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

by LJ Ross

  They paused while Gregory bought a couple of short coffees, enjoying the scent of roasted beans as the liquid percolated through a machine that had been built into the back of a tiny, three-wheeled van.

  “The Leroux are what you might call a power couple,” Durand said, once they were armed with brown cardboard cups. “They’re in every social column, they attend all the best parties and events. Their clothes are worn at the Oscars and the Golden Globes, the Césars and at Cannes. Officially, they’re a wealthy, happily married couple.”

  “But?”

  Durand inclined his head.

  “But the gossip columns say that Armand has an eye for the ladies.”

  Gregory thought privately that the statistical propensity for infidelity amongst French men was hardly newsworthy.

  “If that’s true, it must be difficult working with a smorgasbord of beautiful women every day,” he said. “But infidelity isn’t a crime.”

  Durand shook his head.

  “Rendre grâce á Dieu,” he muttered, as they drew nearer to the site where the marquee had been pitched.

  Security railings had been set up around the perimeter of the marquee, manned by dark-suited, ex-military security staff. A long, red carpet had been laid out and ran from a roadside entrance up to a canopied portico. Torches had been staked into the ground and, once lit, would create a mock runway for all those who entered.

  “I bet I can guess what you’re thinking,” Durand said, with a touch of smugness. “You’re wondering whether the lovely Madeleine will be waiting for you in there, non?”

  Gregory shook his head.

  “Actually, I was wondering what they’ll do if it starts to rain.”

  * * *

  The skies remained cold but cloudless and, as the sun eventually slipped into the horizon and the torches were lit, Gregory and Durand entered the backstage area of the marquee. There, they were faced with a cacophony of chattering men and women—well over a hundred, taking into account all the hairdressers, make-up artists and photographers, design staff and technicians who made up the fabric of Maison Leroux.

  Durand seemed momentarily dumbfounded by the concentration of so much glamour in so small a space, and Gregory took it upon himself to do the talking.

  “Excuse me, we’re looking for Mme Leroux?”

  The hairdresser he’d spoken to waved a roller brush in the direction of an anteroom that was partially hidden behind a set of artificial conifers.

  “Là dedans,” she said.

  Gregory thanked her and then nudged Durand forward. They made their way through an open plan dressing space with banks of chairs and mirrors, each bearing the name of the model who would be stationed there, alongside a number of photographs depicting the various ‘looks’ they would be modelling that evening. On the other side of the room, there were rows of clothing rails with similar name tags attached.

  As they passed by, Gregory caught sight of a slender woman disappearing into the forest of silks and satins, and could have sworn it was Madeleine.

  Has my boy got a crush?

  At the sound of his mother’s voice, Gregory’s heart began to pound against the wall of his chest, while his skin broke into a clammy sweat.

  He heard her laughter so clearly, she might have been standing beside him.

  Unable to stop himself, Gregory swung around to check over his shoulder, eyes wide and searching.

  But, of course, there was nobody there except a roomful of fashionable people, none of whom was his mother.

  “Alex?”

  Turning back, he found Durand looking at him strangely.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Alex consciously relaxed his shoulders.

  “Fine,” he said. “Just a bit hot in here, that’s all.”

  Durand’s small, mole-like eyes continued to search his face and Gregory had the uncomfortable sensation that he was trying to peel back the layers of his mind, to see what lay buried in its deepest core.

  Was this what his patients felt like, as they sat opposite him in the consulting room?

  He was saved from answering any probing questions by the sound of a man’s high-pitched voice carrying across the room.

  “Where is he? Is that him?”

  A man of around Durand’s age sauntered towards them and, even without the professional camera swinging at his hip, Gregory would have guessed the newcomer to be a photographer. There could be no mistaking the uniform of form-fitting black jeans and shirt—with a couple of buttons left open at the collar—not to mention the loosely-draped scarf and an assortment of beaded jewellery that looked so cheap that Gregory could be reasonably sure it was eye-wateringly expensive.

  Alex scarcely had time to prepare himself before the man grabbed his chin in a vice-like grip and turned his face this way and that, then stepped back to run a critical eye over the rest of his physique.

  “You don’t look anything like your portfolio,” he said accusingly. “You’re an inch shorter, for one thing, you need a haircut, and you should have had more sleep. But…perhaps we can do something with the rest of you.”

  “Thank you,” Gregory said, gravely, while Durand goggled at them both. “However, I think there’s been a mistake. I’m not part of the show, I’m here with the police.”

  He gestured towards Durand, who took out his identification card. The photographer looked at him as if he were an unusual sort of specimen, then peered at the writing on the card.

  “Mathis Durand, Brigade Criminelle,” he read. “I spoke to your colleagues the other day. They came to take statements from all of us.”

  While his head was turned, Gregory noticed for the first time that the entire right side of the photographer’s neck was covered in an old burns scar, which had been concealed beneath the folds of his voluminous scarf. He wondered how it had happened—nosiness being an active by-product of his profession.

  “And you are Leon Boucher, I presume?”

  The photographer inclined his head in answer to Durand’s question, with the complacent air of one who expected his name to be recognised instantly.

  “I am Leon,” he said, and then turned his attention back to Gregory. “A pity. I would have liked to do something with your face, perhaps in monotone, playing with the shadows.”

  Alex was momentarily lost for words.

  “Doctor Gregory will be far too busy helping us with our investigation,’’ Durand said, taking pity on him.

  “Ah, yes. Poor Camille,” Leon sighed. “Such a waste.”

  “Did you know her well?” Gregory asked, since the man seemed to be in a talkative mood.

  “Hardly at all,” he replied. “It’s like I said to the other inspector, Gabrielle sent her to me for a test shoot, to see if she had the right look on film. It’s one thing to see a pretty woman on the street, but it doesn’t mean they’ll take a good photo,” he added. “Anyway, she came into my studio a couple of weeks ago with frizzy hair and heavy make-up, looking like some little putain—which is what I told her before I sent her into the bathroom to scrub it all off.”

  Gregory began to realise what Durand had meant about the fashion world being cutthroat.

  “What were your impressions of her, aside from that?” Durand asked him.

  Leon lifted a bony shoulder.

  “She was…confident,” he said, meaningfully. “She had no modelling experience but, after a little direction, it was as though she’d been in front of the camera her whole life. Gabrielle was very pleased with the images and decided to hire Camille for several editorials we had coming up, as well as Fashion Week.”

  “Did you like her?” Gregory asked, simply.

  Leon looked away.

  “It isn’t my job to like the models I photograph,” he said, evasively.

  “Honesty is best,” Durand murmured. “We’re investigating attempted murder, not a parking fine, my friend.”

  Leon swept his fringe out of his eyes and, as he did, Gregory caught sight of som
e scratches on his inner wrist.

  “Hurt yourself?” he asked.

  The photographer looked down and then gave a self-deprecating laugh, tugging the cuff of his shirt to cover them.

  “That? It was my cat, Marie Antoinette. She is a beast, who rules my apartment with an iron claw—just like her namesake.”

  Gregory smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  “You were telling us whether you liked Camille.”

  The smile faded from Leon’s eyes.

  “What do you want me to say? That she was demanding and difficult? She was,” he said. “I told her she should wise up and remember there were many other girls who could step into her shoes, just like that.”

  He clicked his fingers, which were covered in silver rings.

  “The truth is, she had something rare that was unpractised but very natural,” he said, grudgingly. “She had a face…it was the perfect canvas. With one look, she could be the innocent ingenue. With another, she could be a vixen.”

  That was the second time somebody had used that particular metaphor as a descriptor for Camille, Gregory thought, and he was finding it hard to reconcile with the quiet, shrunken woman he’d seen huddled on the bed less than an hour before.

  “She was an extrovert,” Leon continued. “Very…experimental.”

  He seemed to roll the word around on his tongue, and his lips spread into a lazy, affected smile that Gregory disliked intensely.

  “The photographs made the bosses happy, which is all that matters. But, if you’re asking me whether she was somebody I’d go out of my way to help, then the answer is ‘no’. She was an entitled little madam, even by this industry’s standards.”

  Leon gave an irritable shrug.

  “Ambition is not a bad thing, but Camille carried an air about her, as if she deserved to be here amongst people who have worked hard to claw their way inside. I wonder whether she’ll look back on it one day and regret how she behaved, once the scars heal.”

  He drew himself in, seemingly aware that he had said too much. But, before he could leave, Durand asked a final question.

  “Did Camille tell you anything about herself? Her family, or where she had come from? Her previous job, for example?”

  But the photographer shook his head.

  “It’s like I said on Monday. I wouldn’t remember, even if she had. I see three, four models a day at least, and some of them chatter to help with their nerves. I tell them to be quiet, or I let them talk to themselves. Either way, my mind is on my work. Why don’t you ask Gabrielle? She’s the one who discovered her.”

  Leon raised a hand to wave at someone across the room.

  “And now, you must excuse me, gentlemen. As you can see, I’m very busy.”

  They watched him saunter away again, air-kissing people as he went, then Durand turned to Gregory and stared closely at his face.

  “What?” Alex prompted him.

  “It’s nothing, I was only trying to imagine what you would look like in monochrome. Perhaps with a little shadow, here and there?”

  Gregory muttered something uncomplimentary in gutter French, which brought a delighted laugh from the inspector.

  “See? Already, you’re becoming one of us. Come, let me introduce you to your new employer.”

  * * *

  While Gregory and Durand tried to find their bearings in the world of high fashion, Eva Bisset stared out of a window at the people passing by in cars or on bikes, and wondered what Jean-Pierre had done with her scooter. Ever since she’d told him about the baby, he’d insisted that she was to make no more delivery rounds—and had been furious when she’d flouted that edict.

  The scooter had been confiscated after that.

  If she closed her eyes, she could feel the wind against her face as she motored through the streets—but she could also smell an earthy mix of turmeric and ground paprika as the meat sizzled in the kitchen and seeped through the walls to where she now stood, with her nose pressed against the glass.

  She raised a shaking hand to scrub away the tears that leaked from her eyes and ran down her neck, blurring her vision.

  The baby was gone.

  She’d known, the moment it happened; she’d felt its tiny life being stolen away from her, along with the dreams she had of being its mother, leaving nothing but an empty, raw space in her womb.

  Jean-Pierre would be furious when he found out.

  It wasn’t my fault, she longed to tell him.

  But she didn’t know where he’d gone, and was afraid of what he might do when he returned.

  She watched a pair of giggling women pass by, their skinny bodies sheathed in expensive wool coats, and thought of the fashion people who were swarming the city with their plastic hearts and plastic smiles.

  She hated them.

  She felt a small twinge of pain low in her abdomen and was reminded again of just how much.

  CHAPTER 9

  When they entered the inner sanctum belonging to Gabrielle and Armand Leroux, it was like crossing the Arctic Circle. From ceiling to floor, everything was white—including the leather sofa upon which Armand reclined, with his belly spilling over tight white trousers and a pristine white shirt that strained at the buttons as he snored. They didn’t notice Gabrielle at first, her platinum blonde hair and pale skin camouflaged by her surroundings until she stepped away from the static backdrop and moved towards them.

  “Inspecteur, c’est bon de vous revoir, mais j’ai bien peur que vous nous ayez supris au mauvais moment…”

  “Pardon, Madame, can we speak in English, for the benefit of our guest?” Durand interrupted her, and smiled blandly at Alex. “This is Doctor Gregory, who is lending his services as a criminal profiler to the investigation, as well as his expertise in the field of psychology to work with Camille over the coming days.”

  She turned and gave him an automatic once-over, which seemed to be the habit of those working in her industry.

  “So good to meet you,” she murmured, almost inaudibly. “It’s dreadful what’s happened to poor Camille, and we’re all devastated to lose her at such a crucial time. Aren’t we, Armand?”

  The man must have had hearing like a bat, Gregory thought, because he awakened instantly from what appeared to have been a very deep sleep and proceeded to swing his considerable bulk off the edge of the sofa.

  “What did you say, my love?”

  Armand was a man comfortably in his sixties, with a mop of carefully quaffed grey hair and the bloodshot eyes of one who had enjoyed a heavy drinking session the night before. He was at least forty years older than his wife, who didn’t seem to mind as he stumbled across the room towards them and draped a heavy arm over her slight shoulders.

  “Ah, Inspector Durand! You should have woken me up sooner,” he chided Gabrielle, and pinched her button nose in a gesture that left the other two men in the room feeling vaguely nauseated.

  “I didn’t want to wake you, my darling,” his wife crooned.

  Durand cleared his throat.

  “I was just introducing your wife to Doctor Gregory, who’s an expert in criminal profiling and has agreed to assist us while we investigate the attempted murder of Camille Duquette.”

  Armand’s eyes widened theatrically, and he surged forward to grasp Gregory’s hand in both of his own sweaty palms.

  “Monsieur, you are most welcome,” he gushed. “I can’t tell you what a worry it’s been to us, these past few days. When I think of how frightened Camille must have been…I have a daughter myself, from a previous marriage. In the absence of her own family, Gabrielle and I knew it was only right that we should look after her. Isn’t that so, ma cherie?”

  Armand dropped Gregory’s hand and drew his wife in for a smacking kiss, while Alex surreptitiously wiped his palm on the back of his trousers. If this was a man renowned for his infidelities, he certainly put on a good show. But then, Armand wouldn’t be the first to have cultivated the art of good showmanship.

  “H
ave you made any progress with the case?” Gabrielle asked. “How is Camille doing?”

  “We’re following all leads,” Durand said, repeating a line that must surely be universal to detectives the world over. “Camille is in a stable condition, but she still hasn’t spoken.”

  Gabrielle closed her eyes, put a delicate hand on her heart—which was encased in a long, floating column of bridal white—and whispered a prayer.

  “We were hoping to ask you both some follow-up questions,” Durand said, drawing out his little reporter’s notebook and another half-eaten biro from the inner pocket of his coat.

  “We can only spare you a few minutes, I’m afraid,” Armand warned him. “The show is due to start in a couple of hours, and we must go and check all the preparations are in order and begin to greet our guests.”

  “I must also check the models,” Gabrielle murmured, and then raised a hand.

  A mousy-haired assistant seemed to materialise from nowhere, bearing an enormous leather folder in one hand and a mobile phone in the other.

  “Oui, Madame?”

  Gabrielle proceeded to issue a series of brusque instructions to her assistant, and Gregory was interested to note the marked change to the tone of her voice as she did so.

  Still waters ran deep, with that one.

  The assistant left with a deferential bow, and when Gabrielle turned back to the others in the room, she was all breathless smiles again.

  “Please, come and have a seat.”

  She led them across to the sofa where Armand had recently caught forty winks and perched herself on the edge.

  “How can we help you?”

  Durand dived straight in.

  “You say in your statement that you know nothing about Camille Duquette, other than the information she provided to your payroll department. Is that correct?”

  “Well, it was all quite last minute, you see. Camille only joined us a couple of weeks ago,” Armand said, defensively.

  “You didn’t think to enquire about her employment history?” Gregory asked.

  “Monsieur, perhaps you don’t appreciate the nature of our business,” Gabrielle told him, and her voice was once again all honey. “No particular qualification or experience is required to become a model, even at this level.”