79.
With regard to the onset of his father’s illness, Zoran’s evidence was that before 1984
his father “was a perfectly normal, considerate man. He was a charming and
successful businessman and there was no indication that there was anything wrong
mentally or physically”. However, in 1984 his father started to behave erratically, and
he began to have paranoid delusions about the female members of his family,
believing in particular that they were trying to poison him. Zoran says in his witness
statement that he cannot put his finger on any particular trigger for this change in
behaviour, but it was in the summer of 1984 that his father’s behaviour became too
much for his mother and he was forced to leave the family home in London. Zoran
had been in Scotland, and returned to London to be told that his father had left. He
says that he was stunned. He adds that his father also began to behave erratically at
work, and would only appear in the office sporadically. No doubt the onset of Bane’s
illness was one of the reasons which encouraged him to think of taking a break from
work at this time, although as I have explained the plan came to nothing.
80.
Zoran says that his relationship with his father became strained after 1984, because he
supported his mother and also because he did not like the way his father was behaving
at work. In September 1985, Zoran decided he had had enough and he returned to
Scotland. The office in London had an unhealthy atmosphere and his father’s
deteriorating mental state made it unpleasant to work there. In the event, September
1985 was the last time when Zoran saw his father, even though he was not to die until
20 years later. During his last month in London his father had stopped speaking to
him completely, and would ignore him. As Zoran said in cross-examination:
“I think he just thought that I had taken the side of my mother,
and she had had the locks changed and I was in league with her,
so he decided to cut contact with me.”
81.
It is convenient at this point to refer to three important entries in Bane’s diary for
1984 and 1985 which involve Zoran.
82.
The first entry is dated 22 April 1984. It needs to be read in the context of an earlier
entry dated 1 March 1984 recording that he had an accident skiing in Switzerland in
which he cracked a bone in his leg. He had returned from Switzerland on 15 March,
and gone to Gleneagles on 17 April. The entry for 22 April read as follows:
“Easter – St Andrews with damaged left leg, Zoran ask me to
make promenade at Links, where tide is high – I refused, he
went to second-hand library in St Andrews.”
This episode evidently made a strong impression on Bane, because another entry for
Easter 1984 can be found at the end of the entries for 1996, as follows:
“Zoran drove Mirjana and me Gleneagles Village, Airlie Court
to St Andrews (I had cracked left [fibula] from Davos
1/03/1984) and he wanted that we walk on the links!!! I said,
are you crazy – with my limping tide could be very quickly
high. He went then to the second-hand bookshop – near Old
Course. He paid us a tea.”