The Fear Index

9





Even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us – of their imagined approbation or disapprobation; and this all follows from sympathy, a fundamental element of the social instincts. A man who possessed no trace of such instincts would be an unnatural monster.




CHARLES DARWIN, The Descent of Man (1871)




HOFFMANN’S NON-EXISTENT PUBLIC profile had not been achieved without effort. One day, quite early in the history of Hoffmann Investment Technologies, when the company still only had about two billion dollars in assets under management, he had invited the partners of Switzerland’s oldest public-relations firm to breakfast at the Hotel Président Wilson and offered them a deal: an annual retainer of 200,000 Swiss francs in return for keeping his name out of the papers. He set only one condition: if by any chance he was mentioned, he would deduct 10,000 francs from their fee; if he was mentioned more than twenty times in a year, they would have to start paying him. After a lengthy discussion, the partners accepted his terms and reversed all the advice they normally gave their clients. Hoffmann made no public charitable donations, attended no gala dinners or industry awards ceremonies, cultivated no journalists, appeared on no newspaper’s rich list, endorsed no political party, endowed no educational institution and gave no lectures or speeches. The occasional curious journalist was steered for background to the hedge fund’s prime brokers, who were always happy to take the credit for its success, or – in cases of extreme persistence – to Quarry. The partners had always kept their full fee and Hoffmann his anonymity.

It was, therefore, an unusual experience, and frankly an ordeal for him to attend his wife’s first exhibition. From the moment he stepped out of the car and crossed the crowded pavement and entered the noisy gallery, he wished he could turn around and leave. People he suspected he had met before, friends of Gabrielle’s, loomed up and spoke to him, but although he had a mind that could perform mental arithmetic to five decimal places, he had no memory for faces. It was as if his personality had grown lopsided to compensate for his gifts. He heard what others were saying, the usual trite and pointless remarks, but somehow he didn’t take them in. He was conscious of mumbling things in reply that were inappropriate or even downright odd. Offered a glass of champagne, he took water instead, and that was when he noticed Bob Walton staring at him from the other side of the room.

Walton, of all people!

Before he could take evasive action, his former colleague was making his way through the crowd towards him, determined to have a word, his hand extended. ‘Alex,’ he said, ‘it’s been a while.’

‘Bob.’ He shook his hand coldly. ‘I don’t believe I’ve seen you since I offered you a job and you told me I was the devil come to steal your soul.’

‘I don’t think I put it quite like that.’

‘No? I seem to recall you made it pretty damn clear what you thought of scientists going to the dark side and becoming quants.’

‘Did I really? I’m sorry about that.’ Walton gestured round the room with his drink. ‘Anyway, I’m glad it all turned out so happily for you. And that’s sincerely meant, Alex.’

He said it with such warmth that Hoffmann regretted his hostility. When he had first come to Geneva from Princeton, knowing no one and with nothing except two suitcases and an Anglo-French dictionary, Walton had been his section head at CERN. He and his wife had taken him under their wing – Sunday lunches, apartment-hunting, lifts to work, even attempts to fix him up with a girlfriend.

Hoffmann said, with an effort at friendliness, ‘So how goes the search for the God particle?’

‘Oh, we’re getting there. And you? How’s the elusive holy grail of autonomous machine reasoning?’

‘The same. Getting there.’

‘Really?’ Walton raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘So you’re still going on with it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Gosh. That’s brave. What happened to your head?’

‘Nothing. A silly accident.’ He glanced over towards Gabrielle. ‘I think maybe I ought to go and say hello to my wife …’

‘Of course. Forgive me.’ Walton offered his hand again. ‘Well, it’s been good talking to you, Alex. We should hook up properly some time. You’ve got my email address.’

Hoffmann called after him, ‘Actually, I haven’t.’

Walton turned. ‘Yes you have. You sent me an invitation.’

‘An invitation to what?’

‘To this.’

‘I haven’t sent any invitations.’

‘I think you’ll find you have. Just a second …’

It was typical of Walton’s academic pedantry, thought Hoffmann, to insist on such a minor point, even when he was wrong. But then to his surprise, Walton handed him his BlackBerry, showing the invitation plainly sent from Hoffmann’s email address.

Hoffmann said reluctantly, for he too hated to admit an error, ‘Oh, okay. Sorry. I must have forgotten. I’ll see you around.’

He quickly turned his back on Walton to hide his dismay and went in search of Gabrielle. When he finally managed to get across to her, she said – rather sulkily, he thought – ‘I was starting to think you weren’t coming.’

‘I got away as soon as I could.’ He kissed her on the mouth and tasted the sourness of the champagne on her breath.

A man called out, ‘Over here, Dr Hoffmann,’ and a photographer’s flash went off less than a metre away.

Hoffmann jerked his head back instinctively, as if someone had flung a cup of acid in his face. Through his false smile he said, ‘What the hell is Bob Walton doing here?’

‘How should I know? You’re the one who invited him.’

‘Yeah, he just showed me. But you know something? I’m sure I never did that. Why would I? He’s the guy who closed down my research at CERN. I haven’t seen him for years …’

Suddenly the owner of the gallery was beside him. ‘You must be very proud of her, Dr Hoffmann,’ said Bertrand.

‘What?’ Hoffmann was still looking across the party at his former colleague. ‘Oh yes. Yes, I am – very proud.’ He made a concentrated effort to put Walton out of his mind and to think of something appropriate to say to Gabrielle. ‘Have you sold anything yet?’

Gabrielle said, ‘Thanks, Alex – it isn’t all about money, you know.’

‘Yes, okay, I know it isn’t. I was just asking.’

‘We have plenty of time yet,’ said Bertrand. His mobile emitted an alert, playing two bars of Mozart. He blinked at the message in surprise, muttered, ‘Excuse me,’ and hurried away.

Hoffmann was still half-blinded by the camera flash. When he tried to look at the portraits, the centres were voids. Nevertheless, he struggled to make appreciative comments. ‘It’s fantastic to see them all together, isn’t it? You really get a sense of another way of looking at the world. What’s hidden beneath the surface.’

Gabrielle said, ‘How’s your head?’

‘Good. I hadn’t even thought about it till you just mentioned it. I like that one very much.’ He pointed to a nearby cube.

‘That’s of you, isn’t it?’

It had taken her a day simply to sit for it, he remembered, squatting in the scanner like a victim of Pompeii with her knees drawn up to her chest, her head clasped in her hands, her mouth opened wide as if frozen in mid-scream. When she had first shown it to him at home, he had been almost as shocked by it as he had been by the foetus, of which it was a conscious echo.

She said, ‘Leclerc was here earlier. You just missed him.’

‘Don’t tell me they’ve found the guy?’

‘Oh no, that wasn’t it.’

Her tone put Hoffmann on his guard. ‘So what did he want?’

‘He wanted to ask me about the nervous breakdown you apparently had when you worked at CERN.’

Hoffmann wasn’t sure he had heard properly. The noise of all the people talking, bouncing off the whitewashed walls, reminded him of the racket in the computer room. ‘He’s talked to CERN?’

‘About the nervous breakdown,’ she repeated more loudly. ‘The one you’ve never mentioned before.’

He felt winded, as if someone had punched him. ‘I wouldn’t exactly call it a nervous breakdown. I don’t know why he has to drag CERN into this.’

‘What would you call it, then?’

‘Do we really have to do this now?’ Her expression told him they did. He wondered how many glasses of champagne she had drunk. ‘Okay, I guess we do. I got depressed. I took time off. I saw a shrink. I got better.’

‘You saw a psychiatrist? You were treated for depression? And you’ve never mentioned it in eight years?’

A couple standing nearby turned to stare.

‘You’re making something out of nothing,’ he said irritably. ‘You’re being ridiculous. It was before I even met you, for God’s sake.’ And then, more softly: ‘Come on, Gabby, we shouldn’t spoil this.’

For a moment he thought she was going to argue. Her chin was raised and pointing at him, always a storm signal. Her eyes were glassy, bloodshot – she had not got much sleep either, he realised. But then came a sound of metal rapping on glass.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ called Bertrand. He was holding up a champagne flute and hitting it with a fork. ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ It was surprisingly effective. A silence quickly fell on the crowded room. He put down the glass. ‘Don’t be alarmed, friends. I’m not going to make a speech. Besides, for artists, symbols are more eloquent than words.’

He had something in his hand. Hoffmann could not quite see what it was. He walked over to the self-portrait – the one in which Gabrielle was silently screaming – peeled a red spot from the roll of tape concealed in his palm and stuck it firmly against the label. A delighted, knowing murmur spread around the gallery.

‘Gabrielle,’ he said, turning to her with a smile, ‘allow me to congratulate you. You are now, officially, a professional artist.’

There was a round of applause and a general hoisting of champagne glasses in salute. All the tension left Gabrielle’s face. She looked transfigured, and Hoffmann seized the moment to take her wrist and raise her hand above her head, as if she were a boxing champion. There were renewed cheers. The camera flashed again, but this time he managed to make sure his own smile stayed fixed. ‘Well done, Gabby,’ he whispered out of the side of his mouth. ‘You so deserve this.’

She smiled at him happily. ‘Thank you.’ She toasted the room. ‘Thank you all. And thank you especially whoever bought it.’

Bertrand said, ‘Wait. I haven’t finished.’

Next to the self-portrait was the head of a Siberian tiger that had died at the Servion Zoo the previous year. Gabrielle had had its corpse refrigerated until she could get its decapitated skull into an MRI scanner. The etching on glass was lit from below by a blood-red light. Bertrand placed a spot next to that one as well. It had sold for 4,500 francs.

Hoffmann whispered, ‘Any more of this, and you’ll be making more money than I am.’

‘Oh, Alex, shut up about money.’ But he could see she was pleased, and when Bertrand moved on and attached another red spot, this time to The Invisible Man, the 18,000-franc centrepiece of the exhibition, she clapped her hands in delight.

And if only, Hoffmann thought bitterly afterwards, it had stopped there, the whole occasion would have been a triumph. Why couldn’t Bertrand have seen it? Why couldn’t he have looked beyond his short-term greed and left it at that? Instead he worked his way methodically around the entire gallery, leaving a rash of red spots in his wake – a pox, a plague, an epidemic of pustules erupting across the whitewashed walls – against the horses’ heads, the mummified child from the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde, the bison’s skull, the baby antelope, the half-dozen other self-portraits, and finally even the foetus: he did not stop until all were marked as sold.

The effect on the spectators was odd. At first they cheered whenever a red spot was applied. But after a while their volubility began to diminish, and gradually a palpable air of awkwardness settled over the gallery so that in the end Bertrand finished his marking in almost complete silence. It was as if they were witnessing a practical joke that had started out as funny but had gone on too long and become cruel. There was something crushing about such excessive largesse. Hoffmann could hardly bear to watch Gabrielle’s expression as it declined from happiness to puzzlement, to incomprehension, and finally to suspicion.

He said desperately, ‘It certainly looks as though you have an admirer.’

She didn’t seem to hear him. ‘Is this all one buyer?’

‘It is indeed,’ said Bertrand. He was beaming and rubbing his hands.

A muted whisper of conversation started up again. People were talking in low voices, apart from an American who said loudly, ‘Well, Jesus, that’s just completely ridiculous.’

Gabrielle said in disbelief, ‘Who on earth is it?’

‘I cannot tell you that, unfortunately.’ Bertrand glanced at Hoffmann. ‘All I can say is “an anonymous collector”.’

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 watch, 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.