The Fear Index Read online

  The noise came again. He raised himself on his elbows and strained his ears. It was nothing specific – an occasional faint thump. It could just be the unfamiliar heating system, or a door caught in a draught. At this stage he felt quite calm. The house had formidable security, which was one of the reasons he had bought it a few weeks earlier: apart from the floodlights, there was a three-metre-high perimeter wall with heavy electronic gates, a steel-reinforced front door with a keypad entry system, bulletproof glass in all the ground-floor windows, and a movement-sensitive burglar alarm, which he was sure he had turned on before he came up to bed. The chances that an intruder had got past all that and penetrated inside were tiny. Besides, he was physically fit: he had long ago established that high levels of endorphins enabled him to think better. He worked out. He jogged. An atavistic instinct to protect his territory stirred within him.

  He slid out of bed without waking Gabrielle and put on his glasses, robe and slippers. He hesitated, and peered around in the darkness, but he could not recall anything in the room that might be useful as a weapon. He slipped his mobile into his pocket and opened the bedroom door – a crack at first, and then fully. The light from the lamp downstairs shed a dim glow along the landing. He paused on the threshold, listening. But the sounds – if there had ever been sounds, which he was beginning to doubt – had ceased. After a minute or so he moved towards the staircase and began to descend very slowly.

  Perhaps it was the effect of reading Darwin just before he fell asleep, but as he went down the stairs he found himself registering, with scientific detachment, his own physical symptoms. His breath was becoming short, his heartbeat accelerating so rapidly it was uncomfortable. His hair felt as stiff as fur.

  He reached the ground floor.

  The house was a belle époque mansion, built in 1902 for a French businessman who had made a fortune out of extracting oil from coal waste. The whole place had been excessively interior-designed by the previous owner, left ready to move into, and perhaps for that reason Hoffmann had never felt entirely at home in it. To his left was the front door and immediately ahead of him the door to the drawing room. To his right a passage led towards the house’s interior: dining room, kitchen, library and a Victorian conservatory that Gabrielle used as her studio. He stood absolutely still, his hands raised ready to defend himself. He could hear nothing. In the corner of the hall, the tiny red eye of the movement sensor winked at him. If he was not careful, he would trigger the alarm himself. That had already happened twice elsewhere in Cologny since they moved in – big houses wailing nervously for no reason, like hysterical rich old ladies behind their high ivy-covered walls.

  He relaxed his hands and crossed the hall to where an antique barometer was mounted on the wall. He pressed a catch and the barometer swung outwards. The alarm control box was hidden in a compartment behind it. He reached out his right forefinger to enter the code to switch the system off, and then checked himself.

  The alarm had already been deactivated.

  His finger stayed poised in mid-air while the rational part of his mind sought for reassuring explanations. Perhaps Gabrielle had come down after all, had switched the system off and had forgotten to turn it back on again when she returned to bed. Or he had forgotten to set it in the first place. Or it had malfunctioned.

  Very slowly he turned to his left to inspect the front door. The gleam of the lamplight reflected in its glossy black paint. It appeared to be firmly closed, with no sign it had been forced. Like the alarm, it was of the latest design and also controlled by the same four-digit code. He glanced back over his shoulder, checking the stairs and the corridor leading to the interior of the house. All was still. He moved towards the door. He tapped in the code. He heard the bolts click back. He grasped the heavy brass handle and turned it, then stepped out on to the darkened porch.

  Above the inky expanse of lawn, the moon was a silvery-blue discus that seemed to have been thrown at great speed through scudding masses of black cloud. The shadows of the big fir trees that screened the house from the road swayed and rustled in the wind.

  Hoffmann took a few more paces out into the gravel drive – just far enough to interrupt the beam of the infrared sensors and set off the floodlights at the front of the house. The brightness made him jump, pinning him to the spot like an escaping prisoner. He put up his arm to shield his eyes and turned to face the yellow-lit interior of the hall, noticing as he did so that a large pair of black boots had been placed neatly to one side of the front door, as if their owner had not wanted to trail in mud or disturb the occupants. The boots were not Hoffmann’s and they were certainly not Gabrielle’s. He was also sure they had not been there when he arrived home almost six hours earlier.

  His gaze transfixed by the boots, he fumbled for his mobile, almost dropped it, started dialling 911, remembered he was in Switzerland and tried again: 117.

  The number rang just once – at 3.59 a.m., according to the Geneva Police Department, which records all emergency calls, and which subsequently issued a transcript. A woman answered sharply: ‘Oui, police?’

  Her voice seemed to Hoffmann very loud in the stillness. It made him realise how visible he must be, standing exposed under the floodlights. He stepped quickly to his left, out of the line of sight of anyone watching from the hallway, and at the same time forward, into the lee of the house. He had the phone pressed very close to his mouth. He whispered: ‘J’ai un intrus sur ma propriété.’ On the tape his voice sounds calm, thin, almost robotic. It is the voice of a man whose cerebral cortex – without his even being aware of it – is concentrating all its power entirely on survival. It is the voice of pure fear.

  ‘Quelle est votre adresse, monsieur?’

  He told her. He was still moving along the facade of the house. He could hear her fingers typing.

  ‘Et votre nom?’

  He whispered, ‘Alexander Hoffmann.’

  The security lights cut out.

  ‘Okay, Monsieur Hoffmann. Restez là. Une voiture est en route.’

  She hung up. Alone in the darkness, Hoffmann stood at the corner of the house. It was unseasonably cold for Switzerland in the first week of May. The wind was from the north-east, blowing straight off Lac Léman. He could hear the water lapping rapidly against the nearby jetties, rattling the halliards against the metal masts of the yachts. He pulled his dressing gown tighter around his shoulders. He was shaking violently. He had to clench his teeth to stop them chattering. And yet, oddly, he felt no panic. Panic was quite different to fear, he was discovering. Panic was moral and nervous collapse, a waste of precious energy, whereas fear was all sinew and instinct: an animal that stood up on its hind legs and filled you completely, that took control of your brain and your muscles. He sniffed the air and glanced along the side of the mansion towards the lake. Somewhere near the rear of the house there was a light on downstairs. Its gleam lit the surrounding bushes very prettily, like a fairy grotto.

  He waited for half a minute, then began to move towards it stealthily, working his way through the wide herbaceous border that ran along this side of the house. He was not sure at first from which room it was emanating: he had not ventured down here since the estate agent showed them round. But as he drew closer he realised it was the kitchen, and when he came level with it, and edged his head around the window frame, he saw inside the figure of a man. He had his back to the window. He was standing at the granite-topped island in the centre of the room. His movements were unhurried. He was taking knives from their sockets in a butcher’s block and sharpening them on an electric grinder.

  Hoffmann’s heart was pumping so fast he could hear the rush of his own pulse. His immediate thought was Gabrielle: he must get her out of the house while the intruder was preoccupied in the kitchen. Get her out of the house, or at the very least get her to lock herself in the bathroom until the police arrived.

  He still had his mobile in his hand. Without taking his eyes from the intruder, he dialled her number. Seconds la
ter he heard her phone start to ring – too loud and too near for it to be with her upstairs. At once the stranger looked up from his sharpening. Gabrielle’s phone was lying where she had left it before she went to bed, on the big pine table in the kitchen, its screen glowing, its pink plastic case buzzing along the wood like some tropical beetle turned on its back. The intruder cocked his head and looked at it. For several long seconds he stayed where he was. Then, with the same infuriating calmness, he laid down the knife – Hoffmann’s favourite knife, the one with the long thin blade that was particularly useful for boning – and moved around the island towards the table. As he did so, his body half turned towards the window, and Hoffmann got his first proper glimpse of him – a bald pate with long, thin grey hair at the sides pulled back behind the ears into a greasy ponytail, hollow cheeks, unshaven. He was wearing a scuffed brown leather coat. He looked like a traveller, the sort of man who might work in a circus or on a ride in a fair. He stared in puzzlement at the phone as if he had never seen one before, picked it up, hesitated, then pressed answer and held it to his ear.

  Hoffmann was convulsed by a wave of murderous anger. It flooded him like a light. He said quietly, ‘You cocksucker, get out of my house,’ and was gratified to see the intruder jerk in alarm, as if tugged from above by an invisible wire. He rapidly twisted his head – left, right, left, right – and then his gaze settled on the window. For an instant his darting eyes met Hoffmann’s, but blindly, for he was staring into dark glass. It would have been hard to say who was the more frightened. Suddenly he threw the phone on to the table and with surprising agility darted for the door.

  Hoffmann swore, turned and started back the way he had come, sliding and stumbling through the flower bed, along the side of the big house, towards the front – hard going in his slippers, his ankle was twisted, each breath a sob. He had reached the corner when he heard the front door slam. He assumed the intruder was making a dash for the road. But no: the seconds passed and the man did not appear. He must have shut himself in.

  Oh God, Hoffmann whispered. God, God.

  He flailed on towards the porch. The boots were still there – tongues lolling, old, squat, malevolent. His hands were shaking as he keyed in the security code. By this time he was yelling out Gabrielle’s name, even though the master bedroom was on the opposite side of the house and there was little chance she could hear him. The bolts clicked back. He flung open the door on to darkness. The hall lamp had been switched off.

  For a moment he stood panting on the step, imagining the distance he had to cross, calculating his chances, then he lunged towards the staircase, screaming, ‘Gabrielle! Gabrielle!’ and was halfway across the marble floor when the house seemed to explode around him, the stairs tumbling, the floor tiles rising, the walls shooting away from him into the night.

  2

  A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die …

  CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species (1859)

  HOFFMANN HAD NO memory of anything after that – no thoughts or dreams disturbed his normally restless mind – until at last, from out of the fog, like a low spit of land emerging at the end of a long voyage, he became aware of a gradual reawakening of sensations – freezing water trickling down the side of his neck and across his back, a cold pressure on his scalp, a sharp pain in his head, a mechanical jabbering in his ears, the familiar sickly-sharp floral smell of his wife’s perfume – and he realised that he was lying on his side, with something soft against his cheek. There was a pressure on his hand.

  He opened his eyes and saw a white plastic bowl, inches from his face, into which he immediately vomited, the taste of last night’s fish pie sour in his mouth. He gagged and spewed again. The bowl was removed. A bright light was shone into each of his eyes in turn. His nose and mouth were wiped. A glass of water was pressed against his lips. Babyishly, he pushed it away at first, then took it and gulped it down. When he had finished, he opened his eyes again and squinted around his new world.

  He was on the floor of the hall, laid out in the recovery position, his back resting against the wall. A blue police light flashed at the window like a continuous electrical storm; unintelligible chatter leaked from a radio. Gabrielle was kneeling next to him, holding his hand. She smiled and squeezed his fingers. ‘Thank God,’ she said. She was dressed in jeans and a jersey. He pushed himself up and looked around, bewildered. Without his spectacles, everything was slightly blurred: two paramedics, bent over a case of gleaming equipment; two uniformed gendarmes, one by the door with the noisy radio on his belt and another just coming down the stairs; and a third man, tired-looking, in his fifties, wearing a dark blue windcheater and a white shirt with a dark tie, who was studying Hoffmann with detached sympathy. Everyone was dressed except Hoffmann, and it suddenly seemed terribly important to him to put on some clothes as well. But when he tried to rise further, he found he had insufficient strength in his arms. A flash of pain arced across his skull.

  The man in the dark tie said, ‘Here, let me help,’ and stepped forward with his hand outstretched. ‘Jean-Philippe Leclerc, inspector of the Geneva Police Department.’

  One of the paramedics took Hoffmann’s other arm and together he and the inspector raised him carefully to his feet. On the creamy paintwork of the wall where his head had rested was a feathery patch of blood. More blood was on the floor – smeared into streaks, as if someone had skidded in it. Hoffmann’s knees sagged. ‘I have you,’ Leclerc reassured him. ‘Breathe deeply. Take a moment.’

  Gabrielle said anxiously, ‘He needs to go to a hospital.’

  ‘The ambulance will be here in ten minutes,’ said the paramedic. ‘They’ve been delayed.’

  ‘Why don’t we wait in here?’ suggested Leclerc. He opened the door on to the chilly drawing room.

  Once Hoffmann had been lowered into a sitting position on the sofa – he refused to lie flat – the paramedic squatted in front of him.

  ‘Can you tell me the number of fingers I’m holding up?’

  Hoffmann said, ‘Can I have my …’ What was the word? He raised his hand to his eyes.

  ‘He needs his glasses,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Here you are, darling.’ She slipped them over his nose and kissed his forehead. ‘Take it easy, all right?’

  The medic said, ‘Can you see my fingers now?’

  Hoffmann counted carefully. He ran his tongue over his lips before replying. ‘Three.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘We need to take your blood pressure, monsieur.’

  Hoffmann sat placidly as the sleeve of his pyjama jacket was rolled up and the plastic cuff was fastened around his bicep and inflated. The end of the stethoscope was cold on his skin. His mind seemed to be switching itself back on now, section by section. Methodically he noted the contents of the room: the pale yellow walls, the easy chairs and chaise longues covered in white silk, the Bechstein baby grand, the Louis Quinze clock ticking quietly on the mantelpiece, the charcoal tones of the Auerbach landscape above it. On the coffee table in front of him was one of Gabrielle’s early self-portraits: a half-metre cube, made up of a hundred sheets of Mirogard glass, on to which she had traced in black ink the sections of an MRI scan of her own body. The effect was of some strange, vulnerable alien creature floating in mid-air. Hoffmann looked at it as if for the first time. There was something here he ought to remember. What was it? This was a new experience for him, not to be able to retrieve a piece of information he wanted immediately. When the paramedic had finished, Hoffmann said to Gabrielle, ‘Aren’t you doing something special today?’ His forehead creased in concentration as he searched through the chaos of his memory. ‘I know,’ he said at last with relief, ‘it’s your show.’

  ‘Yes, it is, but we’ll cancel it.’

  ‘No, we mustn’t do that – not your first show.’

  ‘Good,’ said Leclerc, who was watching Hoffmann from his armchair. ‘This is very good.’

  H
offmann turned slowly to look at him. The movement shot another spasm of pain through his head. He peered at Leclerc. ‘Good?’

  ‘It’s good that you can remember things.’ The inspector gave him the thumbs-up sign. ‘For example, what’s the last thing that happened to you tonight that you can remember?’

  Gabrielle interrupted. ‘I think Alex ought to see a doctor before he answers any questions. He needs to rest.’

  ‘What is the last thing I remember?’ Hoffmann considered the question carefully, as if it were a mathematical problem. ‘I guess it was coming in through the front door. He must have been behind it waiting for me.’

  ‘He? There was only one man?’ Leclerc unzipped his windcheater and with difficulty tugged a notebook from some hidden recess, then shifted in his chair and produced a pen. All the while he looked encouragingly at Hoffmann.

  ‘Yes, as far as I know. Just one.’ Hoffmann put his hand to the back of his head. His fingers touched a bandage, tightly wound. ‘What did he hit me with?’

  ‘By the looks of it, a fire extinguisher.’

  ‘Jesus. And how long was I unconscious?’

  ‘Twenty-five minutes.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Hoffmann felt as if he had been out for hours. But when he looked at the windows he saw it was still dark, and the Louis Quinze clock said it was not yet five o’clock. ‘And I was shouting to warn you,’ he said to Gabrielle. ‘I remember that.’

  ‘That’s right, I heard you. Then I came downstairs and found you lying there. The front door was open. The next thing I knew, the police were here.’