Page 39 of The Grey Wolf
Armand warned them about the video and advised them not to watch. As he left, Monsieur Langlois showed him to the door. Just before it closed behind him, Charles’s father looked him in the eye and said, “I can see he has you fooled too.”
The door swung shut, and Armand walked, limping, to his car. And drove home.
He stood under the hot water for a long time, tilting his head, so that the stream hit his face. His eyes closed, he tried to clear his mind. But Monsieur Langlois’s parting words would not be washed away with the blood and dirt circling the drain.
I can see he has you fooled too.
Though it was the look in Madame Langlois’s eyes that followed him, haunted him. Exactly the same look her son had had, when he knew he was dying. It wasn’t sorrow. It wasn’t pain. Madame Langlois was panicked.
CHAPTER11
“What are you saying?”
The woman, introduced to Beauvoir as Margaux Chalifoux, the Executive Director of Action Québec Bleu, was staring at him across her desk.
“I’m not sure how to put it more clearly, Madame. I’m afraid Charles Langlois is dead. He was killed by a car this afternoon.”
He watched closely for her reaction. One of the last things Langlois had said was that he didn’t know if his boss was involved in whatever was happening.
She was his boss.
And yet Charles had said “he” when talking about the boss. Was that a lie? Or did Charles not consider this woman his boss? There must be, might be, someone else.
Madame Chalifoux tilted her head. She was middle-aged, with thinning hair and a slight mustache, and a full face that now registered understanding, if not sorrow. “That’s terrible. He was a nice young man.” She paused. “Which department of the Sûreté are you with?”
“Homicide.”
She closed her eyes for a long moment. When they opened again, her gaze was sharp, intelligent. No-nonsense. “You think he was murdered.”
“I know it. I was there.”
“Someone actually wanted to kill him? On purpose? But whyCharles?” Then she shook her head. “I’m sorry. Stupid question. That’s what you’re trying to find out.”
“What did he do?”
“He was one of our biologists.” On seeing his surprise, she said, “What exactly do you know about Charles?”
“Nothing,” admitted Beauvoir. He took a seat without being asked. “Tell me.”
It was clear to Chief Inspector Gamache, as he walked through the corridors of Sûreté headquarters, that most of his colleagues had seen the video. Some stopped to ask if he was all right, others just smiled and nodded in a show of commiseration.
Though with each nod, each smile, he wondered how sincere these colleagues were.
With every step down the long corridor of SQ headquarters, he felt his left shoe pinching his bruised foot. When he made it to the elevator and the doors closed, he leaned against the wall, heaved a sigh, and lifted his foot.
“Come in, Chief Inspector,” said Madeleine Toussaint a minute or so later, when her assistant announced him. “Sit. Coffee?”
“Non, merci.”
Toussaint came around her desk and sat in the chair beside him. “Tell me everything you know, Armand.”
“Charles Langlois is, was, a marine biologist,” said Madame Chalifoux.
“Marine? So he specialized in oceans? Salt water?”
“Well, yes, but when he came to us, it was to study the situation with fresh water.” On seeing his puzzled expression, she smiled. “The truth is, Inspector, as you can probably see, we’re a shoestring operation. We take what and who we can get. Charles needed a job, and we needed a biologist.”
“What ‘situation’ exactly was he working on?”
