getting excited.

“She drowned…”

“No! You don't drown in a ball gown.”

“It was embroidered with jewels, it must have weighed a ton in the water, she had been drinking, she slipped and she sank!”

“What about the rest?”

“What about it? All we're investigating is a suspicious death, that's all! The rest is there, but we'd need to search the whole port and raze Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat to the ground to find anything. You'd enjoy that, I know, but this isn't a game…”

“I had a reply from the Cayman Islands. They never give out information normally and this time they have. Stephensen's affairs are unbelievable, and Louchsky's even more so!”

“What are you doing in this job, with fantasies like yours? You shouldn't be working in the judicial system.”

“I hoped to come across people like you.”

“I'm tired, Félix.”

“So they've won, then.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Silence fell. Félix sat raging, twisting the paper clips lying around on his desk into useless pieces of wire. The judge let his telephone ring without answering it. They had reached a critical point in their relationship, almost the end, since their work was the only thing that linked them. This was the moment when they might have lowered their guard and admitted to actual friendship. Two people from neighbouring offices put their heads through the door at intervals of a few minutes. One pretended to be picking up a file, the other asked if everything was all right. Rumours about the punishment had already spread through the law courts. Everybody knew about the procedure: when pressure didn't work, the subject was either somehow compromised or transferred – sometimes both.

 

Eventually the judge turned on his computer. The usual little jingle of the machine coming on was followed by a few clicks on the keyboard. Félix returned to his study of the Cayman Island dossiers: excerpts from a company's articles of association, a photocopy of Stephensen's passport, extracts from a job lot of bank accounts showing transfers
of millions of dollars and euros between Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Austria, Nigeria, Russia…

“It's odd that they're sending us all this,” Félix mused, loud enough to be heard. “They don't usually. His wife was right. Stephensen is about to go up in smoke. He's finished.”

No reply. Félix remained riveted to the figures. Louchsky's money was there, barely disguised by company names.

“Bingo, Louchsky's all over it!”

Still no reply. Félix went on turning pages.

“Well you're soon going to be busy with something a lot more interesting than kids smoking a few joints.”

Silence. This time Félix looked up. The judge had turned bright red, staring panic-stricken at his screen, as though fire had broken out and he didn't know how to put it out. He hammered at the keyboard, turned the machine off, got up, grabbed his telephone and his jacket and rushed out without answering Félix, who had asked if something serious had happened.

After twenty minutes, the judge was still not back. Félix went over to his desk, turned on his computer and accessed his email – he knew the password. Nothing. The judge had deleted the offending message. Félix sat frowning, but then remembered that men over forty-five don't know anything about computer memory. Three clicks later, he found it. The message was entitled “Grand Piano”. There were two images: one of a doorway with the number 43 above it; the other was a crude photomontage of a couple having it off against a piano. The man had the judge's greying head and the muscled body of a porn star. Félix smiled briefly at the thought that Chopin had just been an alibi. He had never guessed, and he should have done so. He was pleased to discover a touch of frivolity within the gloomy character he saw each day. But this thought was soon overlaid with fear. The transfer and the intimidation had struck within an hour. Something unstoppable had been unleashed.

He permanently deleted the offending message and returned to his own desk. It was getting urgent: everything was about to disappear, the judge, the inquiry, the sealed evidence. Félix realized that he would have to photocopy the entire file. He got up and reopened the Cayman files, the ones taken from Louchsky's house, Linda Stephensen's bank statements, the sessions with the shrink. He took out the most important documents, made small piles of them and took them to the photocopier, which turned out to be out of action, like so many things in this building. Shortage of funds, the technical services assured him.

He went up to the next floor and decided to photocopy twenty pages up there every forty minutes, to conceal the fact that he was creating a bombshell. His comings and goings earned him dirty looks from the secretaries, who had never much cared for his casual manner. This time the clerk tried his most winning smile on them. Usually all they got was a witty gibe. By twelve-thirty the pile of documents was ready and the judge was still not back. Félix was worried. He slid the papers into some large envelopes and went downstairs.

He avoided the café which was practically an annexe of the law courts. He wanted to be alone. It was like when he was a child coming out of school: he would run off, without hanging about with the others. He had tried that at first, giggling with the other boys, perched on the backs of park benches, but it hadn't worked. He preferred to go home, to his own games and books, or just to the familiar boredom. He felt the same way now. The courts reminded him of the prestigious Paris
lycée
he had attended, it had the same feeling of decorum, the same splendid staircases. In those days he dressed like a son of the respectable
sixième arrondissement
, worked hard, did everything expected of him. He passed his
bac
with honours, started a law course and allowed his parents to imagine him becoming a judge eventually. Then, one morning, he failed to get out of bed to take an exam. It was the first time that had happened – after that, he gave
up the idea of being a judge and trained instead to become a clerk, which was quicker. And at the same time he told his parents that he was gay. His father had declared in a sombre tone, in one of the solemn declarations that were his speciality: “Homosexuality is contrary to social law.”

“How true,” Félix had said.

He had always thought that if he had been heterosexual he would have taken the exam and passed it. Today he would be a judge, he would be cheating on his wife and letting his superiors pull his strings. What he liked about his judge was that he was what he might have been.

 

As he walked along he kept trying to call the judge but he couldn't get through. He tried his home, and his wife answered. Félix didn't want to alarm her and just asked, casually, if he had been there. She said no. He walked on through the streets of the old town, making the mistake of turning onto Rue Pairolière: the dense crowds of slow-moving holidaymakers irritated him and he took pleasure in jostling them. He didn't like their shorts and he didn't like the way they seemed to think it was all so authentic. They were just a noisy and common crowd following a beaten track for tourists, awash with olives, clothes shops and nightclubs.

Passing in front of number forty-three he looked up towards the windows as if there might be a chance of spotting the judge in his role of lover, but he reached home none the wiser. As soon as he came in he hid the envelopes in a cupboard beneath a pile of sheets. In the kitchen he found some packets of cheese and ham, and shut the fridge door. It was covered with cards from restaurants stuck on with magnets. He took them all off, they were no longer of any use to him. He wouldn't be going to any of them. Mark was gone, the judge transferred, and there was nothing to keep him here.

He suddenly decided to ring Steffy. Before ten at night he was Stephane Burment, a special advisor at the Foreign
Office, sometimes writing for the Minister himself. Félix had met him on one summer's evening at a villa near Nice. He talked waving his arms wildly as though to make up for the long years of grey suits and imaginary girlfriends. He was a Félix with ambition. That is what had brought them together and then eventually driven them apart. Their affair had lasted for six months with a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between north and south. Nowadays they just periodically exchanged emails usually entitled by Félix: “What's new in the stratosphere?”

“I'll call you back in fifteen minutes,” Steffy said.

And Félix imagined him leaving his Empire-furnished office and walking through the corridors, offices and conference rooms, the treasure house and beating heart of the Republic; it was a small world, busy digesting the rest of the world. It operated on two levels, and spoke two languages, the lies loud and eloquent, the truth silent and secret. Steffy functioned like all the others up there, both stiff and supple, always under the threat of a Scud missile and looking for a safer line to follow.