by Louise Penny
“Do you think it’s worth a twelve-hour flight to go here?” She turned the magazine round and showed him soft white beaches, thatched huts, nubile young men, shirtless, carrying drinks with fruit in them.
“Where is it?”
“Mauritius.”
“How much?”
Myrna checked. “Five thousand two hundred.”
“Dollars?” Beauvoir almost gagged.
“Pounds. But it includes the flight. My budget today is five thousand pounds so it’s a little over that.”
“Book business must be good.”
Myrna laughed. “I could sell every book in my place and still not be able to afford that.” She put her large hand on the shiny picture. Outside the frosted window, kids were arriving home from school. Parents waited for them to come down the snowy, icy road from where the bus dropped them off, all red faced, bundled up, distinguishable only by the color of their bulbous snowsuits. They looked like giant, colorful balls cascading down the hill.
“This is fantasy money for a fictional trip. Cheap, but fun.”
“Did someone say cheap but fun?” Gabri joined them and Beauvoir closed his notebook. “Where’re we going this week?”
“He’s also fictional, you know.” Myrna indicated Gabri with her head.
“I am sometimes made-up,” Gabri admitted.
“I’m considering Mauritius.” She handed a magazine to Gabri and offered one to Beauvoir. He hesitated then noticed the icicles hanging from the homes, the snow piled on the roofs, the people bent against the wind and rushing for warmth.
He took one.
“Vacation porn,” whispered Gabri. “Complete with rubber suits.” He flashed an image of a muscular man wearing a tight scuba outfit.
Beauvoir gave himself a fictional budget of five thousand dollars then lost himself in Bali, in Bora-Bora, in St. Lucia.
“Have you been on a cruise?” he asked Myrna.
“Was on one earlier in the week. Upgraded to the Princess Suites. Next time I think I might upgrade all the way.”
“I’m considering the owner’s suite.”
“Can you afford it?”
“True, I might go fake broke but I think it’s worth it.”
“God, I could use a cruise,” said Gabri, lowering his magazine.
“Tired?” Myna asked. Gabri looked it.
“Très fatigué.”
“It is true.” Ruth plopped down in the fourth chair, knocking everyone with her cane. “He is a fatty gay.”
The other two ignored her, but Beauvoir couldn’t hide a small laugh. Before long the other two left, Myrna back to her quiet bookstore and Gabri to tend to a couple customers.
“So, why’re you really here?” Ruth leaned forward.
“For your cheerful company, you old hag.”
“Besides that, numb nuts. You never liked it here. Gamache does, I can tell. But you? You despise us.”
Every hour of every day Jean-Guy Beauvoir searched for not just facts, but truth. He hadn’t appreciated, though, how terrifying it was being with someone who spoke it, all the time. Well, her truth anyway.
“I don’t,” he said.
“Bullshit. You hate the country, you hate nature, you think we’re hicks, idiots. Repressed, passive-aggressive and English.”
“I know you’re English,” he laughed. She didn’t.
“Don’t fuck with me. I don’t have that much time left and I refuse to waste it.”
“Then go away if you think I’m such a waste of time.”
They glared at each other. He’d opened up to her the other night, told her things few others knew. He’d been afraid that might lead to some awkwardness but sure enough, when they’d met the next morning she’d looked at him as though he was a stranger.
“I know why you’re here,” he said at last. “For the rest of the story. You just want to hear all the gory details. You feed on it, don’t you? Fear and pain. You don’t care about me or the Chief or Morin or anyone else, all you want from me is the rest of the story, you sick old crone.”
“And what do you want?”
What do I want? he thought.
I want to tell it.
SIXTEEN
Jean-Guy glanced round. The bistro was quiet. Placing his hands on the arms of his chair he hauled himself forward. The chair felt warm from the fire. In the grate the large logs popped, sending embers bouncing against the screen to glow on the stone hearth then slowly die away.
The maple logs smelled sweet, the coffee was strong and rich, the aromas from the kitchen familiar.
Not of home but of here.
He leaned forward and stared into the cold, blue eyes across from him. Winter eyes in a glacier face. Challenging, hard, impenetrable.
Perfect.
He paused and in an instant he was back there, since “there” was never far away.
“My favorite season is autumn, I think,” Gamache was saying.
“I’ve always loved winter,” came the young voice over the monitors. “I think because I can wear thick sweaters and coats and no one can really see how skinny I am.”
Morin laughed. Gamache laughed.
But that was all Inspector Beauvoir heard. He was out the door, through the Incident Room and into the stairwell. There he paused for a moment. Opening his fist he read the note Gamache had scrawled.
Find Agent Yvette Nichol. Give her this.
There was another note, folded, with Nichol’s name on it. He opened it and groaned. Was the Chief mad? Because Yvette Nichol almost certainly was. She was the agent no one wanted. The agent who couldn’t be fired because she wasn’t quite incompetent or insubordinate enough. But she sure played around the cliff. And finally the chief had assigned her to telecommunications. Surrounded by things, not people. No interaction. Nothing major to screw up. No one to enrage. Just listening, monitoring, recording.
Any normal person would have quit. Any decent agent would have resigned. Like the witch trials of old. If she sank she was innocent, if she survived she was a witch.
Agent Nichol survived.
But still, he didn’t hesitate. Down the stairs he ran, two at a time, until he was finally in the sub-basement. Yanking open a door he looked in. The room was darkened, and it took him a moment to make out the outline of someone sitting in front of green lights. On oval screens lines burst into a frenzy as words were spoken.
Then a face was turned to him. A green face, and eyes glowing green. Agent Yvette Nichol. He hadn’t seen her in years and now he felt a tingling under his skin. A warning. Not to enter. This room. This person’s life.
But Chief Inspector Gamache had wanted him to. And so he did. On the speaker he was surprised to hear the Chief’s voice, talking now about various dog toys.
“Have you ever used a Chuck-it, sir?” Agent Morin asked.
“Never heard of it. What is it?”
“A stick thing with a cup on the end. It helps toss a tennis ball. Does Henri like balls?”
“Above all else,” laughed Gamache.
“Idiotic conversation,” came the female voice. A green voice. Young, ripe, filled with bile. “What do you want?”
“Have you been monitoring the conversation?” Inspector Beauvoir demanded. “It’s on a secure channel. No one’s supposed to have access to it.”
“And yet you were about to ask me to start monitoring it, weren’t you? Don’t look so surprised, Inspector. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. No one comes here unless they want something. What do you want?”
“Chief Inspector Gamache wants your help.” He almost gagged on the words.
“And what the Chief Inspector wants, he gets. Right?” But she’d turned back into the room. Beauvoir felt on the wall and found the light switch. He turned it on and the room was flooded with bright fluorescent lights. The woman, who had seemed so menacing, so otherworldly, suddenly became human.
Staring at him now was a short, slightly dumpy, young woman with sallow skin marked by old
“Why’d you do that?” she demanded.
“Sir,” he snapped. “You’re a disgrace but you’re still a Sûreté officer. You’ll call me ‘sir’ and the Chief Inspector by his full rank. And you’ll do as you’re ordered. Here.”
He thrust the note at the agent who now looked very young, and very angry. Like a petulant child. Beauvoir smiled remembering his initial disquiet. She was pathetic. A sorry little person. Nothing more.
Then he remembered why he was there.
She might be a sorry little person, but Chief Inspector Gamache was risking his entire career in bringing her secretly into the investigation.
Why?
“Tell me what you know.” She lowered the note and stared Beauvoir in the eye. “Sir.”
It was a disconcerting look. Far smarter, far brighter, than he would have expected. A keen stare, and deep inside, still, a flash of green.
He bristled at her use of words. At that particular phrase. “Tell me what you know.” It’s what the Chief always asked when first arriving at a murder scene. Gamache would listen carefully, respectfully. Thoughtfully.
The antithesis of this willful, warped agent.
Surely she was mocking the Chief. But there were more important things than challenging her on that.
He told her what he knew.
The shooting, the kidnapping, the claims of the farmer to have attached a bomb. To go off the next morning at 11:18.
Instinctively they both glanced at the clock. Ten past six in the evening. Seventeen hours left.
“Chief Superintendent Francoeur believes the kidnapper’s a frightened backwoods farmer, probably with a small marijuana operation, who panicked. They think there’s no bomb and no other plan.”
“But Chief Inspector Gamache doesn’t agree,” said Agent Nichol, reading from the note. “He wants me to monitor closely.” She looked up after a moment digesting the Chief’s instructions. “They’re monitoring closely upstairs I presume?”
She was unable, or unwilling, to rid her voice of bitterness. It was an annoying and annoyed little voice.
At a curt nod from Beauvoir she smiled and carefully folded the note. “Well I guess the Chief Inspector thinks I’m better.”
Agent Nichol stared at Beauvoir, willing him to contradict her. He glared at her.
“Must be,” he finally managed.
“Well, he’s going to have to do more than talk about dog toys. Tell him to pause.”
“Haven’t you been listening? A pause and the bomb will go off.”
“Does anyone really believe there’s a bomb?”
“And you’d risk it?”
“Hey, I’m safe and warm here. Why not.”
At a glare from Beauvoir she continued. “Look, I’m not asking him to go make a cup of coffee. Just a second here and there. Lets me record the ambient sound. Got it? Sir?”
Agent Yvette Nichol had started in homicide. Been chosen by Chief Inspector Gamache. Mentored by him. And had been a near complete failure. Beauvoir had begged the Chief to fire her. Instead, after many chances, he’d transferred her. To do something she needed to learn.
The one thing she clearly could not do.
Listen.
That was her job now. Her only job. And now Chief Inspector Gamache was putting his whole career, and perhaps Agent Morin’s life, into these incompetent hands.
“Why haven’t they traced the call yet?” Agent Nichol asked, swinging her seat back to the monitors and hitting some keys on her computer. The Chief’s voice was crisper now, clear. As though he was standing with them.
“They can’t seem to get a fix,” said Beauvoir, leaning over her chair, staring almost mesmerized at the dancing waves on the screens. “When they do it shows Morin in a different place as though he’s moving.”
“Maybe he is.”
“One moment he’s by the U.S. border the next he’s in the Arctic. No, he’s not moving. The signal is.”
Nichol made a face. “I think the Chief Inspector might be right. This doesn’t sound like something rigged up by a panicked farmer.” She turned to Beauvoir. “What does the Chief think it is?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“It would have to be something big,” Nichol mumbled as she focused on the screen and the voices. “To kill an agent and kidnap another then to call the Chief Inspector.”
“He needs to be able to communicate with us without Chief Superintendent Francoeur knowing,” said Inspector Beauvoir. “Right now all his messages are monitored.”
“No problem. Get me the code to his computer and I can set up a secure channel.”
Beauvoir hesitated, examining her.
“What?” she demanded, then smiled. It was unattractive, and again Beauvoir felt a warning tingle. “You came to me remember. Do you want help or not? Sir?”
“. . . Zora’s a handful, apparently,” came Gamache’s voice. “Teething now. She loves the blanket you and Suzanne sent.”
“I’m glad,” said Morin. “I wanted to send a drum set but Suzanne said maybe later.”
“Marvelous. Perhaps you could also send some caffeine and a puppy,” laughed Gamache.
“You must miss them, sir. Your son and grandchildren.”
“And our daughter-in-law,” Gamache said. “Yes, but they’re enjoying Paris. Hard to begrudge them that.”
“Damn it. He needs to slow down,” snapped Nichol, annoyed. “He has to give me pauses.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Well, hurry up,” said Nichol. “And get that code.” She turned her back on Inspector Beauvoir as he strode out the door.
“Sir,” he muttered as he bounded back up the stairs. “Sir. Shit-head.”
At the eighth floor he wheezed to a stop and gasped for breath. Opening the door a little he could see Chief Superintendent Francoeur not far away. Over the monitors came the familiar voices.
“Has anybody spoken to my parents?” the young man asked.
“We’re giving them regular updates. I’ve sent an agent to be with your family and Suzanne.”
There was a longer pause.
“Are you all right?” Gamache jumped in.
“Fine,” came the voice, though it was thin and struggling. “I don’t mind for myself. I know I’m going to be all right. But my mother—”
There was silence again, but before it could go on too long the Chief Inspector spoke, reassuring the young agent.
Chief Superintendent Francoeur exchanged glances with the Inspector beside him.
Across the room Beauvoir could see the clock.
Sixteen hours and fourteen minutes left. He could hear Morin and the Chief Inspector discussing things they wished had gone differently in their lives.
Neither of them mentioned this.
Ruth exhaled. “This story you just told me, none of that was in the news.”
She said “story” as though it was a fairy tale, a children’s make-believe.
“No,” agreed Beauvoir. “Only a few know it.”
“Then why’re you telling me?”
“Who’d believe you if you said anything? They’d all just think you’re drunk.”
“And they’d be right.”
Ruth cackled and Beauvoir cracked a tiny smile.
Across the bistro Gabri and Clara watched.
“Should we save him?” Clara asked.
“Too late,” said Gabri. “He’s made a deal with the devil.”
They turned back to the bar and their drinks. “So, it’s between Mauritius and the Greek Islands on the Queen Mary,” said Gabri. They spent the next half hour debating fantasy vacations, while several feet away Jean-Guy Beauvoir told Ruth what really happened.
Armand Gamache and Henri entered the third and last shop on their list, Augustin Renaud’s list. The man while alive haunted the used bookstores in Quebec City buying anything that might have even a remote reference to Samuel de Champlain.
The little bell above the entrance tinkled as they entered and Gamache quickly closed the door before too much of the day crept in with him. It didn’t take much, a tiny crack and the cold stole in like a wraith.
It was dark inside, most of the windows being “booked” off. Stacks of dusty volumes were piled in the windows, not so much for advertisement as storage.
Anyone suffering from claustrophobia would never get three steps into the shop. The already narrow aisles were made all the more cramped by bookcases so stuffed they threatened to topple over, and more books were stacked on the floor. Henri picked his way carefully along behind Gamache. The Chief’s shoulders brushed the books and he decided it might be best to remove his parka before he knocked over all the shelves.
Getting the coat off proved quite an exercise in itself.
“Can I help you?”
The voice came from somewhere in the shop. Gamache looked round, as did Henri, his satellite ears flicking this way and that.
“I’d like to talk to you about Augustin Renaud,” called Gamache to the ceiling.
“Why?”
“Because,” said Gamache. Two could play that game. There was a pause then a clambering of feet on a ladder.
“What do you want?” the bookseller asked, taking small, quick steps out from behind a bookcase. He was short and skinny, his fisherman’s sweater was pilled and stained. An almost white T-shirt poked out of the collar. His hair was gray and greasy and his hands were dark from dust. He wiped them on his filthy pants and stared at Gamache then he noticed Henri looking out from behind the large man’s legs.
Hiding.
Though Gamache would never say it to Henri’s face, they both knew he wasn’t the most courageous of dogs. Nor, it must be said, was Henri very bright. But he was loyal beyond measure and knew what mattered. Din-din, walks, balls. But most of all, his family. His heart filled his chest and ran to the end of his tail and the very tips of his considerable ears. It filled his head, squeezing out his brain. But Henri, the foundling, was a humanist, and while not particularly clever was the smartest creature Gamache knew. Everything he knew he knew by heart.
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