The Long Way Home

“Did you get Peter’s photograph?” Gamache asked Lacoste.

“Oui. And I’ve sent it to Quebec City,” she said. “They’re looking into it. I’ve also sent it out across the S?reté du Québec network and to police in Paris, Florence, and Venice. I’ve asked them to track his movements. It’s been almost a year, so I’m not expecting much, but I have to try.”

Gamache smiled. Many had thought him mad, or hopped up on painkillers, when he’d appointed an inspector in her early thirties as his successor to lead the famed homicide division. But he’d prevailed. And had never, ever doubted his choice of Isabelle Lacoste.

“Good.”

He was about to ring off when he remembered, “Oh, and Dumfries. Could you check that out too, please?”

“Right. I forgot.”

He hung up and tapped the phone a few times with his finger. Then he went over to his computer and dialed into the Internet.

Once connected, he went to Google and typed in “Dumfries.”

*

“Well, that wasn’t very helpful,” said Myrna. “Is he always like that?”

They’d descended the TD Bank Tower and were standing in the lobby. Myrna was taking a moment to admire the Mies van der Rohe design. The light and height. A contrast to the closed-off, closed-in, squalid little scene they’d left on the 52nd floor.

Thomas Morrow was elegant, tall, gracious. He appeared, in many ways, an animated version of the building itself. Except there was nothing open and bright about him.

The office tower was more than it initially appeared. Thomas Morrow was less.

“Worse,” said Clara. “I think you being there made him nicer than he normally is.”

“You’re joking,” said Myrna. Their shoes rapped on the marble floor. The clock above the long marble security desk said four thirty-five. Thomas Morrow had made his sister-in-law wait twenty minutes and then had given them ten minutes of his time before moving on to more pressing issues than a missing brother.

“I’m sure Peter’s fine,” Morrow had said, a smile on his face that only managed to look condescending. “You know him. He’s gone off to paint and lost track of the time.”

Myrna said nothing, she simply observed Thomas Morrow. He was in his early sixties, she guessed. He sat with his legs splayed open, inviting the women to stare at his crotch. His suit was beautifully cut and his tie was silk. His back was to the view, which meant his visitors saw him against the backdrop of the huge black towers around him and the glittering great lake beyond.

He was like a monarch, surrounding himself with the symbols of power, hoping to disguise his own weakness.

Clara kept her temper. “I’m sure you’re right, but I’m really just interested in knowing if you saw him when he was here.”

Thomas shook his head. “But I wouldn’t expect him to get in touch. No art on my walls.”

He pointed with some pride to the bank of photographs. Not of family or friends, but of business triumphs. Golfing trophies. Famous people he’d met.

Strangers.

“He was probably going to shows and checking out galleries,” said Thomas Morrow. “Have you asked the galleries?”

“That’s a good idea,” said Clara with a tight smile. “Thank you.”

Morrow got up and walked to the door. “I’m glad I could help.”

And that was that.

“We could’ve done that over the phone,” said Myrna as they walked out into the blast furnace of the Toronto summer. The heat shimmered off the buildings and bounced off concrete and drilled into the pavement, which gave off the scent of melting asphalt in the heavy, humid air.

Myrna found it strangely calming. Her mother’s and grandmother’s comfort smells were cut grass and fresh baking and the subtle scent of line-dried sheets. For Myrna’s generation the smells that calmed were manufactured. Melting asphalt meant summer. VapoRub meant winter, and being cared for. There were Tang and gas fumes and long-gone photocopy ink.

All comforted her, for reasons that beggared understanding, because they had nothing to do with understanding.

After years in Three Pines, her comfort scents were evolving. She still loved the smell of VapoRub, but now she also appreciated the delicate scent of worms after a rain.

“I wanted to be able to watch him,” said Clara as they waited at a corner with a crowd of other perspiring people for the light to turn. “To see if he was lying, or holding something back.”

“And was he? Do you think he saw Peter, or spoke to him?”

“I don’t think so.”

Myrna thought about it. “Why did he say that about his walls?”

She could see the imposing fa?ade of the Royal York up ahead. A massive anachronism at the foot of the modern city. And she could almost taste the beer she’d soon be drinking.

“Who knows why the Morrows say anything,” said Clara, pausing just outside the door of the old hotel. The doorman, perspiring in his uniform, had one hand on the handle, ready to yank it open.