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

by LJ Ross

  He set them down on the coffee table and picked up the jug.

  “How do you like it?” he asked, casually.

  “Just milk, please,” Camille murmured. “No sugar.”

  He followed her instructions, and handed her the cup.

  “So, now we know a couple of things we didn’t know before. You like milk in your tea, and you speak very good English.”

  Gregory gave her an encouraging smile and considered whether to ask an important, but potentially traumatic question. She seemed calm, and fairly relaxed, so he decided to try.

  “Do you remember how you were hurt?”

  Her face remained entirely blank.

  “I have no idea,” she said, tearfully. “All I remember is waking up this morning with all these—these bandages, and the nurse won’t let me have a mirror, or take them off so I can see—”

  Gregory spoke in a calm, even tone. He hadn’t forgotten the reports of her becoming volatile, nor the long red scratch on the nurse’s arm.

  “You suffered an attack,” he said. “Your wounds required stitches, but I understand they’re healing reasonably well. There was some nerve damage to the skin on your face, and there’ll be a scar. I’m sorry.”

  She raised a hand to touch the bandage covering her right cheek.

  “Attack?” she whispered. “Was it a robbery? How did it happen?”

  I was hoping you could tell me that.

  Gregory was surprised that she hadn’t reacted more forcibly to the news that she would have a facial scar for the rest of her life and wondered if it was confirmation that she had no memory of her profession.

  If she did, surely she’d have been sorry to lose her means of income, if nothing else.

  He reached inside his briefcase, which contained the images of Camille prior to the attack, taken by the photographer Leon. He selected one or two and set them out on the coffee table in front of her, watching her very closely.

  “Do you recognise this woman?”

  Camille leaned forward to study the photographs, wincing slightly as the bandages on her stomach tugged at her skin.

  “She’s beautiful,” she muttered, with—if he wasn’t mistaken—a hint of envy. “I’m sorry, I don’t recognise her. Why do you ask?”

  Gregory had been listening intently to the inflections in her voice, and watching the emotions flickering across her face. Not once had he seen or heard anything remotely like recognition.

  “The woman in these pictures is you,” he said, carefully. “They were taken a couple of weeks before your attack.”

  To say she looked shocked was an understatement.

  “Me?” she squeaked.

  She snatched up the images and held them closer, running her eyes over the pictures of a wildly glamorous woman with a fall of rippling black hair.

  “I—I don’t believe it,” she said tremulously. “Are you sure this is me?”

  Gregory almost laughed at her choice of words, which brought the conversation back around to the problem of her identity.

  “As far as we know,” he said. “Do you remember anything else at all?”

  She stared at the photographs for endless seconds, then set them face down on the coffee table and clasped her hands together.

  “I don’t know her at all—I can’t…I can’t believe that it’s me.”

  Gregory tried a different approach.

  “Do you know anybody by the name of Gabrielle or Armand Leroux?”

  If possible, she looked even more confused, so he took out his phone and ran a quick image search until he found one of the couple, taken together at their show the previous night.

  “Do you recognise either of these people?”

  She took the phone from him and held it carefully in her slim hands, brow furrowing as she tried to capture the thread of a very dim memory.

  “I think so,” she said, softly. “I think I know this woman.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The rain pattered a gentle, soothing rhythm against the window panes as morning stretched into early afternoon. Gregory and Camille faced one another across the small dining table, their discussion having been interrupted by the arrival of Agnés, who appeared laden with an enormous bowl of soup and Camille’s next round of medication. Whether the reduction in dosage had been the deciding factor in allowing her to talk again, they couldn’t say; but now, her eyes were much clearer without the fog of unnecessary sedation and she was tucking into the soup with a healthy gusto impeded only by the stitches running so close to her mouth.

  “Do you remember how you know Gabrielle Leroux?” Gregory asked, once she’d finished her meal.

  Camille set the bowl aside, and shook her head.

  “Not exactly,” she replied, closing her eyes to try to grasp at the wisp of a memory. “I can’t seem to—to capture it.”

  “Let’s try this,” Gregory murmured. “Keep your eyes closed, and listen to my voice. Picture Gabrielle, the woman you saw in the picture. Does she have light or dark hair?”

  “Very light,” she replied, instantly. “I can see it.”

  “Good. Focus on her hair, and tell me—was the sunlight shining on it?”

  “Yes—no!” she corrected herself, excitably. “Not the sun. A streetlamp.”

  Evening time, Gregory scribbled on his notepad.

  “Good,” he said. “Now, go back to her hair. Can you see it?”

  “Yes,” she said, folding her arms on the tabletop.

  “Tell me what else is around it, Camille. Is there a street, or a house?”

  She struggled, her face screwing up tightly, and then she opened her eyes again and he saw misery lurking in their blue-green depths.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. It’s too hard,” she whispered.

  “All right,” he said gently. “Just one final question, then we’ll leave it for now. Is there anything else you remember—anything at all, no matter how small?”

  When she tried, there was little more than a blank space; a void where the fabric of her mind should have been. She knew what memories were and why they were important, but found herself unable to recall a single one, and the knowledge of what she lacked was more terrifying than anything else.

  And then, amidst the terrifying blankness, came the snapshot of a single image that materialised like the slow shutter of an old-fashioned camera.

  “Giverny,” she whispered. “I remember Monet’s garden.”

  * * *

  In another part of the city, Juliette Deschamps gave the cherub-faced toddler another long squeeze, before allowing Anais to wriggle away in search of her grandmother. She watched her small daughter run with arms outstretched towards the woman she thought was her mother.

  “Attends, petite!”

  Hélène Deschamps scooped Anais up into her arms and gave her a couple of kisses before setting the little girl down again beside a box of toys and books. Juliette watched her daughter root through it, discarding all the new toys she’d bought, until she found a tattered old copy of The Little Prince. She was too young to read, but she grasped the book in her chubby hands and carried it over to her grandmother, not sparing a glance for the woman who’d given her life.

  Juliette stood up and walked quickly into the kitchen, blinking rapidly against the tears that threatened to fall. She braced herself against the sink, battling a rising tide of emotion she rarely allowed herself to feel. She began to wash the dirty plates, scrubbing at the porcelain with far more force than was necessary, while her treacherous mind wandered back in time, to when she’d found out about Anais three years before.

  As a girl of eighteen, she’d been devastated; unprepared for motherhood and unwilling to relinquish the prospect of a glittering career in fashion. Born on a sink estate on the edge of the city to a father whose chronic depression prevented him from holding down a job, and a mother who worked all the hours God sent to make ends meet, she knew what it was to be poor. Growing up, she’d wandered along the Rue Saint Honoré and watched
beautiful men and women coming in and out of Chanel or Givenchy and imagined what it might feel like to wear such lovely clothes, and to look so…so clean. She’d practised walking along the narrow corridor of their apartment, posing at the end, and walking back again. She’d saved for and studied every edition of Vogue, writing down the names of all the fashion houses and the important people who ran them. She had lofty dreams of becoming one of them, and those dreams didn’t—couldn’t—involve babies. Besides, she told herself there was no sense in burdening her family with another mouth to feed.

  As for the father…he didn’t want the responsibility.

  In the end, she made it as far as the waiting room of the abortion clinic before running out, and never going back.

  When the baby had been seven months old, and she’d lost every ounce of weight after plumbing the very depths of postnatal despair, she’d landed her first modelling job. At the time, it seemed like fate had stepped in to help, and her star had risen quickly. But the price she paid for success, and for security, was a high one. One she was no longer willing to pay.

  “Anais needs new shoes.”

  Juliette hadn’t heard her mother enter the kitchen, and she looked down to find the sink was empty of dishes, and the water cold.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll take her—”

  “When?” Hélène asked, snidely. “You work all the time—”

  So that you don’t have to, Maman, she might have said. But she didn’t.

  “I have a free day coming up, this Sunday. Fashion Week will be over by then, and I don’t have any other jobs booked in until next Tuesday.”

  Her mother sniffed.

  “Jobs? You wouldn’t know the meaning of real work, Juliette. You swan around posing, pouting and showing off your body to all the world…”

  She could have argued, Juliette thought. She could have told her mother how exhausting it was, physically and emotionally, and how fickle; she wanted to explain that every piece of food she ate felt like a risk, and every tiny wrinkle a death sentence. She wanted to tell her about the people who saw your vulnerability and tried to exploit it…to…to…

  She drew in a shaking breath, while her mother raged on.

  “You’re not saving any lives, are you?” Hélène was saying. “As for that lingerie campaign, how do you think Anais will feel when she sees that? Meanwhile, I wipe her nose and dry her tears…”

  Juliette began to dry the dishes on an old tea towel and simply listened, letting the words roll off her back. And, when the dishes were done, she made sure her face wore the same cool, detached expression she was famous for; the one that graced the side of enormous billboards and sold expensive perfumes around the world.

  “You offered to look after Anais so that I could go out and work,” she reminded her. “I didn’t want Papa to worry about money, or you to be so tired, and it was for the best. But now, when I come to visit, my daughter hardly knows me.”

  She lifted her chin.

  “When I make enough money to last, enough to buy a little place where I can study design and Anais can go to school, I’ll be coming back for her, Maman. She isn’t yours to keep.”

  Her mother’s lip trembled, and she spat out the final words she would ever say to her daughter.

  “You’re no mother to her, Juliette. It would be better if you forgot all about Anais and went on with your silly life, dressing up in clothes you can’t afford.”

  Juliette stopped with her hand on the doorway and looked back at Hélène with such aching sadness that it shamed her.

  “I—I didn’t mean…” Hélène started to say she was sorry, but the words stuck in her throat.

  “I’ll bring some more money on Sunday,” Juliette whispered, and then turned to look for Anais, who was happily engaged in the task of emptying and re-filling a magazine rack on the living room floor.

  She knelt down and called to the little red-headed girl, throwing her arms wide open.

  “Viens-ici, Anais. Je dois partir, maintenant.”

  Anais looked up, then returned to her task.

  Juliette stayed there for an endless moment, eyes burning with unshed tears, then walked across to press a soft kiss to the top of the girl’s head.

  “Je t’aime, ma petite,” she whispered, inhaling the scent of her baby skin one last time and promising herself that she’d be back to reclaim her little girl before the week was out.

  She had ways—and means.

  She let herself out of the apartment, closing the door softly behind her.

  CHAPTER 14

  The rain had stopped by the time Gregory stepped out of Camille Duquette’s apartment building, where he found Inspector Durand leaning against the side of a battered Citröen that looked as though it had survived both world wars. He had a mobile phone in one hand and a half-smoked cigarette hanging from the other, which he raised in greeting.

  “How the hell did you manage to squeeze into that gap?” Gregory asked, once Durand had completed his call.

  Cars were parked bumper to bumper along the kerb, mere inches separating the Citröen from its neighbours.

  “Skill, mon ami,” Durand replied, and then ground the butt of his cigarette beneath the heel of his shoe. “Jump in, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  “Do I want to know?” Gregory muttered, but he walked around to the passenger side. “What brings you here, anyway? I thought the meeting with the Commissaire was re-scheduled to four o’clock?”

  “It was,” Durand agreed, yanking the gearstick into reverse. “I thought it would be a good opportunity to find out how your new patient is getting along, if we travelled together.”

  In other words, Gregory thought, he wanted to get the scoop ahead of Procureur Segal and Juge Bernard. It made no real difference to him, considering he’d be filing the same report to each of them, but it was an interesting insight into their dynamic—

  There was a loud crunch of metal as the tail end of the Citröen connected with the bumper of the car behind, followed by a twist of gears as Durand shifted back into first, then another crunch as he gave the car in front a dose of the same medicine.

  After another couple of bumps, there was enough space for the car to swing out—upon which, it almost connected with a passing cyclist.

  “Don’t the police over here need to pass a driving test?” Gregory wondered aloud.

  When he looked back over his shoulder, he was dumbfounded to find another car already attempting the same manoeuvre in the space they’d just vacated.

  “Look around you,” Durand said. “No matter how new or expensive the car, every one of them has a few little scratches and bumps. It’s a necessary part of living in the city.”

  Gregory found that hard to believe, and yet, when he scrutinised the metalwork of other passing cars, he was amazed to find it was true.

  “Wonder what the insurance premiums are like,” he muttered, as they raced towards the river.

  “Tell me, did you learn anything useful from your discussion with Camille?”

  Gregory glanced briefly at Durand’s profile, then back at the road ahead.

  “She appears to be stable, for the moment,” he replied. “But I think she should continue to be monitored around the clock until we can downgrade her risk assessment, especially following the incident the other day.”

  Durand nodded.

  “At least she’s talking now. What of her attacker? Was she able to tell you—”

  Both men lurched forward as Durand slammed a foot on the brake, before the bonnet of his car could connect with the back of a delivery scooter.

  The inspector rolled down his window and stuck his head out to hurl a few choice insults, then performed an illegal U-turn before speeding off in another direction.

  “I can’t stand bad drivers,” he declared.

  “Quite,” Gregory muttered, trying to push past the fear of imminent death to remember what he’d been saying.

  Oh, yes.

  �
��The woman we’re calling ‘Camille’ appears to be suffering from amnesia. I conducted various tests with her, and it seems she has little or no memory recall prior to waking up this morning. There’s been no obvious impact to her motor skills; she’s able to walk easily, and could tell me certain likes and dislikes, as well as converse fluently in English—when the level of conversation became more complex, she slipped back into French, so I think it’s safe to assume that’s her mother tongue.”

  “That makes it less likely she was an illegal immigrant—unless she’d travelled from a French-speaking country,” Durand remarked.

  “Possibly. From a clinical perspective, it’s reassuring to know that both her short- and long-term memory is operational, although badly impaired.”

  “You think the amnesia is… genuine?”

  Gregory thought back over the hours he’d spent with Camille and gave the question serious consideration.

  “There are different types of amnesia,” he said. “Retrograde, anterograde…but, given that her scans came back clear, I think she may be suffering from something called ‘dissociative amnesia’ rather than any kind of brain injury.”

  Durand grunted.

  “What does it mean, ‘dissociative’?”

  “The disorder is characterised by a patient’s inability to recall basic or important memories about themselves—sometimes, enormous blocks of time—usually following a recent trauma. It’s called ‘dissociative’ because, in seeking to block out the memories, the patient’s mind is dissociating from those things it finds too stressful or traumatic to process.”

  Durand thought about it as he executed a sharp left turn and began motoring south-west, towards the 13th Arrondissement.

  “If that’s the case, Camille would surely wish to block out the trauma of her attack, but why block out memories of her whole life?”

  It was a good question, and one that Gregory hoped to answer as soon as possible.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to work with her to find out. Perhaps there were things she wished to forget, which seems consistent with the anomalies surrounding her identity. A person doesn’t decide to change their name without good reason.”