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 called Daniel. Heard it ring. And ring. And then Daniel’s recorded voice, deep, cheerful, warm, inviting him to leave a message.
“Daniel? It’s Dad. Call me when you can.”
Up ahead he could see their apartment. And in it what he’d dashed across Paris to find.
Since silence was already broken, Jean-Guy decided to make one more call.
As soon as he heard Annie’s voice, he relaxed. Until that moment, he had no idea how tense he’d become.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Just fine. Honoré and the girls have had their dinner and baths, and we’re just tucking them in. Did you know Great-Aunt Ruth has taught him a song?”
“Oh, God, what now?”
Their son’s very first word hadn’t been “Mama” or “Papa,” or “milk,” or “please.”
Thanks to Great-Aunt Ruth and her duck Rosa, Honoré’s first word had been “fuck.” Which he’d screamed, loud and clear. In the middle of a party. Repeatedly.
Annie and Jean-Guy had tried to explain that he was actually saying “duck,” but his enunciation was so perfect no one believed that.
Honoré adored Great-Aunt Ruth and her duck Rosa and absorbed anything they chose to imprint.
“Here, listen,” said Annie and held the phone out.
In a clear, high voice, their son was singing, “What do you do with a drunken sailor?”
“A sea shanty? Jesus,” sighed Jean-Guy. “Still, he can hold a tune.”
“Yes, that’s the thing to focus on.”
“You’re all right?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
A few minutes earlier she’d felt a twinge. It was, she told herself, indigestion. Though in her heart, and slightly further down, she knew it wasn’t that.
She could feel panic rising, but she wouldn’t say anything to him. Not yet. Not until she was sure.
“I’ll tell you more when I see you,” Jean-Guy was saying.
“Come home when you can,” she said. Soon. Soon.
As he said goodbye he heard, in the background, “Way, hey, and up she rises…”
“No need to take off your coat,” said Armand, as they entered the apartment. “We aren’t staying long.”
“Long enough for me to use the facilities?” Madame Arbour asked, her voice brusque. Clearly not used to being lugged all over the city like a sack of occasionally intelligent potatoes.
“Oui. Certainement,” he said. “It’s just off the bedroom.”
When she left, he went over to the box from the hospital. It was still where they’d left it the night before, sitting beside the armchair in the living room. Taking the top off, he looked in.
And jerked back in surprise.
Something had been added. Even covered in a cloth he knew what it was.
He unwrapped the gun, careful not to get his prints on it. Was this the weapon that had killed Alexander Plessner? Was he being set up now?
He smelled the muzzle. It had not been fired recently, but that meant nothing.
Using a handkerchief, he released the magazine.
It was fully loaded. But …
He ejected one of the bullets. It was not standard issue.
Hollow point? Illegal, brutal. Effective, if the effect you wanted was to blow a hole clean through another human being.
No. This was something else entirely.
He stared at the bullet for a moment, his mind whirring.
Replacing it, he looked around. Someone had broken into their apartment between the time he and Reine-Marie had stopped there that afternoon on their way to the Louvre, and now. Was anything else changed? Added? Taken? Without a thorough search, he couldn’t tell. And he didn’t have time for that.
Who’d done this? Claude Dussault? Irena Fontaine? Thierry Girard?
Xavier Loiselle?
And why? He looked at the firearm in his hand. What was the purpose?
The water stopped running, and he knew he had moments to decide what to do.
He slipped the gun into his coat pocket and bent over the box once again. Then, he hesitated. And changed his mind.
Walking quickly over to the bookcase, he pulled a few books out of a high shelf and hid the gun there.
When Séverine Arbour reappeared, she found Gamache going through the box.
“What’s that?” she asked, joining him.
“These are the things Stephen had on his desk, and what the hospital gave us after he was hit by the truck. The investigators have kept his laptop and phone, but everything else is here.”
“What’re you looking for?”
She’d been a bit surprised by the apartment. It was smaller than she’d expected. Most powerful people, men in particular, liked homes that reflected what they saw as their place on the ladder. Which was, in reality, a few rungs lower than their egos believed.
This place was petite, beamed, with bookcases and a fireplace. The floors were parquet, in the classic herringbone pattern.
An old oak dining table shared space with a comfortable sofa and armchairs. The kitchen, through an archway, was compact and dated.
But it was calm, peaceful even. It smelled of coffee and wood. And felt like home.
“Neodymium,” he said.
As she watched, he dug into his pocket and dropped a handful of coins into the box.
It was such a bizarre thing to do, for a moment she wondered about his sanity.
But he looked completely, intensely sane.
Stirring the contents with his hand, he picked up the coins along with some screws and the Allen wrench.
“Nothing.”
And she understood. If something in there was made of neodymium, it would pull metal to it. And magnetize what it touched.
He sat back in the chair and stared at her. “So what magnetized the nickels?”
“Nickels?”
“Stephen had two Canadian nickels that were stuck together. We thought they were glued, the seal was that strong, but when I saw that video about neodymium, I realized they might’ve been magnetized.”
“Which would mean your friend had a sample of the neodymium,” she said. “That’s what had magnetized the coins. Is that what you thought was in the box? The neodymium itself?”
“I’d hoped.”
It was now clear that his godfather had had suspicions for years. Had spent the last precious years of his life, and any amount of his fortune, to piece together the evidence. Had brought the engineer and his trusted friend Alexander Plessner in to help.
He’d sold everything he owned, mortgaged his home, gone all in.
But what had he found out? Was it corporate espionage? Was it something to do with neodymium?
They knew, he realized, almost nothing.
He checked his watch.
Quarter to nine. Time he left for the rendezvous.
But he wasn’t armed, with information or anything else. He glanced at the bookcase. Had he just made a fatal error?
But it was done now.
He called Daniel at the bank again. And again, no answer.
“Something wrong?” Séverine Arbour asked.
“No.”
He stared at his phone, then hit the app. Within seconds it showed Daniel’s location.
Armand exhaled.
He was at the bank. Probably with his phone on silent.
“I’m going to meet Commissioner Dussault,” he said.
“Can I go home now?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not.”
“You still don’t trust me? What do I have to do?”
“It’s not that,” he said, though of course it was. “It won’t be safe for you at home. The only safety is in numbers. You need to join the others at the archives. You’ll be fine there.”
“Fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and egotistical?”
When he looked surprised, she explained. “Beauvoir told me about your Québec village. He talks about it a lot. Apparently it’s filled with fine people.”