The Eyes of Lira Kazan (15 page)

The plane landed in the area reserved for private jets, well away from the crowds, barriers, customs and formalities. A man got out. He had a leather briefcase with brass locks discreetly attached to his wrist by a chain. He had come from Nigeria. His chauffeur was waiting for him at the other side of the hangar, standing to attention, ready to murmur “This way, Governor” and open the rear door of the armoured Maybach limousine. But then three men interposed themselves.

“Mr Finley? Police,” one of them said.

Finley's eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. He remained upright and haughty. The only sign of nerves was a tightening of his hand on the briefcase as the agents explained that they had a warrant to take him to the headquarters of the Serious Fraud Office, where he would be questioned. He appeared to consent, and undid the chain around his wrist so as to hand the briefcase to his colossus of a bodyguard.

“Sorry,” the policeman said. “We'll take that. Customs.”

Finley stepped backwards. He tried again to hand the briefcase to the bodyguard, with the contempt of somebody who felt untouchable.

“Put down that briefcase!”

Surprised, Finley obeyed. Everything then happened fast. The briefcase was seized, and the governor stepped into the car, in a cold rage. He knew that his assistant would already be calling his lawyers. They would go into action immediately and get him out of this. He just needed to be patient.

 

All this time, back at the headquarters of the Serious Fraud Office, Helen and Nwankwo were going over the final details.

“You must not come out of this room. You'll be able to see and hear everything that is said. It's all filmed, that's the law. You can even suggest lines of questioning over the intranet. You can be my prompter. But at no time must the governor see you, otherwise I'll be in serious trouble.”

Helen was a small woman, who looked frail and nervous in her severe suit decorated with coloured brooches, but she did not lack authority and intuition. Her position was normally filled by ambitious, self-interested people. Helen was the exception and she knew it. She had risen almost invisibly through the ranks and had learnt a great deal along the way, more than she should have. And so when the collapse of Grind Bank was officially announced, she spotted a small window of opportunity. A very small one, but it was worth exploiting. A message appeared on her mobile.

“They'll be here in a quarter of an hour.”

Nwankwo stiffened. Helen put a hand on his shoulder and repeated the conditions of their collaboration.

“Nwankwo, I can't perform miracles. His lawyer will arrive within the hour, and alarm bells will start ringing in high places. We haven't got much time. It's all going to be painful and frustrating for you, but you must promise me you'll stay out of it.”

“I promise.”

Helen shut the door.

 

Nwankwo watched from the window as Finley got out of the car. It was both pleasant and painful to see him escorted by two policemen, looking small down at the bottom of the building, the same man who had swaggered like a king into his Abuja office, and who had ordered the death of Uche as though he were crushing an insect. Ten minutes later, watching and listening to the interview taking place on the other side of the corridor, he felt choked once again by the power and arrogance of his enemy. Nwankwo clutched the edge of the table until his fingers were white.

Finley looked Helen up and down. He was one of those men who felt that a woman should automatically feel threatened by him. But Helen held his stare. She remained calm, asked him to be seated and state his identity, and to explain the reason for his visit to England. And then to open the briefcase.

“Certainly not!”

“I don't want to use any more force.”

“Especially as it could backfire against you,” replied Finley, his legs crossed and his chin held high in defiant certainty.

Helen remained impassive.

“Open it,” Nwankwo muttered, alone in his room. “Open that fucking case!”

Helen ordered the guards to force the locks. The case was full of money.

“I hope you weren't planning to deposit this at Grind Bank!” she snarled. She was closing in. “Although according to my information you've got other accounts here in London.”

She seemed to be stroking the dossier in front of her.

“This is not my money,” the governor replied in a blank tone.

“Whose is it then?”

“I work for my country, madam, and I must sometimes remain silent. Your action, I repeat, is going to get you into serious trouble. Let's stop this little game now and nothing more will happen.”

In his room, Nwankwo was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, with his papers spread around him. It was like playing a video game, conducting an interrogation without the accused before him and without Uche at his side. He wrote:
An 800-million-dollar contract was signed last month for the development of a new oilfield off the Nigerian coast. This must be his commission!

The message appeared on Helen's screen. She glanced at it and continued with her questions.

“Mr Finley, according to our sources, a governor in Nigeria earns twenty-five thousand dollars a year. You have just bought a house in Hampstead for fifteen million pounds. Can you explain this?”

Finley shrugged, not bothering to reply.

“Mr Finley, I must ask you again. If, as we have been told, a Nigerian governor earns twenty-five thousand dollars a year, how were you able last year to buy a Bombardier jet for twenty million dollars – I have the proof of the sale on one of your bank accounts.”

 

She carried on asking more and more questions, more and more sharply. Nwankwo was writing faster and faster, listing everything – the Jaguar, the Bentley, the mistress's flat, the tailors' bills. Behind every bill, behind every luxury brand, lay the misery of his country. Nwankwo was in a state of febrile excitement, with dilated pupils and shaking hands. Never before had any Nigerian official had to answer such questions about his lifestyle and his thefts. What he had not been able to achieve in his own country was happening here.
Look Uche, look at Finley shaking!
It was true, the governor's bravado had melted away, he was stammering, cursing, threatening: he realized that his whole life had been patiently laid bare, as though the British authorities had been watching him for many years.

And then the telephone rang on Helen's desk.

Nwankwo soon understood what was happening, if only because of the way she wasn't being allowed to finish her sentences. Without even hearing he knew who was talking and what was being said. They all said the same things: “Do you want to cause chaos in the City?” or “Some things can't be sorted out in an inspector's office!” And then Helen, putting down the receiver, said in a dignified but flat voice, and in the name of order, of the wider interests of the country's petrol or car companies and that of Her Majesty's Government:

“Mr Finley, our interview is over.”

Nwankwo closed his eyes. He could hear the sound of the chair scraping, the briefcase being closed and, worst of all, Finley's triumphant sneering laugh. He rose from his chair and stood for a moment, his arms hanging at his side, momentarily lost in this room stuffed with useless evidence. He was shaking with rage now, he didn't know where to look. Devoured by his sense of helplessness he began to punch the wall. He felt no pain. He had become a human bombshell. Then he opened the door and went out. Finley was still there, still sniggering. Nwankwo charged towards him before the policemen understood what was happening. He grabbed the governor and held him against the wall by the neck, spitting in his face. He yelled that he would avenge Uche, that he would get him in the end… The police were finally able to drag him off and hold him down, with Helen looking on furiously. Nwankwo was still yelling.

Finley wiped his face. He went over to Nwankwo who was still being held down and whispered:

“But surely you know very well what happens to those who disrespect me.”

He was admitting Uche's murder, and threatening another one. He went away, his head held much too high. The policemen released Nwankwo. Helen's door slammed. Nwankwo knocked on it three times.

“Get out!” she yelled from inside the room.

Nwankwo remained frozen in the corridor. He had to go now. He would never come back. He went back into the little room where he had been listening to the interview and laboriously gathered up his documents. He was still driven by an unstoppable rage, by images that wouldn't go away. He had been humiliated too often to respect procedures that no longer concerned him, and, without premeditation, he turned off the light, closed the door, inserted his USB memory stick into the computer and transferred the film of the interview onto it. The corridor was now silent, the calm
after the storm. The copying took several minutes. Then he crept away, his heart beating as though he were a thief.

 

When he got home, all was quiet. Even the little one didn't jump into his arms. The children watched him go past the sofa and up the stairs. Children sense things about their parents, when they are angry, when they love each other, when they are trying to conceal something. They could hear their mother's strangled voice upstairs.

“They'll deport us!” Ezima was saying.

“No, I'm sure they won't do that.”

Nwankwo was lying, he was no longer sure of anything. Helen might forgive him for his outburst, his shouting, even the violent attack, because she knew what he had been through, but she would never forgive him for taking the film, and he was determined to make use of it.

“School starts in three days. The children are dreading it, they don't know anyone here, they'll be the little new ones, and…”

“…and the little blacks, I know.”

“So?”

“So, I love you and I'm just bringing you bad luck. But I feel as though I'm carrying Uche on my back, you see. Wherever I go, I'm carrying him. I won't put him down until Finley has got what he deserves.”

“On your back? That's where your children should be! They're alive, Uche's dead!”

“I wouldn't wish anyone to know what I know or to see what I've seen. It's unbearable. I've tried, Ezima, but I am no longer capable of living a normal life.”

“What are you saying?”

“That for the moment you should put your name down instead of mine at the children's school. And that I should go and sleep somewhere else for the time being.”

“All this means is that it's even worse here than it was there,” Ezima sighed.

 

 

What could Eyvin possibly have left in a place like this? Félix wondered as he stood at the foot of tower block L. He dragged his feet along, his stomach in knots and his lips tight – he knew the address by heart,
Caliban Towers, Block L, top floor, Steve
. He gazed up at the windows dotted with satellite dishes, the youths sitting on the steps, killing time if nothing else, and the pubescent graffiti all over the walls of the hall and lift. What could the young blond prodigy, snapped up by the bank, possibly have left in such a place?

Félix pressed the button for the fourteenth floor, and the lift doors closed. It took off, with Félix as pale as if he were going into outer space. Top floor. Steve had written his first name on the bell, and had left a pair of muddy trainers outside the door. You could hear his music from the stairwell. Eyvin's secret friend didn't appear to be very threatening so far. Perhaps he was a childhood friend. Félix rang twice.

“Who's there?” a slightly hoarse voice called.

Félix stammered out his name. The door opened on an extremely scruffy young man.

“Eyvin gave me this address,” Félix said.

“Eyvin's dead.”

“I know and I'm afraid that's why I'm here. He left something for me.”