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

by LJ Ross

  It was heartless but true, and there was a certain comfort to that.

  “Gregory will be leaving in a few days, and then it will be back to business as usual. Drink up and forget your worries—they’ll be forgotten, soon enough.”

  But as the outer door opened, it brought a gust of cool air and a group of all-female protesters, who were celebrating a day well spent, their animated voices already chattering about the next time they would take to the streets. They carried cardboard banners with slogans on one side and pasted photographs of Juliette and Camille on the other.

  ‘JE SUIS ELLE, ET ELLE EST MOI’, one slogan read.

  I am she, and she is me.

  And the pair in the corner knew a moment’s fear, for there were some who refused to be forgotten, even in death.

  * * *

  Madeleine was waiting for him at a table beside the window, and this time she’d dressed in the post-war style, her blonde hair swept up in a victory roll with a slash of red lipstick and a polka-dot tea dress. She was the sort of woman who could choose to be conspicuous or not, and when he remarked on it, she gave him a self-deprecating smile.

  “I read a magazine article once, about Marilyn Monroe,” she said. “I don’t know whether it was true, but the story goes that she was walking one day in New York City with a friend, who asked why people weren’t mobbing her in the street, clamouring for her autograph. Marilyn asked her friend whether they’d like to see her ‘become Marilyn’ and, when she did, something subtle changed—her body language, the way she moved—and suddenly cars were slowing down and people were staring at her.”

  Gregory listened as he shrugged out of his overcoat and hung it on a peg on the wall.

  “Is that what you do? Turn on the jazz?”

  She smiled at the reference.

  “I think that’s what we all do—each of us who are asked to play a role. We switch between different sides of ourselves.”

  “What side am I seeing now?” he asked.

  Madeleine smiled slowly.

  “I suppose you’re seeing Margot. She’s fun, relaxed and generally happy.”

  Gregory wondered if she knew how sad that sounded.

  “And Madeleine?”

  “Is taking the night off,” she said. “Her work is done, for a few days at least.”

  She broke a breadstick in half and offered a piece to him.

  “Which side of you am I seeing?” she asked, throwing the question back.

  “Very good,” he murmured. “It’s a bad habit of mine, to ask all the questions and answer none myself.”

  “What do they call that in your world—avoidance?”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, enjoying the brief electricity, then he leaned back to break the contact.

  “What a pity, I rather liked your alter-ego,” she murmured.

  “But not this one?”

  He said it with a smile, but the question was serious. ‘Doctor Gregory’ was the man he embodied most of the time, and most in need of acceptance.

  “I like him very much, too,” she said. “He’s a bit uptight, you know, but he appreciates jazz music, and listens when I talk. He has sad green eyes he tries to hide, and is a little lost, I think…just like me.”

  Embarrassed, he looked away.

  “Shall we order?”

  She nodded, wondering if he knew how attractive it was when the cool, steady-handed Doctor Gregory was flustered.

  “The casserole is good here.”

  “Two casseroles it is, then,” he said, not bothering to look at the menu.

  She leaned forward and rested her forearms on the table between them. Her hands were open, and he could have taken them in his own.

  But he didn’t.

  “A couple of officers from Durand’s team came to see me today,” she said, changing the subject. “They wanted to ask me about Juliette.”

  Gregory caught the quick flash of pain.

  “She was your friend?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “She was prickly at first, and kept to herself most of the time, but over the past couple of years we grew to know one another. I called her my friend, and she came to some of my gigs.”

  She looked down at her hands, then back up again.

  “It wasn’t common knowledge, but Juliette had a daughter she was supporting. Anais, she was called. Juliette showed me a picture once, but she preferred not to talk about her while she was in ‘work mode’.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said, and thought back to the painful conversation with Juliette’s mother. “At least she has loving grandparents to look after her.”

  He left the statement hanging in the air, wondering if Madeleine would choose to share any information she might have about Anais’s father, but none was forthcoming.

  Madeleine took a sip of water to wet her throat, which was suddenly dry.

  “Last night, I told you that you didn’t really know me—”

  “How could I? We’ve only just met,” he said, reasonably.

  “Yes, but…what I mean is, there’s another side to me that I prefer not to think about. Just like Juliette.”

  Whether it was the note in her voice or the look in her eye, he didn’t know, but Gregory broke his own rule and reached across the table to take her hand.

  “You can tell me anything,” he said, and meant it. A great part of his job was to help those in emotional need, listening to their stories without judgment. He wondered if the same applied to fledgling romantic relationships, too.

  “I haven’t told anyone,” she said, and looked around the room to check their conversation would not be overheard. “Not even the police. If it gets out to the press, my career will be ruined.”

  “You can rely on my discretion but, if what you tell me could help to find Juliette’s killer, and Camille’s attacker, I have a duty to report it to the police.”

  She raised a hand to cup his cheek, taking him by surprise.

  “Why do you think I’m telling you this?” she murmured. “I know you’ll do the right thing, whatever that may be.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her about his mother, Cathy Jones, and the lengths he’d gone to, to treat her illness—and the risks he’d taken to try to exact the truth, an apology, or preferably both. All for nothing, in the end.

  Had he done the right thing there?

  “A couple of years ago, when I was just starting out in the business, I made a stupid mistake,” Madeleine continued, and the moment was lost.

  He gave her hands a squeeze.

  “People do,” he said quietly. “It’s called ‘being human’.”

  She gave him a weak smile, and hoped he would feel the same compassion once her story was told.

  “Juliette and I were at the same party one night,” she began. “We were told to go, because a lot of important industry people would be there, but I remember we stuck together a lot of the time because we hardly knew anyone. The club was a big place, very dark, and I was tired of smiling at the end of a long week. We found a sitting room and there was a small crowd in there already, with some of the other models we knew, so we joined them.”

  Madeleine drew her hands away, clasping them on her lap.

  “They offered us some pills—ecstasy, I think. They said it would give us both a boost, so we’d sparkle for the people who mattered. It was so stupid…but, I took one. So did Juliette. Shortly after, I started feeling sick. The room was spinning, and I thought I was going to pass out…then, the police came.”

  She closed her eyes, remembering the terrifying loss of control.

  “I remember being in the police car…and then Armand being there, speaking to the man in charge. I thought I would be arrested, but instead they drove me home—Juliette, too. When I woke up the next day, Armand came to see me again and said he’d already spoken with the police. I felt terrible, worse than I can ever remember, and I thought he’d come to tell me I was fired. I’d just been offered a campaign for Petit Leroux,
their children’s concession, and if it ever got out that I’d been involved in a drug raid it would ruin the wholesome image they wanted to create of a young mother and her cute, well-dressed kids.”

  She pulled a face at that.

  “But he didn’t fire you?”

  Gabrielle shook her head, pausing while the waiter delivered her chicken casserole, her appetite completely gone.

  “He told me I could carry on working and he’d do what he could to smooth things over with the police, if I did him a favour in return,” she said, feeling sick at the very thought. “He—he said he had a friend who was having another party, and he asked me to go along and be nice to his guests.”

  Gregory felt anger course through his body, so swift and so strong, he began to shake.

  “You mean, he wanted you to be an escort?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s a polite way of putting it,” she said. “But Armand, he knows how to pick them. He has friends in the police, so he probably looked into our backgrounds and found out Juliette had a baby and a family to support. She couldn’t afford to lose the job she’d only just begun, and neither could I. My mother requires constant care because she has advanced multiple sclerosis. The drugs she needs are new on the market and very expensive, so I need to keep working.”

  “He abused his position.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Armand threatened to blacken our names if we told anyone about it—and I’ve seen it happen, Alex. I’ve seen models with a shining future go from being the face of huge fashion brands, to being unemployed and unemployable, practically overnight, simply on the word of one or two powerful people.”

  “You’re afraid he’ll do the same to you?”

  “Yes,” she said miserably. “I would love to have the confidence to stand up and speak out, and deal with the consequences later, but I have my mother to think of. The medicine has changed her life.”

  “Does he still ask you to go along to parties?”

  “Not for over a year,” she said. “He’s found some fresh blood in the meantime, and I’ve been trying to carve out a new career, making a name for myself in the jazz clubs so I can give it up and get away. But I have to do it slowly and carefully.”

  “You said the police were complicit,” he prompted. “Give me a name, Madeleine.”

  “Alex, I wish I could—”

  “You can. Please.”

  But she shook her head, battling tears of anger and frustration.

  “I want to tell you, but I’m afraid of what will happen. You don’t know what these people are like, Alex. They live on another plane, where they believe they’re invincible.”

  Oh yes, he thought. I know people like that.

  His father was one of them.

  “Do you think Juliette’s death is connected to all this?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t know. It happened over two years ago, so I don’t understand why anybody would want to hurt her now; surely, they’d have acted back then, not after she’d done as she was told, and remained quiet.”

  Maybe she had a change of heart, Gregory thought. It was possible she’d given her killer a reason to act swiftly, but the manner of her death was inconsistent with the usual cases of ‘punishment’ or ‘execution-style’ killings he’d seen before. In those cases, the killer wasted no time on ritual or bloody deaths; they moved swiftly and cleanly to silence a person who had become any kind of threat.

  Unless, of course, Juliette’s killer was an opportunist who tried to emulate the details of Camille’s attack in order to give a false impression that the perpetrator was one and the same.

  If that was the case, the job for the Brigade Criminelle became much harder because they were no longer looking for one person.

  They were looking for two.

  “I understand if…if you don’t see me the same way, now,” Madeleine said, with as much bravado as she could muster. “I’m not proud of my past.”

  Gregory shoved aside the questions circling his mind and focused on the person seated in front of him, giving her his full attention as so few people were able to do.

  “Everybody has regrets, Madeleine,” he said. “Without them, we’d be two-dimensional, cardboard cut-outs without any texture or personality. I have my own regrets, and sometimes I wish I could turn back the clock to do things differently, but I can’t—and neither can you. All you can do is what you’ve done, which is take control of your future.”

  He reached across to take her hand again.

  “What you’ve told me makes me sad and angry, and you’re right that I see you differently now. Before, I thought you were lovely—but now, I think you’re exceptional.”

  Her eyes filled.

  “You really mean that?”

  He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her soft skin.

  “If you find the courage to tell me more of what happened, I’ll be here to listen. Until you do, we won’t know who we can trust at the Police Judiciaire.”

  She nodded mutely.

  “I don’t know the name,” she said. “All I know is that Armand called them le cochon.”

  The pig, Gregory thought. International derogatory slang for police, of non-specific gender.

  “You never met them, at one of these parties Armand arranged?”

  “I was—it…” Her voice faltered and she gulped down some more water while he waited, endlessly patient. “You don’t understand. These parties were like…did you ever see the film, Eyes Wide Shut?”

  He nodded, and felt his heart sink.

  “Like that,” she muttered. “Everybody wore masks, and nobody used their real name. I think my drinks may have been spiked, because the memories are unclear.”

  “Do you know where the parties were held?”

  “Everywhere,” she replied. “Large houses, mostly, or rented space around the city.”

  Gregory could see the physical effort it was taking for her to recount what she considered to be the most shameful part of her past, and he knew they’d reached a tipping point. Two other models had been attacked in the same week—both of whom were known to her, and one of whom had experienced the same abuse of power. The similarities may be coincidence, but a police inspector friend he’d met in the North of England had once told him that there was no such thing as ‘coincidence’.

  He was starting to think he may be right.

  “I don’t think you should be alone this evening,” he said.

  Madeleine shook her head and gave him a private smile.

  “There is safety in numbers,” she agreed.

  CHAPTER 27

  Sunday 29th September

  The room was dark and sumptuous, awash with velvet and silk.

  The air was heavy with the stench of spoiling fruit and, when he turned, Alex saw an enormous bowl rotting away in the centre of a long, polished table. On the wall behind it was a photograph of the fruit bowl as it had once been; ripe and colourful, spilling over with fat purple grapes and shiny red apples.

  But then, the image shifted, and the colours altered until it no longer showed things as they had once been, but as they now were—stale and festering.

  He turned away, stumbling through a draped curtain into the next room, where another tableau awaited him.

  It was a hall of mirrors but different to the one before; warmly lit and furnished in golds and reds. Banners hung from the ceiling depicting images of women of all ages, races and sizes, bearing the slogan, ‘JE SUIS ELLE, ET ELLE EST MOI’.

  In the centre of the room, two women stood half-clothed, their faces concealed behind velvet masks, each holding a cardboard sign.

  I am she, the brunette said, turning to face one of the mirrored panels on the wall.

  And she is me, the redhead replied, pulling a small knife from where it had been embedded in her chest.

  As the blade was drawn out, both women began to bleed; their wounds identical but for the brunette’s right forearm. The mir
rored panel began to crack and splinter, sending heavy shards of glass tumbling to the floor.

  Then another began to crack.

  And another.

  Soon, the sound of shattering glass filled the room and he turned his face away from the shrapnel, feeling tiny pricks puncturing his skin.

  Madeleine!

  He raised a hand to protect his eyes, trying to see through the fog of glass to find her.

  She isn’t here, the brunette said, her voice rising above the sound of glass panels shattering, their number as infinite as the possibilities within his own imagination.

  She’ll be joining us, soon, the redhead told him.

  No! he shouted, and his body reared up from the bed in his hotel room, his hand connecting with Madeleine’s shoulder as she tried to sleep.

  She rolled over, unsure of what to do for the best, then tried to take his hand.

  But he shook her off, as his body waged a terrible battle on the frontiers of his own mind.

  In his dream, a child appeared before him, small and chubby with pigtails in her hair.

  Papa?

  He shook his head.

  Where’s your daddy? he asked her, but she ran away from him.

  Wait!

  He held out a hand to stop her, but the skin of his hand was old and more weathered than before, and, as he turned, he caught sight of himself in the broken slivers of glass still clinging to the wall.

  His father.

  Alex spun away from the reflection and straight into his mother’s steely grip. He tasted blood in his mouth, an old wound he’d suffered as a boy, and he tried to break free of her, once and for all.

  But the arms held steadfast, and her voice whispered in his ear.

  Blood is thicker than water. Nothing can come between a mother and her son.

  “Alex!” Madeleine cried, giving him a firm shake. “Alex, wake up!”

  He did, suddenly and completely, and his hands grasped her slim shoulders as he struggled to acclimatise himself in the real world.

  “Sorry,” he said, immediately letting go of her arms and checking to see if his hands had left a mark. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No, not really,” she said. “It came as more of a shock.”