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 S?reté 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 S?reté 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 S?reté. 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 S?reté 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.
Trying to find a solution.
Suppose they got a larger budget? Hired more agents? Threw more resources at the crisis?
Surely there was something that could be done. The situation couldn’t possibly be hopeless.
He only stopped when he’d met himself again. The Armand who’d been standing on the side of the quiet road, in the middle of nowhere, waiting. At the intersection of truth and wishful thinking.
Where the straight road splayed.
And he knew then. They were all going down. Not just the S?reté, but the entire province. And not necessarily his generation. But the next. And the next. His grandchildren.
He was up to his neck in crime. They’d be over their heads.
And he knew something else. Something he wished he didn’t know, but could not now deny.
There was nothing that could be done. They’d reached and passed the point of no return. Without even a lifeboat in sight. The corruption of decades within government and police forces had seen to that.
“So what do we do?” asked one of the older officers in the meeting. “Give up?”
“Non. I don’t have a solution. Not yet. So we bear down, do our jobs, communicate. Gather information and share it.”