The Fear Index

something about the sound of this one that got me interested: I don’t know – a pricking of my thumbs. As it happened, I was planning to go skiing over the holidays, so I thought I’d look him up …’

    HE’D DECIDED TO make contact on New Year’s Eve: he had figured even a recluse might be forced to put up with company on New Year’s Eve. So he had left Sally and the kids in the chalet in Chamonix – which they had rented together with the Bakers, their perfectly ghastly neighbours in Wimbledon – and, ignoring their reproaches, had driven down the valley alone to Geneva, glad of an excuse to get away. The mountains had been a luminous blue under a three-quarters moon, the roads empty. There was no satellite navigation in the hire car, not in those days, and when he got close to Geneva Airport he had had to pull off the road and look at the Hertz map. Saint-Genis-Pouilly was straight ahead, just past CERN, in flat arable land that glistened in the frost – a small French town, a café in its cobbled centre, rows of neat houses with red roofs, and finally a few modern apartment blocks built of concrete in the last couple of years and painted ochre, their balconies festooned with wind chimes, folded-up metal chairs and dead window boxes. Quarry had rung Hoffmann’s doorbell for a long time without getting a response, even though there was a pale strip of light beneath the door and he sensed that someone was inside. Eventually a neighbour had come out and told him that tout le monde par le CERN was at a party in a house near the sports stadium. He had stopped off at a bar on the way and picked up a bottle of cognac, and had driven around the darkened streets until he found it.
    More than eight years later he could still remember his excitement as the car locked with its cheerful electronic squawk and he set off down the pavement towards the multicoloured Christmas lights and the thumping music. In the darkness other people, singly and in laughing couples, were converging on the same spot, and he could somehow sense that this was going to be it: that the stars above this dreary little European town were in alignment and some extraordinary event was about to occur. The host and hostess were standing at the door to greet their guests – Bob and Maggie Walton, English couple, older than their guests, dreary. They had looked mystified to see him, and even more so when he told them he was a friend of Alex Hoffmann’s: he got the impression no one had ever said that before. Walton had refused his offer of the bottle of cognac as if it were a bribe: ‘You can take it with you when you leave.’ Not very friendly, but then in fairness he was crashing their party, and he must have looked a misfit in his expensive skiing jacket surrounded by all these nerds on a government salary. He had asked where he might find Hoffmann, to which Walton had replied, with a shrewd look, that he wasn’t quite sure but that presumably Quarry would recognise him when he saw him, ‘if you two are such good friends’.
    Leclerc said, ‘And did you? Recognise him?’
    ‘Oh yes. You can always spot an American, don’t you think? He was on his own in the centre of a downstairs room and the party was kind of lapping around him – he was a handsome guy, stood out in a crowd – but he wasn’t taking any notice of it. He had this look on his face of being somewhere else entirely. Not hostile, you understand – just not there. I’ve pretty much got used to it since then.’
    ‘And that was the first time you spoke to him?’
    ‘It was.’
    ‘What did you say?’
    ‘“Dr Hoffmann, I presume.”’
    He had flourished the bottle of cognac and offered to go and find two glasses, but Hoffmann had said he didn’t drink, to which Quarry had said, ‘In that case why did you come to a New Year’s Eve party?’ to which Hoffmann had replied that several very kind but overprotective colleagues had thought it was best if he was not left on his own on this particular night. But they were quite wrong, he added – he was perfectly happy to be on his own. And so saying he had moved off into another room, obliging Quarry, after a short interval, to follow him. That was his first taste of the legendary Hoffmann charm. He had felt pretty pissed off. ‘I’ve come sixty miles to see you,’ he said, chasing after him. ‘I’ve left my wife and children crying in a hut on a freezing mountainside and driven through the ice and snow to get