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Chapters (63)
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  63. Acknowledgements

‘I see you’re admiring my ammonites,’ Gessen said. ‘Fascinating, aren’t they?’ He paused. ‘Until I was lured away by the call of medicine, I began my studies in mathematics and wrote a thesis on Fibonacci spirals in nature. A lovely sequence. Do you know it?’

Vidor’s shocked expression turned quickly to suspicion. ‘Of course I know it. It is deeply embedded in my bones.’ He tapped his sternum. ‘I, too, wrote a thesis on the Fibonacci sequence as an undergraduate.’

‘Did you? How strange.’ Once again, Gessen had the unsettling feeling that he and Vidor, following their separate journeys from birth, had landed on the opposite sides of the same coin. ‘And where did you write your thesis, in Paris?’

‘Cambridge.’ His voice was flat. ‘As I told you several times already, I left for England soon after earning my baccalaureate.’

Gessen waited for him to fill the silence, but Vidor remained mute. ‘Do you mind if I put on some music?’ He rose from the chair. ‘I find it helps to settle the mind.’ He pressed a button on the remote and adjusted the volume as the opening notes of a Bach violin concerto filled the room. ‘Close your eyes,’ he said, lowering the lights. ‘Allow the music to fill your senses.’

Fibonacci spirals, Bach. What next, chanting and crystals? Gessen was rapidly running out of ideas. With a murder charge hanging over Vidor’s head, there was no time to waste. But getting at the root of the problem was impossible, as long as he failed to discover the crack in Vidor’s defences. How could he possibly prove amok syndrome, or any other form of temporary psychosis, with no evidence of festering trauma to work with? Vidor’s toxicology screen in Copenhagen was clear, so he couldn’t point to mind-altering drugs as a mitigating factor.

Even his blood glucose levels, which Vidor insisted was the real cause of the attack, had been perfectly normal. His EEG checked out as well, though a single recording wasn’t sufficient to rule out temporal lobe epilepsy. He could schedule a longer EEG and try to induce a seizure with flashing lights. But such assessments took time, and Vidor’s extended stay, with no ground gained, was costing Gessen money he could ill afford.