The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

He was toying with him, prodding him, but Gamache wasn’t responding.

“Your physical health wasn’t the issue, was it?” asked Fleming, leaning forward. “It’s emotional. You couldn’t take it. You’re broken. Something happened and you weren’t strong enough. You let down people who were depending on you. And then you ran away and hid, like a child. Probably in that village. What was its name?”

Don’t remember it, Gamache prayed. Don’t remember.

“Three Pines.” Fleming smiled. “Nice place. Pretty place. It was a kind of rock, with time moving around it, but not through it. It wasn’t really of this world. Is that where you live? Is that why you’re here? Because the Whore of Babylon was disturbing your hiding place? Marring Paradise?” Fleming paused. “I remember there was a woman who sat on her porch and said she was a poet. She’s lucky so many words rhyme with fuck.”

He didn’t just remember Three Pines, every detail seemed etched in his memory.

“I’m not the only prisoner in this room, am I?” Fleming asked. “You’re trapped in that village. You’re a middle-aged man waiting out his days. Do you lie awake at night, wondering what’s next? Are your friends growing bored with you? Do your former colleagues tolerate you, but cluck behind your back? Is your wife losing respect for you, as you grip the bars and look at her through the prison of your days? Or have you dragged her into the cell with you?”

John Fleming was looking at him. Triumphant. He’d filleted Gamache after all. Eviscerated him. The man lay gutted before Fleming. And both knew it.

Fleming throbbed, emitting malevolence on a scale Gamache had never known before.

“Mary Fraser,” Gamache said, his voice low.

He felt a slight hesitation in the force of personality across from him, and he used it to push forward.

“She’s in Three Pines,” said Gamache. “Along with Delorme.”

He thrust the words at Fleming, then followed them with his body. Ignoring the throbbing in his head, he stood up and leaned forward, hands splayed on the cold metal table, only stopping when his face was within an inch of Fleming’s.

Fleming also stood and closed the tiny gap between them, so that his nose was actually touching Gamache’s. His fetid breath was in Gamache’s mouth in a mockery of intimacy.

“I don’t care,” Fleming whispered.

But what Fleming had done was confirm he knew who they were. Up until that moment it had been a guess on Gamache’s part.

“They know everything,” said Gamache.

“Now that’s not true,” said Fleming, and while Gamache was too close to see the smile, he felt it. “Or you wouldn’t be here. You might have the gun, but you haven’t found what really matters. What only I can find.”

“The plans,” said Gamache. “You took them from Bull when you killed him in Brussels.”

But by Fleming’s reaction, he could see that was wrong. He thought quickly, trying not to be distracted by Fleming’s face touching his. He stared into those eyes, their lashes almost intertwining.

And then Gamache moved away, back across the table.

“No,” he said. “Dr. Bull didn’t have them. He didn’t need them. They weren’t his plans, after all. They were Couture’s. The plans never left Québec.”

“You’re getting closer,” Fleming said in a singsong voice, a parody of a children’s game of hide and seek.

Fleming sat back down.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” he said to Gamache. “You have the gun but not the plans. Funny, isn’t it? That little village has so many hiding places, and so much to hide. I wonder if it really is Paradise, or something else? What would hell look like? Fire and brimstone, or some beautiful place, in a glade or valley? Luring you in with the promise of peace and protection, before turning into a prison. The cheerful grandmother with the lock and key.”

Fleming examined Gamache.

“I know where the plans are. You might find them without me. Or you might not. Or…” Fleming paused, and smiled. “While you’re turning over every stone, someone else might find the plans to Project Babylon. And then what?”

“What do you want?” Gamache asked.

“You know what I want. And you’re going to give it to me. Why else would you be here?”

“You thought I was someone else,” said Gamache. “Someone you’ve been waiting for all these years. Someone who terrifies you.”

He looked at the black-and-white photo of the fathers of Project Babylon. Two dead men and one imprisoned for life. But there had been someone else in Brussels that day, Gamache realized. There had to have been.

“Who took the picture?” he asked.

Fleming leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. But something had shifted. Fleming’s fingers were closed tight around the bones of his arms. The sardonic smile was forced.