by Louise Penny
“Should we say something?” Jacqueline asked.
“Say what?” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “To who?”
“To Monsieur Gamache, of course,” she said.
“No,” said Anton firmly. “Promise me you won’t. We don’t know what it is—”
“We have a pretty good idea,” she said.
“But we don’t know.” He lowered his voice when the chef looked over. “It’ll probably go away.”
Jacqueline had her own reasons to worry, but for the moment she was focused on Anton’s reaction to the thing.
* * *
Armand sat in the bistro, reading.
He could feel eyes on him. All with the same message.
Do something about that thing on the village green.
Make it go away.
What good was it to have the head of the entire Sûreté as a neighbor, if he couldn’t protect them?
He crossed his legs, and heard the mutter of the open fire. He felt the warmth, smelled the maple wood smoke, and sensed the eyes of his neighbors drilling into him.
While there’d been a comfortable armchair right by the open hearth, he’d placed himself in the window. Where he could see the thing.
Like Reine-Marie, Armand had noticed that as the day went by, he’d slowly stopped thinking of the figure on the green as “he.” It had become an “it.”
And Gamache, more than any of them, knew how dangerous that was. To dehumanize a person. Because no matter how strange the behavior, it was a person beneath those robes.
It also interested him to see his own reactions. He wanted it to go away. He wanted to go out there and arrest it. Him.
For what?
For disturbing his personal peace.
It wasn’t useful to tell everyone that there was no threat. Because he didn’t know if that was true. What he did know was that there was nothing he could do. The very fact he was head of the Sûreté made it less possible, not more, for him to act.
* * *
Reine-Marie had stood at his side at his swearing-in. Gamache in his dress uniform, with the gold epaulets and gold braid and gold belt. And the medals he wore reluctantly. Each reminding him of an event he wished hadn’t happened. But had.
He’d stood resolute, determined.
His son and daughter watching. His grandchildren there too, as he’d raised his hand and sworn to uphold Service, Integrity, Justice.
Their friends and neighbors were in the audience, packed into the grand room at the National Assembly.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his longtime second-in-command and now his son-in-law, held his own son. And watched.
Gamache had asked Beauvoir to join him in the Chief Superintendent’s department. Once again as second-in-command.
“Nepotism?” Beauvoir had asked. “A grand Québec tradition.”
“You know how much I value tradition,” said Gamache. “But you’re forcing me to admit that you’re the very best person for the job, Jean-Guy, and the ethics committee agrees.”
“Awkward for you.”
“Oui. The Sûreté is now a meritocracy. So don’t—”
“Fuck up?”
“I was going to say, don’t forget the croissants, but the other works too.”
And Jean-Guy had said oui. Merci. And watched as Chief Superintendent Gamache shook hands with the Chief Justice of Québec, then turned to face the crowded auditorium.
He stood at the head of a force of thousands charged with protecting a province Armand Gamache loved. A populace he saw not as either victim or threat, but as brothers and sisters. Equals, to be respected and protected. And sometimes arrested.
“Apparently there’s more to the job,” he’d said to Myrna, during one of their quiet conversations, “than cocktail parties and luncheon clubs.”
He had, in fact, spent the past couple of months holding intense meetings with the heads of various departments, getting up to speed on dossiers from organized crime, drug trafficking, homicide, cyber crime, money laundering, arson and a dozen other files.
It was immediately obvious that the degree of crime was far worse than even he had imagined. And getting worse. And what drove the gathering chaos was the drug trade.
The cartels.
From there sprang most of the other ills. The murders, the assaults. Money laundering. Extortion.
The robberies, the sexual assaults. The purposeless violence committed by young men and women in despair. The inner cities were already infected. But it wasn’t confined there. The rot was spreading into the countryside.
Gamache had known there was a growing problem, but he’d had no idea of the scope of it.
Until now.
Chief Superintendent Gamache spent his days immersed in the vile, the profane, the tragic, the terrifying. And then he went home. To Three Pines. To sanctuary. To sit by the fire in the bistro with friends, or in the privacy of his living room with Reine-Marie. Henri and funny little Gracie at their feet.
Safe and sound.
Until the dark thing had appeared. And refused to disappear.
* * *
“Did you speak to him again?” the Crown attorney asked.
“And say what?” asked Chief Superintendent Gamache, in the witness box. From there he could see people in the gallery fanning themselves with sheets of paper, desperate to create even the slightest of breezes to cut the stifling heat.
“Well, you might’ve asked what he was doing there.”
“I already had. And in any other circumstance, you’d be asking me why I, a police officer, was harassing a citizen who was just standing in a park, minding his own business.”
“A masked citizen,” said the Crown.
“Again,” said Gamache. “Being masked is not a crime. It’s strange, absolutely. And I’m not going to tell you I was happy about it. I wasn’t. But there was nothing I could do.”
That brought a murmur from those listening. Some in agreement. Some feeling that they’d have acted differently. And certainly the head of the Sûreté should have done something.
Gamache recognized the censure in the mumbling, and understood where it came from. But they were sitting in a courtroom now, with full knowledge of what had happened.
And still he knew there was nothing he could have done to stop it.
It was very hard to stop Death, once that Horseman had left the stables.
“What did you do that night?”
“We had dinner, stayed up and watched television, then Madame Gamache went to bed.”
“And you?”
“I poured a coffee and took it into my study.”
“To work?”
“I didn’t turn on the lights. I sat in the darkness, and watched.”
* * *
One dark figure watching another.
As he’d sat there, Armand Gamache had the impression something had changed.
The dark figure had moved, shifted slightly.
And was now watching him.
* * *
“How long did you stay there?”
“An hour, maybe more. It was difficult to see. He was a dark figure in the darkness. When I took the dogs out for a last walk, he was gone.”
“So he could have left at any time? Even shortly after you sat down. You didn’t actually see him leave?”
“No.”
“Is it possible you drifted off to sleep?”
“It’s possible, but I’m used to surveillance.”
“Watching others. You and he had that in common,” said Zalmanowitz.
The comment surprised Chief Superintendent Gamache and he raised his brows, but nodded. “I suppose so.”
“And the next morning?”
“He was back.”
CHAPTER 3
Judge Corriveau decided it was a good time to break for lunch.
The Chief Superintendent would be in the witness box for many days. Being examined and cross-examined.
It was now stifling in the courtroom, a
nd as she left she asked the guard to turn the AC on, just for the break.
When she’d sat down that morning, Maureen Corriveau had been grateful that her first murder case as a judge would be fairly straightforward. But now she was beginning to wonder.
Not that she couldn’t follow the law involved. That was easy. Even the appearance of the robed figure in the village, while strange, was easily covered by clear laws.
What was making her perspire even more than just the overbearing heat was the inexplicable antagonism that had so quickly developed between the Crown and his own witness.
And not just any witness. Not just any arresting officer. The head of the whole damned Sûreté.
The Chief Crown wasn’t just getting in the Chief Superintendent’s face, he was getting up the man’s nose. And Monsieur Gamache did not like it.
She wasn’t an experienced judge, but as a defense attorney she was an experienced judge of human actions and reactions. And nature.
There was something else happening in her courtroom, and Judge Corriveau was determined to figure it out.
* * *
“Is it just me, or is this trial going a bit off the rails already?” asked Jean-Guy Beauvoir as he joined his boss in the corridor of the Palais de Justice.
“Not at all,” said Gamache, wiping his face with his handkerchief. “Everything’s perfect.”
Beauvoir laughed. “And by that you mean everything’s merde.”
“Exactly. Where’s Isabelle?”
“She’s gone ahead,” said Beauvoir. “Organizing things back at the office.”
“Good.”
Isabelle Lacoste was the head of homicide, personally selected for the job by Gamache when he’d left. There’d been grumbles when the announcement of Gamache’s successor had been made. Complaints of favoritism.
They all knew the story. Gamache had hired Lacoste a few years earlier, at the very moment she was about to be let go from the Sûreté. For being different. For not taking part in the bravado of crime scenes. For trying to understand suspects and not just break them.
For kneeling down beside the corpse of a recently dead woman and promising, within earshot of other agents, to help her find peace.
Agent Lacoste had been ridiculed, pilloried, subtly disciplined, and finally called into her supervisor’s office, where she came face-to-face with Chief Inspector Gamache. He’d heard of the odd young agent everyone was laughing at, and had gone there to meet her.
Instead of being thrown away, she was taken away by Gamache and placed in the most prestigious division in the Sûreté du Québec. Much to the chagrin of her former colleagues.
And that rancor had only escalated when she’d risen through the ranks to become Chief Inspector. But instead of responding to the critics, as some within her division had begged her to do, Lacoste had simply gone about her job.
And that job, she knew with crystalline clarity, was indeed simple though not easy.
Find murderers.
The rest was just noise.
When the day was done, Chief Inspector Lacoste went home to her husband and young children. But she always took part of her job with her, worrying about the victims and the killers still out there. Just as she always took part of her family with her when she went to work. Worrying about what sort of community, society, they would find when they left the safety of home.
“I just got a text,” said Beauvoir. “Isabelle has everyone in the conference room. She’s ordered sandwiches.”
He seemed to give both pieces of information equal importance.
“Merci,” said Gamache.
The corridors were crowded with clerks and witnesses and spectators, as the courtrooms in the Palais de Justice emptied for the lunch break.
Every now and then there appeared a figure in black robes.
Barristers, Gamache knew. Or judges. Also hurrying to grab something to eat.
But still, a sight that should have been familiar now gave him a start.
Inspector Beauvoir said nothing else about the morning’s testimony. The frozen look of efficiency on his boss’s face told him all he needed to know about whether it was going according to plan. Or not.
Chief Superintendent Gamache’s guard was up. A tall, thick wall of civility that even his son-in-law couldn’t penetrate.
Beauvoir knew exactly what was behind that wall, clawing to get out. And he also knew the Crown Prosecutor would not want it to actually get out.
They walked swiftly along the familiar cobblestoned streets of Old Montréal, a well-traveled route between their office and the courthouse. Past low-ceilinged, beamed restaurants full of the lunch crowd.
Jean-Guy glanced in, but kept going.
Up ahead was Sûreté headquarters, rising from the old city. Towering over it.
Not, Beauvoir thought, an attractive building. But an efficient one. It, at least, would have air-conditioning.
The two men emerged from the narrow street into the open square in front of Notre-Dame Basilica, weaving around tourists taking photographs of themselves in front of the cathedral.
When looked at years from now, they’d see the magnificent structure, and a whole lot of sweaty people in shorts and sundresses wilting in the scorching heat as the sun throbbed down on the cobblestones.
* * *
As soon as they entered Sûreté headquarters, they were hit by the air-conditioning. What should have felt good, refreshing, a relief, actually felt like someone had thrown a snowball into their faces.
The agents in the lobby saluted the chief, and the two men took the elevator. By the time they reached the top floor, they were drenched in sweat. Perversely, the AC opened the floodgates of perspiration.
Gamache and Beauvoir entered the chief’s office, with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Montréal, and from there across the St. Lawrence River to the fertile flatlands and the mountains on the horizon. Beyond which lay Vermont.
The gateway into the United States.
Gamache paused for a moment, staring at the wall of mountains. More porous than they appeared from a distance.
Then he opened a drawer and offered Beauvoir a clean, dry shirt.
Beauvoir declined. “I’m good. I wasn’t on the witness stand.” He walked to the door. “I’ll be in the conference room.”
Gamache quickly changed into the new shirt, then joined Beauvoir, Lacoste and the others.
They stood as he entered, but he waved them to be seated before taking his own chair.
“Tell me what you know.”
For the next half hour he listened and nodded. Asking few questions. Taking it all in.
These men and women, pulled from various departments, had been specially, carefully chosen. And they knew it.
This was a new era. A new Sûreté. His job, Gamache knew, wasn’t to keep the status quo. Nor was it to fix what was wrong.
His job was to build afresh. And while institutional memory and experience were important, it was vastly more important to have a solid foundation.
The officers in that room were the foundation upon which a whole new Sûreté du Québec was rising. Strong. Transparent. Answerable. Decent.
He was the architect and much more involved than his predecessors, some of whom had engineered the corruption of the past, and some of whom simply let it happen, by not paying attention. Or being afraid to say something.
Gamache was paying attention. And he insisted his senior officers did too.
And he insisted that they not be afraid to question. Him. The plans. Each other. Themselves. And indeed, many had questioned the new chief, ferociously, when shortly after taking over and immersing himself in their dossiers and briefings, he’d presented them with the reality.
“Things are getting worse,” he’d said. “Far worse.”
This had been almost a year earlier. In this same conference room.
They’d looked at him as he detailed what “far worse” meant. Some not comprehending. Some understanding
perfectly well what he was saying. Their faces going from disbelieving to shocked.
He’d listened to their protests, their arguments. And then he said something he’d hoped wouldn’t be necessary. He didn’t want to shatter their confidence, or drain their energy. Or undermine their commitment.
But he could see now that they needed to know. They deserved to know.
“We’ve lost.”
They looked at him blankly. And then some, those who’d followed his report most clearly, blanched.
“We’ve lost,” he repeated, his voice even. Calm. Certain. “The war on drugs was lost a long time ago. That was bad enough, but what’s happened is the knock-on effect. If drugs are out of control, it isn’t long before we lose our grip on all crime. We aren’t there yet. But we will be. At the rate things are going, growing, we’ll be overwhelmed in just a few years.”
They’d argued, of course. Not wanting to see it. To accept it. And neither had he, when he’d first compiled the information. Put it all together. In the past, the departments had competed, been territorial. Had been reluctant to share information, statistics. Especially those that might make them look bad.
It appeared to Gamache that he was the first one to meld all the information. To put it all together.
He wondered if this was how the captain of a great ship felt when he alone knew it was sinking. To everyone else, it still looked fine. Moving along as it always had.
But he knew the cold waters, unseen, were rising.
At first he’d been in denial too. Going over and over the files. The figures. The projections.
And then one day in early autumn, at home in Three Pines, he’d laid his hand on the last dossier, gotten up from his seat by the fire, and gone for a walk.
Alone. No Reine-Marie. No Gracie. No Henri, who’d stood perplexed and hurt by the door. His ball in his mouth.
Gamache had walked, and walked. He’d sat on the bench above the village and looked out over the valley. The forests. To the mountains, some of which were in Québec. And some in Vermont.
The border, the boundary, impossible to see from there.
Then he’d lowered his head. Into his hands. And he’d kept it there, shutting out the world. The knowledge.
And then he’d gotten back up, and walked some more. For hours.