The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (16 page)

“I told you I knew where we were going,” said the man. “Not a wrong turn all the way down.”

“Which is why you’re the navigator,” said the woman.

“No. I’m the navigator because you insist on driving.”

“Only after—”

The woman put up her hands and whispered to the man, loudly enough for Lacoste to hear it, “We can talk about this later.”

Isabelle Lacoste, far from being put out, almost smiled. These two reminded her of her parents, and were about the same age. Mid-fifties, she guessed. Sensibly, if unimaginatively, dressed. The woman wore a cloth coat of decent cut, though slightly baggy, while the man had on a raincoat, with the lightest dusting of doughnut sugar down the front.

The woman’s hair was obviously dyed at home, and due for another treatment. And the man’s hair was combed over, in an attempt to hide what could not be hidden.

“My name’s Mary Fraser.” Her hand, extended in greeting, revealed chipped nail polish. “This is my colleague, Sean Delorme.”

He smiled and shook hands. His cuticles were nibbled and torn.

“We’re from CSIS,” she said cheerfully.

Had Mary Fraser said they were from the moon it would have been more believable. Isabelle Lacoste tried not to show her surprise.

“Are we supposed to tell her that?” Sean Delorme asked, averting his face from Lacoste and putting his hand to his mouth. Again, trying to hide the obvious.

“What else are we going to say?” whispered Madame Fraser. “That we’re tourists?”

“Okay, but we should have consulted.”

“We had the whole drive down—”

Now it was the man’s turn to put up his hand to stop the bickering.

“We can talk about this later,” he said. “But if we get into trouble, it’s your fault.”

They spoke to each other in English but had spoken to Lacoste in heavily accented, textbook good, French.

Perhaps, thought Lacoste, they didn’t think she spoke English. She decided not to disabuse them of that thought.

“
Un plaisir,
” she said, shaking their hands. “CSIS, you say? The Canadian Security Intelligence Service?”

She had to be sure. If two people looked less like spies, and even less like intelligence agents, it was these two.

The man, Sean Delorme, looked around, then leaned closer to Lacoste. “Can we talk privately?”

His eyes darted around, as though they were in Berlin in 1939 and he had the codes.

“Of course,” said Lacoste, and unlocking the door into the Incident Room, she led them inside just as Beauvoir arrived.

Lacoste made the introductions.

Like her, Beauvoir looked at them and asked, obviously needing to clarify, “CSIS? The spy agency?”

“We prefer intelligence,” said Mary Fraser, but she didn’t seem displeased to be called a spy.

“What brings you here?” asked Lacoste, taking them over to the conference table.

“Well,” said Delorme, dropping his voice to barely above a whisper. “We heard about the gun.”

Lacoste half expected him to tap the side of his nose.

“You’ll have to forgive Monsieur Delorme,” said Mary Fraser, giving her colleague a filthy look. “We’re not often allowed out of the office.”

Now he gave her an equally filthy look.

“Where is your office?” asked Lacoste.

“Ottawa,” said Ms. Fraser. “We’re at headquarters.”

“May I see your identification?” asked Beauvoir.

Delighted by the request, they were completely oblivious to the possible insult.

They brought out their wallets but had trouble getting their laminated ID cards out. Mary Fraser was even having trouble finding hers.

As the two squabbled, Jean-Guy and Isabelle exchanged a grimace. Ottawa, and CSIS, could not have thought much of the find in the woods if this is what they sent.

Finally they handed the ID cards over to Beauvoir and Lacoste, who confirmed the two smiling middle-aged people across the conference table were Canadian intelligence agents.

“How did you hear about the gun?” Lacoste asked, sliding the cards back.

“Our boss told us,” said Delorme.

“How did he hear?” she tried again.

“I don’t really know.” Delorme looked at Ms. Fraser, who shook her head.

“Frankly, we just do as we’re told, and we were told to come here to look at the gun.”

Almost certainly this was the result of General Langelier “thinking about it,” thought Lacoste. He must’ve called someone in National Defence, who called CSIS, who sent it down the line until they ran out of line and came to these two.

“Why you?” asked Beauvoir. “Not that we aren’t thrilled to have you.”

“You know,” said Ms. Fraser. “We were wondering the same thing. We work in the same section, Sean and I. Have for years. Mostly filing.”

“But some fieldwork,” Delorme jumped in.

“Putting records on computer. Cross-referencing,” she said. “Seeing if any connections were missed. We’re quite good at that.”

“We are,” he admitted. “We see things others don’t.”

“Best not to tell them we see things,” she said, and Delorme laughed.

“Well,” said Lacoste, warming to them. “I imagine you’d like to see the gun.”

She sounded to her own ears like a 1950s housewife discreetly offering to show guests the facilities.

*   *   *

“Do you wish you were out there?” Reine-Marie asked, as her husband took a bite of the maple-smoked ham, apple and Brie sandwich, on a
pain de campagne
.

He looked out the bistro window, toward the stone bridge.

“You mean in the damp, cold woods at a crime scene?”

“Yes.”

“A little.”

“Monsieur Gamache,” said Reine-Marie, “you’re crazier than even my mother thought.”

“Your mother loved me.”

“Only because you made her own children look sane. Except Alphonse, of course. He really is nuts.”

Henri was curled under their bistro table. The shepherd’s head, resting on Armand’s shoes, was smattered with flakes of crusty bread.

“Isabelle’s doing a good job?” Reine-Marie asked.

“Not just a good job, a remarkable job. She’s completely taken control of the department. Made it her own.”

Reine-Marie watched him for signs of regret hiding beneath the obvious relief. But there was only admiration there for his young protégé.

“Jean-Guy seems to be accepting her as his boss,” she said, buttering a piece of fresh baguette from the basket that came with her parsnip and apple soup.

“I think it’s still a bit of a struggle,” said Armand. “But he at least respects Isabelle and knows he couldn’t possibly be made Chief Inspector, after what happened.”

“You mean after he shot you?” Reine-Marie asked.

“That didn’t help,” Armand admitted. He picked up his sandwich again, then put it down. “I was threatened yesterday by a young agent.”

“I saw him put his hand on his billy club,” said Reine-Marie, lowering her spoon.

Armand nodded. “Fresh out of the academy. He knew I was once a cop and he didn’t care. If he’d treat a former cop like that, how’s he going to treat citizens?”

“You look shaken.”

“I am. I’d hoped by getting rid of the corruption the worst was over, but now…” He shrugged and smiled thinly. “Is he alone, or is there a whole class of thugs entering the Sûreté? Armed with clubs and guns.”

“I’m sorry, Armand.”

She reached across the table and placed her hand on his.

He looked down at her hand, then up into her eyes, and smiled.

“It’s a place I no longer recognize.
To everything there is a season
. I’m thinking of talking to Professor Rosenblatt about his job at McGill.”

“You think he’s not who he claims to be?”

“Oh, no, not at all. I’m sure Isabelle and Jean-Guy checked him out. No, this is personal interest.”

“Really? Thinking about becoming a physicist?” asked Reine-Marie. When he didn’t answer, she looked at him closely. “Armand?”

She knew he wasn’t considering studying science, but now she understood what he was considering.

If the big question facing both of them was,
What next
? could the answer be,
University
?

“Would that interest you?” he asked.

“Going back to school?”

She hadn’t really thought about it, but now that she did she realized there was a world of knowledge out there she’d love to dive into. History, archeology, languages, art.

And she could see Armand there. In fact, it was a far more natural fit than the Sûreté ever seemed. She could see him walking through the hallways, a student. Or a professor.

But either way, he belonged in the corridors of academe. And so did she. She wondered if the killing of young Laurent had finally, completely, put paid to any interest he had in the disgrace that was murder.

“You like the professor?” she asked, going back to her soup.

“I do, though there seems a strange disconnect between the man and what he did for a living. His field was trajectory and ballistics. The main people who’d benefit from his research would be weapons designers. And yet he seems so, so, gentle. Scholarly. It just doesn’t seem to fit.”

“Really?” she asked, trying not to smile. It was what she’d just been thinking about him. A scholarly man who pursued murderers. “I guess we’re not all what we seem.”

“He does seem to know his stuff, though. He identified the weapon immediately. He said it was a Supergun.”

“A Supergun?”

He’d wondered if she’d laugh. Sitting in the warm and cheerful bistro, with fresh warm bread and parsnip and apple soup in front of them, the very word sounded ridiculous. “Supergun.” Like something out of a comic book.

But Reine-Marie didn’t laugh. Instead she remembered, as he did every hour of every day, Laurent. Alive. And Laurent, dead. Because of the thing in the woods. No matter its name, there was nothing remotely funny about it.

“It was built by a man named Gerald Bull,” said Armand.

“But what’s it doing here?” she asked. “Did Professor Rosenblatt know?”

Armand shook his head, then gestured out the window. “Maybe they can tell us.”

Reine-Marie looked out and saw Lacoste and Beauvoir walking across the dirt road, to the path into the woods. And with them were two strangers. A man and a woman.

“Who are they?” asked Reine-Marie.

“At a guess, I’d say National Defence, or maybe CSIS.”

“Or maybe more academics,” suggested Reine-Marie.

*   *   *

Once again, Jean-Guy Beauvoir attached the huge plug to the huge receptacle and heard the clunk as the huge floodlights came on.

He kept his eyes on the CSIS agents and wasn’t disappointed.

They’d gone from standing shoulder to shoulder, holding their briefcases like commuters at a train station, to looking like two people who’d lost their minds.

Their eyes flew wide open, their mouths dropped, their heads in unison slowly, slowly tilted back. And they stared up. Up. Had it been raining they would have drowned.

“Holy shit,” was all Sean Delorme could say. “Holy shit.”

“It’s real,” said Mary Fraser. “He did it. He actually built it.” She turned to Isabelle Lacoste, who was standing beside her. “Do you know what this is?”

“It’s Gerald Bull’s Supergun.”

“How did you know?”

“Michael Rosenblatt told us.”

“Professor Rosenblatt?” asked Sean Delorme, recovering enough to stop saying “holy shit.”

“Yes.”

“How did he know?” said Delorme.

“He’s seen it,” said Beauvoir. “He’s here.”

“Of course he is,” said Mary Fraser.

“I asked him to come,” said Beauvoir.

“Ahhhh,” said Mary Fraser, turning away. Her eyes dragged back to the giant gun. But she wasn’t looking at the weapon. The CSIS file clerk was staring at the etching.

“Unbelievable,” she said under her breath.

“The stories were true then,” said Delorme, turning to his colleague.

Mary Fraser took a few tentative steps forward and leaned into the image.

“That’s writing,” she said, pointing to, but not touching, the etching. “Arabic.”

“Hebrew,” corrected Lacoste.

“Do you know what it says?” Delorme asked Lacoste.

“
By the waters of Babylon
,” said Isabelle.

“
We sat down and wept
,” Mary Fraser finished the quote, taking a step away from the image. “The Whore of Babylon.”

“Holy shit,” said Sean Delorme.

*   *   *

Gamache and Henri walked toward the edge of the village. Henri had his ball, and Armand had his script.

He looked down at the title, smeared with dirt from the grave Ruth had dug for it. But it hadn’t rested in peace. He’d dug it up and now it was time he read it.

She Sat Down and Wept.

It could be a coincidence. Almost certainly was. That the title of a play by a serial killer was so similar to the phrase carved onto the side of the weapon of mass destruction.

Coincidences happened, Armand knew. And he knew not to read too much into them. But he also knew not to dismiss them altogether.

He’d planned to read the play at home, in front of the fireplace, but he didn’t want to sully his home. Then he thought he’d take it to the bistro, but decided against that too. For the same reason.

“Aren’t you giving it more power than it deserves?” Reine-Marie had asked.

“Probably.”

But they both knew that words were weapons too, and when fashioned into a story their power was almost limitless. He’d stood on the porch, holding the script.

Where to go?

To a place already sullied beyond redemption, he thought. Though the only place that came to mind was the forest, where a boy had been murdered and a gun designed to kill
en masse
had sat for decades. But there were too many people and he didn’t want to have to explain himself.

So if not a place that was damned, there was only the alternative. The divine. A place that could withstand the onslaught of John Fleming.

He and Henri walked to the edge of the village. They climbed the stairs to the doors of the old chapel, always unlocked, and stepped inside.

No one was in St. Thomas’s Church but it didn’t feel empty. Perhaps because of the stained-glass boys, there in perpetuity. Sometimes Armand would go up to St. Thomas’s just to visit them.