He treated the BMW with extreme care, driving with his face up close to the windscreen. There were a lot of roadworks, cables being laid, first one lane shut and then the other, creating a chicane. The turning to Route de Clerval was on the right, just past a distribution centre for auto parts – Volvo, Nissan, Honda. He indicated to turn into it. Up ahead on the left was a petrol station. He pulled up at the pumps and went into the shop. CCTV footage shows him hesitating between the aisles, then moving decisively to a section selling jerry cans: red metal, good quality, thirty-five francs each. The video is time-lapsed, making his actions seem jerky, like a marionette’s. He buys five, paying for them in cash. The camera above the till clearly shows the wound on the top of his head. The sales assistant subsequently described him as being in an agitated state. His face and clothes were streaked with grease and oil; there was dried blood in his hair.
Hoffmann said, with a terrible attempt at a smile, ‘What’s with all the roadworks?’
‘It’s been going on for months, monsieur. They’re laying fibre-optic cable.’
Hoffmann went out on to the forecourt with the jerry cans. It took him two trips to carry them to the nearest pump. He began filling them in turn. There were no other customers. He felt horribly exposed standing alone under the fluorescent lights. He could see the sales assistant watching him. Another jet came in to land directly over their heads, making the air tremble. It seemed to shake him from the inside out. He finished filling the last can, opened the rear door of the BMW and shoved it along to the far side of the back seat, stacking all the others in a row after it. He returned to the shop, paid one hundred and sixty-eight francs for the fuel and another twenty-five for a flashlight, two cigarette lighters and three cleaning cloths. Again he paid in cash. He left the shop without looking back.
Leclerc had briefly inspected the body at the bottom of the elevator shaft. There was not much to see. It reminded him of a suicide he had once had to deal with at the Cornavin railway station. He had a strong stomach for that kind of thing. It was the unmarked corpses who looked at you as if they should still be breathing that got under his skin: their eyes always seemed so full of reproaches. Where were you when I needed you?
In the basement he talked briefly to the Austrian businessman whose car Hoffmann had stolen. He was outraged, seemed to hold Leclerc more responsible than the man who had committed the crime – ‘I pay my taxes here, I expect the police to protect me’ and so forth – and Leclerc had been obliged to listen politely. The licence number and description had been circulated as a high priority to every Geneva police officer. The entire building was now being searched and evacuated. Forensics were on their way. Madame Hoffmann had been picked up at the house in Cologny and was being brought over for questioning. The office of the chief of police had been notified: the chief himself was at an official dinner in Zurich, which was a relief. Leclerc was not sure what else he could do.
For the second time that evening he found himself climbing multiple flights of stairs. He felt dizzy with the effort. There was a tingling in his left arm. He needed to get himself checked out: his wife was always nagging him about it. He wondered about Hoffmann and whether he had killed his colleague as well as the German in the hotel room. On the face of it, it seemed impossible: the safety mechanism of the elevator had plainly failed. But equally it was a remarkable coincidence, one had to say, for a man to have been at the scene of two deaths in the space of a few hours.
Arriving at the fifth floor, he paused to recover his breath. The entrance to the hedge fund’s offices was open; a young gendarme was standing guard. Leclerc nodded to him as he went past. On the trading floor, the mood seemed not merely shocked – he would have expected that, after the loss of a colleague – but almost hysterical. The employees, previously so silent, were huddled in groups, talking animatedly. The Englishman, Quarry, almost ran over to him. On the screens, the numbers continued to change.
Quarry said, ‘Any news of Alex?’
‘It appears he forced a driver out of his car and stole it. We’re looking for him now.’
Quarry said, ‘This is unbelievable-’
Leclerc cut him off. ‘Excuse me, monsieur: could I see Dr Hoffmann’s office, please?’
Quarry at once looked shifty. ‘I’m not altogether sure about that. I think perhaps I ought to call in our lawyer…’
Leclerc said firmly, ‘I’m sure he would advise full co-operation.’ He wondered what the financier was trying to hide.
Quarry backed down immediately. ‘Yes, of course.’
Inside Hoffmann’s office there was still debris on the floor. The hole in the ceiling gaped above the desk. Leclerc looked up at it in bewilderment. ‘When did this happen?’
Quarry grimaced with embarrassment, as if having to confess to the existence of a mad relative. ‘About an hour ago. Alex pulled down the smoke detector.’
‘Why?’
‘He believed there was a camera inside.’
‘And was there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who installed it?’
‘Our security consultant, Maurice Genoud.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘Well…’ Quarry could see no escape. ‘Actually, it turns out to have been Alex.’
‘Hoffmann was spying on himself?’
‘Yes, apparently. But he couldn’t remember ordering it.’
‘And where is Genoud now?’
‘I believe he went down to talk to your men when Gana’s body was discovered. He also handles security for this whole building.’
Leclerc sat at Hoffmann’s desk and started opening the drawers.
Quarry said, ‘Don’t you need a warrant to do that?’
‘No.’ Leclerc found the Darwin book, and the CD from the radiology department of the University Hospital. On the sofa he noticed a laptop lying discarded. He went across and opened it, studied the photograph of Hoffmann, then went into the file of his exchanges with the dead man, Karp. He was so absorbed, he barely glanced up when Ju-Long came in.
Ju-Long said, ‘Excuse me, Hugo – I think you ought to take a look at what’s happening on the markets.’
Quarry, frowning, bent over the screen, switching from display to display. The slide was beginning in earnest now. The VIX was going through the roof, the euro sinking, investors pulling out of equities and scrambling for shelter in gold and ten-year Treasury bonds, the yields of which were falling fast. Everywhere money was being sucked out of the market – in electronically traded S amp;P futures alone, in the space of little more than ninety minutes, buy-side liquidity had dropped from $6 billion to $2.5 billion.
Here it comes, he thought.
He said, ‘Inspector, if we’re done here, I need to get back to work. There’s a big sell-off underway in New York.’
‘What’s the point?’ asked Ju-Long. ‘We’re not in control anyway.’
The edge of despair in his voice caused Leclerc to look up sharply.
‘We’re having a few technical problems,’ explained Quarry. He could see the suspicion on Leclerc’s face. It would be a nightmare if the police inquiry moved on from Hoffmann’s mental breakdown to the breakdown of the entire company. The regulators would be all over them by morning. ‘It’s nothing to worry about, but I ought just to talk to our computer people…’
He started to move from the desk, but Leclerc said firmly: ‘Wait, please.’ He was looking out over the trading floor. Until that moment he hadn’t really registered that the company itself might be in difficulties. But now he noticed, in addition to the anxious groups of employees, several others scurrying around. There was a definite message of panic in their body language, which at first he had ascribed to the death of their colleague and the disappearance of their leader, but now he realised it was separate to that, wider. ‘What sort of technical problems?’ he asked.
There was a brief knock on the door and a gendarme stuck his head into the room.
‘We’ve got a trace on the stolen car.’
Leclerc swung round to face him.
‘Where is it?’
