The Fear Index

wife for the second time that day to say he was delayed at work, and set off in the back of a patrol car through the rush-hour traffic to the northern side of the river.
    He had been on duty for almost twenty hours and was as exhausted as an old dog. But the prospect of a suspicious death, of which there are only about eight per year in Geneva, always bucked up his spirits. With flashing light display, a piercing siren and an air of great self-importance, the patrol car roared up the Boulevard Carl-Vogt and over the bridge, cutting into the left-hand lane of the Rue de Sous-Terre, forcing the oncoming traffic to swerve out of its way. Thrown around in the back seat, Leclerc rang the chief’s office and left a message that the suspect in the Hoffmann case apparently had been found dead.
    In the Rue de Berne there was almost a carnival atmosphere outside the Hotel Diodati – four police cars with flickering blue lights, sharply brilliant in the overcast early-evening gloom; a sizeable crowd on the opposite side of the street, including several glossy black hookers in colourful, minimal clothes, joking with the locals; fluttering lines of stripy black-and-yellow crime-scene tape sectioning off the spectators. Occasionally a camera flashed. They were like fans, thought Leclerc as he got out of the car, waiting for a star to come out. A gendarme lifted the tape and Leclerc ducked underneath it. As a young man he had patrolled this area on foot, had got to know all the working girls by name. He guessed some of them would be grandmothers now; come to think of it, one or two had been grandmothers then.
    He went inside the Diodati. It had been called something else in the eighties. He couldn’t remember what. The guests had all been corralled in reception and were not being allowed to leave until they had each given a statement. There were several obvious hookers here, and a couple of smartly dressed men who should have known better and who stood apart, surly with embarrassment. Leclerc didn’t like the look of the tiny elevator so took the stairs, pausing on each deserted floor to recover his breath. Outside the room where the body had been found, the corridor was crowded with uniforms and he had to put on white coveralls, white latex gloves, and clear plastic slipovers on his shoes. He drew the line at pulling up the hood. I look like a damned white rabbit, he thought.
    He didn’t know the detective in charge of the crime scene – a new fellow named Moynier, apparently in his twenties, although it was hard to tell as he had his hood up and only the baby-pink oval of his face was visible. Also in the room in their white suits were the pathologist and the photographer, both old hands, but not as old as Leclerc; no one was as old as Leclerc; he was as old as the Jura. He contemplated the corpse, hanging off the bathroom door handle. Above the tight line of the ligature, which was buried in the flesh of the neck, the head had turned black. There were various cuts and abrasions on the face. One eye was badly swollen. Strung up and skinny, the German looked like an old dead crow left out by a farmer to discourage other carrion. In the bathroom there was no light switch, but even so it was possible to see the blood smeared on the toilet bowl. The shower curtain rail was hanging away from the wall; so was the washbasin.
    Moynier said, ‘A man next door swears he heard sounds of a struggle sometime around three. There’s also blood by the bed. I’m provisionally declaring it a murder.’
    ‘Smart work,’ said Leclerc.
    The pathologist coughed to cover his laughter.
    Moynier didn’t notice. He said, ‘I was right to call you? Do you think this is the man who attacked the American banker?’
    ‘I should say so.’
    ‘Well then, I hope you don’t object, Leclerc, but I was here first, and so I must insist that this is my case now.’
    ‘My dear fellow, you’re welcome to it.’
    Leclerc wondered how the occupant of this squalid room could possibly have come to intersect with the owner of a $60 million mansion in Cologny. On the bed the dead man’s possessions had been individually bagged in clear plastic and laid out for inspection: clothes, a camera, two knives, a raincoat apparently slashed at the front. Hoffmann had worn a raincoat like that when he went to the hospital, Leclerc thought. He picked up a mains adaptor.
    He said, ‘Isn’t this for a computer? Where is it?’
    Moynier shrugged. ‘There isn’t one