A Better Man
- Автор: Пенни Луиза
- Серия: Chief Inspector Gamache #15
- Год: 2019
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Publishing Group
- ISBN: 9781466873711
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «A Better Man». Краткое содержание книги:
It's Gamache's first day back as head of the homicide department, a job he temporarily shares with his previous second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Floodwaters are rising across the province. In the middle of the turmoil, a father approaches Gamache, pleading for help in finding his daughter.
As crisis piles upon crisis, Gamache tries to hold off the encroaching chaos, and realizes the search for Vivienne Godin should be abandoned. But with a daughter of his own, he finds himself developing a profound, and perhaps unwise, empathy for her distraught father.
Increasingly hounded by the question, how would you feel..., he resumes the search.
As the rivers rise, and the social media onslaught against Gamache becomes crueler, a body is discovered. And in the tumult, mistakes are made.
In the next novel in this constantly surprising series that deepens and darkens as it evolves (The New York Times Book Review), Gamache must face a horrific possibility, and a burning question.
What would you do if your child's killer walked free?
“We never thought you’d be that desperate. Or that stupid,” said the politician.
“Well, you took your best shot,” said Gamache, with a thin smile. “And yet here I am. Still standing. Right in front of you.”
“You think that was our best shot, Armand?”
There was shocked silence then, until Chief Superintendent Toussaint jumped in.
“I think we hold the course. Keep the equipment at the Hydro dams to prevent a catastrophe and dynamite as it’s necessary down south.”
The Deputy Premier, ignoring her, leaned over the map. “I see in your scenario, Gamache, one of the villages spared would be your own. Don’t you live in some tiny backwater in the townships? I can smell it on you. Smells like shit.”
“Actually, it’s donkey.” He stared at the politician. “What’s your point, Pierre?”
“Oh, Armand, I think you know my point. Once again you would misuse power for your own gain. And…” The Deputy Premier paused and inhaled. “I think what I smell isn’t a donkey. It’s an ass.”
The room bristled.
“You’re right,” said Gamache. “One of the places in the path of the flooding is mine. A small village, insignificant by your standards, called Three Pines. No one’s ever heard of it, and if it disappeared in the deluge, I suspect it wouldn’t be missed. But it would still be a tragedy. As it would for all the other towns and villages you’re ignoring.”
“Thank you for coming, Chief Inspector.” Toussaint put out her hand. “We’ll take it from here. I’ll let you get back to your own work now.”
They stared at each other. The former occupant and the current occupant of the highest office in the Sûreté.
He was dismissed.
He found himself unceremoniously on the other side of the door as it closed.
Armand Gamache had been put in his place.
When he walked into Beauvoir’s office to get his coat and boots and dog, Jean-Guy stood up at the desk. Isabelle Lacoste was also there.
“Interviews over?” Gamache asked.
“Interviews canceled,” she said. “Because of the emergency.”
“Meeting over?” asked Beauvoir.
“Not yet. I gave my opinion, and we’ll see. There’re smart people in there.”
“So why’re you out here?” asked Beauvoir.
“I guess I’m not so smart,” said Gamache with a smile.
“I’m sorry,” said Lacoste. “They shouldn’t—”
“It’s all right,” Gamache assured her. Then noticed that Jean-Guy’s suit, his papers, his chair, and the ceiling had little brown dots all over them.
“Your dog shook,” explained Beauvoir.
“Oh, dear.”
“Yes. That’s pretty much what I said as I washed myself off and scraped down my desk. Gosh, I said. Bit of a mess.” His eyes widened in a crazed look, and Lacoste laughed.
“By the way, do you mind my asking why you have a dog?”
“He belongs to the missing woman.”
“I see.” Beauvoir looked down at the smelly old thing, lying contentedly on the now-filthy rug. “I’m sorry we have to put that search on hold.”
“Actually, we don’t. Or at least I don’t. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to speak to her father in Ste.-Agathe, before the roads are closed. Do you mind if I take Agent Cloutier with me?”
“No, of course not. You don’t need to ask, patron,” said Beauvoir.
“But I do.” Gamache smiled.
“Mind if I come, too?” asked Lacoste. “Seems I’m free for the afternoon.”
“That would be great,” said Gamache. Not only did he value her judgment and company, but he knew that she was a mentor to Agent Cloutier.
Isabelle Lacoste had been a young woman when, to everyone’s surprise, he’d chosen her for homicide. That hadn’t been all that many years ago.
Now her hair was prematurely graying and there were lines at her forehead and from her mouth. Caused by stress. And pain. She walked with a limp and a cane, still recovering from near-fatal injuries almost a year earlier.
He’d often wondered if he’d really done her, done Jean-Guy, done any of them such a favor by recruiting them into homicide. But they were adults, he told himself, and could make their own decisions.
And now one had decided to leave and one had decided to return.
As he waited for the elevator, with Isabelle and Fred, he looked out at Montréal. So much rain was sliding down the window, it looked as though the city was underwater.
Gamache put his hands behind his back, one gripping the other, and felt his core grow cold. And saw again the animation. Of much of Québec sliding into Vermont. Sent there by a flood of water and a fear of making the wrong decision.
“All that most maddens and torments,” he said.
“Moby-Dick,” said Lacoste. “Studied it at university.”
“Right,” said Gamache, turning to her. “I couldn’t remember where it’s from.”
“But why remember it at all?”
“Just something someone in the meeting said.”
“Well, that can’t be good,” said Isabelle Lacoste as they stepped into the elevator. “Hardly reassuring.”
“Non.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They pulled in to the driveway of the neat bungalow in the center of Ste.-Agathe forty minutes later.
As they stood on the driveway, they could see that ice still covered the lake. But it was heaved up here and there. Ice-fishing cabins had been abandoned, and there was a huge fissure through the middle of the hockey rink twenty feet off shore.
Lac des Sables was breaking up. It had obviously hit swiftly. Taking the villagers by surprise.
Even from there they could hear the bangs. Booms. As new cracks formed in the thick ice.
The thaw was moving north. More swiftly than imagined. More swiftly, certainly, than hoped.
Gamache put his hands in his pockets and brought his shoulders up against the wind.
They were in the Laurentian Mountains, and it was considerably colder. What had been coming down as rain farther south was turning to ice pellets here. And soon, he thought, freezing rain.
They’d have to be quick about this if they hoped to make it back home.
Chief Inspector Gamache brought out his phone and called in the report of the ice breakup. He rang off just as a man appeared at the door.
Homer Godin had clearly been waiting for them. He came out of his house, but he stopped short and brought his hand to his face.
“Fred,” he said.
On seeing Monsieur Godin, Fred slithered out of the car. The man dropped to his knees to embrace the old dog.
Then Godin got up and wiped his face as he turned to Gamache and put out his hand.
“Thank you, thank you for coming. I’m Vivienne’s father.”
Not, Gamache noticed, Monsieur Godin. Not Homer. But Vivienne’s father. That was his identity now. And, perhaps, had been since his only child’s birth.
“Armand Gamache. We spoke on the phone.”
“Yes. I stayed here, as you suggested. But she hasn’t called.” Monsieur Godin searched Gamache’s face for reassurance. That she would.
But Armand Gamache was silent.
Homer looked down. At the dog. His shoulders rose and fell. And there was a gasp. A sob. His hands covered his face, and through the fingers came the muffled words.
“This’s all my fault.”
“No, no, that’s not true, Homer,” said Lysette Cloutier, reaching out to touch his arm.
But he didn’t seem to notice. Then he finally dropped his hands, and wiped his face with his sleeve.
“I’m sorry. I’m better now.” He pulled himself up, rigid. Then noticed the third person.
Gamache introduced Superintendent Lacoste.