by Louise Penny
“I couldn’t tell her much, but I felt I owed her something.”
“Why?”
“Well, she and Jean-Guy had developed a particular loathing for each other.”
Thérèse smiled. “I can see that happening.”
Gamache stopped and looked at the Brunels. “You were discussing the Arnot case. Why was that?”
Thérèse and Jérôme exchanged looks. Finally Jérôme answered.
“I’m sorry, I should have told you right away, but I was too…”
Afraid, admit it. Afraid.
“… afraid,” he said. “In my last search, I came across his name. It was in a file deeply buried.”
“About the murders in the Cree territory?” asked Gamache.
“No. A more recent file.”
“And you said nothing?” Armand’s voice was clear and calm and dark like the night.
“I found his name just before we came here. I thought it was over. That we’d stay here for a while, lie low so Francoeur and the others would know we weren’t a threat.”
“And then what?” asked Gamache. He wasn’t angry. Just curious. Sympathetic even. How often had he wished for the same thing? To offer his resignation and walk away. He and Reine-Marie would find a small place in Saint-Paul de Vence, in France. Far away from Québec. From Francoeur.
Surely he’d done enough. Surely Reine-Marie had done enough.
Surely it was someone else’s turn.
But it wasn’t. It was still his turn.
And he’d involved the Brunels. And neither they, nor he, could put down this burden just yet.
“It was a fool’s dream,” admitted Jérôme wearily. “Wishful thinking.”
“What did the files say about Pierre Arnot?” Gamache asked.
“I didn’t have a chance to read them.”
Even in the dark, Jérôme could feel Gamache scrutinizing him.
“And Francoeur?” asked the Chief. “Was he mentioned?”
“Just suggestions,” said Jérôme. “If I can get back online I can look deeper.”
Gamache nodded toward the road. A vehicle drove slowly around the green, then came to a stop directly in front of them. It was a beat-up old Chevy truck, with cheap winter tires and rust. The door shrieked as it opened and the driver stepped out. Male or female, it was impossible to say.
Henri, who barely ever made a sound, emitted a low growl.
“Hope this is worth it,” said the voice. Female. Petulant. Young.
Thérèse Brunel turned to Gamache.
“You didn’t,” she whispered.
“I had to, Thérèse.”
“You could’ve just stuck a gun in our mouths,” she said. “Would have been less painful.”
She grabbed the Chief’s arm, yanked him a few paces away from the truck, and whispered urgently into his face. “You do know she’s one of the people we suspect of working with Francoeur, of leaking the video of the raid? She was in the perfect position to do that. She had the access, the ability and the personality to do it.” Thérèse shot a look at the figure creating a dark hole against the cheerful Christmas lights. “She’s almost certainly working with Francoeur. What’ve you done, Armand?”
“It was a risk I had to take,” he insisted. “If she’s working with Francoeur we’re sunk, but we would’ve been anyway. She might be one of the few who could leak the video, but she’s also one of the few who can get us back online.”
The two senior Sûreté officers glared at each other.
“You know that, Thérèse,” said Gamache urgently. “I had no choice.”
“You had a choice, Armand,” Thérèse hissed. “For one thing, you could have consulted me. Us.”
“You haven’t worked with her, I have,” said Gamache.
“And you have such insight into people? Is that it, Armand? Is that why Jean-Guy’s where he is? Is that why your department deserted you? Is that why we’re hiding here and our only hope is one of your own former agents, and you don’t even know if she’s loyal or not?”
Silence met those words. Silence and a long, long exhale of what looked like steam.
“Excuse me,” he said at last, and walked past Thérèse Brunel to the road.
“Can I help?” Jérôme asked a little awkwardly. He’d heard what Thérèse had said. He suspected this young woman had too.
“Go inside, Jérôme,” said Gamache. “I’ll look after this.”
“She didn’t mean it, you know.”
“She meant it,” said Gamache. “And she was right.”
When the Brunels had gone inside, he turned to the newcomer.
“You heard that?”
“I did. Fucking paranoid.”
“Do not use that language with me, Agent Nichol. You’ll be respectful of me, and the Brunels.”
“So that’s who that is,” she said, peering into the night. “Superintendent Brunel. I couldn’t tell. Heady company. She doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t trust you.”
“And you, sir?”
“I asked you down here, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but you had no choice.”
It was too dark to see her face, but Gamache was sure there was a sneer there. And he wondered just how big a mistake he might have made.
TWENTY-FOUR
The next morning all four of them worked to install the equipment Agent Yvette Nichol had brought with her from Montréal. They carried it up the hill, from Emilie’s home to the old schoolhouse.
Olivier had given Gamache the key, but had asked no questions. And Gamache had offered no explanations. When he’d unlocked the door a puff of stale air met him, as though the one-room schoolhouse had been holding its breath for years. It was dusty and still smelled of chalk and textbooks. It was bitterly cold inside. A black potbellied woodstove sat in the middle of the floor, and the walls were lined with maps and charts. Math, science, spelling. A large blackboard above the teacher’s desk dominated the front of the room.
Most of the students’ desks had gone, but a couple of tables sat against the wall.
Gamache surveyed it and nodded. It would do.
Gilles showed up and helped them carry the cables and terminals and monitors and keyboards.
“Pretty old stuff,” he commented. “Are you sure it still works?”
“It works,” snapped Nichol, and studied the grizzled man. “I know you. We met when I was here last time. You talk to trees.”
“He talks to trees?” Thérèse muttered to Gamache as she passed, carrying a box of supplies. “Two for two, Chief Inspector. Who’s next? Hannibal Lecter?”
Within the hour all the equipment had been moved from Emilie’s home to the old schoolhouse. Agent Nichol had proved more helpful than anyone, especially Gamache, could have hoped. Which only increased his discomfort. She only questioned his orders once.
“Really?” She’d turned to him when the Chief Inspector had told her what they needed to do. “That’s your plan?”
“Do you have a better one, Agent Nichol?”
“Set it up in Emilie Longpré’s living room. That way it’s convenient.”
“For you, yes,” explained Gamache. “But the less distance the cables have to run, the better. You know that.”
She reluctantly admitted he had a point.
He hadn’t told her the other reason. If they were found out, if their signal was traced, if Francoeur and Tessier and others appeared on the brow of the hill, he wanted the target to be the abandoned schoolhouse. Not a home in the middle of Three Pines. The schoolhouse wasn’t far removed, but perhaps enough.
If they were successful, it would be decided, he suspected, by moments and millimeters.
“You do know this probably won’t work,” said Nichol, as she crawled under the old teacher’s desk.
The school had been decommissioned years earlier. No longer could the children of Three Pines walk to school and go home for lunch. Now they were bused to Saint-Rémi every day. Such was progr
Once the equipment was in place, Gilles left them. Through the dirty schoolhouse window Gamache watched the red-bearded woodsman carry his snowshoes up the hill out of the village, in search of the hunting blind. It had been a long time since Gilles, or Gamache, had seen it, and Gamache hoped and prayed it was still there.
A clanking of metal on metal caught his attention and he turned to face the room. Superintendent Brunel was feeding old newspapers and kindling into the woodstove, trying to get it going. Right now the schoolhouse felt like a freezer.
While Agent Nichol and Jérôme Brunel worked to connect the equipment, Chief Inspector Gamache walked over to one of the maps of Québec tacked to a wall. He smiled. Someone had placed a tiny dot south of Montréal. Just north of Vermont. Beside the winding Rivière Bella Bella. Written there, in a small perfect hand, was one word. Home.
It was the only map in existence that showed the village of Three Pines.
Superintendent Brunel was now feeding quartered logs into the woodstove. Gamache could hear the crackle and pop of the long-dry wood and he could smell the slight sweet scent of the smoke. Soon, if Thérèse Brunel tended it, the stove would be radiating heat and they could remove their coats and hats and mitts. But not just yet. The winter had taken hold of the old building and wouldn’t be easily evicted.
Gamache walked over to Thérèse.
“Can I help?”
She shoved another log in and poked it as embers flew up.
“You all right?” he asked.
She took her eyes off the stove and glared across the room. Jérôme was sitting at the desk, organizing a bank of monitors and keyboards and slim metal boxes. Agent Nichol’s bottom could be seen under the desk, as she made connections.
Her eyes flashed back to Gamache.
“No, I’m not all right. This is crazy, Armand,” Thérèse said under her breath. “Even if she doesn’t work for Francoeur, she’s unstable. You know that. She lies, she manipulates. She used to work for you and you fired her.”
“I transferred her, to that basement.”
“You should have fired her.”
“For what? Being arrogant and rude? There’d barely be any Sûreté agents left if that was a dismissible offense. Yes, she’s a piece of work, but look at her.”
They both looked over. All they could see was her bottom, in the air, like a terrier burying a bone.
“Well, maybe not the best moment to make a judgment,” said Gamache with a smile, but Thérèse saw nothing amusing. “I put her in the basement, monitoring communications, because I wanted her to learn how to listen.”
“And did it work?”
“Not perfectly,” he admitted. “But something else happened.” He looked over at Agent Nichol again. Now she was seated, cross-legged, under the desk, carefully dissecting a mass of cables. Disheveled, unkempt, in clothes that didn’t quite fit. The sweater was pilled and too tight, the jeans a bad cut for her body, her hair had a slightly greasy look. But her focus was intense.
“In the hours and hours of sitting there listening, Agent Nichol discovered a knack for communication,” Gamache continued. “Not verbal, but electronic. She spent hours and hours refining techniques for gathering information.”
“Spying.” Thérèse refined what he meant. “Hacking. You do know you’re making an argument for her collaborating with Francoeur.”
“Oui,” he said. “We’ll see. The Cyber Crimes division suspected her, you know.”
“What happened?”
“They rejected her for being unstable. I don’t believe Francoeur would work with someone he couldn’t control.”
“And so you brought her here?”
“Not as a witty companion, but because of that.”
He tipped a piece of wood in Nichol’s direction and Superintendent Brunel followed it. And saw, again, the awkward young agent sitting under the desk. Quietly, intently, turning the chaos of wires and cables and boxes into orderly connections.
Thérèse turned back to Gamache, her eyes unyielding. “Agent Yvette Nichol may be good at her job, but the question I have, and the one you seem to have failed to ask, is what is her job? Her real job?”
Chief Inspector Gamache had no answer for that.
“We both know she’s probably working for Francoeur. He gave the order and she did it. Found the video, edited it, and released it. To spite you. You’re not universally loved, you know.”
Gamache nodded. “I’m getting that impression.”
Again, Thérèse failed to smile. “The very qualities you see in her, Francoeur also sees. With one exception.” Superintendent Brunel leaned closer to the Chief Inspector and lowered her voice. He could smell her sophisticated eau de toilette, and the slight scent of mint on her breath. “He knows she’s a sociopath. Without conscience. She’ll do anything, if it amuses her. Or hurts someone else. Especially you. Sylvain Francoeur sees that. Cultivates that. Uses that. And what do you see?”
They both looked over at the pale young woman holding a cable up, with much the same expression as Ruth had when she held the flame the night before.
“You see another lost soul to be saved. You made your decision, you brought her here, without consulting us. Unilaterally. Your hubris has very likely cost us…”
Thérèse Brunel didn’t finish that sentence. She didn’t have to. They both knew what the price might be.
She slammed down the wrought-iron cover of the woodstove with such force the clank made Yvette Nichol jump and hit her head on the underside of the desk.
A series of filth exploded from under the teacher’s desk, such as the little schoolhouse had probably never heard before.
But Thérèse didn’t hear it. Neither did Gamache. The Superintendent had left the little building, slamming the door in Gamache’s face as he followed her.
“Thérèse,” he called, and caught up halfway down the shoveled path. “Wait.”
She stopped, but her back was to him. Not able to face him.
“So help me, Armand, if I could fire you I would.” She turned then and her face was angrier than he’d ever seen. “You’re arrogant, egotistical. You think you have special insight into the human condition, but you’re as flawed as the rest of us. And now look what you’ve done.”
“I’m sorry, Thérèse, I should have consulted you and Jérôme.”
“And why didn’t you?”
He thought about that for a moment. “Because I was afraid you’d overrule me.”
She stared at him, still angry, but caught off guard by his candor.
“I know Agent Nichol’s unstable,” he continued. “I know she might be working with Francoeur and that she might have leaked the video.”
“Christ, Armand, do you ever listen to yourself?” she demanded. “I know, I know, I know.”
“What I’m trying to say is that there was no choice. She might be working for him, but if she isn’t, she’s our only hope. No one will miss her. No one ever goes into that basement. Yes, she’s emotionally stunted, she’s rude and insubordinate, but she’s also exceptional at what she does. Finding information. She and Jérôme will make a formidable team.”
“If she doesn’t kill us.”
“Oui.”
“And you thought, if you explained it, Jérôme and I would be too stupid to come to the same conclusion?”
He stared at her. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
His sharp eyes looked around him, then up the road out of the village. Thérèse followed his gaze.
“If she’s working with Francoeur,” she said, “he’s on his way. She’ll have told him we’re together, and she’ll have told him what we’re doing. And she’ll have told him where to find us. If she hasn’t yet, she soon will.”
Gamache nodded, and continued to stare at the top of the hill, half expecting a bank of black vehicles to roll to a stop up there, like dung on the white snow.
But nothing happened. Not yet anyway.
“We have to assume the worst. That he now knows that Jérôme and I are not in Vancouver,” said Thérèse. “That we didn’t turn our backs on you.” She looked like she now wished she had. “That we’re all here in Three Pines, and still trying to gather information on him.”
She turned back to Gamache and considered him.
“How can we trust you, Armand? How do we know you won’t do something else without consulting us?”
“And I’m the only one holding back information?” he demanded, more angrily than even he expected. “Pierre Arnot.”
He spat the name at her.
“Which is the more damning? The more dangerous?” he asked. “An agent who may or may not be working with Francoeur, or a mass murderer? A psychopathic killer who knows the workings of the Sûreté better than anyone else? Is Arnot involved in all of this somehow?”
He glared at her and her cheeks colored. She gave one curt nod.
“Jérôme thinks so. He doesn’t know how yet, but if they can get that thing to work, he’ll find out.”
“And how long has he kept that name from you? From me? Do you not think it would have been helpful to know?”
His voice was rising, and he struggled to lower it, to bring himself under control.
“Oui,” said Thérèse. “It would have been helpful.”
Gamache gave a curt nod. “It’s done now. His mistake doesn’t excuse my own. I was wrong. I promise to consult you and Jérôme in the future.” He held out a gloved hand to her. “We can’t turn on each other.”
She stared at it. Then took it. But she didn’t return his thin smile.
“Why didn’t you arrest Francoeur at the same time as Arnot and the others?” she asked, dropping his hand.
“I hadn’t enough proof. I tried, but it was all insinuation. He was Arnot’s second in command. It was inconceivable that Francoeur wouldn’t have been involved in the Cree killings, or at the very least known about them. But I couldn’t find a direct link.”
“But you found a link to Chief Superintendent Arnot?” asked Thérèse.
She’d touched on something that had long troubled the Chief Inspector. How he could have found damning and direct evidence against the Chief Superintendent but not against his second in command.
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