Читать книгу Absolution - Aleš Šteger - Страница 9

European Approach

There’s no one in this city who doesn’t know about Laszlo Farkas, the famous prosecutor, who made a career for himself with a number of very widely discussed anti-corruption proceedings. His name is a fearsome metaphor for all convicted criminals who ran schemes involving the illegal privatization of public property during the time of transition to Slovenian independence, who laundered money, who intentionally debilitated firms, trafficked fictitious equity certificates and shares or who, in any other way, very quickly and illegally accumulated a significant amount of wealth. Farkas. Directors on trial tremble at his name. Farkas, renowned for cases such as Patex, Botox, Pimpex and many others that resulted in long-term prison sentences for the cream of Slovenian management. He’s also wellknown to the wider public because of his physical appearance. For many years Farkas has suffered from glaucoma, which contributes to his slightly insane appearance. A glance at his red, unnaturally bulging and puffy eyes, eyes that never blink, might send shivers down your spine. He left Lendava, a small town on the Hungarian border where he used to practise law, many years ago. He gave up his private practice upon moving to Maribor, where he assumed the position of prosecutor in the State Attorney’s Office, in the department specializing in serious economic crimes.

It’s around 2.30, early Friday afternoon. Farkas walks out of the court. His white BMW is parked just around the corner. As he does every Friday, he drives across the Tito Bridge, past the hospital to the Ball Bar at the foot of the Pohorje Mountains. The head of the Volley Football Fan Club is already there. Fifteen minutes later Farkas leaves the bar and drives back to his house at the foot of Pyramid Hill in Maribor. He opens his garage door with a remote control, parks the car.

Once at the front door he notices that the house alarm has once more been disarmed. ‘I’ll have to call the maintenance crew again,’ he sighs and unlocks the door.

‘Vila, where are you, Vila?’ Farkas calls out.

Nothing. Farkas is surprised not to see his poodle, who usually greets him at the front door.

‘You lazy little slug, are you asleep again? Vila, come!’

Instead of the dog he is greeted by a horrible sight: on his living-room floor Vila lies motionless. Open drawers, things scattered across the room. On the table, a bottle of whisky. On the sofa, Rosa Portero, revolver in her left hand, unlit cigarette clenched between her lips.

‘Finally! I thought you’d forgotten about me,’ she says in German and lights up. ‘You don’t mind, do you? Relax. Vila’s asleep. She’ll wake up in a few hours, probably with a horrible headache from all the sleeping pills she’s had with her food. A very greedy little thing, that dog of yours.’

A door bell.

‘That’ll be the flower delivery. Come on, let’s open the door.’

Farkas, his hands in the air, slowly walks to the front door, Rosa behind him.

‘Ask who it is,’ orders Rosa.

‘Flower delivery,’ resounds from beyond the door.

‘Maribor doesn’t do flower deliveries, except to the cemetery,’ says Farkas abruptly.

‘We call this the European approach,’ says Rosa.

Farkas opens the door to Adam Bely. A couple of minutes later Farkas sits tied up on the living-room floor, holding the cylindrical electrodes. Deep snoring of Vila the poodle next to him.

‘Is this his personal trick, or is it some common Maribor folk tradition to paint a poodle’s tail purple?’ Rosa addresses Bely as he frisks Farkas’s coat and bag. He finds an envelope and counts out at least thirty thousand euros.

‘What’s this?’ he asks as he turns on the E-meter device. Rosa turns on the Dictaphone and lights another cigarette.

‘We don’t smoke in this house,’ says Farkas quietly.

‘Where has this money come from?’

‘I lent it to a guy, and now he’s paid me back.’

‘I see, says Bely’, keeping track of the E-meter needle.

‘You come from Lendava, is that correct?’

‘From the way you speak, you could be from Maribor,’ replies Farkas. ‘Do you have any idea how long you’ll be put away for this? You’re good for ten years, and you’ll beg me to call in a favour with my prosecutor colleague when they tear you apart in court.’

‘The motto of your legal office was Suum cuique.’

‘To each his own. Correct,’ says Farkas.

‘I assume the envelope with all that money adheres to that slogan, too.’

‘You can have this conversation with the police, or, even better, from solitary, where you’ll have plenty of time to think things through.’

‘That’s enough, Farkas. Tomi gave you the envelope, the head of the Volleys. Where would a kid like that get so much money?’

Farkas says nothing. Softly and steadily, Bely taps his fountain pen against the palm of his hand. Farkas’s bloodshot eyes bulge further as he studies Bely’s palms, one of which is injured. His eyes dart from the pen to Bely to Vila’s purple tail. The dog’s fur rises and falls with heavy breaths. He hears the ceramic fountain pen as it hits flat against Bely’s wounded palm, the vibrations that spread evenly across the room and bounce off him back to Bely. Bely feels the vibrations as they settle into his body. Watchfully he stares at Farkas’s big, bloodshot, never-shut eyes, which stare back at him. Tired, his corneas look like cocoons of heavily interwoven capillaries. As if the tiniest of the spiders were about to nestle in, the purple tail of the fountain pen, bloody trail, ceramics, blood-filled pools, soft Persian rug, the beating of a canine heart, heavy look, vibrations, the arching ground that opens up into the room, tick, tiring, they bend like sheets, tack, palm, eyes, tail, tick, pencil, breath, tack, pool.

Rosa’s voice calls out to Bely to open his eyes. There’s something soft underneath him. His nose and mouth are stuffed with purple tail fur. It’s Vila, who lies on the rug beside him.

‘What happened? Where’s Farkas?’

‘Don’t worry, he’s safe, upstairs in the bedroom. I put him there before I woke you up. He managed to hypnotize you while you tried to hypnotize him. Never seen anything like it before. All of a sudden you stumbled and fell across one another.’

‘My head.’

‘You were lucky you missed the table, but the dog broke your fall, and you probably broke all of her bones, poor little thing!’

‘Come on, let’s go upstairs,’ says Bely, as he grabs the E-meter and staggers to the staircase.

The bedroom door on the first floor is wide open. Farkas, still tied up, lies next to the bed, his mouth Scotch-taped. Bely pulls Farkas up and over to the mirror.

‘I should’ve practised more,’ mutters Bely. ‘I can’t get the hypnosis to work, not even before the mirror.’

Bely leaves and returns with his coat, feels around the pockets and pulls out his little bottle of pills.

‘You’re not going to give him your fat-reducing pills, are you?’ laughs Rosa.

Bely throws her a serious glance. He continues to feel around in his pockets. A small case, an ampoule, a needle, Bely attaches it to a syringe. Farkas tries to resist as Bely rolls up his sleeve. On his upper arm, a tattoo of the Maribor football club logo, a castle with a bird on the blossom of a violet. The needle pierces the castle, light tightening of the skin, a frozen moment. Farkas calms down, turns languid and mellow.

‘We’ve got about twenty minutes,’ says Bely. ‘The serum only works that long.’

Bely tears the Scotch tape off Farkas’s mouth and turns on the Dictaphone.

‘Where did you get the envelope with the money?’

Farkas stutters incomprehensibly. Bely grabs him by his shirt and slaps his face.

‘Answer me! Where did you get that money in the envelope?’

‘It’s a week’s worth of earnings from my Volleys.’

‘Your Volleys?’

‘Nobody knows about it, they all think that the Volleys are a bunch of football fans. But some of them are also members of a well-organized group, which I run.’

‘What group?’

‘Well, we do personal protection, primarily politicians, but also businessmen. It’s less likely that I’ll ever see you in court if you have our protection. We also deal with other stuff, but on a much smaller scale.’

‘Like what?’