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.
He raised his brows. “You think you’re here for an interrogation?”
“Aren’t I? Not torture, you’re far too civilized for that. But you are trying to work out whose side I’m on, isn’t that right?”
Armand smiled and tilted his head slightly.
She was smart. Clever. He’d have to be even more careful than he’d thought.
“My job has made me suspicious,” he admitted. “But it’s also taught me not to prejudge. I am curious that by your own admission you began to suspect something months ago, but hadn’t yet found the results of the water test. Something this Xavier Loiselle found in minutes.”
“I wasn’t initially looking in that direction,” said Madame Arbour. “As I told you, at first I thought it was something to do with building the plant. Contractors dragging it out. It’s only recently that I realized the issue isn’t the plant, but the mine.”
Gamache nodded and opened his hands. “That explains it then.”
“Listen—” She dropped her voice. “Beauvoir came to me, remember? Practically dragged me from my home. Believe me, I’d much rather be in my living room drinking wine and watching reruns of Call My Agent. I’m an engineer, not”—she waved her hands and looked around—“whatever this is.”
“Then why did you agree to help?”
“Honestly? If I’d known it was this bad, I’d never have answered the door. I was curious. I thought GHS was involved in some scam, not”—she dropped her voice still further—“murder.”
She was certainly stressed. Afraid. Perhaps because she knew her people were also in bar Joséphine. Watching, listening. And she knew what they were capable of.
Or perhaps because she’d woken up in her nice bed, in a nice neighborhood of Paris, expecting a nice quiet Sunday, and had instead been swept up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, then down into the bowels of the George V. Swept into another world. One where people killed other people. For reasons as yet obscure.
And now, instead of letting her go with the others to the relative safety of the Archives nationales, he’d brought her here. Exposing her to the very people she’d been trying so hard to avoid.
All good reasons to be afraid. But was she afraid of them, or him?
“Well, I am used to this.” He didn’t bother to drop his voice. “It’s what I’ve done, all day, every day. For decades. You find problems and solve them, I also find problems and solve them. It’s what we both do best.”
“Yeah, well, your problems kill people.”
“So do yours, I expect.” His thoughtful eyes held hers. And then he did drop his voice. “You’re doing fine.”
She lowered her eyes to her wine and took a deep breath in. A deep breath out.
This was making less and less sense. And she wondered if she should tell him. Everything.
“Now,” he said, his voice at a normal level again. “Neodymium?”
She hesitated for a moment, clearly considering her options. If she got up and walked out, he couldn’t stop her.
But Madame Arbour was smart enough to know there were no options left. She had to see this through.
“All I have is my phone,” she said. “Should I look it up? Suppose they’ve hacked it? That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? And aren’t they listening now?” She looked around.
“Probably. Don’t worry about your phone. If it’s all we have, then we have to use it.”
“You want them to know, don’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I see no way around it. Time they felt our warm breath on the back of their necks.”
“If we’re that close to them,” she said, bringing out her phone, “aren’t they that close to us?”
“Yes, but they always were. What’s changed is our position, not theirs. And they know it. What do you have?”
He put his reading glasses on and leaned close.
She’d entered the name of the rare earth element into a specialized site for engineers. And up popped the information.
“Nothing,” said Jean-Guy, throwing himself onto the back of the chair and staring at the screen.
They’d divided up the members of the board and were searching the databases, looking for anything that could point them to the one Stephen might have approached.
“You?” he asked the others.
From their terminals scattered down the long tables of the reading room, he heard mumbled, “Non. Nothing yet.”
And more tapping.
“I’m going to look up the dates from Stephen’s notes,” said Jean-Guy. “Maybe there’s something there.”
“What notes?” Allida Lenoir was sitting across from him and glanced at the piece of paper. “Agence France-Presse stories?”
Beauvoir smiled. “Non. AFP are the initials of the dead man. Alexander Francis Plessner.”
“Are you sure?” said the head archivist.
“Pretty sure, but if you want to try Agence France-Presse, be my guest.”
A few minutes later Madame Lenoir sighed. “Nothing. I put the dates into the wire service site and nothing unusual came up. A protest in Washington. European Union in turmoil. And the usual series of tragedies. Refugees fleeing brutal regimes and being turned back. A plane crash in the Urals. A bridge collapse in Spain. Shootings in two American cities.”
“No mention of GHS?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“No stories out of Patagonia or Luxembourg?”
“No.”
“Let me see that.”
Madame de la Granger had wandered over, and without waiting for him to give it to her, she snatched the scrap from his hand.
Bet she could catch a fly with chopsticks, thought Jean-Guy.
He got up and walked over to his mother-in-law. “Anything?”
“Not yet. No scandals to do with the board members,” said Reine-Marie. “No bankruptcies. No obvious need for money. No sudden big purchases. But I haven’t finished yet. You?”
But she already knew the answer. Then a thought occurred to her.
“Are there any board members with the initials AFP?” she asked, reaching for the report.
They began putting the names into the searches. Sure enough Annette Poppy, a former British Foreign Secretary, turned out to be Annette Forrester Poppy.
Jean-Guy looked at his watch. It was ten past seven.
“I know this man,” came the voice of the Chief Librarian over Jean-Guy’s shoulder.
Madame de la Granger was pointing to a member of the GHS Engineering board. “He’s the son of an old family friend. We were at the Sorbonne together.”
She moved her finger so they could read his name. Alain Pinot.
Alain Flaubert Pinot.
They stared at the photo of the middle-aged man. Thinning hair and fleshy face.
“His father owned newspapers,” said Madame de la Granger. “He asked if I’d tutor his son. As a favor, I agreed. What a waste of time.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Reine-Marie.
“Because Alain Pinot was as dumb as they come,” said the Chief Librarian. “If stupid was sand, he’d be half the Sahara.”
They looked at her.
“What? It’s true. This guy’s father knew I was into research. He hoped I could teach the kid how to track down information. Prepare him for a job at the newspapers. But all he was interested in was partying. And yet…”
They waited, as Madame de la Granger cast her mind back.
“I quite liked him. He was a couple of years younger than me, spoiled, entitled, thick but harmless. He had a poor brain but a good heart.” She looked again at the photo. “Just before he flunked out of the Sorbonne, his father had him transferred to another university, and I lost track of him.”
“Where to?” asked Beauvoir.