The Fear Index

8





There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair.




CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species (1859)




CONTOURS DE L’HOMME: Une exposition de l’oeuvre de Gabrielle Hoffmann – how much more impressive it sounded in French than English, she thought – was scheduled to run for one week only at the Galerie d’Art Contemporain Guy Bertrand, a small whitewashed space, previously a Citroën auto-repair shop, in a back street around the corner from MAMCO, the city’s main contemporary art gallery.

Gabrielle had found herself sitting next to the owner, M. Bertrand, five months earlier at a Christmas charity auction at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel – an event Alex had flatly refused to attend – and the next day he had wheedled his way into her studio to see what she was working on. After ten minutes of outrageous flattery, he had offered to give her an exhibition in return for half of any proceeds, as long as she paid the expenses. Of course she had realised at once that it was Alex’s money rather than her talent that was the main attraction. She had observed over the last couple of years how great wealth acted like an invisible magnetic force field, pushing and pulling people out of their normal pattern of behaviour. But she had also learned to live with it. You could go mad trying to guess whose actions were genuine, whose false. Besides, she wanted to have a show – wanted it, she realised, more keenly than she had ever wanted anything in her life, except to have a child.

Bertrand had urged her to throw an opening-night party: it would build interest, he said, and drum up some publicity. Gabrielle had demurred. She knew that her husband would sink into misery for days beforehand at the prospect of such an occasion. In the end, they had compromised. When the doors opened quietly at eleven that morning, two young waitresses in white blouses and black miniskirts stood offering flutes of Pol Roger and plates of canapés to everyone who crossed the threshold. Gabrielle had worried that no one would show up, but they did: the gallery’s regulars, who had received an emailed flyer advertising the exhibition; passers-by attracted by the sight of a free drink; and her own friends and acquaintances who she had been calling and emailing for weeks beforehand – names from old address books, people she hadn’t seen for years. All had turned up. The result was that by noon, a sizeable party of more than a hundred was in progress, spilling out through the doors and on to the pavement where the smokers gathered.

Halfway through her second glass of champagne, Gabrielle realised she was actually enjoying herself. Her oeuvre consisted of twenty-seven pieces – everything she had finished over the past three years, apart from her very first self-portrait, which Alex had asked if they could keep and which remained on the coffee table in the drawing room. And the truth was, once it all was gathered together and properly lit – the engravings on glass especially – it did look like a solid, professional body of work: at least as impressive as most openings she had attended in her time. No one had laughed. People had looked carefully and made thoughtful comments, mostly complimentary. The earnest young reporter from the Geneva Tribune had even compared her emphasis on the simplicity of the line with Giacometti’s topography of the head. Her only remaining anxiety was that nothing had yet sold, which she blamed on the high prices Bertrand had insisted on charging, from 4,500 Swiss francs – about $5,000 – for the CAT scans of the smallest animal heads up to 18,000 for the big MRI portrait, The Invisible Man. If nothing had gone by the end of the day, it would be a humiliation.

She tried to forget about it and pay attention to what the man opposite her was saying. It was difficult to hear over the noise. She had to interrupt him. She put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?’

‘Bob Walton. I used to work with Alex at CERN. I was just saying that I think you two first met at a party in my house.’

‘Oh my God,’ she said, ‘that’s quite right. How are you?’ She shook his hand and looked at him properly for the first time: thin, tall, neat, grey – ascetic, she decided; either that or just plain severe. He could have been a monk – no, more senior than that, he had authority: an abbot. She said, ‘It’s funny – I just tagged along to that party with friends. I’m not sure we’ve ever been formally introduced, have we?’

‘I believe not.’

‘Well – thank you, belatedly. You changed my life.’

He didn’t smile. ‘I haven’t seen Alex for years. He is coming, I assume?’

‘I certainly hope so.’ Once again her eyes flickered to the door in the hope that Alex would walk through it. So far all her husband had done was to send her the taciturn bodyguard, who had now stationed himself at the entrance like a nightclub bouncer and occasionally seemed to speak into his sleeve. ‘So what brings you here? Are you a gallery regular or just a passer-by?’

‘Neither. Alex invited me.’

‘Alex?’ She did a double-take. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know Alex sent out any invitations. It’s not the kind of thing he does.’

‘I was a little surprised myself. Especially as the last time we met we had something of a disagreement. And now I have come to make amends and he isn’t here. Never mind. I like your work.’

‘Thank you.’ She was still trying to assimilate the idea that Alex might have invited a guest of his own, and without telling her. ‘Perhaps you’ll buy something.’

‘I fear the prices are somewhat beyond the means of a CERN salary.’ And for the first time he gave her a smile – all the warmer for being so rare, like a flash of sun on a grey landscape. He put his hand into his breast pocket. ‘If you ever feel like making art out of particle physics, give me a call.’ He gave her his card. She read:



Professor Robert WALTON


Computing Centre Department Head


CERN – European Organisation for Nuclear Research


1211 Geneva 23 – Switzerland




‘That sounds very grand.’ She slipped the card into her pocket. ‘Thank you. I might well do that. So tell me about you and Alex—’

‘Darling, you are clever,’ said a woman’s voice behind her. She felt someone squeeze her elbow and turned to find herself confronted by the wide pale face and large grey eyes of Jenny Brinkerhof, another Englishwoman in her mid-thirties married to a hedge-fund manager. (Geneva had started to teem with them, Gabrielle had noticed: economic migrants from London, fleeing the UK’s new fifty per cent tax rate. All they seemed to talk about was how hard it was to find decent schools.)

She said, ‘Jen, how lovely of you to come.’

‘How lovely of you to invite me.’

They kissed and Gabrielle swung round to introduce her to Walton, but he had moved on and was talking to the man from the Tribune. This was the trouble with drinks parties: getting stuck with a person you didn’t want to talk to while someone you did was tantalisingly in view. She wondered how long it would be before Jen mentioned her children.

‘I do so envy you just having the sheer space in your life to do something like this. I mean, if there’s one thing that having three kids just absolutely kills, it’s the creative spark …’

Over her shoulder Gabrielle saw an incongruous figure, strange yet familiar, enter the gallery. ‘Excuse me a minute, Jen, would you?’ She slipped away and went over to the door. ‘Inspector Leclerc?’

‘Madame Hoffmann.’ Leclerc shook her hand politely.

She noticed he had on the same clothes he had been wearing at four in the morning: dark windcheater, a white shirt now distinctly grey around the collar, and a black tie that he had knotted unfashionably close to the thick end, just as her father always did. The stubble of his unshaved cheeks reached up like a silvery fungus towards the black pouches beneath his eyes. He looked utterly out of place. One of the waitresses approached with a tray of champagne, which Gabrielle assumed he would refuse – wasn’t that what policemen did when they were on duty: refuse alcohol? – but Leclerc, brightening, said, ‘Excellent, thank you,’ and took the glass cautiously by the stem, as if he feared he might break it. ‘That’s very good,’ he said, taking a sip and smacking his lips. ‘What is it? Eighty francs a bottle?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. My husband’s office arranged it.’

The photographer from the Tribune came over and took their picture standing side by side. Leclerc’s windcheater gave off the musty smell of ancient damp. He waited until the photographer had moved away and then said, ‘Well, I can tell you forensics obtained an excellent set of fingerprints from your mobile telephone and from the knives in the kitchen. Unfortunately we can find no matches in our records. Your intruder does not have a criminal record, in Switzerland at least. Quite the phantom! Now we are checking with Interpol.’ He seized a canapé from a passing tray and swallowed it whole. ‘And your husband? Is he here? I can’t see him anywhere.’

‘Not yet. Why? Do you want him?’

‘No, I came to see your work.’

Guy Bertrand sidled over, plainly curious. She had told him about the break-in. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked, and Gabrielle found herself introducing the policeman to the owner of the gallery. Bertrand was a plump young man dressed from head to toe in black silk – Armani T-shirt, jacket, trousers, holistic Zen slippers. He and Leclerc regarded one another with mutual incomprehension; they might have been different species.

‘A police inspector,’ repeated Bertrand, in a tone of wonder. ‘You would be interested in The Invisible Man, I think.’

‘The Invisible Man?’

‘Let me show you,’ said Gabrielle, grateful of an opportunity to separate them. She led Leclerc over to the largest exhibit, a glass case lit from beneath in which a full-size nude man, apparently composed of pale blue gossamer, seemed to hover just above the ground. The effect was ghostly, disturbing. ‘This is Jim, the invisible man.’

‘And who is Jim?’

‘He was a murderer.’ Leclerc turned sharply to look at her. ‘James Duke Johnson,’ she continued, rather pleased to have elicited this reaction, ‘executed in Florida in 1994. Before he died, the prison chaplain persuaded him to donate his body for scientific research.’

‘And also for public exhibition?’

‘That I doubt. You’re shocked?’

‘I am, I confess.’

‘Good. That’s the effect I wanted.’

Leclerc grunted and set down his champagne. He moved closer to the glass case and put his hands on his hips, staring at it intently. His stomach flopping over his trouser belt reminded her of one of Dalí’s melting watches. He said, ‘And how do you achieve this impression of floating?’

‘Trade secret.’ Gabrielle laughed. ‘No, I’ll tell you. It’s quite simple. I take sections from an MRI scan and trace them through very clear glass – two-millimetre Mirogard, the clearest you can get. Only sometimes instead of using pen and ink I use a dentist’s drill to engrave the line. In daylight you can hardly see a mark. But if you shine artificial light on to it from the right angle – well, that’s the effect you get.’

‘Remarkable. And what does your husband think of it?’

‘He thinks I’ve become unhealthily obsessed. But then he has obsessions of his own.’ She finished her glass of champagne. Everything seemed pleasantly heightened – colours, noises, sensations. ‘You must think we’re a pretty strange couple.’

‘Believe me, madame, my work brings me into contact with people far stranger than you can even begin to imagine.’ Suddenly he turned his bloodshot eyes upon her. ‘Would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘When did you first meet Dr Hoffmann?’

‘I was just remembering that.’ She could see Alex in her mind with perfect clarity. He had been talking to Hugo Quarry – always bloody Quarry in the picture, even right at the start – and she had had to make the first move, but she had drunk enough not to care. ‘That would have been at a party in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, about eight years ago.’

‘Saint-Genis-Pouilly,’ repeated Leclerc. ‘A great many CERN scientists live round there, I believe.’

‘They certainly did then. You see that tall, grey-headed guy over there – Walton, his name is. It was at his house. I went back to Alex’s apartment afterwards and I remember there was nothing in it except computers. It got so hot that one day it showed up on an infrared monitor in a police helicopter and he was raided by the drug squad. They thought he was growing cannabis.’

She smiled at the memory, and so did Leclerc – but for form’s sake, she suspected, to encourage her to keep talking. She wondered what he wanted.

‘Were you at CERN yourself?’

‘God, no, I was working as a secretary at the UN – your typical ex-art student with bad prospects and good French: that was me.’ She was talking too fast and grinning too much, she realised. He would think she was tipsy.

‘But Dr Hoffmann was still at CERN when you got to know him?’

‘He was in the process of leaving to set up his own company with his partner, a man called Hugo Quarry. We all met for the first time on the same night, oddly enough. Is this important?’

‘And why exactly did he do that, do you know – leave CERN?’

‘You’d have to ask him. Or Hugo.’

‘I will. He is American, this Mr Quarry?’

She laughed. ‘No, English. Very much so.’

‘I assume one reason Dr Hoffmann left CERN was because he wanted to make more money?’

‘No, not really. Money never bothered him. Not then, anyway. He told me he could pursue his line of research more easily if he had his own company.’

‘And what line was that?’

‘Artificial intelligence. But again, you’d have to ask him about the details. I’m afraid it’s always been way over my head.’

Leclerc paused.

‘Has he sought psychiatric help, do you know?’

The question startled her. ‘Not that I’m aware. Why do you ask?’

‘It’s just that I gather he suffered a nervous breakdown when he was at CERN, which someone there told me is the reason why he left. I wondered if there’d been any recurrence.’

She realised she was staring at him with her mouth open. She clamped her jaw shut.

He was studying her closely. He said, ‘I’m sorry. Have I spoken out of turn? You didn’t know that?’

She recovered her composure just enough to lie. ‘Well, of course I knew about it – I knew something about it.’ She was aware of how unconvincing she sounded. But what was the alternative? To admit that her husband was mostly a mystery to her – that an immense amount of what occupied his mind every day had always been impenetrable territory for her, and that this unknowable quality was both what had attracted her to him in the first place and what had frightened her ever since? ‘So you’ve been checking up on Alex?’ she said in a brittle voice. ‘Shouldn’t you be trying to find the man who attacked him?’

‘I have to investigate all the facts, madame,’ said Leclerc primly. ‘It may be that the assailant knew your husband in the past or had a grudge against him. I merely asked an acquaintance at CERN – off the record and in the strictest confidence, I do assure you – why he had left.’

‘And this person said he had had a breakdown, and now you think Alex may be making up this whole story about a mysterious attacker?’

‘No, I’m simply trying to understand all the circumstances.’ He emptied his glass in one swig. ‘I’m sorry – I should let you get back to your party.’

‘Would you like another drink?’

‘No.’ He pressed his fingers to his mouth and suppressed a burp. ‘I must get on. Thank you.’ He bowed slightly, in an old-fashioned way. ‘It really has been most interesting to see your work.’ He stopped and stared again at the executed murderer in his glass box. ‘What exactly did he do, this poor fellow?’

‘He killed an old man who caught him stealing his electric blanket. Shot him and stabbed him. He was on death row for twelve years. When his last appeal for clemency was turned down, he was executed by lethal injection.’

‘Barbaric,’ muttered Leclerc, although whether he meant the crime, the punishment, or what she had made out of it, she was not entirely sure.





AFTERWARDS LECLERC SAT in his car on the opposite side of the street, his notebook on his knee, writing down as much of what he had just been told as he could remember. Through the window of the gallery he could see people milling around Gabrielle, her small dark figure lent an occasional touch of glamour by a camera flash. He decided he rather liked her, which was more than he could say for her exhibition. Three thousand francs for a few bits of glass with a horse’s skull scribbled on them? He blew out his cheeks. Dear God, one could buy a decent working animal – the whole thing, mark you, not just the head – for half that amount.

He finished writing and flicked back and forth through his notes, as if by a process of random association he might find some clue that had so far eluded him. His friend at CERN had taken a quick look at Hoffmann’s personnel file and Leclerc had jotted down the highlights: that Hoffmann had joined the team operating the Large Electron–Positron Collider at the age of twenty-seven, one of the few Americans seconded to the project at that time; that his head of section had considered him one of the most brilliant mathematicians on site; that he had switched from the construction of the new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, to the design of the software and computer systems needed to analyse the billions of pieces of data generated by the experiments; that after a prolonged period of overwork his behaviour had become sufficiently erratic for his fellow workers to complain, and he had been asked to leave the facility by the security department; and that finally after extensive sick leave his contract had been terminated.

Leclerc was fairly sure that her husband’s mental breakdown had come as news to Gabrielle Hoffmann: another of her endearing qualities was an obvious inability to lie. So it seemed Hoffmann was a mystery to everyone – his fellow scientists, the financial world, even his wife. He circled the name of Hugo Quarry.

His thoughts were interrupted by the noise of a powerful engine, and he glanced across the road to see a big charcoal-coloured Mercedes with its headlights on pulling up outside the gallery. Even before it had come to a stop, a bull-like figure in a dark suit jumped out of the front passenger seat, quickly checked the road ahead and behind and then opened the rear door. The people on the pavement, with their drinks and cigarettes, turned round lazily to see who was emerging, then looked away without interest as the unknown newcomer was escorted swiftly through the doors.