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 to 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.