The Fear Index

by Robert Harris

  Gabrielle followed his gaze to Hoffmann. She swallowed before she spoke. Her voice was very quiet. ‘Is this you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Because if it is—’

  ‘It isn’t!’

  The door emitted a chime as it was opened. Hoffmann looked over his shoulder. People were starting to leave; Walton was in the first wave, buttoning his jacket against the chilly wind. Bertrand saw what was happening and gestured discreetly to the waitresses to stop serving drinks. The party had lost its point and nobody seemed to want to be the last to leave. A couple of women came over to Gabrielle and thanked her, and she had to pretend that their congratulations were sincere. ‘I would have bought something myself,’ said one, ‘but I never had the chance.’

  ‘It’s quite extraordinary.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘You will do this again soon, won’t you, darling?’

  ‘I promise.’

  After they had moved off, Hoffmann said to Bertrand, ‘For God’s sake, at least tell her it isn’t me.’

  ‘I can’t say who it is, because to be honest I don’t know. It’s as simple as that.’ Bertrand spread his hands. He was plainly enjoying the situation: the mystery, the money, the need for professional discretion; his body was swelling within its expensive black silk skin. ‘My bank just sent me an email to say they’d received an electronic transfer with reference to this exhibition. I confess I was surprised by the amount. But when I got my calculator and added up the cost of all the items on display, I found it came to one hundred and ninety-two thousand francs. Which is precisely the sum transferred.’

  ‘An electronic transfer?’ repeated Hoffmann.

  ‘That is right.’

  ‘I want you to pay it back,’ said Gabrielle. ‘I don’t want my work to be treated like this.’

  A big Nigerian man in national dress – a kind of heavily woven black and fawn toga with a matching hat – waved an immense pink palm in her direction. He was another of Bertrand’s protégés, Nneka Osoba, who specialised in fashioning tribal masks out of Western industrial detritus as a protest against imperialism. ‘Goodbye, Gabrielle!’ he shouted. ‘Well done!’

  ‘Goodbye,’ she called back, forcing a smile. ‘Thank you for coming.’ The door chimed again.

  Bertrand smiled. ‘My dear Gabrielle, you seem not to understand. We are in a legal situation. In an auction, when the hammer comes down, the lot is sold. It’s the same for us in a gallery. When a piece of art is purchased, it’s gone. If you wish not to sell, don’t exhibit.’

  ‘I’ll pay you double,’ said Hoffmann desperately. ‘You’re on fifty per cent commission, so you just made nearly a hundred thousand francs, right? I’ll pay you two hundred thousand if you’ll give Gabrielle her work back.’

  Gabrielle said, ‘Don’t, Alex.’

  ‘That is impossible, Dr Hoffmann.’

  ‘All right, I’ll double it again. Four hundred thousand.’

  Bertrand swayed in his Zen silk slippers, ethics and avarice visibly slugging it out on the smooth contours of his face. ‘Well, I simply don’t know what to say—’

  ‘Stop it!’ shouted Gabrielle. ‘Stop it now, Alex! Both of you! I can’t bear to listen to this.’

  ‘Gabby …’

  But she eluded Hoffmann’s outstretched hands and darted towards the door, pushing between the backs of the departing guests. Hoffmann went after her, shouldering his way through the small crowd. He felt as if it were a nightmare, the way she constantly eluded his grasp. At one point his fingertips brushed her back. He emerged on to the street just behind her, and after a dozen or so paces he finally managed to grab her elbow. He pulled her to him, into a doorway.

  ‘Listen, Gabby …’

  ‘No.’ She flapped at him with her free hand.

  ‘Listen!’ He shook her until she stopped trying to twist away; he was a strong man – it was no effort to him. ‘Calm down. Thank you. Now just hear me out, please. Something very weird is going on. Whoever just bought your exhibition I’m sure is the same person who sent me that Darwin book. Someone is trying to mess with my mind.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Alex! Don’t start on this again. It’s you who bought everything – I know it is.’ She tried to wriggle free.

  ‘No, listen.’ He shook her again. Dimly he recognised that his fear was making him aggressive, and he tried to calm down. ‘I promise you. It’s not me. The Darwin was bought in exactly the same way – a cash transfer over the internet. I bet you that if we go back in there right now and get Monsieur Bertrand to give us the purchaser’s account number, they’ll match. Now you’ve got to understand that although the account may be in my name, it’s not mine. I know nothing about it. But I’m going to get to the bottom of it, I promise you. Okay. That’s it.’ He released her. ‘That’s what I wanted to say.’

  She stared at him and began slowly massaging her elbow. She was crying silently. He realised he must have hurt her. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She looked up at the sky, gulping. Eventually she got her emotions back under control. She said, ‘You really have no idea, do you, how important that exhibition was to me?’

  ‘Of course I do …’

  ‘And now it’s ruined. And it’s your fault.’

  ‘Come on, Gabrielle, how can you say that?’

  ‘Well it is, Alex, you see, because either you bought everything, out of some kind of mad alpha-male belief that you’d be doing me a favour. Or it was bought by this other person who you say is trying to mess with your mind. Either way, it’s you – again.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Okay, so who is this mystery man? Obviously he’s nothing to do with me. You must have some idea. A competitor of yours, is he? Or a client? Or the CIA?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Or is it Hugo? Is this one of Hugo’s funny public-schoolboy japes?’

  ‘It isn’t Hugo. That’s one thing I am sure of.’

  ‘Oh no, of course not – it couldn’t possibly be your precious bloody Hugo, could it?’ She wasn’t crying any more. ‘What exactly have you turned into, Alex? I mean, Leclerc wanted to know if money was the reason why you left CERN, and I said no. But do you ever stop to listen to yourself these days? Two hundred thousand francs … Four hundred thousand francs … Sixty million dollars for a house we don’t need …’

  ‘You didn’t complain when we bought it, as I recall. You said you liked the studio.’

  ‘Yes, but only to keep you happy! You don’t think I like the rest of it, do you? It’s like living in a bloody embassy.’ A thought seemed to occur to her. ‘How much money have you got now, as a matter of interest?’

  ‘Drop it, Gabrielle.’

  ‘No. Tell me. I want to know. How much?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends how you calculate things.’

  ‘Well try. Give me a figure.’

  ‘In dollars? Ballpark? I really don’t know. A billion. A billion-two.’

  ‘A billion dollars? Ballpark?’ For a moment she was too incredulous to speak. ‘You know what? Forget it. It’s over. As far as I’m concerned, all that matters now is getting out of this bloody awful town, where the only thing anyone cares about is money.’

  She turned away.

  ‘What’s over?’ Again he grabbed her arm, but feebly, without conviction, and this time she wheeled on him and slapped him on the face. It was only light – a warning flick, a token – but he let her go at once. Such a thing had never happened between them before.

  ‘Don’t you ever,’ she spat, jabbing her finger at him, ‘ever grab hold of me like that again.’

  And that was it. She was gone. She strode to the end of the street and rounded the corner, leaving Hoffmann with his hand pressed to his cheek, unable to comprehend the catastrophe that had so swiftly overtaken him.

  LECLERC HAD WITNESSED it all from the comfort of his car. It had unfolded in front of him like a drive-in movie. Now, as he continued to watc
h, Hoffmann slowly turned around and made his way back towards the gallery. One of the two bodyguards standing with their arms folded outside had a word with him, and Hoffmann made a weary gesture, apparently a signal that he should go after his wife. The man set off. Then Hoffmann went inside, followed by his own minder. It was perfectly easy to see what was happening: the window was large and the gallery was now almost empty. Hoffmann went over to where the proprietor, M. Bertrand, was standing, and clearly began to berate him. He pulled out his mobile phone and waved it in the other man’s face. Bertrand threw up his hands, shooing him away, whereupon Hoffmann seized him by the lapels of his jacket and pushed him back against the wall.

  ‘Dear God in heaven, now what?’ muttered Leclerc. He could see Bertrand struggling to free himself as Hoffmann held him at arm’s length, before once again shoving him backwards, harder this time. Leclerc swore under his breath, threw open his car door and hauled himself stiffly out into the street. His knees had locked, and as he winced his way across the road to the gallery, he pondered yet again the harshness of his fate: that he should still have to do this sort of thing when he was closer to sixty than fifty.

  By the time he got inside, Hoffmann’s bodyguard had planted himself very solidly between his client and the gallery’s owner. Bertrand was smoothing down his jacket and shouting insults at Hoffmann, who was responding in kind. Behind them the executed murderer stared ahead impassively from his glass cell.

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ said Leclerc, ‘we shall have no more of this, thank you.’ He flashed his ID at the bodyguard, who looked at it and then at him and very slightly rolled his eyes. ‘Quite. Dr Hoffmann, this is no way to behave. It would pain me to arrest you, after all you have been through today, but I shall if necessary. What is going on here?’

  Hoffmann said, ‘My wife is very upset, and all because this man has acted in the most incredibly stupid way—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ cut in Bertrand, ‘incredibly stupid! I sold all her work for her, on the first day of her first exhibition, and now her husband attacks me for it!’

  ‘All I want,’ responded Hoffmann, in a voice that struck Leclerc as quite close to hysteria, ‘is the number of the buyer’s bank account.’

  ‘And I have told him it is quite out of the question! This is confidential information.’

  Leclerc turned back to Hoffmann. ‘Why is it so important?’

  ‘Someone,’ said Hoffmann, struggling to keep his voice calm, ‘is quite clearly attempting to destroy me. I have obtained the number of the account that was used to send me a book last night, presumably in order to frighten me in some way – I’ve got it here on my mobile. And now I believe the same bank account, which is supposedly in my name, has been used to sabotage my wife’s exhibition.’

  ‘Sabotage!’ scoffed Bertrand. ‘We call it a sale!’

  ‘It wasn’t one sale, though, was it? Everything was sold, at once. Has that ever happened before?’

  ‘Ach!’ Bertrand made a sweeping gesture.

  Leclerc looked at them. He sighed. ‘Show me the account number, Monsieur Bertrand, if you please.’

  ‘I can’t do that. Why should I?’

  ‘Because if you don’t, I shall arrest you for impeding a criminal investigation.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

  Leclerc stared him out. Old as he was, he could deal with the Guy Bertrands of this world in his sleep.

  Eventually Bertrand muttered, ‘All right, it’s in my office.’

  ‘Dr Hoffmann – your mobile, if I may?’

  Hoffmann showed him the email screen. ‘This is the message I got from the bookseller, with the account number.’

  Leclerc took the telephone. ‘Stay here, please.’ He followed Bertrand into the small back office. The place was a clutter of old catalogues, stacked frames, workman’s tools; it smelled of a pungent combination of coffee and glue. A computer sat on a scratched and rickety roll-top desk. Next to it was a pile of letters and receipts, skewered on a spike. Bertrand moved the mouse across his computer screen and clicked. ‘Here is the email from my bank.’ He vacated the seat with a pout. ‘I may say, incidentally, I don’t take seriously your threats to arrest me. I co-operate merely as a good Swiss citizen should.’

  ‘Your co-operation is noted, monsieur,’ said Leclerc. ‘Thank you.’ He sat at the terminal and peered close to the screen. He held Hoffmann’s mobile next to it and compared the two account numbers laboriously. They were an identical mixture of letters and digits. The name of the account holder was given as A. J. Hoffmann. He took out his notebook and copied down the sequence. ‘And you received no message other than this?’

  ‘No.’

  Back in the gallery, he returned the mobile to Hoffmann. ‘You were right. The numbers match. Although what this has to do with the attack on you, I confess I do not understand.’

  ‘Oh, they’re connected,’ said Hoffmann. ‘I tried to tell you that this morning. Jesus, you guys wouldn’t last five minutes in my business. You wouldn’t even get through the frigging door. And why the hell are you going round asking questions about me at CERN? You should be finding this guy, not investigating me.’

  His face was haggard, his eyes red and sore, as if he had been rubbing them. With his day’s growth of beard he looked like a fugitive.

  ‘I’ll pass the account number to our financial department and ask them to look into it,’ said Leclerc gently. ‘Bank accounts, at least, are something we Swiss do rather well, and impersonation is a crime. I’ll let you know if there are any developments. In the meantime, I strongly urge you to go home and see your doctor and have some sleep.’ And make it up with your wife, he wanted to add, but he felt it was not his place.

  10

  … the instinct of each species is good for itself, but has never, as far as we can judge, been produced for the exclusive good of others.

  CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species (1859)

  HOFFMANN TRIED TO call her from the back of the Mercedes, but he only got her voicemail. The familiar, jaunty voice caught him by the throat: ‘Hi, this is Gabby, don’t you dare hang up without leaving me a message.’

  He had a terrible premonition she was irretrievably gone. Even if they could patch things up, the person she had been before this day began would no longer exist. It was like listening to a recording of someone who had just died.

  There was a beep. After a long pause, which he knew would sound weird when she played it back but which he struggled to end, he said finally, ‘Call me, will you? We’ve got to talk.’ He couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘Well, okay. That’s it. Bye.’

  He hung up and stared at the mobile for a while, weighing it in his palm, willing it to ring, wondering if he should have said something else or if there was some other way of reaching her. He leaned forward to the bodyguard. ‘Is your colleague with my wife, do you know?’

  Paccard, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead, spoke over his shoulder. ‘No, monsieur. By the time he got to the end of the road, she was already out of sight.’

  Hoffmann let out a groan. ‘Is there no one in this goddam town who can do a simple job without screwing up?’ He threw himself back in his seat, folded his arms and stared out of the window. Of one thing at least he was certain: he had not bought up Gabrielle’s exhibition. He had not had the opportunity. Convincing her, however, would not be easy. In his mind he heard her voice again. A billion dollars? Ballpark? You know what? Forget it. It’s over.

  Across the gunmetal waters of the Rhône he could see the financial district – BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Private Wealth … It occupied the northern bank of the wide river and part of the island in the middle. A trillion dollars of assets was controlled from Geneva, of which Hoffmann Investment Technologies handled a mere one per cent; of that one per cent his personal stake was less than one tenth. Viewed in proportion, why should she be so outraged by a billion? Dollars, euros, francs – these were the units in which he measured the success or
failure of his experiment, just as at CERN he had used teraelectronvolts, nanoseconds and microjoules. However, there was one great difference between the two, he was obliged to concede; a problem he had never fully confronted or solved. You couldn’t buy anything with a nanosecond or a microjoule, whereas money was a sort of toxic by-product of his research. Sometimes he felt it was poisoning him inch by inch, just like Marie Curie had been killed by radiation.

  At first he had ignored his wealth, either rolling it over into the company or parking it on deposit. But he hated the thought of becoming an eccentric like Etienne Mussard, twisted into misanthropy by the pressure of his own good fortune. So recently he had copied Quarry and tried spending it. But that had led directly to the overdecorated mansion in Cologny, stuffed with expensive collections of books and antiques he did not need but which required layers of security to protect: a sort of pharaoh’s burial chamber for the living. The final option he supposed would be to give it away – Gabrielle would approve of that, at least – but even philanthropy could corrupt: to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars responsibly would be a full-time job. Occasionally he had a fantasy that his surplus profits might be converted into paper money and incinerated round-the-clock, just as an oil refinery burned off excess gas – blue and yellow flames lighting up the Geneva night sky.

  The Mercedes began to cross the river.

  He did not like to think of Gabrielle wandering the streets alone. It was her impulsiveness that worried him. Once angered, she was capable of anything. She might disappear for a few days, fly back to her mother in England, have her head filled with nonsense. You know what? Forget it. It’s over. What did she mean by that? What was over? The exhibition? Her career as an artist? Their conversation? Their marriage? Panic welled inside him again. Life without her would be a vacuum: unsurvivable. He rested the edge of his forehead on the cold glass, and for a vertiginous moment, looking down into the lightless, turbid water, imagined himself sucked into nothingness, like a passenger whipped out through the fuselage of a ruptured aircraft miles above the earth.