Kingdom of the Blind (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #14)

by Louise Penny

  She’d agreed immediately to his request but now had to figure out just how this could be done.

  Then she’d called a taxi. It had dropped her off, into a pile of snow and slush.

  Lacoste walked carefully across the icy sidewalk. Her cane in hand. And stood at the entrance to the apartment building.

  It was a low-rise, with windows that were so frosted up it would be, from the inside, impossible to see outside.

  She tried the front door. It was unlocked.

  Limping into the entrance, she had to make her way around a large pile of circulars on the floor. Clearly if there was a caretaker, he or she was taking the day off. Or the year.

  Isabelle Lacoste checked again the information Chief Superintendent Gamache had texted her.

  Benedict Pouliot. Apartment 3G.

  After looking around for an elevator and realizing there was none, she stood in front of the stairs, took a deep breath, and began climbing.

  * * *

  After their meeting with the coroner, Jean-Guy dropped Gamache at a café on rue Ste.-Catherine.

  “Bit scuzzy,” he said, looking around. “You sure you want to wait here?”

  “I used to come here as a young agent.” Gamache looked around. “All I could afford. Even brought Reine-Marie here.”

  “On a date? Are you mad?” Beauvoir looked at the dregs slumped in booths. But the place itself seemed clean enough. The sort of diner where Mom and Dad and drug-dealer son could share a poutine together.

  “I guess Reine-Marie likes the bad boys,” said Armand, and Jean-Guy laughed.

  “Yeah, they don’t get much more brutal than you, patron. Now, you have everything you need?”

  “I need you to leave,” said Gamache.

  And now Jean-Guy stood in front of the closed door in Sûreté headquarters. A room he was fast becoming familiar with. And growing to hate.

  He lifted his hand, but it opened before he could knock.

  “Chief Inspector,” said Marie Janvier.

  “Inspector,” he said.

  “Thank you for coming.” She stepped aside to let him in.

  “Thank you for having me.”

  If she was going to pretend this was a social event, so could he.

  “We have just a few more questions for you.” She indicated the same chair he’d sat in last time.

  The same people were at the same table, but now there was also an older man in a comfortable chair off to the side.

  Beauvoir was prepared this time. He knew, despite the pleasant smiles, what it was they wanted from him.

  Instead of taking his seat, he walked past the investigator, directly up to the quiet man in the corner.

  “And who are you?” he asked.

  The man stood up. He was not in uniform, but he held himself like an officer. Police or military. Senior.

  He was slightly shorter than Beauvoir, middle-aged, with a trim body. There was an ease about him, and an alertness. The sort of attitude that came from years of being in charge, in difficult situations.

  And this, it seemed, was a difficult situation.

  “Francis Cournoyer. I’m with the Ministère de la Justice.”

  Beauvoir was surprised, even shaken. But tried not to show it. “Why’re you here?”

  “I think you know why, Chief Inspector.”

  “This has become political.”

  “This was always political. I expect your Chief Superintendent knows that. Knew that, even when he made the decision to let the drugs pass. But you don’t need to look at me like that. I’m not the enemy. We all want the same thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Justice.”

  “For whom?”

  Francis Cournoyer laughed. “Now that’s a good question. I serve the people of Québec.”

  “As do I.”

  “And the Chief Superintendent?”

  Beauvoir couldn’t contain his outrage. “After all he’s done, you’d question that?”

  “But his service needs to be seen in its totality. Yes, he’s done a lot of good, but can you really say he’s served the population well when he let loose what amounts to a plague?”

  “To stop something worse.”

  “But how do we know it would’ve been worse?” asked Cournoyer. “All we do know is if that drug hits the streets, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, will die. Either by the drug itself or the violence that comes with it. Is that justice?”

  Even Beauvoir, not a political animal, could see that Francis Cournoyer was trying out the line that would be used on journalists. In talk shows and interviews.

  To justify this assassination.

  However apparently well-meaning the head of the Sûreté had been, he’d made a terrible blunder. And had to pay.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “You have a chance to limit the blowback, Chief Inspector. You were his second-in-command. This can mar the entire Sûreté, just when it’s beginning to win back some credibility.”

  “You want me to say it was all his decision? All his doing?”

  “You have a choice. Gamache is going to be blamed. There’s no way around that. His ruin was inevitable, from the moment he made that decision. He knew it. And did it anyway. There’s nothing you can do to stop that. You can’t save him. That bullet has left the barrel. What you can do is stop the collateral damage to others.”

  “Including myself?”

  Francis Cournoyer just shrugged.

  “Including the Premier?”

  Cournoyer’s face grew grim.

  “We’ve drawn up a statement, Chief Inspector. Take it with you if you like. Read it. Put it in your own words. But sign it. Do the right thing. Don’t be blinded by your loyalty.”

  “You’re kidding, right? You’d say that to me?” Beauvoir was trying to keep his voice down and his tone civil, but his anger was clawing its way out. “Releasing those drugs allowed us to break the largest drug rings working in North America. It was a Sûreté action that almost cost a senior Sûreté officer her life, and instead of thanking us, you treat me and the Chief like criminals?” Now he dropped his voice. “And I’m the blind one?”

  “You have no idea what I see.”

  “Oh, I think I have an idea. We’re a detail in your big picture, right?”

  And he had the satisfaction of seeing, fleetingly, a moment of hesitation in Cournoyer’s eyes. Of very slight surprise.

  “It’s nice you think we have a big picture,” said Cournoyer, recovering. “But believe me, we’re just bumbling along, responding to events and trying do the right thing by our citizens.”

  Beauvoir didn’t say anything, but he did know one thing. This Mr. Cournoyer did not bumble.

  * * *

  Gamache sat at the melamine table in the booth, sipping water and looking out the window.

  Then he got a text.

  “I’ll be back,” he said to the server, handing her a twenty. “Please hold the table for me.”

  “Oui, monsieur.”

  Pulling his tuque down over his ears and putting his gloves on, Gamache squinted into the bright, cold day. His feet crunching on the sidewalk, pedestrians hurried past him, in a rush to get where they were going.

  But he was in no hurry. Up ahead and across the road, two people were also walking slowly. One tall, thin, gaunt even in the winter coat. The other shorter, fuller, more stable on her feet.

  Amelia.

  Gamache matched their pace for two blocks, and when they paused, he stepped into an alleyway. There, hunched into his parka, he watched, leaning against the cold bricks of the abandoned building.

  He saw the dealers and addicts and prostitutes, going about their business in broad daylight. Knowing no cop would stop them.

  This part of rue Ste.-Catherine wasn’t so much an artery as an intestine.

  He could see two scruffy men, in filthy clothing, going through garbage cans. Occasionally shoving each other. Fighting over cans and stale
crusts.

  Gamache watched, impressed.

  The young officers were doing well. Taking this seriously. As they should. There would be few things in their careers more important than what they were doing at that moment. Though they didn’t yet know it.

  He’d had a text, a brief update, from one of them. Advising him where Amelia was. But they had no idea where he was. No idea that the head of the Sûreté had joined them and was also watching the former cadet.

  Gamache stepped back further into the shadows, as Amelia and her friend approached a dealer. Both men looked frail, especially compared to Amelia.

  The one-eyed man, thought Gamache.

  Then Amelia did something odd. She shoved the sleeve of her left arm up to her elbow and held it out to the dealer, who shook his head.

  Amelia said something, appearing to argue, before turning her back on the dealer and walking away. Her friend hurrying to catch up.

  “Twenty bucks for a blow job.” Gamache heard the male voice behind him.

  Ignoring it, he continued to watch until he felt a poke in his back.

  “I’m speaking to you, Grandpa. You want a blow job or not?”

  Gamache turned and saw a man younger than his own son. Tattoos over his ravaged face. He must have been handsome once, thought Gamache. He must’ve been young, once.

  “No thank you,” he said, and turned to watch the exchange across the street.

  “Then fuck off.”

  Gamache felt two fists hit his back with such force he was propelled out of the alley and across the icy sidewalk. Putting out both hands just in time, he thudded against a parked car, narrowly missing skidding onto the street. And into oncoming traffic.

  A driver leaned on his horn and gave him the finger as he passed.

  “You okay?”

  Gamache felt a thin hand, like a skeleton’s, on his arm and turned to look into a cavernous face. The cheeks were so sunken the thin skin barely stretched across the bones. And the eyes, with dark circles, were dilated. But kind.

  Gamache looked across the road. His eyes sweeping over and past the couple a block away now.

  Amelia had glanced back at the sound of the horn, but Gamache had already turned away and was looking at the person who held his arm.

  “Do you need help?” asked the soft voice.

  “Non, non. I’m fine. Merci.”

  She looked behind her, shouting into the alley. “You fucking asshole. You might’ve killed him.”

  “Fucking tranny,” came the reply out of the dark. “Get off my block.”

  The woman turned back to Gamache. They were about the same height, and it was clear she had once been robust but was withered, whittled down. She wore a short leather skirt and a pink, frilly coat. Her makeup was carefully, skillfully, applied, but couldn’t hide the sores on her face.

  “You sure you’re okay?” she asked. “It isn’t safe here, you know.”

  “You’re very kind, thank you,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

  “Don’t.” She laid the same skeleton hand on his arm.

  Gamache brought out a notebook and pen and wrote down his personal number.

  “If you ever need help.” He handed it to her, along with his gloves. “My name’s Armand.”

  “Anita Facial,” she said, shaking his hand and taking what he offered.

  * * *

  Amelia continued walking with Marc. She’d slept in the hallway outside his tiny apartment the night before and tried not to hear what was going on inside.

  And now they were off again. He to find another score. She to find David.

  A car horn had blasted just behind them, and she’d turned in time to see a prostitute holding the arm of a man who’d almost wandered into traffic.

  She watched for a moment as the man gave the prostitute what must have been money for services. Some things never changed.

  Amelia continued trudging down rue Ste.-Catherine. She bent her head into the wind and narrowed her eyes and repeated, as she had the night before, the familiar poems and favorite phrases seared into her memory. She went through them, her personal rosary. Over and over. Round and around. Until the bitter day faded. Until the addicts and whores and trannies faded and she was left with the warmth of the words from books now ash.

  * * *

  Gamache walked back to the café.

  He knew it was probably unwise to have come here, but he wanted to make sure Amelia was indeed on the streets and was doing what he expected.

  Looking for the carfentanil.

  He was under no illusion about what would happen if she failed. If he failed.

  Fentanyl, he knew, was a hundred times stronger than heroin. And carfentanil was a hundred times stronger than any fentanyl.

  It would be like taking a flamethrower to every kid on the streets.

  As he walked slowly back, he thought about what Beauvoir had said. That no one was more brutal than him. It was said in jest, but it was also, Gamache knew, true.

  Armand felt a slight pain in his back where the young male prostitute had hit him from behind. There were two spots, side by side, that throbbed. If he were sprouting wings, that’s where they’d be.

  But Armand Gamache knew with certainty that he was no angel. Though he did wonder if there was ever another war in heaven, on which side he’d be placed.

  After sliding back into the booth and ordering coffee and a sandwich, Armand put on his reading glasses and opened the book he’d bought that morning at Myrna’s bookshop.

  Erasmus’s Adagia. His collection of proverbs and sayings.

  The print was small, and Armand’s eyes were still blurry, but he knew the book well and now read the familiar entries.

  One swallow doesn’t make a summer.

  A necessary evil.

  Between a rock and a hard place.

  A rare bird.

  And then he found the one he’d been looking for.

  * * *

  In the kingdom of the blind, Amelia recited to herself as she trudged along—

  —the one-eyed-man is king, Gamache read.

  * * *

  “Chief Inspector?”

  Beauvoir turned and saw Francis Cournoyer walking down the corridor after him.

  “A word, please.”

  Jean-Guy had been interrogated for an hour and finally been allowed to leave. But he hadn’t made it very far down the hallway before Cournoyer caught up with him.

  The Ministère de la Justice man looked around, then pulled Beauvoir into the washroom and locked the door.

  “You forgot this.” He held out a manila file folder.

  Beauvoir looked at it. It contained the statement.

  “I didn’t forget it. I’m not signing. Ever.”

  “It doesn’t say anything we don’t already know,” said Cournoyer.

  “But signing it would say a lot about me, wouldn’t it?” said Beauvoir. “Drop it. Drop this whole thing. Do what’s right.”

  Cournoyer smiled. “Is it so clear to you, always? What’s right? It isn’t to me. And it isn’t to Gamache.”

  “That’s a lie. He did what was right.”

  “Then why do so many decent people think it was wrong? Not just them”—he jerked his head toward the interview room—“but others. Good people, yourself included, disagreed with his decision.”

  He looked closely at Beauvoir.

  “You’re surprised I know that? By the Chief Superintendent’s own testimony, you pleaded with him to stop the shipment of opioids. Every one of the agents in the inner circle begged him to stop it. He admits that. But it didn’t stop him. He let it onto the streets, to potentially kill thousands.”

  “It hasn’t hit the streets yet, and he’s gotten most of it back.”

  “But not all. And it will hit the streets, any day now. Any minute now. Every young death will be laid at his feet.”

  “You think he doesn’t know that? Isn’t that bad enough for him? You have to make it a public lynching? It’s d
isgusting. You’re disgusting. I won’t have anything to do with it.”

  “You’ll change your mind. Before this’s over, you’ll sign.”

  “I won’t. What’s your endgame in all of this? It can’t be just protecting politicians.”

  Cournoyer unlocked the bathroom door, and then, looking back at Beauvoir, he seemed to make up his mind.

  “Ask Gamache.”

  “What?”

  “Ask him. He knows far more than he’s telling you.”

  Cournoyer tossed the file, with the statement, onto the floor and left.

  Jean-Guy stared at it. Then picked it up.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Your Benedict . . . Pouliot does not live in 3G, as it turns out,” said Isabelle Lacoste, picking up the burger with both hands and taking an almighty bite.

  “But he does live in the building?” asked Gamache. “With his girlfriend?”

  He had to wait while Isabelle chewed and chewed.

  Beauvoir, who’d just joined them in the diner on rue Ste.-Catherine, waved at the server. “I’ll have one of those too, please, and a hot chocolate.”

  It was difficult for a grown man to order a hot chocolate with authority, but he tried.

  Armand smiled. But his amusement faded on catching the look Beauvoir gave him.

  And Armand felt a slight chill, as though a locked door had opened, just a little.

  “Oui,” said Lacoste, finally swallowing. It had been a while since she’d been this hungry. “Well, sort of. They used to live in . . . 3G, but she moved out a month or so ago, and he moved into a smaller apartment. Same building. Did you know he’s the . . . caretaker?”

  She went to take another bite, but Gamache put his hand on her arm to stop her.

  “I didn’t know that. So he has no girlfriend?”

  “Not anymore. Not that the neighbors know. I spoke to half a dozen of them. They all said pretty much the same thing. They’d lived together for a couple of years. The parting seemed . . . amicable.”

  She took another bite. The place might look like a dive, but the burger was freshly made, perfectly charbroiled, and delicious.

  She did not mention that she’d hauled herself all the way up three flights of stairs, pausing at every second step to catch her breath. Only to discover that someone else now lived in 3G and the apartment she was looking for was actually just off the lobby.