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

by LJ Ross

  Stars, moon, movies and meteorites.

  Stars, moon, movies and meteorites.

  And monsters, his mother added. Terrible things wait in the dark for bad boys like you.

  The door started to close, and he began to run, crying out as the glass penetrated his skin, reaching blindly for the light before it was too late.

  He burst through the doorway and felt the warmth of the sun against his skin, blinding him at first, but then the world came into focus again and he found himself standing in a beautiful summer garden. Flowers bloomed everywhere, their petals creating a patchwork of colour around an enormous lily pond, bordered by weeping willows.

  The ground was no longer jagged, but soft and springy, the grass thick and green beneath his feet. Alex took a step closer to the pond, ducking beneath the hanging vines of the willow tree so he was shaded beneath its fold.

  But he was not alone.

  A woman was seated there, her long dark hair falling in rippling waves across one side of her face while she watched a pair of swans gliding on the water.

  “Camille?”

  She continued to look out at the water.

  “What’s your name?” he asked. “Who are you?”

  She turned to look at him then and, as her hair fell away, he saw blood running from a gaping wound on the right side of her face, and even more seeping through the silk pyjamas she wore.

  I’m you, she said. I’m everybody and nobody.

  When he looked down, there was a deep cut on his right palm.

  He stumbled away, pushing through the long branches and back out into the sunlight. On the other side of the pond, there stood a beautiful blonde girl. She waved to him, and beckoned him towards her, but there was no bridge to span the distance, nor any boat to carry him across.

  And he couldn’t swim, for his arms were bound tightly inside the straitjacket he wore like a second skin.

  * * *

  Alex awoke with a shout.

  Sometime during the night Madeleine had turned the lights out, and he found himself shrouded in darkness, shivering so hard his teeth chattered.

  “Alex?”

  The light came on again and Madeleine sat up, her body unashamedly naked in the glow of the lamp.

  “Just—just a nightmare. It’s nothing.”

  She raised a hand to his head, but he jerked away. It had been a long time since he’d shared a moment of vulnerability with anyone, especially where he was the one receiving comfort, rather than dishing it out.

  “You look as if you’d seen a ghost,” she said, drawing the covers a little higher to stay warm against the cold draught that seemed to emanate from him. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” he said bleakly. “There’s nothing you can do. I’m sorry to have woken you up.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she muttered. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have any work tomorrow, anyway. I want to help you, if I can.”

  Doctor Gregory returned, along with his logic. “You can help me by telling me why Camille Duquette put your address down as a contact on her bank application,” he said.

  She was taken aback.

  “I—should I be talking to you about this?”

  “It seems a little late for circumspection,” he said. “None of this is admissible, anyway, but I want to know. Call it curiosity.”

  She flopped back against the headboard and reached for the bottle of water sitting on the bedside table.

  “When I met Camille for the first time at the Leroux party a couple of weeks ago, she told me she was looking for a new place to stay. I assumed she’d had a bust-up with an ex-boyfriend or she’d moved from another city.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “No, I didn’t. Camille was very private about her past, and I felt it polite not to enquire in case there had been a bereavement or something of that kind.”

  “She didn’t give you any details?”

  “No. Like I say, we were only briefly introduced. I offered her a place to stay, temporarily, while we were working together.”

  “Very trusting,” he remarked, and she turned to look at him.

  “Yes,” she muttered. “I have a spare room at my apartment, and… I didn’t want to be alone.”

  She swallowed and turned away from him to take a long gulp of water.

  “How did you find her, as a house guest?”

  “Unobtrusive,” she replied. “Tidy…but unpredictable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She only stayed for a few days before we were carted off to the hotel, and she was hardly around,” Madeleine elaborated. “She never came home at night, so I assume she was sleeping elsewhere, either with family or a boyfriend. I told the police all of this.”

  But Gregory wasn’t so interested in that.

  “You said she was unpredictable. What do you mean by that?”

  She took another sip of water.

  “I mean, she could be moody. One minute, she was all smiles, the next…totally different. And she liked to rifle through my things.”

  “You caught her?”

  Madeleine shook her head.

  “No, but I came home a couple of times to find my clothes had been left out on the bed or moved around. It was odd, because she was generally very tidy, as I say.”

  Gregory filed away the information for later.

  “Did you like her?”

  “I…I didn’t dislike her,” she said. “I suppose, to be honest, she put me on edge. She was very ambitious, and fashion was all she talked about, which bored me. All the same, I was sorry to see what had happened, and I hope she’s doing better now. I’d like to visit her sometime, when the police say it’s all right.”

  Gregory nodded.

  “Do you have any idea who might want to hurt her?”

  She looked away again, and drew her knees up to her chest. It made him want to reach out and draw her closer, to comfort whatever sadness had touched her heart.

  But he didn’t.

  “Was there a man?” he asked.

  She leaned her head back against the pillows and laughed.

  “There’s always a man,” she said bitterly. “In fact, there’s usually more than one.”

  “Madeleine—”

  “You hardly know me,” she said suddenly. “And I hardly know you. Let me give you a crash course, Doctor Gregory. My name is Madeleine Margot Paquet, and I look a certain way. It hasn’t always brought me joy, or success; sometimes, it’s brought me trouble. As for the glamorous world of fashion…it’s as bad as the film world. Maybe worse, because nobody has started a movement for women’s rights. You think Gabrielle runs Maison Leroux? Son mari est un souteneur.”

  Gregory didn’t catch the last sentence, but it was spoken with such vitriol, he knew it must have been something derogatory. There was no time to question it, because Madeleine was already rolling off the bed to search for her clothes.

  “You don’t have to go. I’m sorry about the Spanish Inquisition.”

  She sent him a confused look.

  “Quoi?”

  Monty Python clearly wasn’t a part of the English syllabus in France.

  “Never mind. I meant, I’m sorry for asking you all those questions.”

  She hovered, dress in hand.

  “You don’t know my world,” she said eventually. “I haven’t always sung songs at nice jazz cafés.”

  “You don’t know mine,” he shot back. “And I’ve never sung songs, except in the shower.”

  That brought a smile to her lips and, as they looked at one another, he realised he’d forgotten all about the nightmare.

  CHAPTER 21

  Saturday 28th September

  It was shortly after eight when Thierry Lebrun arrived outside Juliette Deschamps’ apartment building. As a runner for Leon, he’d worked with her a couple of times and knew her to be one of the very best in the business, part of a new wave of models with a ‘classic’ look that harkened back to images of women in the
eighties and nineties. She dressed impeccably, her skin was flawless, and she gave every impression of being a woman at the top of her game—she had never been late for work before.

  Which is why he was surprised to find himself outside a second-rate mansion block on a dingy street in the 7th Arrondissement, trying to wake her up.

  He checked the names printed on a laminated card outside the main door and, sure enough, hers was listed as the sole resident on the fourth floor.

  He rubbed his cold hands together, blew some hot air on them, then pressed the buzzer again.

  There was no answer, and he hopped from one foot to the other, hugging himself as an icy blast of wind rushed along the narrow street, stirring up the litter that had been discarded sometime during the night.

  “Allons,” he muttered.

  He pressed the buzzer again and held his finger there for long seconds.

  Still no answer.

  He tried her mobile phone, but the number rang out several times and he chewed his lip, wondering what to do for the best. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d been called upon to drag a model out of bed after a heavy session the night before, but he couldn’t perform miracles and there were plenty of others waiting to take her place—and he was getting cold. The coat he wore might have been the height of fashion, but it wasn’t built to withstand much more than a mild breeze.

  After another unsuccessful attempt at the buzzer, Thierry was about to give up when some instinct compelled him to try the door.

  It opened easily.

  Shaking his head at the lack of security, he stepped into a dim hallway with a bare stone floor. A bank of post boxes was set against one wall and a narrow staircase led to the upper floors. There was no lift, so he grasped the bannister and began the ascent, wishing he wasn’t so unfit. His feet crunched against a small pile of broken glass as he reached the third floor, and he glanced up at the light fitting with its filthy cream shade, thinking once again that it was surprising somebody of Juliette’s means should choose to live in such a place when others of her calibre were in swanky penthouses overlooking the river.

  He was perspiring by the time he reached the top floor, and he ducked his head beneath a low-hanging beam to knock loudly on the single, shabby-looking door bearing her name.

  “Juliette!”

  There was no answer still, and he pressed an ear to the wood, straining to hear any sounds of life from within.

  Just then, he heard footsteps approaching from the floor below. The stairs creaked beneath the weight of an old man, who leaned heavily on the bannister as he dragged himself up the final flight. He introduced himself as Monsieur Gerard, her nearest neighbour, and there ensued a brief discussion where Thierry learned that Juliette had come home sometime around seven-thirty the previous day—the old man had heard her floorboards creaking above his head, and then some crashing around. He’d hammered a broom against the ceiling and the noise had stopped, then she’d gone out again a few minutes later—and seemed to have been in a hurry judging by the speed she’d clattered down the stairwell.

  Thierry’s heart fell, because, if Juliette wasn’t at home, he had no idea where else she could be.

  With a boyfriend or somebody she’d met the night before?

  It seemed unlikely; of all the different characters he met in the industry, Juliette Deschamps had never given the impression of being remotely interested in the opposite sex—or her own, for that matter. Nor had she ever been so unprofessional as to miss the beginning of an important shoot and place her reputation in jeopardy.

  He thanked the old man and was turning to leave when he spotted the blood.

  Just a tiny trail, nothing more than a couple of spots on the stone floor, but enough to send his heart thumping against the wall of his chest.

  “Appelle le gardien,” he said shakily, and while the old man bustled off to find the caretaker, he called the police.

  * * *

  When Gregory arrived at the scene less than an hour later, he spotted Inspector Durand’s Citröen parked on the kerb outside Juliette’s apartment, next to a nondescript white van belonging to the city’s coroner and a couple of white and blue squad cars. A pair of officers were engaged in the important task of setting up a cordon to keep press hounds and rubberneckers at bay, having anticipated that the level of morbid fascination would reach a fever pitch, once the news broke that a second catwalk model had been attacked.

  And this time, her killer hadn’t been interrupted.

  Gregory scrawled his name in the logbook and slipped on some protective overalls before he was escorted inside the building, which wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but was somehow even less impressive on the inside. He was met with a stale odour of mildew mingled with a potent aftershave he attributed immediately to the procureur, who must have passed through the dank hallway a short time before.

  “Monsieur?”

  He followed the young police officer up a narrow flight of stone stairs which had already been coated in a fine layer of protective plastic. His eyes roamed the floor and the walls, not looking for anything specific except, perhaps, the shadow of a criminal.

  He found the first one as they reached the third-floor landing, where a yellow forensic marker had been placed beside what remained of a broken bulb. Gregory stopped to look down at the scattered fragments of glass and filament, then up at the light fixture, where the remains of the metal bayonet cap could still be seen. A crime scene investigator—an officer of the Police Technique et Scientifique—was crouched on all fours beside the skirting board, her polypropylene suit rustling as she brushed tiny slivers of glass into an evidence bag. She looked up from behind a hooded mask and he met her eyes, before continuing upward, where his next nightmare awaited him in the flesh.

  * * *

  Gregory would never forget the sight of Juliette Deschamps.

  He had seen many things in his time as a clinician and was not afraid of the sight of blood; an ability to withstand a certain level of trauma was a prerequisite for the work he did each day, and his tolerance had been tested many times before, in the saddest of circumstances.

  But this felt different, somehow.

  Her killer had displayed an exceptional level of cruelty; a disregard for humanity he seldom came across, even at Southmoor, where ‘humanity’ was a fluid term.

  “How long has she been dead?” he asked quietly.

  Durand battled his own emotions and the strong urge for a cigarette.

  “The examiner thinks at least twelve hours,” he said.

  There was a stifling odour of blood lingering on the air in the small studio, mingling with something worse that reminded him of over-ripe fruit. Post-mortem lividity had set in, turning the visible parts of Juliette’s skin a translucent grey as whatever blood that remained succumbed to gravity and settled on the underside of her body. Were it not for the congealed blood caking her hair, and the ugly, gaping wounds on her skin, she might have been a mannequin—beautiful, even in death.

  “The examiner found a cut to the right side of her face, in exactly the same place as Camille’s.”

  Juge Bernard delivered the update with a sombre expression, and was joined by Procureur Segal, who had been engaged in the task of liaising with the senior forensic technician.

  “There were lacerations to the stomach and torso as well,” he said. “It’s very similar to what happened before.”

  “It must have been the same man,” Durand agreed. “There are too many similarities to overlook; the victim type, the fact she was a witness, not to mention the injuries…it’s too much of a coincidence, especially since the precise details of Camille’s wounds were not made public. That reduces the likelihood of there being a copycat.”

  Gregory stepped closer to Juliette’s body, which lay in a perfect circle of blood. Her life force had pumped from her body onto a cheap circular rug she’d laid out to brighten the room, which consisted of a sofa-bed, two large wardrobes and a tiny kitch
enette, with a separate en-suite bathroom. As he approached, he saw what the examiner had seen: ragged tears to her clothing and skin, and a series of lancing blows to her forearms which must have been sustained as she fended off further blows, in an ill-fated effort to survive.

  He turned back to gauge the distance between the door and the place where she’d fallen, estimating it to be no more than ten paces. Blood was spattered across the magnolia walls and on the bare floorboards in long, thin arcs, roughly forming a perimeter around her body.

  But there was nothing immediately beside the door.

  “The intruder gained access to the apartment first,” he surmised. “They didn’t attack straight away, or there’d have been blood on the walls beside the door, over there.”

  “It’s the same as before,” Bernard remarked. “The perpetrator managed to get inside Camille’s hotel room before lashing out, as well.”

  “That seems to fit your idea that the attacker was known to his or her victims,” Durand said, and Gregory nodded.

  “Yes, I think that’s very likely.”

  While the police team discussed the mechanics of running a crime scene, Gregory moved slowly around the room, taking care not to tread anywhere he shouldn’t and following a protective walkway the technical and scientific officers had laid out. One of them was taking photographs of Juliette—close-up, unforgiving images of a life laid bare—and he turned away to look out of the dormer window and gather his thoughts.

  As he looked out of the grubby windowpanes, he understood immediately what had attracted Juliette to the apartment; from this vantage point, there was an uninterrupted view of the Eiffel Tower and the rooftops of Paris. He wondered how many times Juliette Deschamps had stood in the same spot and watched the clouds roll by—then he noticed a wooden stool that had been placed nearby with a copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein resting on top, presumably where she had often perched reading and looking out of the window.

  Gregory turned to survey the rest of the room, scanning every corner, and was struck by an incredible weight of sadness. There was an emptiness here that came not only from a violent loss of life but something deeper. Even accounting for a degree of projection which came from his own grief at the senseless waste of life, it was still true that there were no pictures on the walls, nor any mementos of Juliette’s travels around the world. The décor was spartan and impersonal and, if he hadn’t known better, he’d have said she’d only recently moved in.