The Fear Index

you first meet Dr Hoffmann?’
    ‘I was just remembering that.’ She could see Alex in her mind with perfect clarity. He had been talking to Hugo Quarry – always bloody Quarry in the picture, even right at the start – and she had had to make the first move, but she had drunk enough not to care. ‘That would have been at a party in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, about eight years ago.’
    ‘Saint-Genis-Pouilly,’ repeated Leclerc. ‘A great many CERN scientists live round there, I believe.’
    ‘They certainly did then. You see that tall, grey-headed guy over there – Walton, his name is. It was at his house. I went back to Alex’s apartment afterwards and I remember there was nothing in it except computers. It got so hot that one day it showed up on an infrared monitor in a police helicopter and he was raided by the drug squad. They thought he was growing cannabis.’
    She smiled at the memory, and so did Leclerc – but for form’s sake, she suspected, to encourage her to keep talking. She wondered what he wanted.
    ‘Were you at CERN yourself?’
    ‘God, no, I was working as a secretary at the UN – your typical ex-art student with bad prospects and good French: that was me.’ She was talking too fast and grinning too much, she realised. He would think she was tipsy.
    ‘But Dr Hoffmann was still at CERN when you got to know him?’
    ‘He was in the process of leaving to set up his own company with his partner, a man called Hugo Quarry. We all met for the first time on the same night, oddly enough. Is this important?’
    ‘And why exactly did he do that, do you know – leave CERN?’
    ‘You’d have to ask him. Or Hugo.’
    ‘I will. He is American, this Mr Quarry?’
    She laughed. ‘No, English. Very much so.’
    ‘I assume one reason Dr Hoffmann left CERN was because he wanted to make more money?’
    ‘No, not really. Money never bothered him. Not then, anyway. He told me he could pursue his line of research more easily if he had his own company.’
    ‘And what line was that?’
    ‘Artificial intelligence. But again, you’d have to ask him about the details. I’m afraid it’s always been way over my head.’
    Leclerc paused.
    ‘Has he sought psychiatric help, do you know?’
    The question startled her. ‘Not that I’m aware. Why do you ask?’
    ‘It’s just that I gather he suffered a nervous breakdown when he was at CERN, which someone there told me is the reason why he left. I wondered if there’d been any recurrence.’
    She realised she was staring at him with her mouth open. She clamped her jaw shut.
    He was studying her closely. He said, ‘I’m sorry. Have I spoken out of turn? You didn’t know that?’
    She recovered her composure just enough to lie. ‘Well, of course I knew about it – I knew something about it.’ She was aware of how unconvincing she sounded. But what was the alternative? To admit that her husband was mostly a mystery to her – that an immense amount of what occupied his mind every day had always been impenetrable territory for her, and that this unknowable quality was both what had attracted her to him in the first place and what had frightened her ever since? ‘So you’ve been checking up on Alex?’ she said in a brittle voice. ‘Shouldn’t you be trying to find the man who attacked him?’
    ‘I have to investigate all the facts, madame ,’ said Leclerc primly. ‘It may be that the assailant knew your husband in the past or had a grudge against him. I merely asked an acquaintance at CERN – off the record and in the strictest confidence, I do assure you – why he had left.’
    ‘And this person said he had had a breakdown, and now you think Alex may be making up this whole story about a mysterious attacker?’
    ‘No, I’m simply trying to understand all the circumstances.’ He emptied his glass in one swig. ‘I’m sorry – I should let you get back to your party.’
    ‘Would you like another drink?’
    ‘No.’ He pressed his fingers to his mouth and suppressed a burp. ‘I must get on. Thank you.’ He bowed slightly, in an old-fashioned way. ‘It really has been most interesting to see your work.’ He stopped and stared again at the executed murderer in his glass box. ‘What exactly did he do, this poor fellow?’
    ‘He killed an old man who caught him stealing his electric blanket. Shot him and stabbed him. He was on death row for twelve years. When his last appeal for clemency was turned down, he was executed by lethal