Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

anti-terrorist unit for a long time. He is suspected of having supplied explosives to the group that blew up the Rue Saint-Lazare bus. Small quantities of C-4 and PEP 500 were found in his home during a search, along with plastic charges, cell phones converted into detonators, and a huge arsenal: guns of every caliber, steel rebars, bulletproof vests. After three days in custody, the man has not admitted anything to his interrogators, and the analysis of his hard drive and electronic communications during recent months is not enough to prove his participation, even indirectly, in the terrorist attacks.

It is a fascinating case, but a complicated one. The heat makes it hard for me to concentrate. My two colleagues speak quickly, overloading me with so many details that I struggle to retain them. My memory is usually excellent, but tonight I grab a notebook to write down what they tell me.

When the briefing is over, they take me downstairs to the interrogation room. Foucaud, Taillandier…all the big bosses are there, behind a one-way mirror, eager to see me at work. And now I, too, feel eager to enter the arena.

I open the door and walk into the room.

Inside, the heat is stifling, almost unbearable. Handcuffed to a chair, Rahmani is sitting behind a wooden table not much bigger than a school desk. His head is lowered and he is sweating. He barely even notices my presence.

I roll up the sleeves of my blouse and wipe the beads of sweat from my forehead. I have brought a bottle of water as a way of establishing contact. Instead of handing it to the suspect, however, I decide to open it and take a long drink myself.

To begin with, the water makes me feel better. Then, abruptly, I feel dizzy and disoriented. I close my eyes and lean against the wall.

When I open them again, I have no idea where I am. My mind is a blank, a void. And I feel the most awful anxiety, as if I’ve been teleported to an unknown place.

I feel myself reeling, so I sit down in the chair, facing the man, and ask: “Who are you? What am I doing here?”

One week ago

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

I remember everything…

Paris, six p.m. The end of a beautiful fall day.

The last rays of the setting sun set the capital ablaze, reflecting in the windows of buildings, the surface of the river, the windshields of cars, spreading their golden light through the city’s streets. A wave of dazzling light and long shadows.

Near the Parc André-Citroën, I extricate my car from a traffic jam and drive it up the concrete ramp that leads to a glass ship moored on the banks of the Seine. The façade of the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital looks like the prow of a futuristic ocean liner that has made a stopover in the south of the fifteenth arrondissement; it hugs the rounded bend of the street and mirrors the Judas trees and hawthorn hedges planted along either side of the esplanade.

Parking lot. Concrete maze. Sliding doors opening on a large central atrium. Row of elevators. Waiting room.

I have an appointment with Professor Evariste Clouseau, the head of the National Institute of Memory, which occupies the building’s entire top floor.

Clouseau is one of France’s leading specialists in Alzheimer’s disease. I met him three months ago as part of the investigation my team was conducting into the murder of his twin brother, Jean-Baptiste, the head of the cardiovascular unit in the same hospital. The two brothers hated each other so virulently that when Jean-Baptiste learned that he had pancreatic cancer, he decided to commit suicide and make it look as if he had been murdered by his brother. The case was big news. Evariste was even briefly imprisoned before we managed to uncover the truth. After his release, he told Seymour that we had freed him from hell and that he would be eternally grateful to us. These were not empty words; when I called him a week ago to book an appointment, he managed to squeeze me in that very day.

After the fiasco during my interrogation of the suspected terrorist, I quickly recovered my memory. My lapse lasted no more than three minutes, but it happened with everyone watching. Taillandier forced me to take medical leave, then blocked my return, pending a doctor’s assessment. So I had to undergo an in-depth medical examination and consult a psychiatrist again. Despite my protests, I was prescribed a long break from work.

This came as a surprise to no one. Taillandier had been openly trying to get rid of me for years. She had failed after the Vaughn case, but this new episode handed her the chance at revenge on a silver platter. I refused to go quietly, however. I contacted the union, hired an employment lawyer, and saw several other doctors, who all testified to my perfect health.

I wasn’t really worried. My morale was high, and I wanted to fight, get my job back. Sure, I’d had that sudden, brief memory loss, and—like everyone—I sometimes forgot what I was doing, but I attributed these little episodes to stress, tiredness, overwork, the heat…

And that opinion was shared by all the doctors I went to see. All but one, who mentioned the possibility of a neurological disease and asked me to undergo a brain scan.

Figuring that the best defense is a good offense, I decided to be proactive and consult a recognized authority in the field. So it was that I went to see Clouseau, who ordered a whole battery of tests. Last week, I spent an entire day in this damn hospital, enduring a spinal tap, an MRI, a PET scan, and various blood tests and memory tests. Clouseau asked me to come in today so he could talk to me about the results.

I feel confident. And impatient to start work again. I have even planned an evening out with some university friends—Karine, Malika, and Samia—to celebrate my return to