The Fear Index

by Robert Harris

  Next to the bench, mounted on a pair of trestles, was one of her works: a 3D scanned image of a foetus composed of about twenty sections drawn on sheets of very clear glass. Leclerc bent to examine it. Its head was disproportionately large for its body, its spindly legs drawn up and tucked beneath it. Viewed from the side it had depth, but as one shifted one’s perspective to the front it seemed to dwindle, then vanish entirely. He could not make out whether it was finished or not. It had a certain power, he was forced to concede, but he couldn’t have lived with it himself. It looked too much like a fossilised reptile suspended in an aquarium. His wife would have thought it disgusting.

  A door from the conservatory led out to the garden. It was locked and bolted; no key nearby that he could find. Beyond the thick glass, the lights of Geneva wavered across the lake. A solitary pair of headlights made its way along the Quai du Mont-Blanc.

  Leclerc left the conservatory and returned to the passage. Two more doors led off it. One turned out to be a lavatory containing a big old-fashioned water closet, into which Leclerc took the opportunity to relieve himself, and the other a storage room filled with what appeared to be detritus from the Hoffmanns’ last house: rolls of carpet tied with twine, a bread-making machine, deckchairs, a croquet set, and, at the far end, in pristine condition, a baby’s cot, a changing table, and a clockwork mobile of stars and moons.

  3

  Suspicion, the offspring of fear, is eminently characteristic of most wild animals.

  CHARLES DARWIN, The Descent of Man (1871)

  ACCORDING TO THE records subsequently released by the Geneva medical service, the ambulance radioed to report that it was leaving the Hoffmanns’ residence at 5.22. At that hour it was only a five-minute drive through the empty streets of central Geneva to the hospital.

  In the back of the ambulance Hoffmann maintained his refusal to obey regulations and lie down on the bed, but instead sat upright with his legs over the side, brooding and defiant. He was a brilliant man, a rich man, accustomed to being listened to with respect. But now suddenly he found he had been deported to some poorer and less-favoured land: the kingdom of the sick, where every citizen was second class. It irritated him to recall how Gabrielle and Leclerc had looked at him when he had showed them The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals – as if the obvious connection between the book and the attack was merely the fevered product of an injured brain. He had brought the volume with him; it was resting in his lap; he tapped his finger against it restlessly.

  The ambulance swerved around the corner and the female attendant put out her hand to steady him. Hoffmann scowled at her. He had no confidence in the Geneva police or in government departments generally. He had no confidence in anyone much, except himself. He searched his dressing gown pockets for his mobile.

  Gabrielle, watching him from the opposite seat, next to the ambulance woman, said, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m calling Hugo.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Alex …’

  ‘What? He needs to know what’s happened.’ As Hoffmann listened to the number ringing, he reached over and took her hand to mollify her. ‘I’m feeling much better, really.’

  Eventually Quarry came on the line. ‘Alex?’ For once his normally languid voice was strained with anxiety: when is a phone call before dawn ever good news? ‘What the hell is it?’

  ‘Sorry to call this early, Hugo. We’ve had an intruder.’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?’

  ‘Gabrielle’s okay. I got a whack on the head. We’re in an ambulance going to the hospital.’

  ‘Which hospital?’

  ‘The university, I think.’ Hoffmann looked at Gabrielle for confirmation. She nodded. ‘Yeah, the university.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  A couple of minutes later the ambulance swept up the approach road to the big teaching hospital. Through the smoked-glass window Hoffmann briefly glimpsed its scale – a huge place: ten floors, lit up like some great foreign airport terminal in the darkness – then the lights vanished as if a curtain had been pulled across them. The ambulance descended along a gently circling subterranean passage and pulled to a halt. The engine was cut. In the silence, Gabrielle gave him a reassuring smile and Hoffmann thought: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. The rear doors swung open on to what looked like a spotlessly clean underground car park. A man shouted in the distance, his voice echoing off the concrete walls.

  Hoffmann was instructed to lie down, and this time he decided not to argue: he had entered into the system; he must submit to its processes. He stretched out, the bed was lowered, and with a horrible feeling of helplessness he allowed himself to be wheeled along mysterious factory-like corridors, staring up at the strip lighting until, at a reception desk, he was briefly parked. An accompanying gendarme handed over his paperwork. Hoffmann watched as his details were registered, then turned his head on the pillow and glanced across the crowded room to where a television news channel played to a heedless audience of drunks and addicts. On the screen, Japanese traders with cell phones clamped to their ears were shown in various attitudes of horror and despair. But before he could find out any more, he was on the move again, down a short corridor and into an empty cubicle.

  Gabrielle sat on a moulded plastic chair, took out a powder compact and started applying lipstick in quick, nervous strokes. Hoffmann watched her as if she were a stranger: so dark and neat and self-contained, like a cat washing her face. She had been doing exactly this when he first saw her, at a party in Saint-Genis-Pouilly. A harassed young Turkish doctor came in with a clipboard; a plastic name tag attached to his white coat announced him as Dr Muhammet Celik. He consulted Hoffmann’s notes. He shone a light into his eyes, struck his knee with a small hammer and asked him to name the president of the United States and then to count backwards from one hundred to eighty.

  Hoffmann answered without difficulty. Satisfied, the doctor put on a pair of surgical gloves. He took off Hoffmann’s temporary dressing, parted his hair and examined the wound, gently prodding it with his fingers: Hoffmann felt as if he were being inspected for lice. The accompanying conversation was conducted entirely above his head.

  ‘He lost a lot of blood,’ said Gabrielle.

  ‘Wounds to the head always bleed heavily. He will need a few stitches, I think.’

  ‘Is it a deep wound?’

  ‘Oh, not so deep, but there is quite a wide area of swelling. You see? It was something blunt that hit him?’

  ‘A fire extinguisher.’

  ‘Okay. Let me make a note of that. We need to get a head scan.’

  Celik bent down so that his face was level with Hoffmann’s. He smiled. He opened his eyes very wide and spoke extremely slowly. ‘Very well then, Monsieur Hoffmann. Later I will stitch the wound. Right now we need to take you downstairs and make some pictures of the inside of your head. This will be done by a machine we call a CAT scanner. Are you familiar with a CAT scanner, Monsieur Hoffmann?’

  ‘Computed Axial Tomography uses a rotating detector and X-ray source to compile cross-sectional radiographic images – it’s seventies technology, no big deal. And it’s not Monsieur Hoffmann, by the way – it’s Dr Hoffmann.’

  As he was wheeled into the elevator, Gabrielle said, ‘There was no need to be so rude. He was only trying to help you.’

  ‘He spoke to me as if I were a child.’

  ‘Then stop behaving like one. Here, you can hold this.’ She dropped his bag of clothes on to his lap and walked ahead to summon the elevator.

  Gabrielle obviously knew her way to the radiology department, a fact that Hoffmann found obscurely irritating. Over the past couple of years the staff had helped her with her art work, giving her access to the scanners when they were not in use, staying late after their shifts had finished to produce the images she needed. Several had become her friends. He ought to be grateful to them, but he wasn’t. The doors opened on to the darkened lower floor. They h
ad a lot of scanners, he remembered. It was the hospital to which they helicoptered the most serious skiing injuries, from Chamonix, Megeve, even Courchevel. Hoffmann had a sense of a huge expanse of offices and equipment extending into the shadows – an entire department stilled and deserted, apart from this one small emergency outpost. A young man with long black curly hair came striding across to them. ‘Gabrielle!’ he exclaimed. He took her hand and kissed it, then turned to look down at Hoffmann. ‘So you have brought me a genuine patient for a change?’

  Gabrielle said, ‘This is my husband, Alexander Hoffmann. Alex – this is Fabian Tallon, the duty technician. You remember Fabian? I’ve told you all about him.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Hoffmann. He looked up at the young man. Tallon had large dark liquid eyes, a wide mouth, very white teeth and a couple of days’ growth of dark beard. His shirt was unbuttoned more than it needed to be, drawing attention to his broad chest, his rugby player’s chest. Suddenly Hoffmann wondered if Gabrielle might be having an affair with him. He tried to push the idea out of his head, but it refused to go. It was years since he had felt a pang of jealousy; he had forgotten how almost exquisite the sharpness could be. Looking from one to the other he said, ‘Thank you for all you’ve done for Gabrielle.’

  ‘It’s been a pleasure, Alex. Now let’s see what we can do for you.’ He pushed the bed as easily as if it were a supermarket trolley, through the control area and into the room containing the CAT scanner. ‘Stand up, please.’

  Once again Hoffmann surrendered mechanically to the procedure. His overcoat and spectacles were taken from him. He was told to sit on the edge of the couch that formed part of the machine. The dressing was removed from his head. He was instructed to lie on his back on the couch, his head pointing towards the scanner. Tallon adjusted the neck rest. ‘This will take less than a minute,’ he said, and disappeared. The door sighed shut behind him. Hoffmann raised his head slightly. He was alone. Beyond his bare feet, through the thick glass window at the far end of the room, he could see Gabrielle watching him. Tallon joined her. They said something to one another that he could not hear. There was a clatter, and then Tallon’s voice came loudly over a loudspeaker.

  ‘Lie back, Alex. Try to keep as still as possible.’

  Hoffmann did as ordered. There was a hum and the couch began to slide backwards through the wide drum of the scanner. It happened twice: once briefly, to get a fix; the second time more slowly, to collect the images. He stared at the white plastic casing as he passed beneath it. It was like being subjected to some radioactive car wash. The couch stopped and reversed itself and Hoffmann imagined his brain being sprayed by a brilliant, cleansing light, from which nothing could hide – all impurities exposed and obliterated in a hiss of burning matter.

  The loudspeaker clicked on and briefly he heard the sound of Gabrielle’s voice dying away in the background. It seemed to him – could this be right? – that she had been whispering. Tallon said, ‘Thank you, Alex. It’s all over. Stay where you are. I’ll come and get you.’ He resumed his conversation with Gabrielle. ‘But you see—’ The sound cut out.

  Hoffmann lay there for what seemed a long while: plenty of time, at any rate, to consider how easy it would have been for Gabrielle to have had an affair over the past few months. There were the long hours she had spent at the hospital collecting the images she needed for her work; and then there were the even longer days and nights he had been away at his office, developing VIXAL. What was there to anchor a couple in a marriage after more than seven years if there were no children to exert some gravitational pull? Suddenly he experienced yet another long-forgotten sensation: the delicious, childish pain of self-pity. To his horror, he realised he was starting to cry.

  ‘Are you okay, Alex?’ Tallon’s face loomed above the couch, handsome, concerned, insufferable.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Hoffmann wiped his eyes quickly on the sleeve of his dressing gown and put his spectacles back on. The rational part of his mind recognised that these sudden lurches in mood were likely to be symptoms of head trauma, but that did not make them any less real. He refused to get back on to the wheeled bed. He swung his legs off the couch, took a few deep breaths, and by the time he walked into the other room had regained control of himself.

  ‘Alex,’ said Gabrielle, ‘this is the radiologist, Dr Dufort.’

  She indicated a tiny woman with close-cropped grey hair who was seated at a computer screen. Dufort turned and gave him a perfunctory nod over her narrow shoulder, then resumed her examination of the scan results.

  ‘Is that me?’ asked Hoffmann, staring at the screen.

  ‘It is, monsieur.’ She did not turn round.

  Hoffmann contemplated his brain with detachment, indeed disappointment. The black-and-white image on the screen could have been anything – a section of coral reef being filmed by a remote underwater camera, a view of the lunar surface, the face of a monkey. Its messiness, its lack of form or beauty, depressed him. Surely we can do better than this, he thought. This cannot be the end product. This must be merely a stage in evolution, and our human task is to prepare the way for whatever comes next, just as gas created organic matter. Artificial intelligence, or autonomous machine reasoning as he preferred to call it – AMR – had been a preoccupation of his for more than fifteen years. Silly people, encouraged by journalists, thought the aim was to replicate the human mind, and to produce a digitalised version of ourselves. But really, why would one bother to imitate anything so vulnerable and unreliable, or with such built-in obsolescence: a central processing unit that could be utterly destroyed because some ancillary mechanical part – the heart, say, or the liver – suffered a temporary interruption? It was like losing a Cray supercomputer and all of its memory files because a plug needed changing.

  The radiologist tilted the brain on its axis from top to bottom and it seemed to nod at him, a greeting from outer space. She rotated it. She twisted it from side to side.

  ‘No evidence of fracture,’ she said, ‘and no swelling, which is the most important thing. But what is this, I wonder?’

  The skull bone showed up like a reverse image of a walnut shell. A white line of variable thickness encased the spongy grey matter of the brain. She zoomed in. The image widened, blurred and finally dissolved into a pale grey supernova. Hoffmann leaned forward for a closer look.

  ‘There,’ said Dufort, touching the screen with a bitten-down, ringless finger. ‘You see these pinpoints of whiteness? These bright stars? These are tiny haemorrhages in the brain tissue.’

  Gabrielle said, ‘Is that serious?’

  ‘No, not necessarily. It’s probably what one would expect to see from an injury of this type. You know, the brain ricochets when the head is struck with sufficient force. There is bound to be a little bleeding. It seems to have stopped.’ She raised her spectacles and leaned in very close to the screen, like a jeweller inspecting a precious stone. ‘All the same,’ she said, ‘I would like to do another test.’

  Hoffmann had so often imagined this moment – the vast and impersonal hospital, the abnormal test result, the coolly delivered medical verdict, the first step on the irreversible descent to helplessness and death – that it took him a moment to realise this was not another of his hypochondriac fantasies.

  ‘What sort of test?’ he asked.

  ‘I would like to use MRI for a second look. It gives a much clearer image of soft tissue. It should tell us whether this is a pre-existing condition or not.’

  A pre-existing condition …

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘The test itself does not take long. It’s a question of when a scanner is free.’ She called up a new file and clicked through it. ‘We should be able to get on to a machine at noon, provided there isn’t an emergency.’

  Gabrielle said, ‘Isn’t this an emergency?’

  ‘No, no, there isn’t any immediate danger.
’

  ‘In that case, I’d rather leave it,’ said Hoffmann.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Have the test. You might as well.’

  ‘I don’t want the test.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous—’

  ‘I said I don’t want the goddamned test!’

  There was a moment of shocked silence.

  ‘We know you’re upset, Alex,’ said Tallon quietly, ‘but there’s no need to talk to Gabrielle like that.’

  ‘Don’t you tell me how to talk to my wife!’ He put his hand to his brow. His fingers were very cold. His throat was dry. He had to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible. He swallowed before he spoke again. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t want it. There are important things I need to do today.’

  ‘Monsieur,’ said Dufort firmly, ‘all patients who have been knocked unconscious for as long as you were are kept here in the hospital for at least twenty-four hours, for observation.’

  ‘That’s impossible, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What important things?’ Gabrielle stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’re not going into the office?’