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

by LJ Ross

  He had therefore come to the conclusion that, in order to achieve anything near to unity, the co-habiting personalities must first learn to live together. Accepting and acknowledging the different identities would be the first step in also acknowledging the problem and bringing it out into the light, rather than relying on dissociative amnesia to block out those parts the primary identity didn’t want to remember.

  And, in the case of Eva and Camille, forgiveness was the key.

  CHAPTER 31

  Madeleine Paquet left the sheltered housing development where her mother lived with mixed emotions.

  On the one hand, her mother was thriving. There was colour in her cheeks, and her mobility seemed to be a little better, after being on the drugs plan for the past couple of years. It was incredible what modern medicine could do.

  But it came at a price.

  The monthly care bill weighed heavily in her bag, and on her heart. No matter how hard she worked, singing could never pay a bill like that—unless she struck lucky and landed herself a record deal of some kind, which was pie in the sky—leaving no option but to continue as she was.

  Trapped.

  The modelling was manageable, but she resented having to work for Leroux after all that had happened, and resented having to pretend it was okay. She was, fundamentally, an honest person, who wanted a simple life, with a family and children to love—eventually. There were things she hoped to achieve; things that relied upon her mind, rather than her body. She was tired of speaking without being heard; tired of needing to raise her voice to express an opinion, then being told to be quiet by the men in the room. She was more than the sum total of the shell she lived in.

  As she rounded a corner and made her way to her apartment, her thoughts turned to the latest man in her life.

  Alexander.

  He seemed so unlike all the others she’d known. He listened, for one thing, and seemed to care about her opinion—seeking it out and considering it before choosing whether to agree or disagree. He’d never once belittled her, nor reduced her to an object. The man had principles, but he wasn’t afraid to take chances, as he had with her. He had a quiet way about him, an understated strength that she found attractive—but she wasn’t blind to the rest.

  For all his kindness to them, and his efforts to help them, Alex didn’t really trust people. He viewed them with suspicion—herself included. She sensed that it wasn’t merely the circumstances under which they’d met, or what she’d told him about her past, but rather a default position he occupied, regardless of the company he kept. She wanted to know what had happened to him, what was so bad as to fracture his belief, but he held himself apart and whenever she felt she was drawing nearer to the ‘real’ person, he withdrew even further.

  If only Alex would give a little more of himself, or even the hope of more, she might be able to imagine a future with him. As it was, she imagined a life of always trying, always striving, but never quite reaching that elusive goal.

  Madeleine let herself into the mansion block where she lived, and set down a small bag of fruit and vegetables while she checked the post box.

  At the very top was a plain brown envelope.

  Curious, she opened it to find a short stack of photos and, as she glanced at the first few, her stomach began to heave and roll.

  Thoughts of being able to support herself and her mother, of ever being able to show her face again, all disappeared into dust; for there, in glossy colour print, were explicit, long-range photographs of her with Alex, alongside older ones taken from some of the parties she’d attended more than two years before.

  The very last picture was one of her modelling shots, a nice summer bikini shot of her on a beach, taken the previous summer. It had been defaced with a black marker pen, and a long scar had been added to her face, as well as several more on her torso.

  * * *

  Oblivious to the shock Madeleine had just received, Alex Gregory continued to guide Eva and Camille towards a mutual understanding. On one hand, he was dealing with a downtrodden victim of domestic abuse, whose confidence and perspective had been lost. On the other, he had a confident, unapologetic woman who wanted to waste no more time before grasping everything life had to offer. Throw a lost baby and some physical trauma into the mix, and there was quite a range of issues to deal with.

  The fact both women occupied the same body seemed incidental, by comparison.

  “You can’t go back to Jean-Pierre,” Camille was telling her alter-ego. “You deserve better.”

  “He loves me,” Eva mumbled.

  “Do you love him?” Camille demanded. “Because, if you do, you’re an idiot. Anyone can see he’s been screwing around, aside from all the kicks and slaps.”

  Eva stood up suddenly and began to pace, shaking her head vehemently from side to side while Gregory inched forward in his seat, ready to intervene if necessary.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” she said. “He’s—he might have made a lot of mistakes, in the past, but Jean-Pierre wouldn’t do that.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, wake up!” Camille shouted. “Why do you think he stays out so late at night? Why do you think he hardly noticed when you weren’t home, Eva? Because he wasn’t there, either.”

  “Everything would have been different, once the baby came along,” Eva cried back. “You took that from me! You took the only thing I had!”

  Eva dissolved into pitiful tears, and Gregory held up a hand to prevent Agnés from rushing forward to comfort her. He might have wanted to do the same but, in this conversation between Eva and Camille, they were merely the facilitators. If any kind of resolution was to be reached, the two women must build their own bridge.

  “I’m sorry, Eva,” Camille said, very quietly. “But I’d do the same again. You think it was just because of the modelling, but it wasn’t. Bringing Jean-Pierre’s child into the world wouldn’t ‘fix’ him or make him any kinder. It would give him another person to bully, and I couldn’t allow that to happen. I had to be strong, for both of us.”

  In the corner of the room, Agnés put a hand to her mouth to stifle sudden tears and quietly stepped outside. Gregory bore down against his own emotions, hearing the heartache and the sorrow, and he knew they were getting closer.

  “I wouldn’t have let him hurt the child,” Eva whispered. “I’d have killed him, first.”

  But she thought of all the savage ways Jean-Pierre had wounded her, in body and in mind, and knew that some things were like a tidal wave and simply could not be stopped.

  “I’m sorry I attacked you,” Eva said, and Gregory realised she was staring at her own reflection in the window, which was like a mirror in the gathering dusk outside. “I’m sorry you were afraid.”

  Camille nodded.

  “What do we do now?” she asked. “I won’t be leaving, and neither will you, unless something changes.”

  “Where would we go? He has all the money—”

  “We get a lawyer,” Camille said. “A good one. I have some earnings due to me from the shoots I did before—well, before the accident.”

  Eva nodded.

  “Would you come with me?” she asked. “To speak to the police, and to the lawyer?”

  “I’ll stay with you as long as you need me to,” Camille replied, and put her hand out to touch the glass. “We’ll work this out, together.”

  Gregory found himself deeply moved; not by the experience of having witnessed an extraordinary episode in the psychiatric world, but by the power of mutual empowerment. It had not been he, the clinician, who had helped them to understand one another. Eva and Camille had managed that all on their own.

  CHAPTER 32

  When Gregory returned to his hotel, he found Madeleine waiting for him in the foyer.

  She stood up as soon as he entered, and one look at her pale face told him something dreadful had happened.

  He covered the distance quickly.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, and held her arms in a light g
rip, for support. “Is it your mother?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, it’s—can we…”

  He curved an arm around her shoulders and led her swiftly towards the lift, then up to his bedroom and away from prying eyes. Once they were inside, she sank onto the edge of his bed and pulled an envelope from her handbag.

  “This was delivered to me, sometime this morning or last night,” she said, holding it out to him. “See for yourself.”

  He handed her a glass of water, which she held between her numb fingers, while he took the envelope from her and held it on the extreme edge. Having spent long enough in the company of police to know that trace evidence should be preserved, he took a napkin from the minibar and pinched it between his fingers, using it to handle the photos which fell from the envelope and onto the desk.

  Gregory was silent as he looked through the paltry collection, his anger rising with every fresh intrusion of their privacy, a feeling that only increased when he turned to the older images of a young woman who had been coerced into a scenario that was now being used against her.

  “There was a note,” she said.

  He saw it, a single sheet of white A4 paper with some printed words on the front. He read its contents, which warned Madeleine of the consequences of speaking out, specifically that the images would be handed over to every press outlet in Paris and that her career and, perhaps more importantly, her reputation would be destroyed.

  “I’m not ashamed of the images of the two of us, although I doubt the Police Judiciaire will feel that way,” she said, in a voice heavy with tears. “It’s the older images, they’re…” She swallowed bile. “It’s like a living reminder of everything I’ve tried to forget and move past. I don’t remember anyone taking photographs but, obviously, they did. I can’t—Alex, I can’t begin to imagine how much this will hurt my mother.”

  Her voice broke and he moved to sit beside her on the bed, pulling her into his arms and wrapping them tightly around her.

  “It doesn’t have to hurt her,” he said quietly. “Madeleine, these images, and the person or people who sent them, only have any power so long as we’re afraid. We need to regain the upper hand, and neutralise the threat.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The person who delivered this to you has been very stupid,” he said. “Hand-delivered items are the easiest to trace back, and that’s discounting any CCTV that might have captured them pushing it through your letterbox. There’s only one thing to do, and that’s take it to the police.”

  “But le cochon must be one of them,” she said. “How do we know who to tell?”

  “We have to trust someone,” he said, and she looked up at him with a startled expression. “We’ll go first thing tomorrow morning. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “But Alex, they’ll probably kick you off the case,” she said. “I don’t want your professional reputation to be damaged—”

  “So you would sacrifice your own, instead?” he asked, and shook his head. “No, Madeleine. We knew that, by continuing to see one another, we were trespassing over a professional boundary. I’ll accept the consequences of my decision.”

  “I’ll have to tell them all about what happened,” she said, half to herself.

  “Do you think you can do it?” he asked, with a hint of challenge that wasn’t lost on her.

  “Yes,” she said. “I can do it.”

  He took her hand.

  “We’ll do it together,” he said, echoing Camille’s words, only an hour before.

  * * *

  “You stupid old man.”

  Gabrielle Leroux looked at her husband with eyes that were narrowed in contempt.

  “My love, I didn’t think—”

  Her soft, pale hand connected with the side of his face in a hard slap.

  “I’ll do the thinking, in future.”

  She paced away to pour herself a stiff drink, which she knocked back in one gulp before placing both palms on the marble countertop of their enormous kitchen.

  “It was idiotic to deliver that envelope,” she said, feeling Armand hovering beside her, desperate once again for her approval. “Even le cochon won’t be able to save us, now.”

  “Maybe—”

  “Quiet,” she snarled, turning to him with eyes that were like cold chips of ice. “This isn’t the eighties, anymore. Things are different. Do you think I didn’t know about your little parties? Do you think I’m blind?”

  “I—”

  “Shut up. I tolerate it for the good of the business, for the good of the brand. At least have the decency to try to hide your exploits, in future.”

  “There won’t be—”

  She simply shook her head.

  “The priority is to keep you out of prison, and out of the papers. I don’t care what it takes. You need to go to Caron.”

  “The Commissaire? No, she isn’t part of it—”

  “I know,” Gabrielle said, and rolled her eyes heavenward. “You will go to her first thing in the morning, and explain that you will turn on le cochon so long as you are afforded immunity from prosecution and your name is kept off the official papers.”

  “Do you think it will work? It needs to be very discreet…”

  Gabrielle turned to him and pinned him with a glare.

  “You will make sure it works, Armand—otherwise you’re finished.”

  “We—”

  “Oh, no,” she interrupted, in that breathy voice he’d once found alluring. “Not ‘we’, Armand. You. Perhaps you’re forgetting that I have independent means, whereas you’ve spent the past twenty years pissing away everything you ever made on the stock market. My father will have no desire to bankroll you any further, and I will simply divorce you and tell my tale as another one of your hapless victims, whilst taking my money and my brand with me.”

  He thought he might embarrass himself by crying.

  “Please, Gaby. It was a stupid mistake.”

  “First thing tomorrow morning,” she repeated, before stalking out of the room.

  CHAPTER 33

  Monday 30th September

  The leaves fell in shades of brown and gold, lining the avenues of Paris as the city recovered from a week of parties, shows and press junkets—and, of course, the murder of one of its most high-profile models. The press continued to report on Juliette Deschamps’ murder, alongside Camille Duquette’s mysterious identity crisis, and the women’s movement with the slogan ‘JE SUIS ELLE, ET ELLE EST MOI’ had seized on their experiences as prime examples of a toxic patriarchy, not merely within the fashion world, but throughout their beautiful city.

  And they were about to add another face to their number.

  Madeleine Paquet leaned on Gregory’s arm for support as they arrived outside a smart front door in the Marais district, not far from his hotel on the other side of the Seine. It was one of the oldest parts of the city, home to the legendary Bastille and now an upmarket residential and shopping area, popular with tourists and locals alike.

  “It’ll be fine,” he murmured, giving her hand a quick squeeze. “Just tell the truth.”

  Commissaire Caron opened the door herself.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us away from the Trente-Six,” Gregory said, once they were seated around her kitchen table.

  “You told me very little over the phone,” Caron said. “But the fact we’re speaking here and not at the PJ tells me it concerns my department.”

  Gregory nodded.

  “Allow me to introduce Madeleine Paquet,” he said, shifting towards the woman seated beside him. “You may recognise her name from the file.”

  Caron nodded.

  “As well as the moisturising cream I use every morning,” she said, with a smile that was designed to put the woman at her ease. “What is it you’d like to tell me?”

  Madeleine pulled out the envelope, and allowed its contents to do the talking.

  Caron exchanged a glance with both of them,
before pulling on a pair of gloves and picking up the unassuming bits of paper.

  When she’d finished, she stacked the photographs and returned them to the envelope before peeling off the gloves again, and steepling her fingers against her chin.

  “Setting aside the obvious conflict of interest that is brought about by the relationship between you, let’s address the bigger picture, first. Do you know who sent this to you?”

  Madeleine proceeded to explain her history with Maison Leroux, and in particular its owner, Armand, who was in the habit of coercing new, up-and-coming models like herself to attend parties he held routinely for important people in the city and beyond.

  “How important?” Caron asked, with a sinking heart.

  “I don’t remember all of them,” Madeleine replied, but went on to name several senior figures whose names she recognised.

  By the time she’d finished, Caron was incensed. She knew what it was to fight and claw her way up the ladder, and what it took to stay there. At least half of the people Madeleine had just named had, at one time or another, offered to help with her departmental budget at the next council meeting. But there were lines in the sand, invisible ones she refused to cross—not even for her own self-interest. She kept a tidy house and, if there was a clean-up operation to do at the Trente-Six, she didn’t mind getting her hands dirty.

  “This person—le cochon—do you know who it is?”

  Madeleine shook her head.

  “Never mind. You did the right thing bringing this to my door, and I’ll mount an enquiry using our own internal affairs officers. Would you be willing to make a statement?” she asked.

  Madeleine glanced at Gregory, who gave her hand another encouraging squeeze.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll go on the record.”

  Caron nodded, understanding the commitment that took, and what the woman stood to lose.

  “If your lawyer files a private civil claim, as well as the criminal complaint, you can sue Armand Leroux and any associated persons for damages,” she pointed out. “That might help with your mother’s care, down the road, if anything should affect your main source of income.”