A corridor was opening through the crowd to let him pass.
“He shames people into paying their debts,” said Matheo. “It’s a terrible thing to see. At first it looks comical, but then it becomes chilling. I was in a restaurant in Madrid recently with my parents. A very nice one. Linens and silverware. Hushed tones. A place where high-level business is discreetly conducted. And a cobrador was standing out front. First the maitre d’ then the owner went out and tried to shoo him away. Even tried to shove him. But he just stood his ground. Holding that briefcase. Staring through the window.”
“Did you know who he was staring at?” Reine-Marie asked.
“Not at first, but the man eventually gave himself away. Got all flustered and angry. He went outside and screamed at him. But the cobrador didn’t react. And when the man stomped off, he just turned and quietly followed. I can’t tell you exactly why, but it was terrifying. I almost felt sorry for the man.”
“Don’t,” said Lea. “They deserve what they get. A cobrador del frac is only used in the most extreme cases. You’d have to have done something particularly bad to bring that on yourself.”
“Can anyone hire a cobrador?” asked Myrna. “I mean, how do they know there is a legitimate debt? Maybe they just want to humiliate.”
“The company screens,” said Matheo. “I’m sure there’re some abuses, but for the most part if you’re being followed by a cobrador, there’s good reason.”
“Armand?” Reine-Marie asked.
He was shaking his head, his eyes narrow.
“It feels like vigilante action,” he said. “Taking justice into their own hands. Condemning someone.”
“But there’s no violence,” said Lea.
“Oh, there’s violence,” said Gamache. And put his finger on the face of the terrified man. “Just not physical.”
Matheo was nodding.
“The thing is,” he said, “it’s very effective. The people almost always pay up, and quickly. And you have to remember, innocent people aren’t targeted. This isn’t the first action, it’s the last. It’s what people resort to when all else fails.”
“So,” said Gamache, looking at Matheo. “Are you considering bringing the cobrador del frac to Québec? Are you asking me if it would be legal?”
Matheo and Lea stared at Gamache, then Matheo laughed.
“Good God, no. I’m showing you this because Lea and I think that that”—he pointed out the window—“is a cobrador del frac.”
“A debt collector?” asked Gamache, and felt a slight frisson. Like the warning before a quake.
Lea was all eyes now, glancing swiftly from Armand to Reine-Marie to Myrna and back. Examining them for any hint of amusement. Or agreement. Or anything. But they were almost entirely expressionless. Their faces as blank as the thing on the village green.
Armand sat back in his chair and opened his mouth, before closing it again, while Reine-Marie turned and looked at Myrna.
Finally Armand leaned forward, toward Matheo, who leaned toward him.
“You do know that that”—he inclined his head toward the village green—“doesn’t look anything like this.” He nodded at the photograph.
“I know,” said Matheo. “When I was researching the article, I heard rumors of something else. Something older. Dating back centuries.” He also glanced over, then looked away, as though it was folly to stare at the thing too long. “The ancestor of the current cobrador. I’d hear whispers that the thing was still alive, in remote villages. In the mountains. But I could never find one, or find anyone who admitted hiring one.”
“And that original cobrador is different?” asked Reine-Marie.
“It’s still a collector, but the debt is different.”
“Degree of debt?” asked Gamache.
“Type of debt. One is financial, often ruinous,” said Matheo, looking at the photo on the table.
“The other is moral,” said Lea.
Matheo nodded. “An elderly man I spoke with in a village outside Granada had seen one, but only once, as a boy, and in the distance. It was following an old woman. They disappeared around a corner and he never saw either again. He wouldn’t speak on the record, but he did show me this.”
From his pocket, Matheo pulled a blurry photocopy of a blurry photograph.
“He took this with his Brownie camera.”
The image was grainy. Black and white.
It showed a steep, narrow street and stone walls that came right to the road. There was a horse and cart. And in the distance, at a corner, something else.
Gamache put his glasses back on and brought the paper up so that it almost touched his nose. Then he lowered it and handed it to Reine-Marie.
Removing his glasses, quietly, he folded them. All the while staring at Matheo.
The photo showed a robed, masked figure. Hood up. And in front of the dark figure there was a gray blur. A gray ghost, hurrying to get away.
“Taken near the end of the Spanish Civil War,” said Matheo. “I hate to think…”
There was no mistaking it. In the photo, almost a hundred years old, was the thing that now stood in the center of Three Pines.
*
“And did you believe it, Chief Superintendent?” asked the Crown.
His rank now seemed more a mockery in the mouth of the Crown than an advantage.
“It was hard to know, at that moment, what to believe. It seemed not only extraordinary but, frankly, incredible. That some sort of ancient Spanish debt collector had appeared in a small village in Québec. And I wouldn’t have believed it, had I not seen it for myself. The photograph and the real thing.”
“I understand you took that piece of paper Matheo Bissonette showed you.”
“I took a copy of it, yes.”
The Crown turned to the clerk.
“Exhibit B.”
The photograph of Three Pines that gray November morning was replaced by what looked, at first, like a Rorschach test. Blots of black and gray, the borders bleeding, uncertain.
And then it coalesced into an image.
“Is that it?”
“It is,” said Gamache.
“And is that what was on your village green?”
Gamache stared at the image, the collector of moral debts, and felt again that frisson.
“It is.”
CHAPTER 5
Jacqueline kneaded the dough, leaning into it. Feeling it both soft and firm beneath her hands. It was meditative and sensual, as she rocked gently back and forth, back and forth.
Her eyes closed.
She kneaded and rocked. Kneaded and rocked.
Other hands, older, colder, plump, were laid on top of hers.
“I think that’s enough, ma belle,” said Sarah.
“Oui, madam.”
Jacqueline blushed, realizing she’d overworked the baguette yet again.
If she didn’t get this right, she’d lose her job. No matter how well she baked brownies and pies and mille-feuilles, if you couldn’t do a baguette in Québec, you were useless to a small boulangerie. Sarah wouldn’t want to let her go, but she’d have no choice.
All depended on this. And she was blowing it.