Black Fly Season. Giles Blunt

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      ‘Good. So is Catherine.’

      Christine Nadeau went back to wait in the car, and Cardinal found Catherine zipping up her carry-on in the bedroom. Her face was flushed, and she looked short of breath. Should I say something?

      ‘I’m so disorganized,’ Catherine said. She was shoving loose change and bills into her jeans pocket as Cardinal hauled the suitcase out to the front room. ‘You’d think I’d learn by now.’

      ‘You’re not disorganized. You were just focused on making sure your camera gear was in shape.’

      ‘I’m not going to check it again,’ Catherine said. ‘It’s a supreme act of will, but I’m not going to check it again.’

      She put on a khaki fisherman’s vest. Even on Catherine it was perfectly hideous, but it had thousands of pockets for film, flash, batteries, pens, labels, and filters – the myriad doodads of the serious photographer.

      ‘Did you pack your medication?’ Cardinal said. He had to. It wasn’t in him to let her leave town and not say this.

      Catherine turned her back on him and put on a light coat over the vest. A slim black coat. It had a hood with a red lining that gave off echoes of fairy tales.

      ‘Did you hear me, sweetheart?’

      ‘Yes, John. I heard you. Yes, I packed my medication. Thank you for reminding me that I can’t be trusted to so much as cross the road without supervision.’

      ‘All right. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

      ‘Here I am excited about a big project and you just have to rain on the parade, don’t you.’

      ‘Don’t over-react, honey. I’m glad you’re taking the trip. You should know by now – after twenty-five years or however long it’s been – I’m a worry wart. Always have been, always will be. Have a good time, and I’ll see you when you get back.’

      Catherine hauled her suitcase outside without another word. Cardinal watched her get into the car, an ache in his chest. I shouldn’t have said anything.

      He was in the kitchen clearing away the breakfast things when Catherine rushed back in. She stopped in the kitchen doorway, and took a deep breath.

      ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a bitch. It’s just sometimes, once in a while – once in a great while – I actually imagine I’m normal. I actually fantasize that I can do all the things normal people do without a second thought, and why should anyone worry about it. It’s hard for me to remember I have this problem. It’s painful to be reminded of it.’

      ‘I’m sorry if I brought you down,’ Cardinal said. ‘Old habits…’

      Catherine came closer, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.

      ‘You worry too much.’

      A little later, Cardinal and Delorme drove up to St Francis hospital. It wasn’t actually called St Francis any more, but Cardinal still thought of it that way. Algonquin Bay’s City Hospital consisted of two brick boxes that used to be two separate hospitals until the provincial government decided they would be better off united in holy parsimony. The smaller one, the former St Francis, sits halfway up a hill, overlooking Ecole Secondaire Algonquin and the grubby cinders of the CNR railway tracks. It is this building that houses the hospital’s psychiatric ward. On any given day, the half-dozen or so patients that wander its halls consist of attempted suicides, drug overdoses, or emotionally symphonic teenagers – patients not deemed crazy enough or long-term enough for residence at the local Ontario Psychiatric Hospital, where Catherine went to recover from the worst of her depressions.

      Cardinal and Delorme were here to check in on Jane Doe, but Cardinal was having trouble focusing, just now, the sight of a hospital having thrown his mind back upon Catherine.

      Perhaps there was no cause for concern. Perhaps Catherine’s excitement about her trip was just that: excitement. She hadn’t flown off on any flights of fancy; she’d made no grand announcements of omnipotence, unveiled no cosmic plans for changing the nature of reality as we know it. Perhaps it really was just girlish excitement about going to the big city on a photographic project. In a normal woman, it would have been no cause for concern. But in Catherine…

      Cardinal and Delorme took the elevator to the third floor, the psychiatric wing. They had arranged to meet a neuro-psychologist who had been brought in to try and help their mysterious redhead recover her memory. City Hospital did not have a neuropsychologist on staff. There was only one in the entire city, and he was there on loan, teaching a course at Northern University’s school of nursing: Dr Garth Paley.

      If I ever need a shrink, Cardinal thought as Dr Paley introduced himself, I want one who looks just like this guy. Paley was dressed in a tweed jacket and jeans, which gave him the look of a man who could be comfortable in the library or in the bar. Although he was not more than mid-fifties, he had grandfatherly white hair and a silvery beard. His brows were dark, shadowing his eyes in a way that gave them a perceptive, almost prehensile, look. A man who could understand and empathize before you even said anything. Some people are just perfectly suited to their jobs; Cardinal often wished he were one.

      ‘I appreciate your letting me know you were coming up to see my Jane Doe,’ Dr Paley told them. ‘Please sit.’

      The office they were in might have been anywhere. It had the usual computer, the usual metal bookshelves bolted to the wall. It was an uncomfortable place and didn’t suit Dr Paley at all.

      ‘A couple of things you should know before you talk to her,’ he said. ‘First off, you mentioned on the phone, Detective, that you were hoping her amnesia was temporary. The short answer is, it isn’t amnesia.’ Dr Paley grinned at them, his cheeks suddenly rosy. Santa Claus as a youngish man.

      ‘I don’t understand,’ Cardinal said. ‘She doesn’t remember who she is or where she’s from…’

      Dr Paley raised a manicured finger. ‘That isn’t amnesia. It’s post-traumatic confusion. We don’t know what the mechanism is, but basically when the brain receives a jolt it’s as if all the pathways get scrambled and information doesn’t flow the way it normally does. But she hasn’t really forgotten who she is, she just can’t retrieve it.’

      ‘She will be able to, though, right?’ Delorme said. ‘She will remember eventually?’

      ‘Oh yes. Dr Schaff assures me that the actual brain damage is minimal. We can expect normal affect to return, probably in a week, maybe three at the most. And by then she should have pretty much a continuous autobiography, too.’

      ‘And what about the crime itself? Getting shot?’

      ‘That she will never remember.’

      ‘Can’t blame her,’ Delorme muttered. ‘For sure, it must have been pretty horrific.’

      ‘That’s not why,’ Dr Paley said. ‘She’s not repressing the memory – the information just isn’t there. People make the mistake of thinking memory is like a videotape. It isn’t. It’s not a recording of what happened. Two sets of encoding have to go on before an event is stored in long-term memory. First, it has to be processed by the brain in a way that makes it comprehensible. Then, it varies, but СКАЧАТЬ