Black Fly Season. Giles Blunt

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СКАЧАТЬ your memory problems, and nervous about asking questions. A few days ago you weren’t feeling anything. I’d say things are looking up.’

      ‘You’re safe here,’ Delorme said. ‘There’s a huge cop guarding your door, and we’re going to do everything we can to catch the person that did this to you.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘We’d better go,’ Cardinal said. ‘Dr Paley wanted to talk to us again.’

      ‘He seems very optimistic,’ Delorme said to the young woman, ‘so try not to worry too much.’

      ‘How can I?’ the girl said and smiled wanly. ‘I can’t remember what I’m supposed to worry about.’

      Dr Paley was waiting for them in a staff lounge down the hall. There was a fridge, a microwave, and a few plastic chairs around a table. The blue screen of a combination TV and VCR glowed high up on a shelf. Dr Paley slipped a videotape into it and sat down beside them with a remote in his hand. He pointed it at the screen and the VCR began to whirr.

      ‘I won’t play you the whole thing,’ he said. ‘The way I went about this, I told her I was an avid shutterbug – true, by the way – and I wanted to show her some of my favourite photographs. What they are is scenes from around Algonquin Bay – places any local person would recognize. I got my wife and kids to pose, so the pictures wouldn’t seem so obvious as memory cues.’

      ‘How will we know which one she’s looking at?’

      Dr Paley clicked the remote and froze the image that appeared. They were looking at a wide-angle shot that included both him and Red, with the angle favouring the young woman. In the upper left-hand corner was a smaller image of the doctor’s daughter in a red snowsuit, standing in front of the Gateway to the North sign.

      ‘I use a video set-up with picture-in-picture capability. You see what she’s seeing in the little box. You’ll notice she has no particular reaction to the Gateway to the North arch.’

      He clicked the remote again. On screen, the redhead made a polite comment, inquiring about the child’s age.

      The Gateway morphed into an image of the cathedral.

      ‘Same again, you see?’ Dr Paley pointed to his patient. ‘She’s polite. Kind-hearted, too, asking about the kids and so on. But nothing in her reaction indicates that she recognizes the church.’

      On screen, the girl smiled. The insert showed a triumphant six-year-old hoisting a fish he had just caught off the government dock, a local landmark. The white bulk of the Chippewa Princess, a cruise boat, loomed in the background.

      ‘No change, right?’

      ‘These are certainly the places you think of, when you think of Algonquin Bay,’ Cardinal said. ‘But her not recognizing them doesn’t mean she isn’t from here, right? It may just mean her memory isn’t budging for now.’

      ‘Correct,’ Dr Paley said. ‘But watch what happens coming up.’ He hit fast forward and the image smeared and leaned. They waited a couple of minutes while he kept his eye on the numbers that clicked round on the bottom of the screen. The tape halted with a clunk. ‘Here we are. I’m showing her my photographic vista of Beaufort Hill.’

      ‘Yes, there’s the old fire tower,’ Delorme said. A tiny dirt road that led up to it curved away from a line of hydro pylons below, forming an elongated Y.

      ‘She doesn’t say anything, you notice, but look at the crease between her brows. She lifts her hand and she starts to speak…’

      The insert suddenly went snowy and there was a loud hiss – almost a roar – of static. The girl’s eyes went round as two zeroes, and her hand flew to her mouth.

      ‘What is it?’ Dr Paley asked on screen. ‘What’s wrong?’

      The girl’s face went blank, the horror gone.

      Dr Paley asked her again what was wrong.

      ‘Nothing,’ the young woman said. ‘I mean, I don’t know. I felt scared all of a sudden.’

      ‘Note the return of affect,’ Dr Paley said to Cardinal and Delorme. ‘A good sign.’

      ‘What startled her?’ Delorme said.

      ‘There was a short in the jumper cable and it caused that awful spray of static and it made her jump out of her skin. But before that, I think she was about to recognize Beaufort Hill, or at least say something about it. So it’s not clear whether her fright reaction is to Beaufort Hill or just to the sudden noise. As you can see, I didn’t get anything else out of her.’

      On screen, Dr Paley gently tried to get the girl to say what had scared her.

      ‘I don’t know,’ she said, again. ‘I just felt this sudden… I don’t know.’

      ‘Was it the noise that frightened you?’

      She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure.’

      ‘Was there something about the picture? The picture of the hill? Could you look at it again?’

      ‘I don’t know…’

      ‘I promise it won’t make the noise this time. I’ll hold the cable.’

      ‘I guess…’

      The insert of Beaufort Hill appeared again. The girl’s expression changed only slightly this time, to one of concentration. Then she shook her head. ‘It doesn’t mean anything to me. At least, I don’t think so. I don’t know what made me jump like that.’

      Dr Paley hit the pause button. ‘I wrapped it up a few minutes after that. It’s probably not much use to you, but I wanted you to see it, if only to get an idea of how gently this sort of recovery has to proceed.’

      ‘Is it possible that hill is where she got shot?’ Delorme asked.

      ‘Very unlikely. As I said, she won’t remember anything about that – nothing that occurred within half an hour before or after. If she was held somewhere first, or if she was fleeing for a time, that may come back, but not the memory of the shooting itself.’

      ‘So it’s possible something happened there,’ Cardinal said.

      ‘Oh, yes. Possibly something leading up to the trauma. Possibly something when she regained consciousness. If so, we can expect it to come back to her at a later date. We just have to be patient.’

       7

      ‘You feel like a little hike?’ Delorme said when they were outside. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear; a damp breeze was blowing across the parking lot. ‘We could take a look at that hill close up. You recognized it, right?’

      ‘Yeah, the picture was taken from somewhere up behind the University,’ Cardinal said. ‘Why don’t we drive over that way before it starts to rain?’

      ‘You СКАЧАТЬ