The Eyes of Lira Kazan (5 page)

“In a ball dress?”

“They're the only ones who wear them.”

 

An hour later the judge left with a sprightly step. Every Tuesday for the last two years he had been having his piano lesson. He only missed it in extreme emergencies. When he came back he was always in high spirits, happy to be returning to something he had abandoned thirty years earlier. He would put his music on his desk and leave it lying around all afternoon, just to remind people of his connection with Chopin.

Félix remained in his office drawing up summonses for the main witnesses in order of protocol. The judge was right. Félix didn't like these people either, these old bronzed playboys, adult versions of the show-offs who used to exclude him in the school playground. He then sorted through the bills
and suddenly realized that he knew the interior decorator who had done the boat. He was a friend of Mark's – they had worked together on several projects. He rang the number on the bill, and the man replied at once. Better still, he told Félix just what he wanted to hear: yes, he remembered that yacht, he had been paid by a company named after a fish, but the banker and his wife had been on his back all the time.

“Terrible taste! I know I should be used to it with all these Russians around the place. But he had fixations, for example he insisted on having cushions embroidered with coral. I said it would be uncomfortable, but he insisted. Usually the men are only interested in the hi-fi and the home cinema, but not him.”

“So they weren't just renting it?”

“No way, he was insisting on that fucking coral, it was his boat all right!”

“Can you do me a favour?”

“What?”

“Do you think you could get a copy of the Swordfish cheque from the bank?”

“I can try. How's Mark?”

“I don't know. He's in London now.”

 

GRIND BANK: DISASTROUS FIGURES

 

 

Sunleif was in front, with the men of Tórshavn. An alert had just been sounded: a shoal of pilot whales was out at sea passing the archipelago; the moment had come to start beating them towards the shore. Already the crowds were hurrying to the beach. Children ran down too – they weren't at school as it was Ólavsøka, the national holiday. Flowers and ribbons had been hung up on the lamp posts. Sunleif had become a man on a day like this. He had been thirteen with blond curly hair and he had killed his first dolphin – there had been blood up to his shoulders – under the proud gaze of his father. Nowadays his hands and muscled arms were as big as his father's.

Sunleif stood up straight. He liked to think that Louchsky might be watching him walking towards the sea. That was why he stood in front, with the locals, gazing at the crowd and at the sea. He wanted his guests, Louchsky and his entourage, and the lawyer Rassmussen, to admire the impressive shape of his thighs beneath the wetsuit rolled down to the waist. He wanted them to see what a colossus he was, carved by the Faroe Islands, at the crossroads of all the winds and currents of the Atlantic.

Last time Louchsky had gone too far, humiliating him in his own house, on his own island. The words still burned through him: “You're my piggy bank! I can smash my piggy bank whenever I want!” the Russian had shouted. And then he had added: “You've got fifteen days, or else…” Or else, what? Fifteen days had gone by.

“On the right, my father's first factories! Eyvin, explain to them!” Sunleif said.

And Eyvin explained to the guests how Stephensen senior had been the first in all the islands to process fish on a
large scale. Eyvin was Sunleif's right-hand man, the last of the Viking race, a frail young man who had been through business schools in London and Paris. He calculated and thought fast, knew all the difficult cases by heart, and he knew how to keep quiet and draw up acceptable balance sheets. Today Eyvin's job was to avoid difficult questions.

“Eyvin, have you told them about my father during the war?”

And Eyvin told them about the arrival here of the British, three days after the Germans had invaded Denmark. His father had greeted them and had had the senior officers to stay in his house. He had to save his factory.

Louchsky didn't listen to Eyvin talking. He hated walking and he despised this festive crowd, these women in their long dresses and scarves, and men in caps; their wooden houses were tarred and built close together to protect themselves against the storms and the dark winters. How could he ever have entrusted so much money to that swaggering fool Sunleif in his frogman costume?

They had first met fifteen years earlier in St Petersburg in a gilded nineteenth-century drawing room. It was at the time when Communism was coming to an end and oil was a hundred dollars a barrel. Sergei Louchsky was involved in arranging foreign investments in the gas company. Sunleif, the fish merchant facing him, seemed very recently arrived in his banker's outfit, pulling at his collar as though he was short of air. But if appearances weren't in his favour, the figures were. The fish mogul was opening a branch in London, and then another on the Côte d'Azure; money was pouring in, shares were soaring, rich clients were drawing in more rich clients. Rumours of success grew fast, and the reason was simple: Grind Bank, as it was called, was lending money at rates that undercut any competition, in exchange for which it asked for no guarantees, simply that its borrowers should buy its own shares with some of the money being lent. The bank's shares rose thanks to the bank's own money. Simple,
and completely mad. A runaway train. But nobody wanted to see it like that. Caution was not an option, there was no point in it back in the Nineties; growth was vertiginous, banks were offering suicidal loans, and the whole world was caught up in the madness. Louchsky soon saw how useful it could be to put his money there – the little Faroe bank would be a useful laundry, just what he was looking for.

And so for all these years the two men had been giving each other big manly slaps on the back. One would lose the smell of fish, the other the oil stains on his oligarch's outfit. Everything was turned into money. They had got into the habit of meeting in London, in the office of Rassmussen, Louchsky's lawyer, and now Sunleif's. Louchsky never came to the Faroes, until now that things had started to go wrong.

 

The crowd carried on towards the landing beach, while the men went on to the port, where the motorboats were waiting. They walked through a few more narrow streets, past different-coloured houses, blue, mustard-yellow and blood-red. There was certainly going to be blood. Sunleif hadn't told them exactly what was going to happen that day, he didn't want to spoil the surprise. He was thrilled at the thought of his guests' faces turning as white as their collars when the serious fun began. They had been delighted when he had told them that his rodeo would infuriate the ecologists. These financial sharks were going to see something now, they had no idea. It was a beautiful day, the sea was calm; dark shadows on the water seemed to foretell something, but they were just the reflections of the cliffs, which would one day fall into the sea and disappear. Here the sea destroyed everything.

“Follow me!” shouted Sunleif.

Ten motorboats were ready to cast off. Everybody climbed on board; Louchsky, the lawyer, Eyvin and Sunleif together. The pilot started the engine. Sunleif stripped off his T-shirt, pulled on the top half of the wetsuit and fastened the zip,
compressing his fat stomach, as though to indicate to them all “I'm going in the water, boys”. Completely unaware of the horrified expression on his guests' faces, he believed in himself as part of a great tradition, that of man against the elements. The boats launched off, with Sunleif's in the lead. He stood, the sun beating down on his already reddening head, shouting over the noise of the engines. He pointed out the islands, naming each one, boasting about their beauty; he told them that to the far north of Tórshavn the land came to an end with enormous precipices from which one can sense on the horizon the edge of the Arctic sea ice. Sunleif was in his element. He had returned to his native land after having made such efforts to blend in at all those board meetings.

“You need months to learn the habits of fish, but only three weeks to become a banker!”

“And just a few days to lose everything,” Louchsky muttered between his teeth, but loud enough to be heard.

He was immediately put back in his place by the larger waves outside the bay. He grabbed the handrail, much to Sunleif's satisfaction. He remembered gripping the side of his chair like that when Louchsky had come to threaten him in his office.

“Look over there!” he shouted.

You could just see the shiny dark shadows moving on the water. The dolphins were there. The boats accelerated. A shoal of cetaceans with bumps on their heads could clearly be seen between the waves. It was heading west.

“Gentlemen, the pilot whales! Why pilots? Explain please, Eyvin!”

And Eyvin explained that these dolphins had a habit of accompanying ships, jumping in their wake.

“It's almost too easy!” Sunleif shouted.

The victims were unprepared for their fate. The motorboats took up their positions, encircling the animals, then turned around and began to drive them towards
the coast. The dolphins now tried to escape. They turned to right and left, diving down beneath the waves. But the hunters stayed with them, tracking them mercilessly, exhausting them, blocking their way. It took time, not to let a single one escape, but that was the fun of it, the excitement, the roar of the engines over the agility of the beast, the superiority of man over the cleverest of animals. There were yells of excitement on the boats as the men quaffed strong beer. Sunleif had plenty of beer on his boat, but he was the only one drinking. A radio message came saying that two dolphins had escaped to starboard. Sunleif pushed the pilot aside, took the wheel and swung round 180 degrees, shaking the whole boat in pursuit of the fugitives.

“You can't escape Sunleif!”

Another sharp turn and Eyvin just managed to reach over the guard rail to vomit up his lunch. Sunleif sniggered. All around the animals were haggard, terrified and exhausted. They now allowed themselves to be driven towards the shallower waters.

Then you could hear the sound of the metal hooks being raised on the decks. They were heavy, over four pounds each. The pack of hunters had finished their beer and the final assault was about to begin.

“Shit!” Sunleif yelled.

His mobile was vibrating for the fifth time. He answered, furious.

“What? Why am I being disturbed?”

It was the housekeeper, stammering. He said the police had come by, and wanted to speak to him urgently and would wait for him on the beach.

“What do you mean the police?” Sunleif foamed.

 

He shouldn't have shouted, or looked at the Russian at that moment. Police is police, even in Faroese. Louchsky had had enough of being stuck on this boat with thirty dying
dolphins and a gang of retarded Vikings in full carnival costume. He stared at Sunleif and put his hand to his neck in a threatening gesture.

They were both thinking the same: their machinations had finally been exposed, the authorities who controlled the markets and analysed everything were onto them. Sunleif suddenly shivered inside his wetsuit. In his shiny black outfit he looked like one of the big fish floundering in the bay under the hooks, at the end of their strength; he was going to die too, because for him to lose would be to die. The police had come to arrest him, or at least to interrogate him. Nobody on board wanted to go down with him; they all observed him from the other end of the boat. But Sunleif suddenly grabbed his spear and waved it, his neck and shoulders bulging.

“Let the fun begin!” he yelled.

And he plunged the spear into the flesh of the nearest animal, again and again, until the hook caught and pulled it up into the boat. Then he pulled out a foot-long knife and plunged it deep into the dolphin's neck, through the thick layer of fat and flesh. The blade disappeared, then Sunleif plunged his hand in, reaching for the arteries and the nervous system. Blood spurted over the boat, and all the other boats. The sea was now turning red with the dolphins' blood.

The dolphins did not die at once, that depended on the skill of the hunter. Some of the men stayed belching on the boats, others plunged into the water from the beach, carrying hooks; they finished off the stranded animals, pulling them in by their fins, pushing them onto the sand. There was already a pile of thirty or so dolphins, dying or dead, piled up like bags washed up by the sea. The only movements were death spasms. They say in the Faroes that animals die in silence. Others maintained that they could hear cries of pain coming from the cliffs.