accurate, at the time. But it was a forecast. A best guess. But things have become clearer, as the weeks and months have gone on.”
“It’s worse than we thought?” She clearly didn’t want to ask, but did anyway.
“As we’ve appeared weaker, organized crime, gangs, traffickers have grown stronger. Bolder.”
“Which is what we’re counting on.”
“Oui. So they’ll also grow reckless. That’s the crack we’ve been looking for.”
“So to speak,” she said, and actually smiled.
He did not. Instead, his handsome, haggard face grew even more serious.
“It’ll be even worse than anyone thought, Madeleine. If we fail. This will be the second catastrophe to hit the Sûreté, and by association the government of Québec, in rapid succession. First the corruption scandal, and now what would appear to be complete incompetence—”
“Bordering on criminal behavior,” Superintendent Toussaint supplied, and only Beauvoir knew that it no longer bordered on criminal behavior. Chief Superintendent Gamache’s testimony in the courtroom that day had crossed that boundary.
“You likened this to the fight against cancer,” said Beauvoir. “That’s fair. That’s accurate. These opiates are like a cancer. You know how doctors treat a tumor?”
“Of course I do. With chemo.”
“Yes. They poison the patient, often taking them to the edge of death, before they can be saved. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Do you want to know what Monsieur Gamache suspects will be the consequence of failure here?”
Superintendent Toussaint’s jaw muscles tensed as they clamped down.
“I do not,” she managed to say.
Beauvoir nodded. “I don’t blame you. But I’ll tell you something. If we fuck this up, we’ll only be hurrying along something that was inevitable. The war on drugs was lost years ago. New designer opiates are hitting the streets every day. This really is, and always has been, our only hope. Our last great stand. But—”
“Yes?”
“The Chief Superintendent also wrote, in that notebook, what happens if we succeed.”
He smiled. “We’re almost there, Madeleine.”
Toussaint looked down at her tablet, and tapped it a few times. Then she paused.
She seemed to be weighing her options.
He’d noticed that Superintendent Toussaint hadn’t asked if Gamache had lied on the witness stand, though they all knew it would come up, almost certainly that day. And Beauvoir knew why Toussaint hadn’t asked.
One day soon there was sure to be an investigation, and questions would be asked of Superintendent Toussaint.
Did she know the Chief Superintendent intended to lie? And when she found out he had perjured himself, did she report it?
If she didn’t ask, she could truthfully answer non to both questions.
Better ignorant than guilty.
She was distancing herself from the Chief Superintendent. But then, so had he.
At least hers was figurative. Beauvoir had done it literally. Fleeing from the courtroom. Retreating. Running away. Putting actual distance between himself and Gamache. And the lie.
He wasn’t even sure why he’d done it. They’d stood side by side through firefights. They’d tracked down and faced down the worst killers Québec could produce. Together.
And now he’d run away?
And now it is now, he thought. And the dark thing is here.
He didn’t turn around. Didn’t need to. He knew what was standing there in the corner of the bright sunny office. Watching and staring. And when he got up, it would follow him. Forever if necessary.
The dark thing is here. Like the demon on the island in Lord of the Flies, the one the boys had conjured out of thin air and terror.
The demon, the dark thing, was himself.
Madeleine Toussaint wrote a word on a piece of paper, transcribing it from her tablet.
“It’s bad news, I’m afraid. Another shipment.”
Beauvoir sighed. What else could he have expected?
“The inspector who brought me this information—”
“François Gaugin? I saw him say something to you when I arrived. He’s a good man.”
“A loyal man. Loyal to the Sûreté,” said Toussaint.
“But not necessarily the leadership?”
“He asked me not to show it to anyone else. He begged me to let him handle this. To make an arrest. I gave him my word.”
Beauvoir met her eyes and nodded. It was that kind of day. When words and promises and oaths were broken.
It had better be worth it, he thought.
“It’s a small shipment, tiny by comparison to what we just tracked.”
She pushed the scrap of paper across the table. It had a significance beyond whatever was written there. It was the canary in the coal mine. A warning that if someone like Inspector Gaugin mistrusted them, then there was real trouble.
It was possible now that Chief Superintendent Gamache would destroy the drug cartel and the Sûreté with it.