The Eyes of Lira Kazan (6 page)

“Go on, Sergei! Take a hook! Straight into the rind!”

Louchsky didn't bother to answer. He had not moved once, and still held on to the handrail. Sunleif had become like an animal now; he threw himself onto a second dolphin that had come up close to the boat, as though begging to be finished off. He jumped into the water up to his waist, bathing in blood; it was all over him – hands, body and face – it looked as though he was himself pouring with blood.

The policemen were waiting there on the beach, two plain-clothes officers, looking a bit stiff, easily distinguishable in the crowd. Each inhabitant would go home with some fat and some meat. Until then the children climbed, laughing, onto the backs of the animals vomiting up their blood. Sunleif, in the water up to his thighs, had seen the men. He was in no hurry, he wanted to bring his great display to an end first. He was the colossus, the chief, the picador and the matador; he was Hercules, the embodiment of all the strength and ferocity of mankind. He wasn't afraid of blood, no, he drank it, he wallowed in it. Let them come! Let the cops come, and the Russians, and all those money sharks, let the blood flow – it wouldn't be his! He still liked to believe that Louchsky was impressed by him.

Finally he stood up and waded out of the water, stepped over the bodies, patted the children kindly on the head: he envied them, having fun riding on a big dead fish, not yet men. He walked, dripping, towards the policemen; his heart was pounding, not from fear of course, it was just his body warming up. Turning round he saw his guests climbing out of the boat, Louchsky in the distance watching him, and he knew what the other was thinking: “You're a dead man if you talk.” He knew, too, that it was a lot better to fall into the hands of the police than those of the mafia. He walked through the crowd, greeting his workers. He had to look confident in front of them.

But now the landscape around him suddenly began to seem like a lost paradise. He looked at his father's factories,
remembered how he had said “You're a man now” the first time he had waded out of the red water as he was doing today. He saw the white wooden church where he had been baptized and married, and the old Tórshavn primary school, a huge building, now a shop, where he had been the gang leader even then. Beyond, past the corrugated-iron roofs, some of them covered in earth and grass, his own stone house. How many dark winters he had spent here, listening to the breakers sending their salty foam into the steep little streets, dreading the hurricane-like storms. He turned round once more, and for the first time ever, because one only understands death when one gets close to it, he found something macabre in the blue-green Faroe waters turning to red.

 

The officer stepped forward, clearing his throat. Sunleif turned to face him.

“All our condolences, Mr Stephensen. Mrs Stephensen's body has been found in the port of Nice, in France.”

The door opened. The judge came in with such a grim expression that Félix thought he might as well spend the fifty-centime piece he had just tossed in the air on a cup of coffee. If it had landed on tails the judge would sign. Now it looked more likely to be heads: the judge would say no. He sat down without a word, tight-lipped, his jaw set. Despite this Félix gathered together the copy of the Swordfish cheque, the address in the Cayman Islands, which hadn't been hard to find, and the plan for an international rogatory commission that he had drawn up while he was at it. He embarked on his report like a child showing off his school work.

“I found Swordfish. Ugland House, South Church Street, George Town, Cayman Islands. You see what I mean…”

“No I don't,” said the judge.

“It's the postal address for about 18,000 companies. As Obama said it's ‘either the biggest building in the world, or the biggest swindle'.”

“Look Félix, I don't care what Obama said, I've got the public prosecutor on my heels. He's taking a personal interest in the case. The people named in the logbook didn't appreciate our visits and have made that known to him.”

“Already? News does travel fast. Well, we'll have to work quickly. I've drawn up a request for an international mandate to obtain information about Swordfish. You just have to sign here…”

The judge took the paper and skimmed through it:

“You're a pain in the arse,” the judge said, putting down the paper.

“Just sign it! After that you can always promise to go easy on the prosecutor's friends.”

“You should shave.”

Félix passed a hand over his neglected chin – he could have passed for a conceptual artist at one of the trendy vernissages that Mark used to drag him to. He didn't answer. He knew when it was time to stop. The judge took off his watch, placed it on his desk and began to bury himself in one of the sixty ongoing case files.

 

Silence fell, broken only by the piercing sound of a drill in the men's lavatories. Then suddenly the door opened and a plump gendarme came in, bearing what Félix enjoyed most about this job: new and unexpected evidence. It was a CD, with Linda Stephensen's name written on the case. Félix grabbed it and slipped it into his computer, with a suddenly humble glance towards the judge, who nodded, and signalled to him to play the recording.

 

“No, it started even before arriving home. You can't imagine how much the
Falcon
shakes, how terrifying the landing at Tórshavn is. There's so much wind up there… I could see the islands through the clouds, there are eighteen of them, I know all their names, at
school we learnt them at the same time as our times tables, as though it would always be useful, as though none of us would ever leave.

 

The recording lasted about five minutes, and contained nothing but the slightly hoarse voice of a woman speaking French with a Nordic accent, with occasional short questions from somebody who sounded like a psychotherapist.

“Let's summon the husband. And we'll find the shrink to authenticate the recording.”

“And while you're at it, why don't you sign for the rogatory commission? At least you'll know why you're getting into trouble,” Félix tried again.

“And what are we going to find? Plenty of millionaires' dirty tricks, but nothing about what happened here. Rich people drown too, you know.”

“Yes but it's only the poor who can't swim!”

 

The inquiry moved along fast: the next day it was found that a man had been caught on surveillance cameras at the post office sending a packet. They matched the face against professional lists and came up with a Dr Molny, a psychoanalyst on Rue de Dijon. The police visited his consulting rooms and he gave them further recordings, explaining that he had recorded sessions with Mrs Stephensen's full agreement, as he had with other patients, as part of research he was doing on the early stages of therapy. He asked for complete discretion, as he feared that it would be bad publicity for him.

CD number three. Linda Stephensen was telling the doctor about a dinner party at their house in the Faroes.

 

 

Eventually they discovered from the central records four bank accounts in Linda Stephensen's name. The gallery account showed several large transactions, tens of millions of euros sometimes, with Sergei Louchsky's name making frequent appearances.

Sunleif Stephensen was pouring with sweat when he appeared at the office. He hadn't been far away. He had come to identify his wife's body. He gave Félix a filthy look. Félix studied the other man's appearance: the neck as wide as the head, the shirt buttons stretched to bursting over his fat stomach – not your typical banker. Stephensen stamped over to the judge, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief that he kept pulling in and out of his pocket. He was cursing them in a mixture of English and Faroese – he appeared to be protesting about the search of his boat, about being summoned at a time that didn't suit him, and about being spoken to in this French language that he didn't understand. A frail young man with fading blond curls trotted in behind him. This was his interpreter, whom he called Eyvin.

“Calm yourself, sir,” said the judge, inviting Sunleif to sit down.

“What's this circus? My boat is searched, I'm summoned as though I'm a criminal – I'm a busy man!”

“Sir, your wife is dead, so—”

“I know that!”

“…so we're exploring every avenue in order to discover the cause of her death.”

“Who authorized you to search my boat? What on earth were you looking for? I thought she drowned!”

“Drowning is certainly one hypothesis. We have begun an inquiry. When it's the wife of an important man like yourself…”