Robert Harris - The Fear Index

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 fur Volkerkunde, 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 proteges, 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.’