Sunleif sat on the edge of his bed with his hands on his thighs. He was still wearing the trousers, shirt and socks from the day before. He stared at the cupboard, at the row of suits, unable to decide what armour to put on for the day ahead. Grind Bank shares had plunged by fifty-two per cent the day before. At this rate it would no longer exist when the markets opened. Failure was imminent and no one was even pretending to save face.
His Blackberry vibrated on the bedside table. Sunleif didn’t reply. It was yet another message from the Finance Minister, with whom he had spent part of the night. Sunleif had watched him ringing City financiers, the British authorities, Danish, French, American bankers… He had listened to him begging them to help avoid disaster, to save Grind Bank. He had heard him threaten that “a lot of foreign fortunes are going to be wiped out”. He had seen him stammering, not quite understanding the replies he was getting. He had heard him promising anything, letting himself be humiliated by the bigger fish: he was a little fish in that pond, a minor politician dealing with a minor bank. And when he finally hung up, Sunleif had listened without flinching as the Minister reminded him of what he already knew, the things he had been praised for in that same office six months earlier: the fact that the public pension scheme and a large part of the Faroe economy was invested in Grind shares. “People are going to lose their homes,” he was told over and over again, until one in the morning. It was the first time that real people or proper accounting had ever been mentioned in their conversations. Sunleif had left an hour later without a solution.
He hadn’t really slept. He had just lain on his bed reviewing various scenarios. He could put on his funeral suit, still on the back of the chair, and then put a bullet through his head, but that wasn’t really his style. Grab the Falcon and fly to a palm-fringed beach? They would find him. Anyway, if he was going to live on an island he preferred his own, this one. During the night he had gazed at the silver-framed photo of himself and Linda on their wedding day, remembering the pale cloth lampshade they had had above the bed, before the crystal chandelier. And then he had finally closed his eyes despite the pale light of the midnight sun. His place would be here, at home, when the storm finally broke.
“STEPHENSEN!”
It was Rassmussen shouting from downstairs, drowning out the protestations of Johanna, the housekeeper, who had been unable to prevent him from coming in. He was already on the stairs. Sunleif grabbed the funeral trousers from the chair and buttoned up his shirt. His alarm said 7.16. Rassmussen pushed the door open.
“Get dressed, we’re going to the office. We’ve got some work to do. You fooled us, but it’s over… We warned you.”
“Jonas, you’re in my house!”
“Not for much longer. Look at yourself!”
“Listen. There’s a problem with liquidity. If he could put in two hundred million…”
“Shut up and come along.”
They went downstairs, Sunleif in front, Rassmussen following, their feet sinking into the thick carpet on the steps. Sunleif could have tossed the lawyer over the banisters with one hand, but today the biggest man was no longer the strongest. They were linked by an unbreakable chain of reciprocal corruption, forced on them by their mutual agreement to do things that could then never be spoken about – the time-honoured Mafia way of doing business. The staff in the house could see how serious the situation was. Their boss now looked like a condemned creature going to its death without a struggle. He had never before left the house without first having his cup of coffee and his boiled egg. Sunleif could feel their stares. Could they even guess at what was going to happen in the next few days? It would all happen very fast. He climbed into the limousine with the darkened windows, and found himself surrounded by armed men. The car roared off. On the side of the road, Eyvin’s mother was trudging up towards Sunleif’s house, her face ravaged by tears.
The bank was still empty. They shut themselves in the office. Sunleif signed everything. He made over the London headquarters, the offices on the Côte d’Azure, the paintings, the Falcon. He worked quickly, as though he was pushing through a deal. Fear and euphoria seemed to be the only two emotions possible when it came to financial dealings.
“We financed your losses, it’s natural that we should get the first pickings,” Rassmussen said, swivelling around in the rolling chair on the other side of the office. “We couldn’t care less how much we get for your assets. The important thing is that you should be stripped bare, reduced to nothing. And don’t forget poor Linda’s gallery, especially as—”
“Especially as what?” Sunleif said, looking up.
“Nothing. Get on with it!”
Rassmussen was in a hurry. He wanted to be gone by the time all the others started appearing. Government, creditors, investment funds, individuals – they would be besieging the office any minute now. Bankruptcy was imminent. Before he left, the lawyer asked:
“Have you wiped everything clean?”
“It’s done.”
“No dirty tricks, Sunleif?”
“No. I’ll call a board meeting in an hour, and we’ll file for bankruptcy.”
“If you were planning to do a runner afterwards, forget it. I’m taking the Falcon now. I hope the tank’s full! You’ve already lost us enough money…”
He left. His departure didn’t mean that they were quits, Sunleif knew that perfectly well. An hour later the offices were full of tense, silent faces. The whole staff was there, prepared for the worst.
“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
