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some poorer and less-favoured land: the kingdom of the sick, where every citizen was second class. It irritated him to recall how Gabrielle and Leclerc had looked at him when he had showed them The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals – as if the obvious connection between the book and the attack was merely the fevered product of an injured brain. He had brought the volume with him; it was resting in his lap; he tapped his finger against it restlessly.
    The ambulance swerved around the corner and the female attendant put out her hand to steady him. Hoffmann scowled at her. He had no confidence in the Geneva police or in government departments generally. He had no confidence in anyone much, except himself. He searched his dressing gown pockets for his mobile.
    Gabrielle, watching him from the opposite seat, next to the ambulance woman, said, ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘I’m calling Hugo.’
    She rolled her eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Alex …’
    ‘What? He needs to know what’s happened.’ As Hoffmann listened to the number ringing, he reached over and took her hand to mollify her. ‘I’m feeling much better, really.’
    Eventually Quarry came on the line. ‘Alex?’ For once his normally languid voice was strained with anxiety: when is a phone call before dawn ever good news? ‘What the hell is it?’
    ‘Sorry to call this early, Hugo. We’ve had an intruder.’
    ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?’
    ‘Gabrielle’s okay. I got a whack on the head. We’re in an ambulance going to the hospital.’
    ‘Which hospital?’
    ‘The university, I think.’ Hoffmann looked at Gabrielle for confirmation. She nodded. ‘Yeah, the university.’
    ‘I’m on my way.’
    A couple of minutes later the ambulance swept up the approach road to the big teaching hospital. Through the smoked-glass window Hoffmann briefly glimpsed its scale – a huge place: ten floors, lit up like some great foreign airport terminal in the darkness – then the lights vanished as if a curtain had been pulled across them. The ambulance descended along a gently circling subterranean passage and pulled to a halt. The engine was cut. In the silence, Gabrielle gave him a reassuring smile and Hoffmann thought: Abandon hope all ye who enter here . The rear doors swung open on to what looked like a spotlessly clean underground car park. A man shouted in the distance, his voice echoing off the concrete walls.
    Hoffmann was instructed to lie down, and this time he decided not to argue: he had entered into the system; he must submit to its processes. He stretched out, the bed was lowered, and with a horrible feeling of helplessness he allowed himself to be wheeled along mysterious factory-like corridors, staring up at the strip lighting until, at a reception desk, he was briefly parked. An accompanying gendarme handed over his paperwork. Hoffmann watched as his details were registered, then turned his head on the pillow and glanced across the crowded room to where a television news channel played to a heedless audience of drunks and addicts. On the screen, Japanese traders with cell phones clamped to their ears were shown in various attitudes of horror and despair. But before he could find out any more, he was on the move again, down a short corridor and into an empty cubicle.
    Gabrielle sat on a moulded plastic chair, took out a powder compact and started applying lipstick in quick, nervous strokes. Hoffmann watched her as if she were a stranger: so dark and neat and self-contained, like a cat washing her face. She had been doing exactly this when he first saw her, at a party in Saint-Genis-Pouilly. A harassed young Turkish doctor came in with a clipboard; a plastic name tag attached to his white coat announced him as Dr Muhammet Celik. He consulted Hoffmann’s notes. He shone a light into his eyes, struck his knee with a small hammer and asked him to name the president of the United States and then to count backwards from one