The Fear Index

meant.’
    ‘Okay, thanks. Tell them I’m on my way.’ Quarry released the switch and looked thoughtfully at the intercom. ‘I’m going to have to leave you, I’m afraid.’ For the first time he felt a definite spasm of anxiety in the pit of his stomach. He glanced across the desk at Leclerc, who was regarding him intently, and suddenly he realised he had been gabbling away much too freely: the copper didn’t seem to be investigating the break-in any more so much as investigating Hoffmann.
    ‘Is that important?’ Leclerc nodded at the intercom. ‘The delta hedge?’
    ‘It is rather. Will you excuse me? My assistant will show you out.’
    He left abruptly without shaking hands, and soon afterwards Leclerc found himself being conducted back across the trading floor, preceded by Quarry’s glamorous red-headed gatekeeper in her low-cut sweater. She seemed in a hurry to get him out of there, which naturally made him slow his pace. He noticed how the atmosphere had changed. Here and there around the room several groups of three or four were gathered in anxious tableaux around a screen, with one person seated, clicking on a mouse, and the others leaning over his shoulders; occasionally someone would point to a graph or a column of figures. And now Leclerc was reminded much less of a seminary and more of doctors assembled at the bedside of a patient displaying grave and baffling symptoms. On one of the big TV screens a network was showing pictures of an aircraft crashing. Standing beneath the TV was a man in a dark suit and tie. He was preoccupied, sending a text message on his mobile phone, and it took Leclerc a moment to recollect who it was.
    ‘Genoud,’ he muttered to himself, and then more loudly, moving towards him, ‘Maurice Genoud!’ at which Genoud looked up from his texting – and was it Leclerc’s imagination, or did his narrow features tense slightly at the sight of this figure bearing down on him from his past?
    He said warily, ‘Jean-Philippe.’ They shook hands.
    ‘Maurice Genoud. You’ve put on weight.’ Leclerc turned to Quarry’s assistant. ‘Would you excuse us a moment, mademoiselle ? We’re old friends. You’ll see me out, won’t you, Maurice? Let me look at you, lad. Quite the prosperous civilian nowadays, I see.’
    Smiles did not come naturally to Genoud; it was a pity he bothered, thought Leclerc.
    ‘And you? I’d heard you’d retired, Jean-Philippe.’
    Leclerc said, ‘Next year. I can’t wait. Tell me, what on earth do they do here?’ He gestured to the trading floor. ‘Presumably you can understand it. I’m too old to get my head around it.’
    ‘I don’t know either. I’m just paid to keep them safe.’
    ‘Well you’re not doing a very good job of it!’ Leclerc clapped him on the shoulder. Genoud scowled. ‘I’m only joking. But seriously, what do you make of this business? A bit odd, wouldn’t you say, having all that security and then allowing a complete stranger to wander in off the street and attack you? Did you install it, I wonder?’
    Genoud moistened his lips before replying, and Leclerc thought, he’s playing for time; that’s what he used to do back in the Boulevard Carl-Vogt when he was trying to think up some story. He’d distrusted the younger man ever since the days when Genoud was a rookie under his command. There was, in his opinion, nothing that his former colleague would not do – no principle he wouldn’t betray, no deal he wouldn’t cut, no blind eye he wouldn’t turn – if he could make sufficient money and stay just within the law.
    Genoud said, ‘Yes, I installed it. What of it?’
    ‘There’s no need to get all defensive. I’m not blaming you. We both know you can surround someone with the best security in the world, but if they forget to use it there’s nothing you can do.’
    ‘That’s true. Now if you don’t mind, I ought to get on with my work. This isn’t the public sector, you know – I can’t stand here gossiping.’
    ‘You can learn a lot by gossiping.’
    They moved towards reception. Leclerc said, man-to-man, ‘So what’s he like, then, this Dr Hoffmann?’
    ‘I hardly know him.’
    ‘Enemies?’
    ‘You’d have to ask him.’
    ‘So there’s no one here dislikes him that you’ve heard about? No one he’s fired?’
    Genoud didn’t even pretend to think about it. ‘No. Enjoy your retirement, Jean-Philippe. You deserve it.’

13

    The extinction of species and of whole groups of species,