Francoeur was trembling with rage, his voice almost a scream.
Gamache waited. In his peripheral vision he could see the clock, ticking down.
“Magog. In an abandoned factory. Agent Nichol and Inspector Beauvoir found him by listening to the ambient sound.”
By listening to the spaces between words they’d found him.
“Please, Sylvain, go to La Grande. I’m begging you. If I’m wrong I’ll resign.”
“If we go there and you’re wrong I’ll bring you up on charges.”
Francoeur walked out of the office, out of the incident room. And disappeared.
Gamache glanced at the clock as he made for the door. One hour and forty-one minutes left. And Armand Gamache prayed, not for the first time that day, or the last.
“It could’ve been worse,” said Émile. “I mean, who knows who made this video? They could’ve made the entire operation look like a catastrophe. But it doesn’t. Tragic, yes. Terrible. But in many ways heroic. If the families have to watch, well . . .”
Gamache knew Émile was trying to be kind, trying to say the editing could have made him out to be a coward or a bumbling idiot. Could have looked like those who died had squandered their lives. Instead everyone had looked courageous. What was the word Émile used?
Heroic.
Gamache slowly climbed the steep stairs, Henri at his heels.
Well, he knew something Émile didn’t. He suspected who had made the video. And he knew why.
Not to make Gamache look bad, but to make him look good, too good. So good the Chief would feel as he did. A fraud. A fake. Lionized for nothing. Four Sûreté officers dead and Armand Gamache the hero.
Whoever had done this knew him well. And knew how to exact a price.
In shame.
TWENTY–FIVE
The storm blew in to Quebec City a few hours later and by two in the morning the capital was lashed by high winds and blowing snow. Highways were closed as visibility fell to zero in white-out conditions.
In the garret of the old stone home on St-Stanislas, Armand Gamache lay in bed, staring at the beamed ceiling. Henri, on the floor beside him, snored, oblivious to the snow whipping the windows.
Quietly, Gamache rose and looked out. He couldn’t see the building across the narrow street and could just barely make out the street lamps, their light all but blotted out by the driving snow.
Dressing quickly, he tiptoed down the stairs. Behind him he heard the clicking of Henri’s nails on the old wooden steps. Putting on his boots, parka, toque, heavy mitts and wrapping a long scarf around his neck Gamache bent down and petted Henri.
“You don’t have to come, you know.”
But Henri didn’t know. It wasn’t a matter of knowing. If Gamache was going, Henri was going.
Out they went, Gamache gulping as the wind hit his face and took away his breath. Then he turned his back and felt it shoving him.
Perhaps, he thought, this was a mistake.
But the storm was what he needed, wanted. Something loud, dramatic, challenging. Something that could blot out all thought, white them out.
The two struggled up the street, walking in the middle of the deserted roads. Not even snow plows were out. It was futile to try to clear snow in the middle of a blizzard.
It felt as though the city was theirs, as though an evacuation notice had sounded and Gamache and Henri had slept through it. They were all alone.
Up Ste-Ursule they trekked, past the convent where Général Montcalm had died. To rue St-Louis, then through the arched gate. The storm, if possible, was even worse outside old Quebec City. With no walls to stop it, the wind gathered speed and snow and slammed into trees, parked cars, buildings, plastering itself against whatever it hit. Including the Chief Inspector.
He didn’t care. He felt the cold hard flakes hit his coat, his hat, his face. And he heard it pelting into him. It was almost deafening.
“I love storms,” Morin said. “Any kind of storm. Nothing like sitting in a screen porch in summer in the middle of a thunderstorm. But my favorite are blizzards, as long as I don’t have to drive. If everyone’s safe at home, then bring it on.”
“Do you ever go out in them?” Gamache asked.
“All the time, even if it’s just to stand there. I love it. Don’t know why, maybe it’s the drama. Then to come back in and have a hot chocolate in front of the fire. Doesn’t get any better.”
Gamache trudged forward, his head down, looking at his feet as he plowed his way slowly through the knee-high drifts. Excited, Henri leapt up and down in the trail made by Gamache.
