with his hand pressed to his cheek, unable to comprehend the catastrophe that had so swiftly overtaken him.
Leclerc had witnessed it all from the comfort of his car. It had unfolded in front of him like a drive-in movie. Now, as he continued to watch, Hoffmann slowly turned around and made his way back towards the gallery. One of the two bodyguards standing with their arms folded outside had a word with him, and Hoffmann made a weary gesture, apparently a signal that he should go after his wife. The man set off. Then Hoffmann went inside, followed by his own minder. It was perfectly easy to see what was happening: the window was large and the gallery was now almost empty. Hoffmann went over to where the proprietor, M. Bertrand, was standing, and clearly began to berate him. He pulled out his mobile phone and waved it in the other man’s face. Bertrand threw up his hands, shooing him away, whereupon Hoffmann seized him by the lapels of his jacket and pushed him back against the wall.
‘Dear God in heaven, now what?’ muttered Leclerc. He could see Bertrand struggling to free himself as Hoffmann held him at arm’s length, before once again shoving him backwards, harder this time. Leclerc swore under his breath, threw open his car door and hauled himself stiffly out into the street. His knees had locked, and as he winced his way across the road to the gallery, he pondered yet again the harshness of his fate: that he should still have to do this sort of thing when he was closer to sixty than fifty.
By the time he got inside, Hoffmann’s bodyguard had planted himself very solidly between his client and the gallery’s owner. Bertrand was smoothing down his jacket and shouting insults at Hoffmann, who was responding in kind. Behind them the executed murderer stared ahead impassively from his glass cell.
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ said Leclerc, ‘we shall have no more of this, thank you.’ He flashed his ID at the bodyguard, who looked at it and then at him and very slightly rolled his eyes. ‘Quite. Dr Hoffmann, this is no way to behave. It would pain me to arrest you, after all you have been through today, but I shall if necessary. What is going on here?’
Hoffmann said, ‘My wife is very upset, and all because this man has acted in the most incredibly stupid way-’
‘Yes, yes,’ cut in Bertrand, ‘incredibly stupid! I sold all her work for her, on the first day of her first exhibition, and now her husband attacks me for it!’
‘All I want,’ responded Hoffmann, in a voice that struck Leclerc as quite close to hysteria, ‘is the number of the buyer’s bank account.’
‘And I have told him it is quite out of the question! This is confidential information.’
Leclerc turned back to Hoffmann. ‘Why is it so important?’
‘Someone,’ said Hoffmann, struggling to keep his voice calm, ‘is quite clearly attempting to destroy me. I have obtained the number of the account that was used to send me a book last night, presumably in order to frighten me in some way – I’ve got it here on my mobile. And now I believe the same bank account, which is supposedly in my name, has been used to sabotage my wife’s exhibition.’
‘Sabotage!’ scoffed Bertrand. ‘We call it a sale!’
‘It wasn’t one sale, though, was it? Everything was sold, at once. Has that ever happened before?’
‘Ach!’ Bertrand made a sweeping gesture.
Leclerc looked at them. He sighed. ‘Show me the account number, Monsieur Bertrand, if you please.’
‘I can’t do that. Why should I?’
‘Because if you don’t, I shall arrest you for impeding a criminal investigation.’
‘You wouldn’t dare!’
Leclerc stared him out. Old as he was, he could deal with the Guy Bertrands of this world in his sleep.
Eventually Bertrand muttered, ‘All right, it’s in my office.’
‘Dr Hoffmann – your mobile, if I may?’
Hoffmann showed him the email screen. ‘This is the message I got from the bookseller, with the account number.’
Leclerc took the telephone. ‘Stay here, please.’ He followed Bertrand into the small back office. The place was a clutter of old catalogues, stacked frames, workman’s tools; it smelled of a pungent combination of coffee and glue. A computer sat on a scratched and rickety roll-top desk. Next to it was a pile of letters and receipts, skewered on a spike. Bertrand moved the mouse across his computer screen and clicked. ‘Here is the email from my bank.’ He vacated the seat with a pout. ‘I may say, incidentally, I don’t take seriously your threats to arrest me. I co-operate merely as a good Swiss citizen should.’
‘Your co-operation is noted, monsieur,’ said Leclerc. ‘Thank you.’ He sat at the terminal and peered close to the screen. He held Hoffmann’s mobile next to it and compared the two account numbers laboriously. They were an identical mixture of letters and digits. The name of the account holder was given as A. J. Hoffmann. He took out his notebook and copied down the sequence. ‘And you received no message other than this?’
‘No.’
Back in the gallery, he returned the mobile to Hoffmann. ‘You were right. The numbers match. Although what this has to do with the attack on you, I confess I do not understand.’
‘Oh, they’re connected,’ said Hoffmann. ‘I tried to tell you that this morning. Jesus, you guys wouldn’t last five minutes in my business. You wouldn’t even get through the frigging door. And why the hell are you going round asking questions about me at CERN? You should be finding this guy, not investigating me.’
His face was haggard, his eyes red and sore, as if he had been rubbing them. With his day’s growth of beard he looked like a fugitive.
‘I’ll pass the account number to our financial department and ask them to look into it,’ said Leclerc gently. ‘Bank accounts, at least, are something we Swiss do rather well, and impersonation is a crime. I’ll let you know if there are any developments. In the meantime, I strongly urge you to go home and see your doctor and have some sleep.’ And make it up with your wife, he wanted to add, but he felt it was not his place.
10
… the instinct of each species is good for itself, but has never, as far as we can judge, been produced for the exclusive good of others .
Hoffmann tried to call her from the back of the Mercedes, but he only got her voicemail. The familiar, jaunty voice caught him by the throat: ‘Hi, this is Gabby, don’t you dare hang up without leaving me a message.’
He had a terrible premonition she was irretrievably gone. Even if they could patch things up, the person she had been before this day began would no longer exist. It was like listening to a recording of someone who had just died.
There was a beep. After a long pause, which he knew would sound weird when she played it back but which he struggled to end, he said finally, ‘Call me, will you? We’ve got to talk.’ He couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘Well, okay. That’s it. Bye.’
He hung up and stared at the mobile for a while, weighing it in his palm, willing it to ring, wondering if he should have said something else or if there was some other way of reaching her. He leaned forward to the bodyguard. ‘Is your colleague with my wife, do you know?’
Paccard, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead, spoke over his shoulder. ‘No, monsieur. By the time he got to the end of the road, she was already out of sight.’
Hoffmann let out a groan. ‘Is there no one in this goddam town who can do a simple job without screwing up?’ He threw himself back in his seat, folded his arms and stared out of the window. Of one thing at least he was certain: he had not bought up Gabrielle’s exhibition. He had not had the opportunity. Convincing her, however, would not be easy. In his mind he heard her voice again. A billion dollars? Ballpark? You know what? Forget it. It’s over.
Across the gunmetal waters of the Rhone he could see the financial district – BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Private Wealth… It occupied the northern bank of the wide river and part of the island in the middle. A
