The Fear Index

Overcoming his revulsion, Hoffmann transferred the knife into his left hand, leaned forward and opened the man’s leather coat. The man lifted his arms and allowed him to search around until he found an inside pocket, from which he withdrew first a wallet and then a dark red European Union passport. It was German. He flicked it open. The photograph was not a good likeness. The text identified him as Johannes Karp, born 14.4.52 in Offenbach am Main.
    Hoffmann said, ‘And you’re seriously telling me you came here from Germany because I invited you?’
    ‘ Ja .’
    Hoffmann recoiled. ‘You’re crazy.’
    ‘No, fucker, you are crazy,’ said the German with a flicker of spirit. ‘You gave me your house codes.’ Blood bubbled from the corner of his mouth. He spat a tooth into his hand and inspected it. ‘ Ein verrückter Mann! ’
    ‘Where is this invitation?’
    He gestured weakly with his head towards the other room. ‘Computer.’
    Hoffmann stood. He pointed the knife at Karp. ‘Don’t move, okay?’
    In the other room he sat on the chair and opened the laptop. It came awake immediately and at once the screen was filled with an image of Hoffmann’s own face. The quality of the photograph was poor – an enlarged picture-grab from a surveillance tape, by the look of it. He had been captured gazing up into the camera, his expression blank, unguarded. It was so tightly cropped it was impossible to tell where it had been taken.
    A couple of keystrokes took him into the hard-drive registry. The program names were all in German. He called up a list of the most recently viewed files. The last folder to be edited, just after six o’clock the previous evening, was entitled Der Rotenburg Cannibal . Inside it were scores of Adobe files containing newspaper articles about the case of Armin Meiwes, a computer technician and internet cannibal who had met a willing victim on a website, drugged him and started eating him, and who was currently serving a life sentence in Germany for murder. Another folder seemed to consist of chapters of a novel, Der Metzgermeister – The Master Butcher : was that right? – tens of thousands of words of what appeared to be a work of fantasy in an unparagraphed stream of consciousness that Hoffmann could not understand. And then there was a folder called Das Opfer , which Hoffmann knew meant The Victim . This was in English and looked like transcripts from an internet chat room – a dialogue, he perceived as he read on, between one participant who fantasised about committing murder and another who dreamed about what it would be like to die. There was something distantly familiar about the second voice, phrases he recognised, sequences of dreams that had once festooned his mind like filthy cobwebs until he had cleaned them out, or thought he had cleaned them out.
    Now they seemed to coalesce in front of him into a dark reflection, and he was so absorbed by what was on the screen it was a near-miracle that some slight alteration in the light or air caused him to look up as the knife flashed towards him. He jerked his head back and the point just missed his eye – a six-inch blade, a flick-knife; it must have been hidden in the man’s coat pocket. The German lashed out at him with his foot and caught him on the bottom of his ribcage, then lunged forward with the knife and tried to slash at him again. Hoffmann cried out in pain and shock, the chair toppled backwards and suddenly Karp was on top of him. The knife glinted in the pale light. Somehow, by reflex rather than conscious intent, he caught the man’s wrist with his left and weaker hand. Briefly the knife trembled close to his face. ‘ Es ist, was Sie sich wünschen ,’ whispered Karp soothingly. It is what you desire . The knife-tip actually pricked Hoffmann’s skin. He grimaced with the effort, holding the knife off, gaining millimetres, until at last his attacker’s arm snapped backwards and with a terrible exultation in his own power Hoffmann flung him back against the metal frame of the bed. It slid briefly on its wheels, banged against the wall and stopped. Hoffmann’s left hand still held on to the other man’s wrist, his right was clamped to Karp’s face, his fingers gouging into the deep sockets of the eyes, the heel of his hand jammed against the throat. Karp roared in pain and tore at Hoffmann’s fingers with his free hand. Hoffmann responded by adjusting his grip so that he had his hand entirely around the