Hysteria: An Alexander Gregory Thriller (The Alexander Gregory Thrillers Book 2)

by LJ Ross

  “You couldn’t seem to remember your age, yesterday,” he remarked.

  “I couldn’t? Why not?”

  He smiled, wondering how long they had to talk about neural connectors in the brain.

  “Your mind is traumatised,” he said. “It’s processing information and feeding old memories back to you in a haphazard way. Yesterday, you remembered me, whereas today, you don’t.”

  She smiled suddenly, in a very feline way.

  “I’m sure I would remember you.”

  Gregory ignored that and moved on to the next question.

  “What about Leon?” he asked. “Do you remember anybody by that name?”

  “Of course,” she laughed. “Everybody in the fashion world knows Leon. He’s the best photographer in the industry.”

  Of course he is, Gregory thought. Especially by his own estimation.

  “And does the name Wendy Li mean anything to you?”

  A cloud passed over her face, and she was quiet for a long moment.

  “I think I know the name,” she said. “But I can’t remember how.”

  He remained silent. Sometimes, it was the most effective tool.

  “I can remember what she looks like,” Camille continued, after a couple of seconds. “She’s an old Chinese woman. Very small, with very thin hands. I think…it sounds stupid, but I think she does palm readings.”

  She looked at him in confusion.

  “Why would I go to have a palm reading?” she said. “It’s nonsense.”

  Gregory thought about how accurate his own had been, but said nothing of that.

  “You don’t remember anything else about her?” he asked. “Do you remember meeting her?”

  She held her head in her hand and visibly struggled, before her shoulders slumped.

  “It’s like—it’s like trying to grasp onto a puff of smoke,” she muttered. “Like waking up after a dream. You think it’ll stay vivid and real, but it floats away.”

  “It may come back to you,” he said, and suddenly the procureur’s voice echoed around his mind.

  She’s having you on, mon ami.

  “You seem to remember the Leroux very well,” he said, thrusting aside the self-doubt that nipped at the edges of his mind. “Can you tell me more about them?”

  “Maison Leroux is one of the best fashion houses in the world. Gabrielle asked me to model for them at Fashion Week.”

  She proclaimed it proudly, then her smile faded as she remembered the reason why she was there. “I’ve missed my chance, now,” she whispered.

  “Do you remember when you first met Gabrielle?”

  Yesterday, it had been a difficult question but, today, it seemed an easy one.

  “Sure, it was a few weeks ago,” she said, without hesitation. “I ran into her on the street, on the Place Vendome.”

  “What were you doing there?” he asked.

  Once again, she opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

  “I—I must have been—I’m not sure. It was at night.”

  He nodded, making a note.

  “All right. What did Gabrielle say?”

  “She said I had a great ‘look’,” Camille replied, dully. “She asked me if I’d ever considered modelling.”

  “Had you?”

  “What?”

  “Wanted to be a model, as a little girl?”

  “I—I don’t know. I can’t remember anything before meeting Gabrielle.”

  Gregory steepled his forefinger and thumb against his temple, considering the best way to approach the problem.

  “What about Armand? Do you remember the first time you met him?”

  “Sure,” she said. “It was at a party he and his wife threw to welcome their new ‘family’. They call us ‘family’ so that we’ll all try and get along.”

  “And, do you? Get along?”

  She nodded.

  “Well enough,” she said. “Some people never like fresh blood on the scene, so they make things difficult. I don’t mind that.”

  There was the hard-nosed side again, he thought.

  “You were telling me about Armand.”

  “Oh, yeah. There isn’t much to tell, really. He leaves his wife to make the creative decisions while he eats, or makes phone calls, or sleeps on a sofa somewhere.”

  That sounded about right, Gregory had to admit.

  “Camille, do you know anybody who would wish to hurt you? Do you remember anything at all about your attack?”

  She ran a nervous hand through her hair, then touched gentle fingers to the bandage on her cheek.

  “I—all I remember is the pain,” she said, choking back fresh tears. “And anger. They seemed so angry.”

  He leaned forward.

  “They? Camille, do you think it was a man or a woman who attacked you? Try to visualise their face—”

  But she started to cry softly, wrapping her arms around her body as she rocked back and forth.

  “I—I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

  * * *

  Gregory tried to work around her mental blocks for a while longer, reversing this way and that, but, by the end of their conversation, Camille was exhausted. He elicited a promise that she should call him or the nurse if she felt frightened or panicked, and promised in return to take her for a walk the following day, once she’d regained her strength.

  Her eyes barely staying open, Camille agreed, and Agnés reappeared to draw the curtains and tuck her into bed for a nap.

  “If she has another episode, call me straight away,” Gregory murmured, once she had fallen into a dead sleep. “Her mind is extremely fragile and, to tell you the truth, I don’t know which version of Camille you’ll get the next time she wakes up.”

  The nurse nodded, looking across at the woman the press still called ‘Sleeping Beauty’.

  “Do you think she’ll recover?”

  “She’s already recovering,” he replied. “Her memories are coming back thick and fast but, unfortunately, not fast enough. If she could only remember something of the attack, it might be the key to everything.”

  As he was preparing to leave, there came a knock at the door.

  He waved Agnés away and checked the peephole, surprised to find that particular visitor standing in the hallway outside.

  “Madeleine?”

  He opened the door and drank in the sight of her.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said shyly. “I spoke to Procureur Segal, and he said it was alright to visit—”

  Gregory held off making any inflammatory remarks about the prosecutor’s ability to judge a patient’s fitness to receive visitors, since it was a moot point.

  “Camille’s asleep at the moment,” he told her. “And I’m afraid she’s had a rough day.”

  “Oh—I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, looking down at the small bunch of flowers she’d brought with her. “Would it be alright to leave these for her?”

  He smiled, wondering what it was about her that he found so appealing. She had beauty, yes; but there were many kinds of beauty, and the most obvious seldom appealed to him. There had to be something else, something more substantial than the shape of her face and the lines of her body—though, as a red-blooded heterosexual male, he wasn’t hypocrite enough to deny their appeal.

  “I’m singing at the Café Laurent again tonight,” Madeleine was saying. “I was planning to have an early dinner, if you’d like to join me?”

  The nurse made a good show of pretending not to listen, as she took the flowers to douse them in water.

  “Ah—”

  He hesitated, grappling between Doctor Gregory and Alex, uncertain as to who presently had the upper hand.

  “If you’re busy, it’s no problem,” she said, huskily. “I heard what happened to Juliette, so you must be busy helping the police with their investigation.”

  And he heard the grief that was written all over her face, as well as the fear.

  He had a report to write
and some research to do but, after that…

  “See you at five?”

  She smiled brilliantly and reached up to bestow a soft kiss, before heading back out into the sunny Autumn afternoon.

  Before he could make his own way out, Agnés’s voice stopped him.

  “Careful, Doctor. You wouldn’t be the first to be blinded by a pretty face.”

  Wise words, he thought, and worth remembering.

  CHAPTER 25

  “We lost another one, Bill.”

  Gregory watched a group of tourists passing by, from his position at the window seat of a café at the summit of the Trocadéro, a hill overlooking the Eiffel Tower from the north side of the River Seine, not far from the Arc de Triomphe. It was the perfect spot to take pictures, and people swarmed the wide palazzo-style terrace to capture the perfect image to put on their mantelpiece, while his thoughts turned to murder.

  “Tell me about it,” his friend invited.

  It was mid-morning in Boston, and Professor Bill Douglas had another speech to prepare, but it could wait.

  “Juliette Deschamps, model and mother of one,” Gregory said simply. “Young, with everything to live for.”

  Douglas heard the sadness in his friend’s voice and was sorry for it. Their work left bruises on the heart, ones that never fully healed.

  “I seem to recognise the name,” he said.

  “You may well do,” Gregory said, as a television fixed to the far wall of the café began to roll out the early evening news and a picture of Juliette filled the entire screen beside the words ‘BUTCHER STRIKES AGAIN’. “She’s the face of various perfume and lingerie brands, but she was also one of the women who overheard Camille Duquette’s attack.”

  “That’s interesting,” Douglas said. “Do the police think that’s the motive—to silence her?”

  “They’re not committed to any particular theory at the moment, but I think it’s an interesting coincidence. Firstly, how would Camille’s attacker know that Juliette was staying next door, or that she was a witness, unless they had inside knowledge or sight of the police file?”

  Gregory watched the news reporter speak in serious, urgent tones outside Juliette’s apartment, where the Technical and Scientific Officers were still working. By now, a forensics tent had been erected outside the main entrance and the other occupants of the building evacuated to nearby hotels to allow the investigative work to continue, but it made for sombre viewing.

  Unbidden, an image of Juliette’s body floated into his mind and he swore softly, raising an espresso cup to his lips to drain the last of the strong hot liquid in an effort to cleanse himself.

  “What’s that?” Douglas said.

  “Nothing, sorry, I was distracted for a moment. The other thing to consider is what possible reason Camille’s attacker could have for wanting to silence Juliette; the police already know they’re at large.”

  “Unless she knew more than she let on,” Douglas said. “Perhaps the girl saw who it was, and threatened to blackmail them.”

  “Surely that would come out in her phone messages or calls?”

  “Not if they spoke directly,” Douglas argued. “As you said yourself, it could be someone already known to both women. Which means—”

  “It could be someone in their everyday circle,” Gregory finished. “Yes, that makes sense. Juliette could talk easily with someone she was already due to see.”

  “How is Camille’s recovery coming along?” Douglas enquired. “She’s still an important missing piece in this puzzle—if she could only remember some details.”

  “I was thinking the very same thing,” Gregory said. “She’s still displaying the classic symptoms of dissociative amnesia, by repressing traumatic memories and converting them into physical symptoms, predominantly headaches and migraines.”

  Douglas leaned back in his chair, while his encyclopaedic mind rolled back over his long career to find other examples of a case like hers.

  “She’s been recovering from injuries,” he remarked. “We can’t say for certain that her migraines are wholly psychosomatic; they may be a genuine physical response.”

  Gregory raised a hand to order another coffee.

  “I would agree, but they tend to come on during our discussions, particularly when I’m pressing her to try to recall basic information about her life.”

  “Which she doesn’t want to do?”

  “Not at all,” Gregory said. “On the policing side, we found out Camille sourced fresh identity paperwork, but we’re still no closer to uncovering her real name. It’s interesting that, when I visited her today, she hardly blinked when I referred to her as Camille, whereas yesterday it would have distressed her.”

  “Different memories coming to the fore,” Douglas muttered. “The fabric of our memories and experience make up the people we are. If Camille remembered only the last couple of weeks during which she lived a glamorous life, it’s natural she would associate with that side to her personality. Yesterday, when she couldn’t recall anything of her life as a model, she disassociated from it because she had no frame of reference.”

  Gregory agreed.

  “It’s unusual, don’t you think? Memories that are regained don’t usually slip away again, the following day.”

  “Dissociative amnesia can create temporary shifts in personality,” he said. “A shy person becomes more outgoing, and vice versa, when they have a limited frame of reference.”

  Gregory looked out of the window, but he didn’t see the crowds or the streets of Paris.

  “I know we don’t use the term ‘hysteria’ any longer, but I still think of it when I’m talking about dissociative illnesses like the amnesia Camille is experiencing, or cases of extreme somatization disorder,” he said, referring to those patients who converted their negative experiences into extreme physical ailments, without any real pathological cause. “It struck me as odd, thinking about the origin of the word.”

  “It comes from the Greek utera, meaning ‘uterus’,” Douglas said. “It’s a very self-limiting phrase, if it fails to allow for the possibility of similar symptoms in men.”

  “Exactly,” Gregory murmured. “In the early days, people thought women who displayed symptoms of ‘hysteria’ were possessed by evil spirits—they’d have called an exorcist, not a psychologist. There’s a women’s rights march in Paris today, and I couldn’t help wondering whether there’s something else underlying all this. Something insidious that has less to do with those two women, than with the world they lived in.”

  Gregory watched a motorcade of police squad cars speed past the café, sirens blazing, and knew they had been called in to quell the protests.

  “You’re thinking they got caught up in something, and their femininity was used against them? Harassment of some kind, perhaps?”

  Gregory thought of Armand Leroux and his reputation with women, and wondered.

  “Something’s rumbling beneath all this, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “It could be much simpler than you think,” Douglas said, playing devil’s advocate. “The danger in our business is over-thinking matters, and looking for complicated explanations when the simplest may be the most appropriate. It could be your run-of-the-mill serial killer on the loose, and he has a refined taste for pretty young women.”

  “Since when did serial killers become ‘run-of-the-mill’?” Gregory said, with a smile.

  “You know what I mean. If we stripped away all the unique circumstances of Camille’s identity fraud and her peculiar psychological response to trauma, we’d be left with—sadly—another young woman fallen prey to attack, most likely from someone who developed an unhealthy fixation and wildly inappropriate fantasies about violence. They’re easier to profile, for one thing.”

  “Easier to profile, maybe—but harder to find.”

  Douglas blew out a breath.

  “You don’t have to find the bastard, you only have to build up a picture of what their mind looks like. L
eave the police to do their job, Alex, while you concentrate on yours. There may be something you’ve missed.”

  Long after the call ended, Gregory remained seated to watch the news report that was still rolling on the television across the room. The faces of two women now filled the screen, the press having assumed a connection between the victims based on their profession alone.

  Perhaps Douglas was right.

  Maybe it was that simple.

  CHAPTER 26

  As Gregory made his way to meet Madeleine Paquet, two other people met at a tiny bar on the Île Saint-Louis. The area was one of two natural islands in the River Seine, accessible via four bridges, including one connecting it to the larger Île de la Cité that was home to Notre-Dame, as well as the former headquarters of the Brigade Criminelle. It was a historic part of town and, whilst the land might once have been used to graze cattle, it was now an upmarket stalwart of the 4th Arrondissement.

  “It’s dangerous to be seen here.”

  The other smiled genially.

  “On the contrary, it’s the safest place to be. Nobody from the PJ would come here to drink; it’s far too close to the office. Besides, the place is full of tourists. Who would know or remember our faces?”

  They paused as a fresh group of students piled into the drinking hole, laden with backpacks and selfie sticks, and they barely glanced at the pair seated in the corner.

  “I need to ask whether you’re involved.”

  The other took a swig of red wine, then set it carefully back on the marble-topped table.

  “You need to ask?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think?”

  “You’re being evasive,” the other hissed. “Just answer me. I need to know.”

  “Surely, it’s better for someone in your position to remain in ignorance. If anything should come to light, it will look bad for both of us. At least, this way, you can deny all knowledge.”

  “Will anything come to light?”

  “Not if we’re careful.”

  “The profiler—”

  “Hasn’t got a clue,” the other snapped. “Camille can’t tell him anything and, as for the other one, she can’t say very much now, can she?”