‘That’s impossible, I’m afraid.’
‘What important things?’ Gabrielle stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’re not going into the office?’
‘Yes, I am going into the office. And you’re going to the gallery for the start of your exhibition.’
‘Alex…’
‘Yes, you are. You’ve been working on it for months – think of all the time you’ve spent here, for a start. And tonight we’re going to have dinner to celebrate your success.’ He was aware that he was starting to raise his voice again. He forced himself to speak more calmly. ‘Just because this guy got into our house, it doesn’t mean he has to get into our lives. Not unless we let him. Look at me.’ He gestured to himself. ‘I’m fine. You just saw the scan – no fracture and no swelling.’
‘And no bloody common sense,’ said an English voice behind them.
‘Hugo,’ said Gabrielle, without turning to look at him, ‘will you please tell your business partner that he’s made of flesh and blood, just like the rest of us?’
‘Ah, but is he?’ Quarry was standing by the door with his overcoat unfastened, a cherry-red woollen scarf around his neck, his hands in his pockets.
‘Business partner?’ repeated Dr Celik, who had been persuaded to bring Quarry down from A amp;E, and was now looking at him suspiciously. ‘I thought you said you were his brother?’
‘Just have the damned test, Al,’ said Quarry. ‘The presentation can be postponed.’
‘Exactly,’ said Gabrielle.
‘I promise you I’ll have the test,’ said Hoffmann evenly. ‘Just not today. Is that all right with you, Doctor? I’m not going to collapse or anything?’
‘ Monsieur,’ said the grey-haired radiologist, who had been on duty since the previous afternoon and was losing patience, ‘what you do, and do not do, is entirely your decision. The wound should definitely be stitched, in my opinion, and if you leave you will be required to sign a form releasing the hospital from all responsibility. The rest is up to you.’
‘Fine. I’ll have it stitched, and I’ll sign the form. And then I’ll come back and have the MRI another time, when it’s more convenient. Happy?’ he said to Gabrielle.
Before she could reply, a familiar electronic reveille sounded. It took him a moment to realise it was the alarm on his mobile, which he had set for six thirty in what felt to him already like another life.
Hoffmann left his wife sitting with Quarry in the reception area of the accident and emergency department while he went back into the cubicle to have his wound stitched up. He was given a local anaesthetic, administered by syringe – a moment of sharp pain that made him gasp – and then a thin strip of hair was shaved from around the wound with a disposable plastic razor. The process of stitching felt strange rather than uncomfortable, as if his scalp was being tightened. Afterwards, Dr Celik produced a small mirror and showed Hoffmann his handiwork, like a hairdresser seeking approval from a customer. The cut was only about five centimetres long. Stitched together it resembled a twisted mouth with thick white lips where the hair had been removed. It seemed to leer at Hoffmann in the glass.
‘It will hurt,’ said Celik cheerfully, ‘when the anaesthetic wears off. You will need to take painkillers.’ He took away the mirror and the smile vanished.
‘You’re not going to bandage it up?’
‘No, it will heal quicker if it’s exposed.’
‘Good. In that case, I’ll leave now.’
Celik shrugged. ‘That is your right. But first you must sign a form.’
After he had signed the little chit – ‘I declare that I am leaving the University Hospital contrary to medical advice, despite being informed of the risks, and that I assume full responsibility’ – Hoffmann picked up his bag of clothes and followed Celik to a small shower cubicle. Celik switched on the light. As he turned away the Turk muttered, barely audibly, ‘Asshole’ – or at any rate that was what Hoffmann thought he said, but the door closed before he could respond.
It was the first time he had been alone since he recovered consciousness, and for a moment he revelled in his solitude. He took off his dressing gown and pyjamas. There was a mirror on the opposite wall and he paused to examine his naked reflection under the merciless neon strip: his skin sallow, his stomach slack, his breasts slightly more visible than they used to be, like a pubescent girl’s. Some of his chest hair was grey. A long black bruise extended across his left hip. He twisted sideways to examine himself, ran his fingers along the grazed and darkened skin, then briefly cupped his penis. There was no reaction, and he wondered: could a blow on the head render one impotent? Glancing down, his feet seemed to him unnaturally splayed and veined on the cold tile floor. This is old age, he thought with a shock, this is the future: I look like that portrait by Lucian Freud Gabrielle wanted me to buy. He bent to pick up the bag and for a moment the room went fuzzy and he swayed slightly. He sat down on the white plastic chair with his head between his knees.
After he had recovered, he dressed slowly and deliberately – boxer shorts, T-shirt, socks, jeans, a plain white long-sleeved shirt, a sports jacket – and with each item he felt a little stronger, a degree less vulnerable. Gabrielle had put his wallet inside his jacket pocket. He checked the contents. He had three thousand Swiss francs in new notes. He sat down and pulled on a pair of desert boots, and when he stood and looked at himself in the mirror again, he felt satisfactorily camouflaged. His clothes said nothing at all about him, which was the way he liked it. A hedge fund manager with ten billion dollars in assets under management could these days pass for the guy who delivered his parcels. In this respect if no other, money – big money, confident money, money that had no need to show off – had become democratic.
There was a knock on the door, and he heard the radiologist, Dr Dufort, calling his name. ‘Monsieur Hoffmann? Monsieur Hoffmann, are you all right?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ he called back, ‘much better.’
‘I am going off duty now. I have something for you.’ He opened the door. She had put on a raincoat and rubber boots and was carrying an umbrella. ‘Here. These are your CAT scan results.’ She thrust a CD in a clear plastic case into his hands. ‘If you want my advice, you should take them to your own doctor as soon as possible.’
‘I will, of course, thank you.’
‘Will you?’ She gave him a sceptical look. ‘You know, you should. If there is something wrong, it won’t go away. Better to face one’s fears at once rather than let them fester.’
‘So you think there is something wrong?’ He detested the sound of his own voice – tremulous, pathetic.
‘I don’t know, monsieur. You need an MRI scan to determine that.’
‘What might it be, do you think?’ Hoffmann hesitated. ‘A tumour?’
‘No, I don’t think that.’
‘What, then?’
He searched her eyes for a clue but saw there only boredom; she must have to deliver bad news a lot, he realised.
She said, ‘It probably isn’t anything at all. But I suppose other explanations might include – I am only speculating, you understand? – MS perhaps, or possibly dementia. Best to be prepared.’ She patted his hand. ‘See your doctor, monsieur. Really, take it from me: it is always the unknown that is most frightening.’
4
The slightest advantage in one being, at any age or during any season, over those with which it comes into competition, or better adaptation in however slight a degree to the surrounding physical conditions, will turn the balance.
Some in the secretive inner counsels of the super-rich occasionally wondered aloud why Hoffmann had made Quarry an equal shareholder in Hoffmann Investment Technologies: it was, after all, the physicist’s algorithms that
