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

by LJ Ross

He made a quick calculation in his head and realised it would be around nine o’clock in the evening in Boston.

  The phone rang for an agonising second or two, and then Bill Douglas’ cheerful voice sounded down the line.

  “Bonjour!”

  Gregory let go of the constriction in his chest, drawing comfort from the warmth of his friend’s greeting.

  “Is this a bad time?” he asked, working hard to keep the tremble from his voice. “I don’t want to interrupt your jet lag.”

  “Not at all,” Douglas said, and waved away his colleagues, who were gesturing towards the hotel bar. “I was about to head up to my room, as it happens.”

  Gregory searched his addled mind for some plausible topic of conversation that didn’t involve his own neuroses.

  “Has there been any progress with Camille?” Douglas asked, helpfully.

  Camille. Of course.

  “Ah, yes and no. The police have dismissed the psychiatrist—Doctor Gonzalez.”

  Douglas made a small sound of surprise at the other end of the line.

  “Why?”

  “Apparently, Camille had some kind of episode and tried to run off. Not only did he fail to report it to the officer leading the investigation, but he failed to mention that she’d made some sounds.”

  “She spoke?”

  “No, she was hysterical—shouting, screaming, but neither the doctor nor the nurse could recall her using any specific words.”

  Douglas grunted.

  “Well, it’s still good news. It confirms the medical opinion that her vocal cords are intact. It doesn’t completely rule out aphasia, but it makes it very unlikely.”

  Gregory agreed.

  “So, who have they found to take over from Gonzalez?” Douglas asked, innocently.

  Gregory smiled into the darkness.

  “Go ahead, you can say it.”

  “I told you so.”

  “Yes, you did. Does it ever get boring, being right all the time?”

  “Not so far. How do you plan to approach it?”

  “I spoke with Southmoor, and they’re happy that my insurance covers me to take on a few days’ private consulting work, so long as I’m back on duty next Wednesday, as planned. I was clear with Inspector Durand about that.”

  “Your time is limited, but you can still be effective,” Douglas said.

  “I hope so. I met Camille for the first time, earlier today, and Gonzalez…she was doped up to the max, Bill. She might as well have been in a coma.”

  The other man swore softly.

  “The lacerations to her torso were minor, all things considered. They’ll be painful, but not sufficient to justify that level of sedation, and certainly not after three days.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Gregory said, shifting the phone to his other ear. “I made some changes to her medication, which was far too high, so we’ll see whether she’s more communicative when I check on her in the morning.”

  Douglas made a rumbling sound of approval.

  “What did you make of her?” he wondered. “Did you think she was…”

  “Faking it?” Gregory finished for him. “I don’t think so, but it’s too early to say for certain. At first, she seemed to be awake, but kept her eyes closed—”

  “Avoidance?”

  “Yes, or perhaps another side product of the trauma. She seemed to react physically when I introduced myself; her head jerked, and her facial muscles tensed.”

  Douglas stepped off the lift and began walking towards his room, which overlooked the Charles River.

  “She’s responsive, then.”

  “She was, until her medication seemed to kick in, after which there was nothing,” Gregory said, thinking back. “She seemed so withered, so fragile, I’m finding it hard to imagine her as the extrovert she seems to have been before the attack.”

  “Appearances can be deceptive,” Douglas said. “You should know that by now.”

  Gregory nodded, though his friend couldn’t see it.

  “I spent some time with Durand, meeting the people who worked alongside her for the past couple of weeks, trying to get some second-hand impressions of her, maybe some information about her life before.”

  “What about the profiling? Do they still want you to consult on the investigation?”

  Muddy water, Gregory thought.

  “Yes, but they understand my first duty will now be to Camille—if that’s her real name.”

  “Have they made any progress on that score?” Douglas asked.

  “It’s still a mystery. Durand’s hoping to hear from the bank where Camille set up an account by tomorrow morning, likewise they’re hoping the forensics report will come through—but the bureaucracy here is just as slow as any other city in the world, so it’s anybody’s guess whether that will actually happen.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Douglas muttered. “Still no word from her family?”

  “None,” Gregory said, with a touch of sadness. “The papers are still running the story, especially since they got wind that she hasn’t spoken. They’re calling her the ‘Sleeping Beauty’, and her attacker ‘The Butcher of Beauty’.”

  “Not all that original,” Douglas was bound to say.

  “It sounds better in French,” Gregory muttered. “Anyway, they’re looking into her identity card and driver’s licence, to see if that’ll lead to something.”

  “They’re thinking forgeries?”

  “Yes, and Durand says they’ve got a few leads, so they’ll shake those down tomorrow.”

  Douglas settled himself on the sofa in his room and toed off a pair of comfortable loafers, leaning back against the chintzy cushions with a sigh.

  “What about the fashion police—I mean, people. What were they like?”

  Gregory grinned, and had almost forgotten about the surrounding darkness.

  “Judging from first impressions? Almost exactly as you’d expect,” Gregory said. “I was hoping to find otherwise, and say all those stereotypes are horribly unjustified, but there was an awful lot of white leather, Bill.”

  Douglas let out a wheezing laugh, which turned into a hacking cough.

  “That doesn’t sound too good,” Alex murmured. “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “It’s nothing,” Bill replied, still coughing as he struggled to uncap a bottle of water. “Just a winter bug, most likely.”

  The cough seemed to abate, and Gregory relaxed again.

  “You should get some rest,” he said. “I can give you an update tomorrow.”

  “I’m fine, I—” Douglas took a long gulp of water to stave off another coughing fit. “It was probably the air conditioning on the plane over. You know what it’s like; all kinds of things circulate around the cabin space.”

  Gregory wasn’t convinced, but let it drop for now.

  “Get some rest, Bill. Thanks for the chat.”

  “Anytime, kiddo. Good luck finding the key to Camille Duquette.”

  After they’d said their goodbyes, Douglas replaced the receiver and turned to check the carriage clock on the mantelpiece in his room. He worked out the time difference and the answer troubled him deeply, because it could mean only one thing.

  His boy wasn’t sleeping again, and wouldn’t tell him why.

  CHAPTER 12

  By the time Gregory made it across town to the Trente-Six, rain was falling in a steady shower. The blue skies of yesterday had been replaced by thick storm clouds that swept in from the English Channel and threatened to worsen before the day was out. Gregory took a moment to shake the rain from his coat and slick a handful of wet, brown curls out of his eyes, then spotted Procureur Segal approaching him across the expansive entrance foyer. The two men were due to attend a morning briefing with Inspector Durand and Commissaire Caron, who had demanded daily updates on the progress of the investigation.

  They shook hands and headed over to the bank of lifts, with Segal exchanging a quick, flirtatious word with a young administration assista
nt who happened to walk by.

  “Juge Bernard has other commitments today, but he’s given his authorisation for any additional warrants we may require.”

  “Durand said you were looking into Camille’s identification documents—you believe them to be forgeries?”

  Segal nodded.

  “Identity fraud is a serious problem, especially if it’s done well. Camille seems to have opened a bank account online, which was necessary in order to receive payments from Maison Leroux. We found out that she listed the address of one of the other models—Madeleine Paquet—on her application form, stating that she was renting a room from her.”

  Gregory’s face remained impassive.

  “And was she? Renting a room?”

  “Not as far as we know, but Durand plans to question her about it again, sometime today. Perhaps they were complicit.”

  “You’re certain the documents are forgeries?”

  “There is always a margin for error,” Segal replied. “But we do know there’s no record of a Camille Duquette matching her description. Often, professional forgers recycle deceased records to create new identities, so we’re in the process of cross-checking the death registry. We’re following up with the bank, as well, to understand how she could have set up an account without the proper identification checks.”

  “Assuming you’re right, and her identity turns out to be a fake one, then the question still remains: why would she have done it?”

  Segal nodded grimly.

  “It opens up a huge can of worms,” he said. “Not to mention the fact that there are local elections coming up, and the migrant problem has worsened since the border crisis in Calais. If it turns out Camille is an illegal immigrant, it may be that the press will turn against her, and support for her recovery will cease.”

  Gregory thought of a traumatised young woman, and of the long-term care she might need.

  “Let’s hope her fate doesn’t rest in the hands of public opinion,” he muttered.

  * * *

  They were about to step into the lift, when the call came through.

  “She’s awake, and talking,” he said, after a brief discussion with Camille’s nurse. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

  Segal broke into a wide grin, which Gregory suspected had a lot to do with the likelihood of police public opinion polls rising by a percentage point or two, now they were a step closer to finding Camille’s attacker.

  “The Commissaire will be very happy about this,” he said, trotting after Gregory as he strode purposefully back towards the main doors. “Give me a moment, Doctor, and I’ll accompany you—”

  “Absolutely not,” Gregory said.

  Segal was taken aback, and his neck flushed an ugly shade of red.

  “Doctor Gregory, whilst we’re grateful to you, I must remind you that you’re here as our guest. In the absence of Camille’s next of kin, we are responsible for her well-being, and I have a duty to attend.”

  Gregory stopped, irritated to be wasting precious time explaining matters that were, to him at least, painfully obvious.

  “I understand your duty, Procureur,” he said. “Unfortunately, you don’t appear to understand mine. In taking on the interim responsibility for Camille’s psychological wellbeing, my primary duty of care transfers to her, and she is now my first priority. That includes protecting her from overt stressors at a crucial moment in her recovery, which also happens to be in the interests of the investigation, if the goal is to encourage her to talk.”

  Segal was conflicted between his personal desire to be one of the first to visit their star witness and hear what she had to say, set against his logical understanding that his very presence might prove to be an inhibitor.

  Fortunately, logic won out.

  “I’d like a report by lunchtime,” he snapped, “And, Doctor, if she tells you anything, anything at all—”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” Gregory assured him, and then stepped back outside into the rain.

  * * *

  Gregory took the stairs up to Camille’s apartment two at a time.

  When the door opened, he was met by the same nurse who’d been in attendance the previous day, a motherly woman by the name of Agnés.

  “She’s in the living room,” she said, darting a quick glance over her shoulder.

  “How’s she been?”

  Agnés looked nervous.

  “She’s—she’s been well behaved. No more attempts to escape or hurt herself, at least.”

  Gregory caught a note in her voice.

  “Has something happened? What did she say, when she spoke to you?”

  She took a deep breath.

  “She asked who she was, monsieur. When I said to her, ‘Aren’t you Camille?’, she said she didn’t know who Camille was, and began to cry.”

  Gregory thought back to his conversation with Procureur Segal and realised that, if the woman was an illegal immigrant and happened also to be suffering from a bout of temporary amnesia brought on by the trauma, it was small wonder she had no idea who ‘Camille’ might be.

  “She was also confused by her injuries,” Agnés said. “She flew into a panic when she touched the bandage on her face, and demanded to see a mirror.”

  “Did you give her one?”

  She shook her head.

  “I thought that it would be unwise to distress her any further. I removed the one hanging in the bathroom, too.”

  He put a reassuring hand on the nurse’s shoulder.

  “Merci, Agnés. You did the right thing. Why don’t you make yourself a cup of tea?”

  She nodded gratefully, having spent the last forty minutes worrying about whether her young charge would make another escape attempt.

  Gregory wasn’t sure what to expect when he stepped into the living room, but he was an experienced man, and had been in close confines with the worst specimens of humanity. He could certainly cope with whatever the woman known as Camille Duquette was presently suffering from—amnesia, or selective amnesia, as the case may be.

  She was sitting by the window watching the rain when he entered, and her long dark hair fell over the bandage on the right side of her face so that, just for a moment, she looked like the living embodiment of one of those moody, black and white photographs they sold from carts on the banks of the Seine.

  Girl by the Window, it would probably be called.

  She turned at the sound of his footsteps against the plain wood floor and tensed in her chair, hands grasping the arms while she looked over his shoulder, seeking out the nurse.

  Gregory stopped dead, held both hands out, palms outfacing, and set his mind to putting her at ease.

  “Bonjour,” he said, reaching inside his wallet for his photographic driver’s licence, which he held up. “Je m’appelle Docteur Alexandre Gregory—”

  “You’re…English?”

  Apparently, his accent wasn’t as good as he’d previously thought.

  “Yes,” he said, slipping the card back into his wallet. “I’m a psychologist. I’m here to help.”

  Her eyes welled up, and they were as he’d previously thought. Large, and very blue.

  “I—I can’t remember anything.”

  “You remember how to speak English,” he said, with a lopsided smile.

  Camille’s lips trembled, but she managed a very weak smile, which was followed immediately by a grimace as the action tugged the skin and irritated the wound on her face.

  “Do you need something, for the pain?”

  She shook her head, and spoke slowly and carefully this time.

  “I took some tablets, before.”

  “If the pain becomes too great, let me know,” Gregory said.

  She nodded.

  “The nurse…she said my name was…Camille.”

  Before they delved into that particular problem, Gregory gestured towards the sofa, which was set back a short distance from where she had stationed herself beside the window. He hoped it would be far eno
ugh away for her to feel safe.

  “May I sit, while we talk about it?”

  She nodded, but he noticed that she shuffled her chair a little further away—albeit subtly, so as not to offend him.

  Which told him something interesting, Gregory thought.

  She had empathy.

  “Thank you,” he said, crossing one leg lightly over the other.

  She was studying him intently, which was not an uncommon thing for new patients to do—or new acquaintances, for that matter. Generally, as soon as he told people of his profession, they tended to scrutinize his face, just as Camille was doing, presumably trying to see behind his eyes to find out what he thought about them.

  “Have we met before?” she asked.

  Gregory smiled.

  “Do you think we have?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Your voice…I think, maybe.”

  He nodded.

  “Yesterday, I came here to visit you with a police inspector called Mathis Durand. You were asleep, but it’s possible you might have heard me talking to you.”

  She nodded, and her fingers began to fiddle with the edge of the soft cotton jumper she wore.

  “Why am I here?” she asked, suddenly. “Why are people calling me Camille?”

  “Do you have another name?” he asked, very smoothly.

  She stared at him, and he could see her struggling to think of it, or anything else at all.

  Then, her shoulders slumped.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know—”

  He heard panic rising, and hurried to extinguish it.

  “Do you like tea?” he asked.

  She frowned at him.

  “What?”

  “Tea. Do you like it?”

  She looked down at her hands, and then shrugged.

  “I suppose…yes.”

  “Good. I’ll make us a cup. Will you be all right here for a moment?”

  She nodded dumbly.

  He found the nurse, Agnés, flicking through the morning’s papers at the tiny breakfast bar in the kitchen. She started to get up when he came into the room, but he shook his head, waving her back into her seat.

  “I think we’re making progress,” he said quietly. “Let’s keep the status quo for now.”

  She nodded, and a couple of minutes later he walked back into the living room with a small wicker tray bearing two steaming cups, a jug of milk and a sugar pot.