The Fear Index

respect to Darwin, Hoffmann felt this was empirically untrue. His own heart was filled with the blackest suspicion and he had no doubt it was evident in his face – in his downturned mouth and sullen, narrowed, shifting gaze. Whoever heard of a case of identity theft in which the thief bought a present for the victim? Someone was trying to screw with his mind: that was what was going on here. They were trying to make him doubt his own sanity, maybe even murder him. Either that or he really was going mad.
    He pushed himself on to his feet and prowled round his office. He parted the slats of his blinds and gazed out across the trading floor. Did he have an enemy out there? His sixty quants were split into three teams: Incubation, who composed and tested the algorithms; Technology, who turned the prototypes into operational tools; and Execution, who oversaw the actual trades. Some of them were a little weird, there was no doubt about that. The Hungarian, Imre Szabo, for example – he couldn’t walk down a corridor without touching every door handle. And there was another guy who had to eat everything with a knife and fork, even a biscuit or a packet of crisps. Hoffmann had hired them all personally, regardless of their oddities, but he did not know them well. They were colleagues rather than friends. He rather regretted that now. He dropped the slat and returned to his terminal.
    The list of his bank accounts was waiting in his inbox. He had eight – Swiss franc, dollar, sterling, euro, current, deposit, offshore and joint. He checked their numbers against the one that had been used to buy the book. None matched. He tapped his finger against his desk for a few seconds, then picked up his phone and called the firm’s chief financial officer, Lin Ju-Long.
    ‘LJ? It’s Alex. Do me a favour. Check out an account number for me, would you? It’s in my name but I don’t recognise it. I want to know if it’s on our system anywhere.’ He forwarded the email from the bookshop. ‘I’m sending it across now. Have you got it?’
    There was a pause.
    ‘Yes, Alex, I got it. Okay, well, first thing I can tell you right away: it starts “KYD” – that’s the Cayman Islands IBAN prefix for a US dollar account.’
    ‘Could it be some kind of company account?’
    ‘I’ll run it through the system. You got a problem?’
    ‘No. Just want to check it out, that’s all. I’d be grateful if you could keep this just between the two of us.’
    ‘Okay, Alex. Sorry to hear about your—’
    ‘I’m fine,’ cut in Hoffmann quickly. ‘No harm done.’
    ‘Okay, that’s good. Has Gana spoken to you, by the way?’
    Gana was Ganapathi Rajamani, the company’s chief risk officer.
    Hoffmann said, ‘No. Why?’
    ‘You authorised a big short on Procter and Gamble last night? Two million at sixty-two per share?’
    ‘So what?’
    ‘Gana is worried. He says our risk limit has been breached. He wants a meeting of the Risk Committee.’
    ‘Well, tell him to go talk to Hugo about it. And let me know about that account, will you?’
    Hoffmann felt too tired to do any more. He buzzed Marie-Claude again and told her to make sure he was not disturbed for an hour. He turned off his mobile. Afterwards he lay on his sofa and tried to imagine who on earth would have gone to the trouble of stealing his name in order to buy him a rare volume of Victorian natural history using a Cayman Islands dollar account that he seemed to own. But the bizarreness of the conundrum defeated even him, and very soon he sank into sleep.

    INSPECTOR LECLERC KNEW that the chief of Geneva’s Police department, a stickler for punctuality, invariably arrived at police headquarters on the Boulevard Carl-Vogt at 9.00 sharp and that his first act of the day was always to read the summary of what had occurred in the canton overnight. Therefore when the telephone rang in his office at 9.08, he had a fair idea of who might be on the other end of the line.
    A brisk voice said, ‘Jean-Philippe?’
    ‘Morning, Chief.’
    ‘This assault on the American banker, Hoffmann.’
    ‘Yes, Chief?’
    ‘Where are we on this?’
    ‘He’s discharged himself from the University Hospital. Forensics are at the house now. We’ve put out a detailed description. One of our men is watching the property. That’s about it.’
    ‘So he’s not seriously hurt?’
    ‘Apparently not.’
    ‘That’s something. What do you make of it?’
    ‘Bizarre. The house is a fortress but the