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

by LJ Ross

  “Beautiful girl,” she said. “Such a pity, what happened to her. But at least she will have these photographs to console her, in the years to come.”

  She looked up and her face creased into a knowing smile.

  “Leon always had an excellent eye.”

  CHAPTER 16

  It was just shy of four o’clock by the time Inspector Durand swung into the car park at the Trente-Six. After a brief tussle with a Skoda and a Peugeot, the two men made their way up to the conference suite where Commissaire Caron and Procureur Segal awaited them, the Juge having been detained on other matters.

  “No surprise there,” Durand said in an undertone, as they stepped inside the lift. “It’s a wonder he’s shown his face, at all.”

  Gregory cocked his head.

  “Oh? I thought Juge Bernard played an important role in the investigation.”

  Durand scoffed.

  “The whole thing is backward,” he complained. “Usually, during the early stages, the procureur directs the investigation alongside the police team. A juge is only nominated once the investigation is fully underway and we have a suspect in mind, not before. Even then, the juge’s role is mostly deferred to the police team, they are not usually so…”

  He waved his hand in the air as he cast around for the English saying.

  “Hands-on,” he finished.

  “Why has it been different this time?”

  “Politics—what else?” Durand muttered. “The Leroux supported the Mayor’s last electoral campaign, and may not choose to do so again if their wishes are not met. They want this matter about Camille tied up quickly, so their brand is unaffected. Those higher up the chain want no shadow cast upon the Brigade Criminelle, at a time when the world is watching.”

  Gregory nodded.

  “Don’t forget, there was no CCTV in the corridors of the hotel when Camille was attacked. How would that look, if it were common knowledge?” Durand said. “There are many private and public interests at stake here.”

  “But, surely, the Commissaire is independent?”

  Durand laughed shortly.

  “The city of Paris may have a population of more than two million people, but it’s a small world. Juge Bernard happens to be a close personal friend of the Leroux—a coincidence, I’m sure,” he muttered, and then added, “Perhaps, we’re due another revolution, mon ami.”

  On that ominous note, they stepped out of the lift and made their way along the corridors of power to provide their report.

  * * *

  “Tell me some good news.”

  When Commissaire Caron issued her demand from the head of the conference table, Procureur Segal came to attention, unconsciously adjusting his tie in a manner that reminded Gregory uncomfortably of his father.

  An Englishman should be smart at all times. Manners and good dress maketh the man.

  With the echo of his father’s words ringing in his ears, he looked down at his tailored suit and felt a sudden and overwhelming urge to tear it off. The material began to feel tight, like a straitjacket, clinging to his skin so he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t break free…

  Gregory reached for the jug of water with a trembling hand and sloshed some into a glass, drinking thirstily while he brought himself under control. When he set the glass carefully back on the table, he found Durand watching him with open curiosity.

  “The team have been following the usual lines of enquiry,” Segal was saying. “Mathis?”

  Durand turned away from his inspection of Gregory and launched into a summary of the investigation so far.

  “Enquiries into CCTV footage have proven fruitless,” he said. “Cameras in the foyer of the Hôtel Violette and in the main communal areas showed no suspicious persons that could not be accounted for and, as you already know, there were no cameras on the upper floors other than the penthouse suite—and none in the service stairs or back entrance to the hotel.”

  Caron could almost see the headlines.

  “I presume a press ban has been in operation…to protect the victim and preserve the integrity of the investigation?” she asked.

  Segal nodded vigorously.

  “Those matters have not been made public, Commissaire.”

  “Good,” she said, folding her hands together. “Good.”

  Durand cleared his throat before continuing.

  “On the orders of Juge Bernard, another search was recently completed of Camille Duquette’s room, the hotel grounds and surrounding areas. I’m pleased to say the team recovered her mobile phone, but still no weapon.”

  “Where did you find the phone?” Gregory asked, actively fighting the stress that threatened to rise up and consume him.

  “In the gardens below her hotel room,” Durand replied.

  “That seems consistent with our theory that the perpetrator fled the scene via the veranda, or the service stairs which back onto the courtyard outside,” Segal put in, obviously pleased by the development. “They must have disposed of the mobile phone as they made their escape.”

  Gregory reserved judgment on that score.

  “What did you find on the mobile?” he asked.

  “Very little,” Durand replied. “It was a burner phone, which is why we made slow progress with the phone companies. They’re notoriously hard to trace.”

  “What about messages or phone calls?” Segal asked.

  “Nothing noteworthy,” Durand replied, and tapped a finger on the paperwork on the desk in front of him. “I have a full list of transcribed messages here, as well as outgoing and incoming calls. There’s nothing pre-dating her employment at Maison Leroux, so we must assume she picked up the phone around the same time she started working for the fashion house.”

  The others seated around the table spent a moment scanning the printed transcripts of messages recovered from Camille’s mobile phone, and found that Durand was absolutely right: there was nothing either noteworthy or sinister, only a collection of mundane text and voicemail messages from the fashion house telling her where to meet, interspersed with the odd friendly message from Madeleine or Juliette, inviting her to some social event or another.

  “There are no Facebook, Twitter or any other social media accounts associated with ‘Camille Duquette’,” Durand pre-empted the next question. “I’ve got a tech specialist going over the phone right now, to see if anything else can be salvaged. Maybe something was deleted, before the phone was discarded.”

  “Good work,” Caron said. “If her attacker took the phone, it tells us there must have been something important on it.”

  Durand nodded. “That’s possible, Commissaire.”

  “More than possible, surely,” Segal argued.

  “The question is, why would she choose a burner in the first place?” Gregory murmured. “It seems to support a theory that Camille—or whoever she may be—was hiding from something or someone.”

  “Which brings us back to the question of her identity,” Segal said. “How did your enquiries go today?”

  “We know that Camille went to one of the best forgers in the business,” Durand replied. “Wendy Li identified Camille from her picture and told us she came to see her two weeks ago, shortly after she was offered the position at Maison Leroux.”

  Both Caron and Segal leaned forward.

  “Wendy Li doesn’t take odd jobs,” Segal pointed out. “How did the girl find her way to that kind of operator?”

  “She was referred,” Durand replied. “We believe, by the photographer known as Leon.”

  Caron and Segal reared back again in a simultaneous motion Gregory might have found funny in other circumstances.

  “Now, just a moment,” the Commissaire said. “Leon is a world-famous photographer, and you’re accusing him of having links to the criminal underworld.”

  Durand nodded cheerfully.

  “I took the liberty of running another background check on Monsieur Boucher, and it came back squeaky clean, just as before.”

  “There
you have it—” Segal started to say.

  “Which, as any police officer will tell you, is highly unusual for a man of his age and profession,” Durand continued smoothly. “I’d expect to see a speeding fine or alcohol-related misdemeanour, at the very least.”

  “Do you think Leon used Wendy Li’s services himself?” Caron asked. “It would account for the fresh record.”

  “I think he not only used her services, but he may have worked for her at some stage,” Durand replied. “While we were interviewing her, Wendy said that he, ‘always had a good eye’.”

  Caron held up her hands.

  “I can’t believe this of Leon Boucher. He has too much to lose.”

  “Not if this happened before his career took off,” Gregory said. “He would have nothing to lose then, and much to gain.” He paused, considering the psychology of a man who had grown accustomed to wealth and status. “If what Wendy Li says is true and Leon is connected, that has several implications for your investigation as I’m sure you’re well aware. First, and most importantly, it means he knowingly lied by omission. He knew much more about Camille Duquette than he let on, and may be in possession of valuable information about her previous identity and why she sought to change it. Second, his own background is now called into question—and, third, he may have had a motive for seeking to silence Camille.”

  “You think she may have sought to expose him in some way, or extort money from him?” Segal said.

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to investigate his accounts. Or, all of their accounts, for that matter.”

  “That will be difficult,” Durand muttered, with a meaningful look towards the other two people in the room. “And the people in question are very unlikely to volunteer their accounts.”

  The room fell silent, then Segal let out a gusty breath.

  “Well, in the circumstances, we have no option but to question Leon about these matters,” he said, reluctantly.

  “I’ve already set up an appointment with him, first thing tomorrow morning,” Durand said, not bothering to hide his relish at the prospect of an interrogation. “It doesn’t matter who Leon is, the law applies to everyone.”

  The other two shuffled uncomfortably, then Caron gave him a stern look.

  “That may be so, but I want you to tread carefully, Mathis, not wield a battering ram.”

  Durand’s face was the picture of innocence.

  “Would I ever do such a thing?”

  CHAPTER 17

  “We believe the attacker used a knife.”

  Back at the Trente-Six, Inspector Durand drew out a series of stark, full-colour pictures taken of Camille Duquette’s injuries after she was admitted to hospital, the previous Monday.

  “As these images show, and the hospital has confirmed, Camille sustained a single wound to the right side of her face. Thankfully, it wasn’t as deep as they initially thought when she was brought in—although the blood loss had been significant. As it turned out, the wound required stitches, there was some nerve damage and there will be an obvious scar, but there’s no physical impediment to her speech or other motor functions.”

  “That’s consistent with what I found when we spoke, earlier today,” Gregory put in. “She experiences some discomfort chewing and talking because of the proximity of the injury to her mouth, but Camille’s lack of communication appears to have a psychological rather than a physical foundation.”

  Caron nodded.

  “And her other wounds?”

  “There were a number on her torso, of varying depth, and some defensive wounds on her hands and arms,” Durand replied, then reached for a diagram the hospital had provided showing the precise location of each injury. “There were nine wounds on her upper and lower torso, at least fifteen shallow cuts on her left forearm, as well as a single, deeper cut to her right palm.”

  Gregory closed his eyes briefly, imagining the scene.

  An intruder enters the hotel room and overpowers Camille, almost immediately. He grabs her head—maybe her hair—and slams it against the mirrored panel on the wall, smashing the glass and disabling her. As she staggers around and possibly falls to the floor, they produce a weapon, a knife, and raise it high…first, a slicing cut across her face, to mark her forever. Then, they try to inflict a killing blow to the stomach…but she fights back, raising her right hand to try to grasp the weapon, cutting her palm, then raising her left arm to fend off the blows that keep coming…

  “The attack must have been interrupted,” Gregory said quietly, opening his eyes again. “Whoever did this wanted Camille to be afraid; they wanted to see that look in her eye. They could have come in quietly and made it quick, but instead they were loud and uncontrolled, which risked them being overheard by one of the neighbouring occupants in the other hotel rooms. That tells us something about the attacker’s mindset.”

  “What?” Segal wondered. “That they were amateurish?”

  “Possibly,” Gregory replied. “It tells us they were angry. Whoever did this felt wronged by Camille; if not her, personally, then what she stood for, who she is. She was offensive to them.”

  Durand scrubbed a hand over his stubbled face.

  “Why her? Of all of them, why her, in particular?”

  Gregory simply shook his head.

  “Were there any wounds to her feet?” he asked.

  Durand nodded, checking the hospital notes laid out in front of him.

  “She stood in some of the glass that shattered when she connected with the mirror.”

  Gregory remembered the soft bandages on Camille’s feet the first day he’d visited.

  “She’s tall—five-ten or thereabouts? To be able to grasp the weapon and put up enough of a fight to keep herself alive, she needed a degree of strength.”

  “Or be a physical match for her attacker,” Durand added.

  Gregory met his eyes and nodded again. “Exactly. Is Camille right- or left-handed?”

  They looked amongst themselves, and he made a note to find out the answer at their next appointment.

  “Looking at the angle of the knife wounds to her torso area, it suggests her attacker was left-handed,” Segal remarked, with just the right balance between smugness and self-deprecation to set Durand’s teeth on edge.

  “Unless they used a back-handed stroke,” Gregory said mildly, taking the wind out of his sails. “Have there been any developments on the forensics?”

  Segal’s face fell again.

  “Yes, and it’s a wash-out,” he said. “The preliminary report came through about an hour ago, and the upshot is, there were no obvious traces of ‘alien’ DNA on Camille’s person, the mirrored panel or any of the more obvious areas where contact may have occurred, such as the door or the window. No fingerprints that haven’t already been accounted for, either. The team are still sifting through the remaining samples taken from the room but there are countless old traces from previous hotel occupants…it’s a forensic nightmare.”

  It might have been disappointing, but it wasn’t unusual for there to be no useable samples—in fact, Gregory was more used to working on cases where there was little or no physical evidence, and the police team needed alternative means to trace the mind responsible for perpetrating the crime.

  “No latex or nitrile?” he asked.

  It was possible the perpetrator wore gloves, which wouldn’t help the police team to trace the perpetrator via ordinary methods, but it might help him to understand whether they sought an organised or a disorganised mind.

  “Not so far,” Durand replied. “But it’s early days.”

  Commissaire Caron sighed deeply and leaned back in her chair, rolling her neck around to stretch out the knots that had developed over the last few days.

  “Doctor Gregory, as you can see, we’re no further forward than we were before—”

  “Respectfully, Commissaire, I disagree,” he interjected. “Twenty-four hours ago, we wondered whether Camille Duquette would ever speak again, but now she has.
We didn’t know why her identity was a mystery, but now we know she wanted it to be that way—although we still don’t know why. Perhaps the interview with Leon will help shed light on that tomorrow.”

  Caron nodded.

  “Tell me then, Doctor, what’s your professional opinion of the woman we continue to call Camille Duquette?”

  “As a clinician or as a profiler?”

  “Both.”

  Gregory ran a hand through his hair and let it fall away again.

  “I spent several hours examining Camille this morning, talking to her, checking her motor function, long- and short-term memory capacity,” he said. “It’s all there, in my report. But, if I were to summarise it, I’d say that the woman I met this morning bears no resemblance to the woman we’ve heard about from those who spent time with her during the past few weeks. I saw no hint of over-confidence verging on arrogance—but subdued behaviour could be attributable to the trauma and her present amnesia.”

  “You think the amnesia is real?” Segal asked.

  “It appears very genuine,” Gregory replied. “But she was able to recall small details about her preferences—whether she liked tea—and she had a memory of Monet’s Garden at Giverny. That may, or may not, be significant.”

  The procureur made a note to follow it up.

  “As I said before, I believe her present condition to be dissociative amnesia—formerly known as hysterical amnesia—which usually sets in following severe trauma. However, it’s an extremely rare condition, made even more unusual by the fact it isn’t localised.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gregory turned to Durand.

  “I mean that it isn’t just a case of Camille not remembering the events immediately surrounding and prior to her attack, it’s a case of her not remembering any details of her life whatsoever, including basic facts such as her name or age.”

  Segal snorted.

  “She’s having you on, mon ami. For whatever reason, she went to Wendy Li to change her identity and her past caught up with her, that’s all. When she came around at the hospital, she knew she would be found out, and she’s buying time.”