The Eyes of Lira Kazan (13 page)

“Where's Eyvin?” Sunleif asked his secretary. She shook her head. She didn't know.

The board meeting began. “I'm afraid it's time to say goodbye,” Sunleif said. The members of the board of Grind Bank sat around the oval table, silent, their heads bowed. None of them knew much about finance, they had left all that to Sunleif. The door opened and the Minister burst in, breathless, as though he had been running. He didn't even say good morning.

“The Courting Bank wants to make an offer, but first they want to send a team of bankers to go through the accounts. They're on their way.”

“You can save them the journey, there are no accounts,” Sunleif interrupted him.

“What do you mean, no accounts?”

“Your guys would go into reverse pretty fast if they saw them anyway, so you might as well call them and tell them to turn round!”

“So what do you suggest?”

“You bail us out or we declare bankruptcy.”

“The state couldn't cover half of this haemorrhage you've caused, you maniac!”

“So, we file. Gentlemen…”

The men around the table prepared to raise their hands, like doctors calling the time of death. But the Minister's telephone rang again, once more delaying the scuttling of the ship. The Minister, still imagining that a miracle could happen, repeated out loud the demands of the buyer.

“The offer includes a demand that Sunleif Stephensen should be replaced.”

Sunleif gave a great roar of laughter, like an ogre, or a clap of thunder. He was cracking up. He shouted. He waved his arms. He told them to come and look at the accounts if they felt like it. “Let them come! Let them come! Just as long as they like birds, rocks, waves and landscape – that's all that's real here in the Faroes!”

It was a strange sight – a bank adrift, already sunk on the stock-market screens. A minister who pretended to believe that he was in control of his country's economy. A fisherman who thought he was a banker. And bonus-eaters who thought they had diplomas from Harvard Business School. None of them could remember the time when living in the middle of the ocean protected you from epidemics.

Then a woman came in. No secretary or security guard had tried to stop her, they had gone the same way as the bosses. She was Eyvin's mother. She had so often imagined this room with her son in the middle, in a fine suit, with a fine career ahead of him. The morning she had walked all the way there, crying. She collapsed in front of Sunleif, sobbing:

“My Eyvin is dead! Why?”

 

Postmortem Report:
EYVIN STISSON

 

 

 

 

The postmortem took place at 11.00 on 28th August 2010. It was carried out by Dr Robert Travis, associate forensic pathologist, in the presence of Detective Chief Inspector Donald Shiff.

The body was discovered by walkers beneath a hedge alongside the A282, 18 miles from London, on the evening of 27th August. The absence of rigor mortis appears to indicate that death had occurred several days earlier.

The body is that of a white male of average build, of around twenty-five years of age, 5 foot 10 inches tall, weighing 150lbs. The dead man was wearing black trousers; he did not have a shirt, socks or shoes. Blond hair, covered in dried blood. Eye colour indeterminable, burnt with acid. Around the eyes are phlyctenae, blisters caused by burning. On the face, several traumatic lesions and contusions, deep purple in colour, the bones of the nose violently fractured.

The body has multiple bruises, burns and scratches, which could indicate that it was dragged, already dead, into the hedge. Examination also reveals several broken ribs, a fracture in the right tibia, lesions on both kneecaps, a haemorrhage in the right kidney and cranial trauma.

Death was probably caused by a heart attack following extensive torture.

 

Dr Robert Travis

When the telephone rang that morning it seemed a bit early to Ezima. But then she was dragged back to the breakfast table by the noise of the children: Tadjou's teenage moaning, Baïna nagging, Ima screaming, burnt toast, milk boiling over, all these cereals and jams she had never come across until a few weeks ago. As soon as Nwankwo reappeared in the kitchen doorway, she felt that something had changed, or rather that something had started again.

He didn't say anything, except to urge Tadjou to hurry up or else he would be late for his swimming lesson. He tried to conceal the excitement he had felt since Helen's call had come. He had gone outside to speak to her. According to information from Scotland Yard, governor Finley was going to be in London in a few days' time. His affairs had clearly suffered from the failure of a bank in the Faroe Islands, and he was hurrying over to sort things out. Helen had some information about his accounts, and she wanted to take advantage of the banking chaos to speak to him as part of the anti-laundering investigation. She wanted to see Nwankwo as soon as possible. Since hanging up, he felt a wave of excitement coursing through his body. He grabbed his car keys. Ezima came out of the kitchen, following him until they were face to face.

“What's going on?” She asked.

“Nothing, nothing at all. I'm just in a hurry, I don't want Tadjou to be late for his lesson, and—”

“What was that telephone call about?”

“Why all these questions?”

“Because I know you, Nwankwo. I don't know who rang, but I saw your face afterwards, and I know that look all too well.”

“Listen—”

“No, you listen to me! Listen to your children laughing. Haven't you noticed that they're shouting and arguing out loud nowadays, even laughing louder – they're just so much more confident now. Back there at home they didn't dare, they were always scared, scared for you, for themselves, they kept quiet. Look at them now!”

“Ezima, it was the fraud squad. They want to speak to me. Finley is coming to London and they want to corner him. They need me to tell them what I know.”

“So it's starting all over again.”

“No! This time it's not me in the front line. It's the British in charge of the inquiry. And anyway this is a democratic country where… well, where we've got nothing to fear…”

He had been about to say “where they don't shoot people on street corners”, but he'd thought of Lira and stopped in mid-sentence. In any case his wife was hardly listening.

“You're the one that scares me, not them…”

Tadjou appeared down the stairs, with his satchel on his back.

“Let's go!” Nwankwo said, his hand on his son's neck.

 

A few miles away, Lira was sitting up in her hospital bed. The bandage covered her face from her eyebrows to the bottom of her nose. Dmitry was beside her, talking gently, at random, trying to hide the distress and nausea he felt in this hospital. He was giving a lyrical description of the isolated house in the mountains where he had left their daughter. He described the fruit-laden trees in front of it, the young hikers who passed by whom Polina might befriend. He had in fact hardly seen anything. He had simply found out that his old friend had become a radical green, and had no telephone, TV, computer or electricity, and that he and his daughter would have to make arrangements to speak to each other at the telephone box in the village. He had stayed for less than an hour, just time to make some introductions, and then he had left Polina
there on the path, angry and worried. He had been in a hurry to get to England.

“But who are these people, you never mentioned them?” Lira asked.

Dmitry told her about Jacques, the son of a French communist, who had learnt Russian at school and had come to Moscow thirty years ago. They had become friends and had then lost sight of each other. A few years later, Jacques, now a film designer, had looked him up in St Petersburg.

“What did you tell him about the situation?”

“The truth. Except for your eyes – you didn't want Polina to know.”

“Yes, for her it would seem as if I were dead.”

He had so often imagined himself having to rush to Lira's bedside, and so often imagined arriving too late. She had been playing with fire for so long, and he could not stop worrying about her despite the separation. Those who said he still loved her after three years were wrong. He certainly didn't expect her to come back to him, but he was still afraid for her, which was a different matter, even though that fear was a way of still being connected to her. He admired and resented her at the same time, would draw away and then explode with fury when he heard from her. He was a calm and rational maths teacher and she played havoc with his emotions. In the last three days his head had been boiling with lists and plans: write to Jacques, fetch Polina from Paris, drive her to the Cévennes, set off back, go to London… He could no longer remember his reaction when she had called him for help. He had shouted her name and thrown the telephone across the room.

“Everything will be all right. You'll get better,” he said.

“Don't waste your energy, Dmitry. It was acid. They don't do things by halves.”

“They didn't kill you. You must have more tests before we know anything. There are marvellous specialists in Moscow, you know.”

“I'm not going back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm not going back to Russia, I'm going to ask for asylum, something like that anyway… I don't want to live in fear of being killed at any moment.”

“But it happened here.”

“Over there they'll finish me off.”

 

The nurse came in to change the dressing. Dmitry stood back, but not far – he wanted to see Lira's eyes. The last bandage came off, revealing shrunken eyelids and raw skin peppered with little blisters, and inside just a dark pupil. Lira could not see Dmitry's chin trembling like a child about to cry; he realized that she had lost more than her eyesight, her beauty had gone, those blue eyes that he had loved so much. He saw her again as he had seen her for the first time, coming into a bar near the university; it had been the beginning of summer and she had caught the sun. Her eyes shone out from her flushed cheeks; he couldn't stop staring, he even dropped his newspaper. All would be darkness from now on. Dmitry held on to the bedstead, and could think of nothing to say, so he suggested she get out of bed and try to walk over to the window. She agreed and got her long pale legs, which were covered in bruises, out from under the sheet. The nurse protested at first but the couple had already started so she joined them, taking Lira's arm.

“You're blinking, that's a good sign, it's the light!”

“Maybe…”

They were in front of the window.

“What can you see?”

“The sky is blue.”

“Not really.”

“Well it's not raining at least, I'd hear it!”

“That's true…” Dmitry sighed.

He made a face. Lira had already developed stratagems. As always she minimized any problem, especially with him. But
the fact was she couldn't see anything. The sky was dark, it looked as though it might rain. They slowly went back to the bed. Lira lay down with a sigh that betrayed how exhausted she was by the effort she had just made. The nurse put on a new bandage. When she had gone, Dmitry returned to their conversation.

“Lira, you must come home.”

“It's out of the question.”

“You've got nobody here, no friends or relations, and you can't see!”

“A minute ago, you thought I would be able to see again.”

“I still hope so. But whatever happens to your eyesight, you'll need help. I spoke to someone at the embassy, they want to help us. They'll arrange your travel, your treatment and legal help.”

“They'll finish me off on the plane!”

“Look, that's enough with your caricatures and conspiracy theories. If you come home they'll leave you alone.”

“I dare say you're right, now that I can't do anything… They'll probably give me a guide dog and a white stick!”

 

There was a sharp knock at the door. Nwankwo came in.

“Nwankwo!” Lira cried.

Dmitry was surprised by the warmth in her voice. So was she, but she sensed Nwankwo's energy and urgency – something important was happening, so different from all the hushed sighs of the others who were condemning her to a kind of limbo. She quickly sensed that the two men were uneasy with one another and she gently asked Dmitry if he wouldn't mind leaving them. He didn't flinch, and just bent over her, pulling up the sheet that was down over her thighs, and took her hands in his and kissed them.

“I'll come back this afternoon. Do you need anything?”