How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (43 page)

“Besides,” said Tessier, watching the activity. “He’s in some village in the Townships. No Internet.”

“Whoever this is has high-speed and huge bandwidth.”

“Christ.” Francoeur turned to Tessier. “Gamache was a decoy.”

“So who is it?” asked Tessier.

*   *   *

“Shit,” said Nichol. “The files are being erased.”

She looked at Jérôme, who looked at Thérèse, who looked at Gamache.

“We need those files,” said Gamache. “Get them.”

“He’ll find us,” said Jérôme.

“He’s found us already,” said Gamache. “Get them.”

“She,” said Nichol, also reacting swiftly. “I know who that is. It’s Chief Inspector Lambert. Has to be.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Thérèse.

“Because she’s the best. She trained me.”

“The whole entry’s disappearing, Armand,” said Jérôme. “You lead them away.”

“Right,” said Nichol. “The encryption’s holding. I can see she’s confused. No, wait. Something’s changed. This isn’t Lambert anymore. It’s someone else. They’ve split up.”

Gamache moved to Jérôme.

“Can you save some files?”

“Maybe, but I don’t know which ones are important.”

Gamache thought for a moment, his hand clutching the back of Jérôme’s wooden chair.

“Forget the files. It all started with Aqueduct thirty years ago or more. Somehow Arnot was involved. The company went under, but maybe it didn’t disappear. Maybe it just changed its name.”

Jérôme looked up at him. “If I leave, there’s no saving Aqueduct. They’ll dismantle it all until there’s no trace.”

“Go. Get out. Find out what became of Aqueduct.”

*   *   *

“They’re trying to save the files,” said Lambert. “They know what we’re doing.”

“This isn’t some outside hacker,” said Francoeur.

“I don’t know who it is,” said Lambert. “Charpentier?”

There was a pause before Charpentier spoke. “I can’t tell. It’s not registering properly. It’s like a ghost.”

“Stop saying that,” said Francoeur. “It’s not a ghost, it’s a person at a terminal somewhere.”

The Chief Superintendent took Tessier aside.

“I want you to find out who’s doing this.” He’d dropped his voice, but the words and ferocity were clear. “Find out where they are. If not Gamache, then who? Find them, stop them, and erase the evidence.”

Tessier left, in no doubt about what Francoeur had just ordered him to do.

*   *   *

“You OK?” Gamache asked Nichol.

Her face was strained, but she gave him a curt nod. For twenty minutes she’d led the hunter astray, dropping one false trail after another.

Gamache watched her for a moment, then returned to the other desk.

Aqueduct had gone bankrupt, but as so often happened, it was reborn under another name. One company morphed into another. From sewers and waterways, to roads, to construction materials.

The Chief Inspector took a seat and continued to read the screen, trying to figure out why the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté was desperate to keep these files secret. So far they seemed not simply benign, but dull. All about construction materials, and soil samples, and rebar and stress tests.

And then he had an idea. A suspicion.

“Can you go back to where we tripped the first alarm?”

“But that’s nothing to do with this company,” Jérôme explained. “It was a schedule of repairs on Autoroute 20.”

But Gamache was staring at the screen, waiting for Dr. Brunel to comply. And he did. Or tried to.

“It’s gone, Armand. Not there anymore.”

“I have to get out, sir,” said Nichol, rattled into courtesy. “I’ve stayed too long. They’ll find me soon.”

*   *   *

“Almost there,” Charpentier reported. “Another few seconds. Come on, come on.” His fingers flew over the keys. “I’ve got you, you little shit.”

“Ninety percent of the files are destroyed,” said Lambert from across her office. “Not many places he can go. Do you have him?”

There was silence, except for the rapid clicking of keys.

“Do you have him, Charpentier?”

“Fuck.”

The clicking stopped. Lambert had her answer.

*   *   *

“I’m out,” said Nichol, and sat back in her chair for the first time in hours. “That was too close. They almost got me.”

“Are you sure they didn’t?” asked Jérôme.

Nichol lugged herself forward and hit a few keys, then took a deep breath. “No. Just missed. Christ.”

Dr. Brunel looked from his wife to Gamache to Nichol. Then back to Thérèse.

“Now what?”

*   *   *

“Now what?” Charpentier asked. He was pissed off. He hated being bested, and whoever was on the other end had done just that.

It’d been close. So close that for an instant Charpentier had thought he had him. But at the last moment, poof. Gone.

“Now we call in the others and look again,” said Chief Inspector Lambert.

“You think he’s still in the system?”

“He didn’t get what he came for.” She turned back to her monitor. “So yes, I think he’s still there.”

Charpentier got up to go into the main room. To tell the other agents, all specialists in cyber searches, to go back in. To find the person who’d hacked into their own system. Who’d violated their home.

As he closed the door, he wondered how Inspector Lambert knew what the intruder was looking for. And he wondered what could be so important to the intruder that he’d risk everything to find it.

*   *   *

“Now we take a break,” said Gamache, getting up. His muscles were sore and he realized he’d been tensing them for hours.

“But they’ll be searching for us even harder now,” said Nichol.

“Let them. You need a break. Go for a walk, clear your head.”

Both Nichol and Jérôme looked unconvinced. Gamache glanced at Gilles, then back at them.

“You’re forcing me to do something I don’t want to do. Gilles here teaches yoga in his spare time. If you’re not up and headed for the door in thirty seconds, I’ll order you to take a class from him. His downward dog is spectacular, I hear.”

Gilles stood up, stretched, and walked forward.

“I could use some chakra work,” he admitted.

Jérôme and Nichol got up and made for their parkas and the door. Gilles joined Gamache by the woodstove.

“Thanks for playing along,” the Chief said.

“What ‘playing along’? I actually teach a yoga class. Want to see?”

Gilles stood on one foot and slowly moved his other leg around, lifting his arms.

Gamache raised his brows and approached Thérèse, who was also watching.

“I’m waiting for the downward dog,” she confided as she put on her coat. “You coming?”

“No. I’d like to read some more.”

Superintendent Brunel followed his gaze to the terminals.

“Be careful, Armand.”

He smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll try not to spill coffee into it. I just want to go back over some of what Jérôme found.”

She left, taking Henri with her, while Gamache pulled his chair up to the computer and started reading. Ten minutes later Gamache felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Jérôme.

“Can I get in?”

“You’re back.”

“We’ve been back for a few minutes, but didn’t want to disturb you. Find anything?”

“Why did they erase that file, Jérôme? Not Aqueduct, though that’s an interesting question too. But the first one you found. The construction schedule on the highway. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe they’re just erasing everything we looked at,” suggested Nichol.

“Why would they take the time to do that?” asked Thérèse.

Nichol shrugged. “Dunno.”

“You need to go back in,” Jérôme said to Nichol. “How close did they get to you? Did they get your address?”

“The school in Baie-des-Chaleurs?” Nichol asked. “I don’t think so, but I should change it anyway. There’s a zoo in Granby with a big archive. I’ll use that.”

“Bon,”
said the Chief Inspector. “Ready?”

“Ready,” said Jérôme.

Nichol turned her attention to her terminal, and Gamache turned to Superintendent Brunel.

“I think that first file was important,” he said. “Maybe even vital, and when Jérôme found it, they panicked.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” said Superintendent Brunel. “I know the mandate of the Sûreté. So do you. We patrol the roads and bridges, even the federal ones. But we don’t repair them. There’s no reason for a repair dossier to be in Sûreté files, and certainly not hidden.”

“And that makes it all the more likely the file had nothing to do with official, sanctioned Sûreté business.” Gamache had her attention now. “What happens when an autoroute needs to be repaired?”

“It goes to tender, I expect,” said Thérèse.

“And then what?”

“Companies bid,” said Thérèse. “Where’re you going with this, Armand?”

“You’re right,” said Gamache. “The Sûreté doesn’t repair roads, but it does do investigations into, among other things, bid rigging.”

The two senior Sûreté officers looked at each other.

The Sûreté du Québec investigated corruption. And there was no bigger target than the construction industry.

Just about every department of the Sûreté had been involved in investigating the Québec construction industry at one time or another. From allegations of kickbacks to bid rigging to organized crime involvement, from intimidation to homicide. Gamache himself had led investigations into the disappearance and presumed murder of a senior union official and a construction executive.

“Is that what this’s about?” Thérèse asked, still holding Gamache’s eyes. “Has Francoeur gotten himself involved with that filth?”

“Not just himself,” said Gamache. “But the Sûreté.”

The industry was huge, powerful, corrupt. And now, with the collusion of the Sûreté, unpoliced. Unstoppable.

Contracts worth billions were at stake. They stopped at nothing to win the contracts, to hold them, and to intimidate anyone who challenged them.

If there was an old sin and a long, dark shadow in Québec, it was the construction industry.

“Merde,”
said Superintendent Brunel under her breath. She knew it wasn’t just a piece of shit they’d stepped on, but an empire of it.

“Go back in, please, Jérôme,” said Gamache, quietly. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees. They finally had an idea what they were looking for.

“Where to?”

“Construction contracts. Big ones, recently awarded.”

“Right.” Dr. Brunel swung around and began typing. Beside him, at the other terminal, Nichol was also typing away.

“No, wait,” said Gamache, putting a hand on Jérôme’s arm. “Not new construction.” He thought for a moment before speaking. “Look for repair contracts.”

“D’accord,”
said Jérôme, and began to search.

*   *   *

“Hello, I’m sorry to disturb you. Have I woken you up?”

“Who is this?” asked the groggy voice at the other end of the phone.

“My name’s Martin Tessier, I’m with the Sûreté du Québec.”

“Is this about my mother?” The woman’s voice was suddenly alert. “It’s five in the morning here. What’s happened?”

“You think this might be about your mother?” Tessier asked, his voice friendly and reasonable.

“Well, she does work for the Sûreté,” said the woman, fully awake. “When she arrived she said someone might call.”

“So Superintendent Brunel’s there with you, in Vancouver?” asked Tessier.

“Isn’t that why you’re calling? Do you work with Chief Inspector Gamache?”

Tessier didn’t quite know how to answer that, didn’t know what Superintendent Brunel might have told her daughter.

“Yes. He asked me to call. May I speak with her, please?”

“She said she didn’t want to talk to him. Leave us alone. They were exhausted when they arrived. Tell your boss to stop bothering them.”

Monique Brunel hung up, but continued to clutch the phone.

*   *   *

Martin Tessier looked at the receiver in his hand.

What to make of that? He needed to know if the Brunels had in fact traveled to Vancouver. Their cell phones had.

He’d had their phones monitored and traced. They’d flown to Vancouver and gone to their daughter’s home. In the last couple days they’d driven around Vancouver to shops and restaurants. To the symphony.

But was it the people, or just their phones?

Tessier had been convinced they were in Vancouver, but now he wasn’t so sure.

The Brunels had parted ways with their former friend and colleague, calling Gamache delusional. But someone had picked up the cyber search where Jérôme Brunel had left off. Or maybe he hadn’t left off at all.

When the Brunel daughter had first answered the phone, he could hear the concern in her voice.

“Is this about my mother?” she’d asked.

Not “What’s this about?” Not “Do you need to speak to my mother?”

No. They were the words of someone worried that something had happened to her mother. And you don’t ask that when your parents are asleep a few feet away.

Tessier called his counterpart in Vancouver.

*   *   *

“Wait,” said Gamache. He was leaning forward, his reading glasses on, looking at the screen. “Go back, please.”

Jérôme did.

“What is it, Armand?” Thérèse Brunel asked.

He looked white. She’d never seen him like that. She’d seen him angry, hurt, surprised. But never, in the years they’d worked together, had she ever seen him so shocked.

“Jesus,” Gamache whispered. “It’s not possible.”

He had Jérôme bring up other files, apparently unrelated. Some very old, some very recent. Some based in the far north, some in downtown Montréal.

But all to do with construction of some sort. Repair work. On roads and bridges and tunnels.

Finally the Chief Inspector sat back and stared ahead of him. On the screen was a report on recent road repair contracts, but he seemed to be staring right through the words. Trying to grasp a deeper meaning.

“There was a woman,” he finally said. “She killed herself a few days ago. Jumped from the Champlain Bridge. Can you find her? Marc Brault was investigating for the Montréal police.”

Jérôme didn’t ask why Gamache wanted to know. He went to work and found it quickly in the Montréal police files.