Chapter 2 #2
People still got sick, still died in Three Pines. Were still hurt, wounded. Terrible things still happened here, as elsewhere. The village did not, could never, guarantee safety from the blows life dealt. That would be ridiculous. The safety they found in the village wasn’t physical but emotional.
Whatever happened, they were not alone. There was help and company, and finally, at the end, there was comfort. A hand to hold.
Jean-Guy saw Olivier leave the Bed-and-Brunch he shared with Gabri and walk across the village green to their bistro.
Light soon appeared through the mullioned windows.
Before long a thin line of smoke would rise from the bistro chimneys, and villagers would take it as a sign far more important in their lives than any papal election.
Breakfast was ready.
Their Saturday would begin in front of the large open fires, with strong coffee and crêpes, or French toast sprinkled with fresh fruit and doused in maple syrup drawn from trees Jean-Guy could see from where he stood.
There’d be scrambled eggs with melted Brie and maple-smoked bacon, flaky croissants and warm cinnamon buns from Sarah’s Boulangerie next door.
Most of all, the villagers would start their day with each other. While Armand walked up to the church alone. He sat in the same pew each morning, under the stained-glass image of the boys, the brothers who’d left Three Pines more than a century earlier for the Great War and never returned.
It was an image that haunted not for its heroism, though there was that, but for the fear etched deep and forever into the faces of two of the boys while the third, the youngest brother, looked out at the congregation.
Not with accusation, though that would have been understandable, but with something more terrifying. Almost unfathomable.
At the age of seventeen he marched with his brothers to certain death in a futile battle that only presaged the next slaughter. And then he spent the next century staring out at the congregation, at those who’d let this happen, who’d let them go. He wanted them to know one thing.
That he forgave them.
Sneak home and pray you never know / the hell where youth and laughter go.
Each morning Armand sat in that fear and forgiveness and pulled the copy he’d made of Charles’s notebook from his pocket, struggling to see what he was missing. Fighting to understand what was written in those pages by another young man who’d also given his life for others.
Armand knew if he got it wrong, it would be unforgivable.
All this Jean-Guy also knew as he turned away from the peaceful view and entered the church.
The lines between Armand’s brows deepened.
There was still so much they did not know, but what was clear to the head of homicide for the S?reté du Québec was that something else was planned.
Which meant there were others still out there.
Those who had avoided arrest. And to do that, their influence must extend to the highest levels of government, the judiciary, industry. Organized crime.
The police.
Even, he feared, within the S?reté. He didn’t know who, though he had suspicions.
Some officers had been arrested in that first sweep, but where there were bad apples, the rot spread.
Which was why Armand kept the fact he had not stopped investigating to his tight circle.
Only a few knew. Very few. A carefully chosen few.
“There must be more,” Armand had whispered that morning as he’d gripped the side of the sink and stared at his reflection.
There must, he’d thought as he’d entered the quiet church, followed by the small parade of creatures. And the ghosts that never left.
“There must,” he muttered as he stood very still and stared straight ahead. As he fought to understand what was happening. What was about to happen.
If anything.
A part of him still hoped he was wrong. Hoped he was reading far too much into a dead man’s indecipherable notes. Had the screaming in his ear, in his head, made him deaf to reason?
Everyone else was convinced the danger was over. The plotters had been arrested. Were in prison. Including the man behind it all.
The former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada.
Marcus Lauzon denied he was involved, but the evidence against him was overwhelming. While the evidence against Don Moretti had evaporated. Disappeared.
How could that be? How could that man, that murderer, not even be arrested?
The answer was, of course, clear. Someone high up had corrupted the process.
But following that train of thought brought Gamache to an even more troubling question: Why had Moretti gotten off while Marcus Lauzon had been convicted? Would Lauzon, as the Black Wolf, not make sure the evidence against him disappeared, and Moretti fell?
Why the other way around? Why?
There were, of course, two possible answers.
Lauzon preferred to be in prison, beyond suspicion, when something else happened.
Or …
Armand closed his eyes and, teetering on the edge, he took a deep breath, then took the plunge.
Or … he’d been wrong. Marcus Lauzon was not the Black Wolf.
After the inquiry wrapped a few weeks earlier, Armand had called the head of the S?reté’s Organized Crime division. In person was always better, but for now, video and virtual would have to do.
“I have the same questions, Armand.” Evelyn Tardiff’s words were transcribed at the bottom of the screen for him to read.
“It seems incredible that Moretti got off. Who else is involved? And why did the head of the crime family even agree to work with anyone? He’s notorious for killing rivals, not partnering with them. ”
“Oui. He murdered his own father for doing the same thing.”
“Unfortunately, that could never be proven. God knows I tried. As you know, I was the arson investigator on that case.”
“Oui.”
There was something else he knew. At the time of the fire that killed Moretti’s father, then Agent Tardiff had been approached by the head of the S?reté to let young Moretti know she’d be open to a bribe. To make the investigation go away.
She did. And slowly over the years she’d gained more and more access to the head of the Montréal mob, even as she rose through the S?reté ranks.
But what worried him now was that Evelyn Tardiff might have known about the poisoning plot and said nothing. What really worried him now was that he no longer knew whose side she was on.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” she said. “Though the question is now moot, thankfully. It’s over.”
Armand left it at that. He wasn’t ready to tell her about the suspicions that propelled him out of his warm bed, to sit within the light of the luminous boys and ponder the unimaginable. The unforgivable.
“Morning, numbnuts.”
Jean-Guy started, spilling a bit of coffee out of each mug. For a moment a trick of the young light made it look as though one of the stained-glass boys had spoken. And called him numbnuts. That could not be good.
Though Jean-Guy quickly realized who it must be. It was not much better.
Ruth Zardo, the elderly poet, popped up in the pew where she’d apparently been napping.
“Sleeping it off, you old hag?” He slipped onto the bench beside her. Rosa the duck looked at him, clearly pissed off at having been woken up. But then ducks were often pissed off. At least, this one was.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Rosa muttered before once again burying her beak between her chest and wing.
“Looking for Clouseau?” Ruth took one of the mugs from Jean-Guy. “For me?”
“Actually—”
Before he could stop her, she took a long sip. “Just coffee. Blech. Why would you bring me that?”
“I—”
“He’s in the basement. No doubt hiding from you. Can’t say I blame him.”
Jean-Guy stared at the mug and wondered how to get it away from her. Armand needn’t know she’d taken a sip. “How does he seem to you?”
Ruth considered the question. “Perhaps a bit better. Hard to tell. He seems worried.” Now she looked at Jean-Guy more closely. “What’s going on? What’s he worried about? Why’s he down there?”
“Hiding from you, I suspect. Can’t say I blame him.”
“Shit-head.”
“Witch.”
He looked at the warm mug cupped in her cold hands and decided not to wrestle her for it. She’d probably win.
As he walked to the stairs, he heard, “Say hi to your boss.”
Though on leave from the S?reté, Armand Gamache was still, and would always be, Beauvoir’s mentor and boss. His Chief Inspector. No matter what happened.
And a lot had.
“Bonjour, Jean-Guy.”
Beauvoir stopped dead at the bottom of the basement stairs, his eyes wide with surprise. “Did you hear me coming?”
Armand’s back remained to him, his hands clasped together behind him. Jean-Guy could see the red slashes, scars where the zip ties had bitten into Armand’s wrists.
Then the older man turned, and his face broke into a smile of genuine pleasure.
At over six feet tall, he was solidly built.
His face was worn from days and nights in windswept fields, trudging through forests, kneeling in deep snow beside some unfortunate who had become a corpse, but never just a case.
And yet, if met by chance at a party, Chief Inspector Gamache would easily be mistaken for a professor of ancient history at the Université de Montréal. Someone who studied the lives of those long dead instead of the head of homicide, hunting those who dealt out fresh death.
Jean-Guy had watched him at social events, listening closely as strangers told Armand the minutiae of their lives. He listened and nodded, asking questions. He let whoever he was with know they were not just fascinating, they were precious. Their stories heard and valued.
Though Armand did not go to many parties anymore, and the listening part had changed, after what had happened.
Perhaps the biggest reason Armand would never be taken for a homicide cop was what Jean-Guy saw now. The smile. Radiant, it radiated from the corners of his eyes and mouth, cutting across the worry lines.
Here was a clearly happy man despite, or perhaps because of, all that he’d knelt beside. All that he’d seen.
And he’d seen the worst. But Armand Gamache had also seen the best, and insisted his people see it too and not get mired in the all-too-obvious darkness.
“How else are we going to survive,” he told them, “unless we also see the kindness, the courage, the decency in people? There’s more goodness than cruelty in this world.”
And he believed it.
“I smelled coffee and thought it must be you,” Armand explained, his voice only slightly louder than it should have been. He’d become good at modulating it. “Ruth has a whole other smell. Besides, when you and Annie and the children spend the weekend, you always join me here.”
“Upstairs, yes, but not down here.” Jean-Guy spoke slowly, making sure he faced his father-in-law. “Why’re you here?”
The basement, with its low, acoustic-tiled ceiling and florescent lights, wasn’t just gloomy, it was cold. Jean-Guy looked at his untouched mug of warm coffee, then held it out.
“For you.”
“Me? Isn’t it yours?”
“No. I’ve had mine. I brought it for you.”
Armand studied him, then took the mug.
Like Ruth upstairs, Armand held the warm mug in his cold hands for a moment. He knew perfectly well the coffee was Jean-Guy’s. But he also knew to refuse the kind gesture would have been much worse than accepting.
He took a long sip and exhaled. “Merci.” He saw the pleasure on Jean-Guy’s face, then turned and gestured at the wall of the church basement.
“That’s why I’m here.”
Evelyn Tardiff’s breath came out in puffs as she walked through the chilly morning. The streets of north end Montréal were quiet. It was going to be one of those picture-perfect autumn days. Bright and fresh, the air crisp and clean.
As she made her way to the farmers’ market, she wondered how many of the people she passed would be dead now, had the plot to poison the drinking water succeeded.
At least half was the official estimate, maybe more.
Maybe that child across the street. Probably that elderly couple walking arm in arm toward the bagel place.
Don Moretti blamed her, probably rightly, for Gamache managing to stop the plot. But there was an advantage to what had happened. Or didn’t happen.
Not only were the investigations and postmortems focused elsewhere, but everyone now believed those responsible were behind bars and the water supply safe.
But water security had all sorts of meaning. The danger to it was not simply from pollution or even deliberate poisoning. A whole new threat was emerging globally, and Canada was about to demonstrate to the rest of the world how insecure a water-rich country could be.
It surprised her that no one saw it. It seemed so obvious.
Yes, Moretti and the others were home free as long as no one thought to dig deeper into the notebooks. As long as they were the only things Gamache had found.
As long as Joe Moretti hadn’t seen, hadn’t sensed, the one who was really in charge. Far more powerful than him. Far viler. Vastly more dangerous.
Some malady is coming upon us. We wait. We wait.
And the head of Organized Crime for the S?reté knew that wait was almost over.
Armand had pinned a creased and marked-up map of the province of Québec to the wall of the church basement and was staring at it. He swayed slightly, in contemplation. Or perhaps exhaustion.
Jean-Guy had seen this map before. In fact, he’d been the one to find it in the monastery on the shores of that remote lake. They’d studied it closely, knowing if the biologist and the Abbot had hidden it, it must be important.
But try as they might, the map had yielded precious little.
When the poison plot had been uncovered and the perpetrators arrested, Armand had rolled up the map and hidden it in a cylinder under his desk at home.
Telling no one except his closest confidants about the find.
After all, he’d told himself, he wasn’t concealing evidence.
The map had nothing to do with the poison plot.
And yet the young biologist and the elderly Abbot had taken great pains to hide it. Which was another reason Armand suspected there was more coming.
This was the first time since the arrests that the map had seen the light of day.
It was a risk. But all they had left was risk.