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.
Gamache took a step toward him, then stopped, frozen in place by a familiar sound. The soft, metallic click of a safety coming off.
He turned to his son.
Daniel’s eyes were wide with terror as the gun pressed against his temple.
“You’re right,” said Girard, his voice conversational, almost chatty. “We did know. But you better than most know the advantage of having a cooperative witness. Sometimes people just have to see the full advantage of being helpful. And the disadvantage of not.”
Gamache glared at him. “I’ll kill you.”
“Ah, you just slipped from your favorite spot on the higher ground, Chief Inspector,” said Girard. “What does it feel like to be in the dung with the rest of us?”
“You’d better frisk him,” said Dussault. “Make sure he’s unarmed.”
Gamache glared at Loiselle as he frisked him.
“Nothing.” Then he gave Gamache a quick jab in the solar plexus with the butt of his machine gun, dropping him to his knees.
“Dad?”
Armand raised a hand, to indicate he was all right, then struggled to his feet. As he did, he looked at Claude Dussault.
The Prefect’s brows had risen, very slightly. In surprise. In annoyance. At Loiselle’s blow? No.
Claude Dussault had expected Loiselle to find a gun.
Armand knew then that Dussault had planted the weapon in his apartment. In the box of Stephen’s things. Where he was bound to find it. And do what?
Use it? Or try to? But if so, why insist he be frisked? Why give it to him, only to have it taken away?
Had Dussault expected Armand to pull it on him in the Place de la Concorde? In a rage when told about Daniel?
If he had, he’d have been immediately gunned down by the heavily armed police who patrolled the place.
Another execution.
Was that what Dussault wanted?
But no, that didn’t make complete sense. They didn’t want him dead. They needed him alive, to find Stephen’s evidence.
So why had Claude Dussault left a gun in his apartment? And did he really expect that the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec wouldn’t notice what it was loaded with?
“Dad, Stephen—” Daniel began, and once again Loiselle raised his rifle and Daniel cringed.
“Let him tell his father what he found at the bank,” said Dussault. “Monsieur Gamache here needs to know if he’s going to help us.”
Armand’s eyes held Daniel’s, and he said, softly, gently, “Tell me.”
It was the same voice he’d used tucking Daniel into bed: “Tell me about your day.”
And the little boy would. It would all come spilling out from a child who found wonder everywhere.
He’d hear about the odd-shaped clouds, the piles of autumn leaves, the snow forts Daniel and his friends had built and defended. The carefree battles waged and won. The first daffodils in the park, and the splashing in the fountain on a sizzling summer’s day.
“Tell me,” Armand said now.
And Daniel did.
“Stephen put in a buy order late Friday, just as the New York market closed. He was going all in on two of GHS’s holdings.”
“The numbered companies?”
“Oui.”
“What do the companies do?”
“One’s a tool and die company. But his main target is a smelter.”
Armand’s mind raced.
A smelter meant ore. Ore came from mines. Which led to GHS, which led to Patagonia.
Which led to the rare earth elements.
Which led to neodymium.
Armand’s eyes flickered to Daniel’s pocket.
Oh, God, he thought. That’s where they are.
The nickels. The ones he’d been looking for earlier, in the box. Magnetized, not glued, together.
Armand saw again Honoré in the garden, and the mighty toss. Saw Jean-Guy’s panic, thinking his son had them in his mouth. And he saw Daniel, in the background, stoop and pick up the nickels. Putting them in his jacket pocket for safekeeping. Away from the hands, and mouths, of other children.
And that’s where they still were. In the same jacket Daniel was now wearing.
If Dussault put it together and realized what they were …
If they found them on Daniel and thought he was deliberately hiding them …
Armand quickly considered his options. Bringing out a handkerchief, he looked at Daniel, then over to Dussault.
“Is it all right if I…?”
Dussault nodded.
He approached Daniel, and as he wiped the blood from his son’s face, Daniel grabbed his arms and whispered, whimpered, his voice high and strained, “I’m not brave, Dad. I’m so afraid.”
Armand pulled him close and held him tight. “I’m here. It’s all right. I’ve got you.” He stepped back and looked his son in the eye. “And you are brave. You’re still standing. Most would be curled on the floor by now. Remember Superman.”
Daniel gave one gruff, unexpected laugh.
It was something he’d explained to his father, at great length, when he was six. That at first Superman was completely invincible. But then his creators—“One was Canadian,” Daniel had excitedly said—realized that was a mistake.
“They had to have something that could hurt him,” the earnest little boy had explained.
“And do you know why that is?” his father had asked.
Daniel had taken his time to think about it.
Two days later he’d slipped his hand into his dad’s as they walked through the park to the playground, and said, “Because you can’t be brave if you’re not afraid.”
“Oui,” his father agreed, and watched Daniel run off to play with the other kids.
“Please, Dad,” Daniel now said. “Tell me you were a commando.”
“Better.” His father leaned closer and dropped his voice further. “I taught commandos.”
Stepping back, he looked at the handkerchief. Reine-Marie had given it to him as a stocking stuffer at Christmas. It was now stained with their son’s blood.
Just as he went to put it back in his pocket, Girard reached out and bent Gamache’s hand back, almost breaking his fingers. Gamache winced and twisted, opening his hand and dropping the handkerchief.
Girard examined it. Nothing hidden in the folds. Then he tossed it back at Gamache.
He could have just asked to see it, Gamache knew, as he flexed his hand and replaced the handkerchief in his pocket. Or even snatched it away from him.
But instead, Thierry Girard had chosen to hurt. Not much, but even a little seemed to give Girard pleasure.
Here was a sadist with a gun, and Armand Gamache wondered just how much control Claude Dussault really did have over his second-in-command.
“You have until tomorrow morning at seven thirty to find whatever it is Stephen Horowitz has hidden,” said Dussault. “The GHS board meeting is at eight. We need it before then.”
“You’ve looked for it for weeks and haven’t found anything,” Gamache said. “But you want me to find it in hours?”
“I think you can do it,” said Dussault. “Given the motivation.”
Gamache looked at him with loathing. “If you really want me to succeed, I need more information. What’s GHS up to? I have to know what I’m looking for.”
“You’re smart,” said Dussault. “I think you’ll know it when you see it.” He looked at his watch. “It’s now ten fifty-three. You have almost nine hours.”
“I’ll need help. Someone needs to come with me.”
“Did you have someone in mind?” asked Dussault.
“Daniel.”
Dussault smiled. “Saw that coming, and no. He stays safe with us.”
“Then Beauvoir. Let me bring Beauvoir in. Together we have a chance.”
Dussault made a subtle gesture toward Girard, and the two men stepped away, to consult in a corner.