Robert Harris: The Fear Index

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.

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.’

Hoffmann 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.’