Armand was sitting on the sofa and looked at her over his reading glasses. He was surrounded by dossiers. Each file a précis of a department.
“Well, not exactly. She has the drinks, you have the information, mon beau.”
“Ahh,” he said, smiling.
“She seemed to think it was a fair trade, but I told her we couldn’t. Isabelle and Jean-Guy will be here at some point for dinner.”
Armand looked at his watch. It was past six, though with the sun setting earlier and earlier, it felt later. He’d changed into slacks and a shirt and sweater, and now he was sitting by the fire, making notes.
He took off his glasses and put his binder down.
The notes he was making weren’t about the case. Isabelle and her team were getting a handle on that. They didn’t need him.
His thoughts were about something else entirely.
The napkin sat rumpled on the sofa. It was from lunch earlier that day with Madeleine Toussaint, when they’d discussed the failure of the S?reté, of all police forces, to control the drug trade. In fact, it seemed the more they tried to control it, the worse it got. Like ties that bound more tightly if you struggled.
But suppose …
He stared into the fire, mesmerized by its motion, almost liquid, certainly fluid. Letting his mind break free.
Suppose you stopped struggling? Suppose you just went with it. What would happen then?
He no longer saw the flames. At least, not those in the hearth.
Then he looked at the napkin again.
It was just too ridiculous. Impossible.
But they’d lost the war. He knew that. And yet, they went on fighting because to give up was even worse. Unthinkable.
But now, Chief Superintendent Gamache thought.
Suppose …
Suppose.
They did. Give up, that is.
He thought of Honoré. Just a few months old. If the cartels were this powerful now, what would it be like by the time he was thirteen? In the schoolyard. In the streets. Gamache would be over seventy by then, retired.
He thought about his granddaughters in Paris. Little Florence and Zora. Now in preschool and kindergarten.
Like some animation on the History Channel, he saw the map of Europe change color as the plague bled toward them. Encroached. Approached. Closing in on his granddaughters.
It was unstoppable. It crossed borders, it knew no boundaries. Not territorial, not of decency. Nothing would stop the opioids hitting the market.
Nothing.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
He was finally in a position to do something. He was the Chief Superintendent of the S?reté du Québec. But there was nothing to be done. Everything had been tried. And everything had failed.
Except. He glanced once more into the fire.
Burn our ships.
Putting his glasses back on, he started to write again. He wrote, and wrote.
Ten minutes later, he looked up and saw Reine-Marie sitting beside him, her hand resting on the open book on her lap. But instead of reading, she was staring straight ahead. And he knew what she was thinking. What she was feeling. What she was seeing.
The dark thing, in the root cellar.
He took her hand. It was cold to the touch.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be working.”
“Of course you should. I’m all right.”
“Even F.I.N.E.?”
She laughed. “Especially that.”
Fucked-up. Insecure. Neurotic. Egotistical.
Their neighbor Ruth had named her latest book of verse I’m FINE. It had sold about fifty copies, mostly to friends who recognized the brilliance, and the truth.
Ruth was indeed FINE. And so were they.
“I’ll call Myrna,” he said, getting up to go to the phone in his study, “and see if the invitation is still open. We could both use that drink, and the company.”
“What about Jean-Guy and Isabelle?” she asked.
“We’ll leave them a note.”
Once in the study, Armand placed the napkin and the notebook in his desk drawer and locked it. Not against Reine-Marie or Jean-Guy, or Isabelle. But he was a cautious man, who had learned the hard way that the unexpected happened. And it would be a disaster if anyone who shouldn’t saw what he’d written. Saw what he was thinking.
Before closing the drawer, he tapped the top of the notebook a couple of times. As though gently rousing something. Tapping a strange, possibly grotesque idea on the shoulder to see if it turned around. And if it did, what would it look like?
A monster? A savior? Both?
Then he closed and locked the drawer, and placed the call.
“All set,” said Armand, taking her coat off the pegs by the door.
The heavy mist had turned to drizzle, which had turned to sleet, and now was snow.
It was an ever-evolving world, thought Gamache. Adapt or die.
*
Jean-Guy threw himself back in the chair, took off his glasses, and stared at the screen.
After returning from Montréal, he told Lacoste about his interview with Katie’s sister, and his search of the home.
“Found nothing, but I did bring this back.”
He showed her the photo.
“This other guy’s Edouard?” said Lacoste. “The one who died?”
“Oui.”
He looked impossibly young. Blond. A huge smile and bright eyes. His slender, tanned arm was around Katie’s shoulders.
The others also smiled. Young. Powerful. Though none shone quite as brightly as Edouard.
“A shame,” said Lacoste quietly. Then paused for a moment, studying the picture more closely. “I wonder how Patrick felt.”
“What do you mean?”
“That Katie should keep this picture of them. It’s clearly from the time when she and Edouard were still close.”
That much was obvious. Even in the old photo the connection was clear.
“Well, Patrick won,” said Beauvoir. “Maybe this reminded him. Maybe he’s the one who kept it.”
“Maybe.”
They’d retreated to their desks in the Incident Room, where Beauvoir pounded another search into the keyboard.
Then he sat back and waited for the answer to appear.
Around him, other agents were tapping at keyboards, talking on phones.
Isabelle Lacoste was at her desk at the center, the hub, of the Incident Room, her feet up, legs crossed at the ankles, sucking on a pen and reading notes from the interrogations.
The agent had returned from Knowlton, reporting that it had been steak-frites night at the restaurant and the waitress was so overwhelmed she wouldn’t know if her own mother was there for dinner the night before, never mind Patrick and Katie.
There was no credit card receipt, so if they were there, they paid cash. Which was curious, thought Beauvoir. He couldn’t remember the last time he paid cash for a meal.
He turned back to his computer. Beauvoir knew he should have asked Lacoste’s permission before claiming one of the desks. It wasn’t, after all, his investigation. He had to get used to that fact. He was no longer second-in-command in the homicide division. Now he was the second-in-command in the whole S?reté.
Jean-Guy had decided to take that as meaning while he belonged to no specific division, he actually belonged to all of them. It was, he was realistic enough to admit, a perception shared by almost no one else in the S?reté. Including Gamache.