Robert Harris: The Fear Index

Gabrielle sat on a moulded plastic chair, took out a powder compact and started applying lipstick in quick, nervous strokes. Hoffmann watched her as if she were a stranger: so dark and neat and self-contained, like a cat washing her face. She had been doing exactly this when he first saw her, at a party in Saint-Genis-Pouilly. A harassed young Turkish doctor came in with a clipboard; a plastic name tag attached to his white coat announced him as Dr Muhammet Celik. He consulted Hoffmann’s notes. He shone a light into his eyes, struck his knee with a small hammer and asked him to name the president of the United States and then to count backwards from one hundred to eighty.

Hoffmann answered without difficulty. Satisfied, the doctor put on a pair of surgical gloves. He took off Hoffmann’s temporary dressing, parted his hair and examined the wound, gently prodding it with his fingers: Hoffmann felt as if he were being inspected for lice. The accompanying conversation was conducted entirely above his head.

‘He lost a lot of blood,’ said Gabrielle.

‘Wounds to the head always bleed heavily. He will need a few stitches, I think.’

‘Is it a deep wound?’

‘Oh, not so deep, but there is quite a wide area of swelling. You see? It was something blunt that hit him?’

‘A fire extinguisher.’

‘Okay. Let me make a note of that. We need to get a head scan.’

Celik bent down so that his face was level with Hoffmann’s. He smiled. He opened his eyes very wide and spoke extremely slowly. ‘Very well then, Monsieur Hoffmann. Later I will stitch the wound. Right now we need to take you downstairs and make some pictures of the inside of your head. This will be done by a machine we call a CAT scanner. Are you familiar with a CAT scanner, Monsieur Hoffmann?’

‘Computed Axial Tomography uses a rotating detector and X-ray source to compile cross-sectional radiographic images – it’s seventies technology, no big deal. And it’s not Monsieur Hoffmann, by the way – it’s Dr Hoffmann.’

As he was wheeled into the elevator, Gabrielle said, ‘There was no need to be so rude. He was only trying to help you.’

‘He spoke to me as if I were a child.’

‘Then stop behaving like one. Here, you can hold this.’ She dropped his bag of clothes on to his lap and walked ahead to summon the elevator.

Gabrielle obviously knew her way to the radiology department, a fact that Hoffmann found obscurely irritating. Over the past couple of years the staff had helped her with her art work, giving her access to the scanners when they were not in use, staying late after their shifts had finished to produce the images she needed. Several had become her friends. He ought to be grateful to them, but he wasn’t. The doors opened on to the darkened lower floor. They had a lot of scanners, he remembered. It was the hospital to which they helicoptered the most serious skiing injuries, from Chamonix, Megeve, even Courchevel. Hoffmann had a sense of a huge expanse of offices and equipment extending into the shadows – an entire department stilled and deserted, apart from this one small emergency outpost. A young man with long black curly hair came striding across to them. ‘Gabrielle!’ he exclaimed. He took her hand and kissed it, then turned to look down at Hoffmann. ‘So you have brought me a genuine patient for a change?’

Gabrielle said, ‘This is my husband, Alexander Hoffmann. Alex – this is Fabian Tallon, the duty technician. You remember Fabian? I’ve told you all about him.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Hoffmann. He looked up at the young man. Tallon had large dark liquid eyes, a wide mouth, very white teeth and a couple of days’ growth of dark beard. His shirt was unbuttoned more than it needed to be, drawing attention to his broad chest, his rugby player’s chest. Suddenly Hoffmann wondered if Gabrielle might be having an affair with him. He tried to push the idea out of his head, but it refused to go. It was years since he had felt a pang of jealousy; he had forgotten how almost exquisite the sharpness could be. Looking from one to the other he said, ‘Thank you for all you’ve done for Gabrielle.’

‘It’s been a pleasure, Alex. Now let’s see what we can do for you.’ He pushed the bed as easily as if it were a supermarket trolley, through the control area and into the room containing the CAT scanner. ‘Stand up, please.’

Once again Hoffmann surrendered mechanically to the procedure. His overcoat and spectacles were taken from him. He was told to sit on the edge of the couch that formed part of the machine. The dressing was removed from his head. He was instructed to lie on his back on the couch, his head pointing towards the scanner. Tallon adjusted the neck rest. ‘This will take less than a minute,’ he said, and disappeared. The door sighed shut behind him. Hoffmann raised his head slightly. He was alone. Beyond his bare feet, through the thick glass window at the far end of the room, he could see Gabrielle watching him. Tallon joined her. They said something to one another that he could not hear. There was a clatter, and then Tallon’s voice came loudly over a loudspeaker.

‘Lie back, Alex. Try to keep as still as possible.’

Hoffmann did as ordered. There was a hum and the couch began to slide backwards through the wide drum of the scanner. It happened twice: once briefly, to get a fix; the second time more slowly, to collect the images. He stared at the white plastic casing as he passed beneath it. It was like being subjected to some radioactive car wash. The couch stopped and reversed itself and Hoffmann imagined his brain being sprayed by a brilliant, cleansing light, from which nothing could hide – all impurities exposed and obliterated in a hiss of burning matter.

The loudspeaker clicked on and briefly he heard the sound of Gabrielle’s voice dying away in the background. It seemed to him – could this be right? – that she had been whispering. Tallon said, ‘Thank you, Alex. It’s all over. Stay where you are. I’ll come and get you.’ He resumed his conversation with Gabrielle. ‘But you see-’ The sound cut out.

Hoffmann lay there for what seemed a long while: plenty of time, at any rate, to consider how easy it would have been for Gabrielle to have had an affair over the past few months. There were the long hours she had spent at the hospital collecting the images she needed for her work; and then there were the even longer days and nights he had been away at his office, developing VIXAL. What was there to anchor a couple in a marriage after more than seven years if there were no children to exert some gravitational pull? Suddenly he experienced yet another long-forgotten sensation: the delicious, childish pain of self-pity. To his horror, he realised he was starting to cry.

‘Are you okay, Alex?’ Tallon’s face loomed above the couch, handsome, concerned, insufferable.

‘No problem.’

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘I’m fine.’ Hoffmann wiped his eyes quickly on the sleeve of his dressing gown and put his spectacles back on. The rational part of his mind recognised that these sudden lurches in mood were likely to be symptoms of head trauma, but that did not make them any less real. He refused to get back on to the wheeled bed. He swung his legs off the couch, took a few deep breaths, and by the time he walked into the other room had regained control of himself.

‘Alex,’ said Gabrielle, ‘this is the radiologist, Dr Dufort.’

She indicated a tiny woman with close-cropped grey hair who was seated at a computer screen. Dufort turned and gave him a perfunctory nod over her narrow shoulder, then resumed her examination of the scan results.

‘Is that me?’ asked Hoffmann, staring at the screen.

‘It is, monsieur.’ She did not turn round.