The Eyes of Lira Kazan (10 page)

 

ACID ATTACK ON RUSSIAN JOURNALIST IN LONDON STREET

 

 

Lira Kazan, a journalist for the Russian weekly magazine
Mir
, was the victim of a savage acid attack the day before yesterday as she was returning to her hotel in Bucknall Street. She was taken to A & E at University College Hospital. Doctors confirm that her life is not in danger, but are unable to say as yet whether her sight can be saved after severe burns to her eyes. The attackers' methods have led the inquiry to suspect a Russian connection. In the last few years London has become the scene for settlements of scores between various interest groups in Moscow. Scotland Yard, however, did comment as follows: “Normally the Russians don't just threaten, they kill.”

 

Nwankwo didn't notice it straight away, even though the paper was lying open in front of him. He was listening, fascinated, to his colleague, teacher and researcher Julian Bolton, explaining his paper on ‘The sense of insecurity in Europe during the last fifty years'. Bolton seemed to have tamed national anxieties as though they were gales – he could predict when they would rise and when they would die down: public opinion was like a kite in his hands. Listening to him, Nwankwo realized that he was now inhabiting a safe world convinced of its inalienable rights, whereas his own world, Africa, had difficulty in making its feelings and claims heard by anyone. “That sense of insecurity doesn't exist where I come from… But then, neither does a sense of security,” he laughed.

And then he saw it. The column on the right-hand page of the
Guardian
seemed to leap at him. “Are you all right?” Julian said. He was trembling. It was her, the girl from the other day; he saw it at once, he remembered what she had said, how she had wanted to speak to him about this Louchsky. “Are you all right?” Julian asked again. Nwankwo looked frightened, slightly mad even. He got up, said “See you tomorrow”, and left without any explanation. He ran to his car and set off towards London and the hospital. He was shaken to the core by the idea that he would never be able to save anyone, and even that he was the bringer of bad luck. When he reached the hospital and was asked what relation he was, he just said: “Give her my name, she can decide.”

 

When he came into the room and saw the tiresome girl from the other day now stretched on a hospital bed with her eyes in bandages, he saw once again the bodies of all
those friends of his who had been shot down in cold blood. He clenched his fists as a cold shudder swept through his body. He approached; she had agreed to see him and was expecting him.

“Nwankwo?” she asked.

“Yes.” He drew up a chair and sat down by the bed. “What happened?”

She told him, her voice weak.

“I was horrible the other day,” he said. “If there's anything I can do…”

“No. I don't want to drag you into this. I know what you promised your family. And you're right to be careful – this proves it.”

He looked at her, not knowing what to say and yet unable to leave. The nurse knocked again and said the woman from the embassy was still there.

“Tell her to go away!” Lira said.

The door closed.

“I don't want their help,” Lira murmured. “They get people killed, or let them be killed and then issue statements saying they will do everything possible to arrest the guilty. I've seen and read that scenario all too often. I must get out of here and escape from them. I don't want to go back. They'd be delighted if I did – I'm dead, or as good as, I won't bother anyone any more…”

Nwankwo listened. What she said about herself applied to him too – “I won't bother anyone any more.” He asked if any of her family was coming, and she explained how urgent it was that her daughter should be protected. The nurse came in again, saying that the embassy woman was insisting.

“Tell her to fuck off!” Lira shouted in Russian, loud enough to be heard out in the corridor.

It seemed that not being able to see meant that she was no longer affected by any trappings of power and was now relying purely on her own instincts and certainties. Nwankwo's expression had changed from pity to a hard sparkle. He
felt drawn to this woman as to few others. She had sprung, one by one, the bolts on the shackles he had imposed upon himself on arriving in England. He got up quietly, promising to return, saying that she would soon be well, and they would share their secrets. He left the hospital like a man possessed. He tapped “10 Elm Street” into his GPS app, setting everything in motion as he dialled the number on his mobile phone.

“Helen?”

“Yes.”

“It's Nwankwo Ganbo. I must speak to you. It's urgent.”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“No not tomorrow, now. I'm on my way.”

Fifteen minutes later, Nwankwo entered the headquarters of the Serious Fraud Office.

The first time he had been through these doors had been nearly three years ago, when he was still in charge of the fight against corruption in his country. He had come to Europe to meet the officers who, like him, were tracking the secret millions of dollars poured out by the oil companies. He had repeated his mantra to them all: “If you want to help Africa, you must put an end to this massive corruption. It is at the root of everything – terrorism, civil war, epidemics, they are all merely symptoms of the disease.” Helen had taken him to a discreet club with large leather armchairs. They understood one another. They spoke the same language, were accustomed to the slow pace of things, and were infuriated at knowing so much without being able to prove it.

She had told him about her childhood as a diplomat's daughter in Kenya. She had grown up, until the age of ten, in a beautiful house with, beyond, the haunting, spellbinding open spaces of Africa. Then, without anyone consulting her, she had been sent off to a boarding school in Switzerland and had never gone back to Africa. Nwankwo had listened to this woman, still young but with prematurely white hair, thinking to himself that if he had met her as a little white
girl in the Nigeria of his youth, they would never have spoken to each other. But here they were, decades later, pursuing the same object. The second time he had met her had been barely a month ago; he had just arrived with his family, wounded but still proud. He had come that time to thank Helen who he knew had helped to get him the job at Oxford.

This time he arrived in Helen's office in a burning fury. He told her about Lira, lying, blind, on her hospital bed. He said that they must help her while she recovered. He asked Helen to protect her as she had protected him. He said they must move fast, that Helen and her staff had the authority to investigate laundering and could trace the recycling of money by Russians and Nigerians in Great Britain. He spoke fast and passionately as though his story and Lira's were already linked together.

“Calm down, Nwankwo. There'll be an investigation, and they may be able to arrest the attackers, don't forget London is peppered with CCTV…”

“What?”

“Surveillance cameras.”

“I should think they're already far away. This city is becoming a refuge for people like that. They come and kill people, they dump their money here… Finley's got himself a fifteen-million-pound house, a whole lot of cars including a Bentley, a helicopter – quite a lot for a man on a two-thousand-dollar-a-month salary. You've got to scare them, Helen!”

“Nwankwo, I promise you, we're watching them.”

“You must do more than that. Go to the files and get Finley's account details, and Louchsky's. I can help you decipher them.”

“I'll see what I can do. But you're a lecturer now, don't forget that, your asylum is conditional on that.”

The white wooden church stood at the end of the street, with its red roof and rustproof metal panels. Behind it there was a graveyard without statues, just small crosses and stones on a grass lawn. One of them would soon bear the inscription “Linda Stephensen 1961 – 2010”. Louchsky watched from the back of his limousine, where he could not be seen. He knew that the crowd of mourners held him somehow responsible for her death. That made him smile. He leant back against the headrest.

“You were sleeping with her,” he said.

“No!” Rassmussen was startled.

“That wasn't a question, Jonas.”

“Well, once or twice.”

“More than that, Jonas.”

Silence.

“You can fuck whoever you like but not the banker's wife. Now the cops are hovering around, they're going to be asking questions. We didn't need this!”

He opened the door without waiting for a reply. Rassmussen followed him. Together they walked up the path, quietly approaching Sunleif, who was receiving condolences, with his children beside him, who had rushed back from their American universities. Some people simply nodded, others shook his hand warmly. They were a reticent lot round here. Sunleif thanked them in a hoarse voice, watching the Russian and his lawyer approaching. He thought about the five billion dollars they were demanding.

Louchsky came up to him and gave him a firm handshake. Rassmussen's hand was sweaty. They went in without saying anything. They were the last. Sunleif closed the church doors and stood for a moment at the back looking at the
rows of mourners. He felt as though he was attending his own funeral. The island people, squeezed on benches at the back, had kept their distance. They knew perfectly well that you were more likely to drown in your bathtub than in a Mediterranean port. The ministers avoided his glance, as though they had completely forgotten the dinners at his house, the loans of private jets, and the envelopes full of cash at election time. As for his children, he didn't recognize them. His son's suit hung loosely on him and his blonde daughter had a diamond stud in her nose. She had insisted on wearing Chinese costume. Their American schools had removed them from their origins; they had lost all interest in fishing and the sea and seemed to be completely indifferent to all the power they stood to inherit. Eyvin was beside them, silent. He was the same age as them and had known them when they were all children, but they had nothing in common now. Sunleif felt a wave of affection for this young employee whom he tormented. He, at any rate, had not forgotten his origins. His affection was increased by the mad and totally illegal act he had ordered Eyvin to commit the night before: “Get into the system and erase everything.” Eyvin, as he came into the church, had nodded. He had obeyed.

 

The banker then took his place in the front row. He was going to say a few words after the pastor had spoken. The service began. Sunleif remembered their wedding in this church. It had been a splendid marriage, between the son of the biggest fishing boss on the island and that year's beauty queen. It had been for better and for worse. And now the worst had happened. He missed Linda, or rather his life with Linda, the beginnings, the rise in their fortune. She spoke English better than him and she had helped him with the early contracts. She even tied his tie. Everything had been so simple then.

And now here she was, stretched out in a flower-decked coffin in the room next door. And while Sunleif was trying
to summon up some last words of love, and the pastor spouted impersonal platitudes, as though all lives followed the same course, the dead woman was still talking. Talking too much, far from here, in the office of a French judge and his faithful clerk.

 

“You have no idea how thrilled I was when Sun bought the
Falcon
! He bought it just like that, for ten million dollars, for me. ‘Linda, you must feel free,' he said. He gave me Magnus and Alf too, handsome pilots in Grind Bank uniforms. He said to them that he was entrusting them with his most precious possession, me. I thanked him, huddling in his arms; men love to feel that they're generous and we're grateful. I knew perfectly well that he couldn't have cared less about my happiness. He just had some money to get rid of. That's what happens when there's too much, well there's never too much, it just sometimes overflows and has to be moved out of sight. I'm speaking too freely. I can to you, can't I? Professional discretion, eh?

“Anyway, that day all I saw was one figure: four thousand miles allowed on the
Falcon
. I just had to ring Magnus and Alf and I could go whenever I wanted. No more timetables, formalities, going through security, other people with their bad breath. With my
Falcon
I could do what I liked. Sometimes I used to go to Paris or London for two or three days, just to do some shopping, or to go to a sale or an exhibition. I go as far away as I can. I can't breathe up there.”