All the Devils Are Here
- Автор: Пенни Луиза
- Серия: Chief Inspector Gamache #16
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Publishing Group
- ISBN: 9781250145253
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «All the Devils Are Here». Краткое содержание книги:
On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand's godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man's life.
When a strange key is found in Stephen's possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d'Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art.
It sends them deep into the secrets Armand's godfather has kept for decades.
A gruesome discovery in Stephen's Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized.
Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family.
For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide.
His power absolute.
Had these two men, individually decent, somehow warped each other? Found, fed, magnified, justified the worst in each other? Until the unthinkable became acceptable became normal?
“Wait a minute,” said Daniel. “This Thierry Girard was the second-in-command at the Préfecture de Paris before Fontaine?”
“Oui,” said his father. “Irena Fontaine took over eighteen months ago.” Armand turned back to Beauvoir and was about to speak, when Daniel interrupted.
“I was in Fontaine’s office this afternoon. There’re posters around, including one of Copenhagen Harbor. I commented on it. Asked how she liked Copenhagen. But she said she’d never been outside France.”
Beauvoir was about to ask what that had to do with anything when he suddenly got it.
“Cologne,” he said.
“Cologne,” said Armand, nodding, and smiling at his son. “Well done.”
“I don’t understand,” said Séverine Arbour.
“Irena Fontaine couldn’t have been the one who bought the cologne for Claude,” said Armand.
“Not if she’s never been outside France,” said Daniel.
“When Monique Dussault told me that Claude’s second-in-command gave him the cologne,” said Reine-Marie, “I assumed she meant Commander Fontaine. But actually she meant Thierry Girard, who also bought some for himself. Was he the one we interrupted in Stephen’s apartment?”
“Perhaps,” said Armand.
They were getting closer to the truth, but there was still far too much they didn’t know. And time was short. It was now quarter to six. Just a few hours before he was to meet Dussault in Place de la Concorde.
Information would be his only ammunition, and so far he had precious little of that.
He checked for the messages that had downloaded when Reine-Marie took his phone to the surface.
Jean-Guy, the rational man who lived in a near perpetual state of magical thinking, also checked his phone.
Not surprisingly, it was empty of new messages.
Armand’s was not.
“What is it?” Reine-Marie asked, noticing Armand’s brows drop, then draw together.
“An update from Mrs. McGillicuddy. It looks like Stephen sold all his holdings.”
“We know that,” she said. “The fake art—”
“Non. All his holdings. Everything,” said Armand. “All his shares, his investments, even in his own company. He’s mortgaged his homes. Liquidated everything.”
“But that’s not possible,” said Daniel, moving to his father’s side to read the message.
“He’s in the hospital,” said Reine-Marie. “How…?”
“It says here he did it late Friday,” said Daniel, scanning the message. “Minutes before market close.”
“Mrs. McGillicuddy’s just discovered it,” said Armand. “This was no last-minute whim on Stephen’s part. He’s obviously spent years putting everything in place. This”—he held up his phone—“was the coup de grâce.”
“That would come to—” Daniel began.
“Billions,” said Armand.
“Wouldn’t the markets react?” asked Arbour.
Daniel was shaking his head. “He timed the sell orders so they wouldn’t be noticed until the European markets opened tomorrow morning. By then they’d be unstoppable and he’d have the weekend to do whatever else he needed.”
“But what was that?” asked Jean-Guy. “Does Mrs. McGillicuddy say?”
Armand shook his head. “She’s as shocked as we are.”
“Maybe he wasn’t the one who sold it all. Maybe someone else did,” said Reine-Marie. “Broke into his accounts and did it.”
“No, it was Stephen. Mrs. McGillicuddy confirmed it before writing me.” Armand looked at Daniel. “What do you think he’s up to?”
Daniel returned to his crate and thought, finally shaking his head. “Buying his way onto the board would take maybe a hundred million, maybe more. Not billions. He had something else in mind. But what? It looks like he’s going all in on something. If there’s a sell order, was there also a buy order?”
“Mrs. McGillicuddy’s looking. Is it possible to put in a buy order late on Friday,” asked Armand, “to be executed first thing Monday?”
“Yes, for sure. But there’d still be a record. Somewhere. We might be able to track it down,” said Daniel, considering. “If I go to the bank, I can at least see if the money is still in his account, and if not, I might be able to trace where it’s gone. I can also look into those numbered companies he and Monsieur Plessner were buying into.”
Armand brought out his wallet and without hesitation gave the tattered old JSPS card to his son. “This might help.”
Reine-Marie watched Daniel put it in his jacket pocket, and she wondered if he understood the magnitude of what his father had just done.
Armand did not particularly value possessions. But there were two that he held precious. One was his wedding ring. The other was that small card, which he hadn’t been parted from in half a century.
“We need to find out which board member, if any, Stephen approached,” said Armand.
“That’s something I can look into,” said Reine-Marie. “Research the members, see who might be the most vulnerable. I’ll call Madame Lenoir from the hotel reception and see if we can use the terminals at the Archives nationales.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Séverine Arbour. “I can help.”
“Non,” said Armand. “Jean-Guy, can you go with Reine-Marie?”
“Absolument.”
“You come with me,” he said to Arbour. “I think we can rattle them a bit more.”
“How?” she asked.
“By going to the Hôtel Lutetia.”
“A punch in the face?” asked Jean-Guy.
“Let’s start with a tap on the shoulder,” said Gamache, with a smile. “Sometimes more frightening. Besides”—he turned to Madame Arbour—“I need more information from you about the Patagonia and Luxembourg projects before I see Claude Dussault.”
“You’re still going to meet him?” asked Reine-Marie.
“Unless something changes, yes. If Claude wants to talk, I want to listen.”
“What if he wants to do more than talk?” she asked, trying to keep her tone casual. But the stress was obvious.
“Then he wouldn’t have chosen such a public place,” said Armand. “A side street. A private home. I’d be worried. But Place de la Concorde? It’s far too public to do anything other than stroll and talk.” He held her eyes. “Believe me.”
Reine-Marie nodded. She believed him. She trusted him. It was Claude Dussault she didn’t trust.
“Jean-Guy?” she said, turning to her son-in-law.
“I agree. It’s safe. I think Dussault wants to see how much we know without revealing his own position. They’re worried.”
Armand handed Reine-Marie the scrap of paper from Stephen’s agenda after first taking a photo of it.
“You might look up those dates, too. See if anything significant happened.” He got to his feet. “We need to go up.”
“So soon?” asked Jean-Guy.
CHAPTER 34
“Monsieur Beauvoir?” asked the concierge, crossing the lobby of the grand hotel.
“Oui?”
Up from that crypt, Jean-Guy was breathing in the sweet scent of the fresh flowers in the lobby and almost tearing up at the sight of the fading daylight beyond the doors of the George V.
“A man dropped this off for you.”
She handed him an envelope. Beauvoir opened it. On the slip of paper was written one word.