Robert Harris - The Fear Index

Leclerc said, ‘Did she mention whether he was carrying a computer?’

There was a pause, a rustle of notes, and Lullin said, ‘How did you know that?’

Hoffmann, still clutching the crowbar, hurried up the steps from the basement to the ground floor, intent on raising the alarm about Rajamani. At the door to the lobby he stopped. Through the rectangular window he saw a squad of six black-uniformed gendarmes, guns drawn, jogging in heavy boots across the reception area towards the interior of the building; following them was the panting figure of Leclerc. Once they had passed through the turnstile, the exit was locked and two more armed police stationed themselves on either side of it.

Hoffmann turned and clattered back down the steps and into the car park. The ramp up to the street was about fifty metres away. He headed for that. Behind him he heard the soft squeak of tyres turning on concrete and a large black BMW swung out of a parking bay, straightened and came towards him, headlights on. Without pausing to think, he stepped out in front of it, forcing it to stop, then ran around to the driver’s door and pulled it open.

What an apparition the president of Hoffmann Investment Technologies must have presented by now – bloody, dusty, oil-smeared, clutching a metre-long crowbar. It was little wonder the driver couldn’t scramble out fast enough. Hoffmann threw the crowbar on to the passenger seat, put the automatic transmission into drive and pressed hard on the accelerator. The big car lurched up the ramp. Ahead, the steel door was just beginning to rise. He had to brake to let it open fully. In his rear-view mirror he could see the owner, transformed by adrenalin from fear into rage, marching up the ramp to protest. Hoffmann locked the doors. The man began pounding on the side window with his fist and shouting. Through the thick tinted glass he was muffled, subaqueous. The steel door opened fully and Hoffmann transferred his foot from the brake to the accelerator, overstepping it again in his anxiety to get away, kangarooing the BMW out across the pavement and swerving on two wheels into the empty one-way street.

On the fifth floor, Leclerc and his arrest squad stepped out of the working elevator. He pressed the buzzer and looked up at the security camera. The usual receptionist had gone home for the evening. It was Marie-Claude who let them in. She put her hand to her mouth in dismay as the armed men rushed past her.

Leclerc said, ‘I am looking for Dr Hoffmann. Is he here?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Will you take us to him, please?’

She led them on to the trading floor. Quarry heard the commotion and turned round. He had been wondering what had happened to Hoffmann. He had assumed he was still with Rajamani and took his lengthening absence as a good sign: it would be better, on reflection, if their former chief risk officer could be persuaded not to try and shut them down at this critical moment. But when he saw Leclerc and the gendarmes, he knew their ship was sunk. Nevertheless, in the spirit of his forebears, he was determined to go down with dignity.

He said calmly, ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’

‘We need to speak to Dr Hoffmann,’ said Leclerc. He was swaying from left to right, standing on tiptoe, trying to spot the American among the astonished quants who were turning from their computer screens. ‘Will everyone please remain where they are?’

Quarry said, ‘You must have just missed him. He stepped outside to speak to one of our executives.’

‘Outside the building? Outside where?’

‘I assumed he was just going out into the corridor…’

Leclerc swore. He said to the nearest gendarmes: ‘You three, check these premises.’ And then to the others: ‘You three, come with me.’ And finally to the room in general: ‘Nobody is to leave the building without my permission. Nobody is to make any phone calls. We shall try to be as quick as possible. Thank you for your co-operation.’

He walked briskly back towards reception. Quarry chased after him. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector – excuse me – what exactly has Alex done?’

‘A body has been discovered. We need to speak to him about it. Forgive me…’

He strode out of the offices and into the corridor. It was deserted. He had a funny feeling about this place. His eyes were searching everywhere. ‘What other companies are on this floor?’

Quarry was still at his heels. His face was grey. ‘Only us, we rent the whole thing. What body?’

Leclerc said to his men, ‘We’ll have to start at the bottom and work our way up.’

One of the gendarmes pressed the elevator call button. The doors opened and it was Leclerc, eyes darting, who saw the danger first and yelled out to him to stay where he was.

‘Christ,’ said Quarry, gazing at the void. ‘Alex…’

The doors began to close. The gendarme held his finger on the button to reopen them. Wincing, Leclerc got down on his knees, shuffled forwards, and peered over the edge. It was impossible to make out anything at the bottom. He felt a drop of moisture hit the back of his neck, and put his hand to it and touched a viscous liquid. He craned his head upwards to find himself staring at the bottom of the elevator car. It was only a floor above him. Something was dangling off the bottom. He drew back quickly.

Gabrielle had finished her packing. Her suitcases were in the hall: one big case, one smaller, and one carry-on bag – less than a full-scale removal but more than just an overnight stay. The last flight to London was due to take off at 9.25, and the BA website was warning of increased security after the Vista Airways bomb: she ought to leave now if she was to be sure of catching it. She sat in her studio and wrote Alex a note, the old-fashioned way, on pure white paper with steel nib and Indian ink.

The first thing she wanted to say was that she loved him, and that she was not leaving him permanently – ‘maybe you’d prefer it if I did’ – she just needed a break from Geneva. She had been out to see Bob Walton at CERN – ‘don’t be angry, he’s a good man, he’s worried about you’ – and that had been a help because for the first time really she had begun to understand the extraordinary work he was trying to do and the immense strain he must be under.

She was sorry for blaming him for the fiasco of her exhibition. If he still insisted he wasn’t responsible for buying everything, then of course she believed him: ‘But darling, are you sure you’re right when you say that, because who else would have done it?’ Perhaps he was having some kind of breakdown again, in which case she wanted to help him; what she did not want to do was learn about his past problems for the first time from a policeman, of all people. ‘If we’re going to stay together we’ve got to be more honest with one another.’ She had only come out to Switzerland all those years ago intending to work as a temp for a couple of months, yet somehow she had ended up staying and fitting her existence entirely around his. Maybe if they had had children it might have been different. But if nothing else, what had happened today had made her realise that work, even the most creative work, for her was no substitute for life, whereas for him she thought it was exactly that.

Which really brought her to her main point. As she understood it from Walton, he had devoted his life to trying to create a machine that could reason, learn and act independently of human beings. To her there was something inherently frightening about that whole idea, even though Walton assured her his intentions had been entirely noble (‘and knowing you, I’m sure they were’). But to take such a vaulting ambition and place it entirely at the service of making money – wasn’t that to marry the sacred and the profane? No wonder he had started to behave so strangely. Even to want a billion dollars, let alone possess such a sum, was madness in her opinion, and there was a time when it would have been his opinion too. If a person happened to invent something that everyone needed – well okay, fair enough. But simply to gain it by gambling (she had never understood exactly what his company did, but that seemed to be the essence of it), well, such greed was worse than madness, it was wicked – nothing good would come of it – and that was why she needed to get out of Geneva, before the place and its values devoured her…