Page 52 of The Grey Wolf
Gamache stared at her. “He told you?”
“Oui.”
Gamache absorbed this. If true, it meant whoever broke into Charles’s home had found what they were looking for.
But why would he do that? Why hide them here, then take them to the first place anyone would look? And why tell Madame McGregor where they were?
Was it possible he wanted her to be able to tell whoever came looking for them that he’d taken them to his home? While he hid them someplace else?
Gamache tiptoed from supposition to supposition, like someone fording a rushing river, from one stepstone to the next. Hoping not to slip. To slip up.
Which meant—Gamache took the next step—Charles must’ve known someone would come looking. Which meant the young manknew he was in danger. And if someone was asking, it meant something terrible had happened to him.
How frightened Charles must have been. And yet he’d kept up the investigation. He could have stopped. Could have handed over his files to the conspirators in hopes they’d leave him alone.
But instead, Charles Langlois, just emerging from the nightmare of addiction and homelessness, had entered another nightmare.
How terrible his secret must have been.
Why, why, why hadn’t Charles told him? Just a name. As he lay dying, just a name. Something. Anything.
But now the one person who could tell them was gone, taking all he knew with him. And their only real hope was that Charles had once again lied, and had not taken his files home.
“If anyone else comes asking about Charles and his notebooks, let me know.” He gave her his card.
Once the security videos were teed up, they went through them at double speed. Stopping now and then, slowing down occasionally.
There was the Premier of Québec, smiling and looking silly in his hairnet. Gamache knew him to be a decent individual, though they did not share the same politics.
They skipped ahead to other visits. Gamache recognized a number of provincial cabinet ministers, whose protection was part of the Sûreté mandate, and lower-level federal, provincial, and municipal politicians.
The hairnets the pols were given never quite fit. They were either too tight, so they looked like they’d just come out of unsuccessful brain surgery, or much, much too large, so they looked like mushrooms.
Gamache suspected that was not an accident.
Then he tipped forward in his chair as though about to dive through the screen. He hit pause. Not tapped but slammed his finger down on it.
“It’s Langlois,” said Lacoste, leaning in.
Gamache sat very, very still. As though afraid to alert the people on the screen to his presence.
Charles Langlois stood in the background as some almost maniacally cheerful member of Parliament, whose hairnet made him look like a big toe, tried to make small talk with a homeless man who just wanted a slice of bacon.
Charles was talking to a woman. They clearly knew each other. This was no meet-and-greet casual chat. There was an urgency about their conversation.
The homeless man had raised his head and was looking at them. The date on the tape was the Sunday before last.
Beauvoir looked at the frozen image, then at Gamache. “What is it?”
The Chief zoomed in for a closer look.
The woman was older than when he’d last seen her. Her clothes were much more elegant, her hair perfectly coiffed. But there was no mistaking her.
It was the woman who’d called him, shattering the peace of their Sunday morning.
It was the one he’d told to go to hell.
“Christ.” And with the word came a breath from deep down inside the Chief Inspector. One he’d held for decades.
