“That’s probably true and, it must be admitted, this one won’t be any help,” he indicated Henri. “Unless the sight of a dog whimpering frightens you into surrendering.”
Hancock smiled. “This is the final ice floe. I have no choice. It’s what’s been handed me.”
“No, it isn’t. Why do you think I’m here?”
“Because you’re so wrapped up in your own sorrow you can barely think straight. Because you can’t sleep and came here to get away, from yourself.”
“Well, that too, perhaps,” smiled Gamache. “But what are the chances we’d meet in the middle of the storm? Had I come ten minutes earlier or later, had we walked ten feet apart, we’d have missed each other. Walked right by without seeing, blinded by the blizzard.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, what are the chances?”
“Does it matter? It happened. We met.”
“You saw the video,” Gamache said, lowering his voice. “You saw what happened. How close it came.”
“How close you came to dying? I did.”
“Maybe this is why I didn’t.”
Hancock regarded Gamache. “Are you saying you were spared to stop me from jumping over the cliff?”
“Maybe. I know how precious life is. You had no right to take Renaud’s and you have no right to take your own now. Not over this. Too much death. It needs to stop.”
Gamache stared at the young man beside him. A man, he knew, drawn to seawalls and jagged cliff faces and to the Anglos of Quebec, standing just off shore where the ice was thinnest.
“You’re wrong you know,” Gamache finally said. “The English of Quebec aren’t weak, aren’t frail. Elizabeth MacWhirter and Winnie and Ken and Mr. Blake, and yes, even Porter, couldn’t kill Augustin Renaud, not because they’re weak but because they know there’s no need. He was no threat. Not really. They’ve adapted to the new reality, to the new world. You’re the only one who couldn’t. There’ll be Anglos here for centuries to come, as there should be. It’s their home. You should have had more faith.”
Hancock walked up to Gamache.
“I could walk right by you.”
“Probably. I’d try to stop you, but I suspect you’d get by. But you know I’d follow you, I’d have to. And then what? A middle-aged Francophone and a young Anglo, lost in a storm on the Plains of Abraham, wandering, one in search of a cliff, the other in search of him. I wonder when they’d find us? In the spring, you think? Frozen? Two more corpses, unburied? Is that how this ends?”
The two men looked at each other. Finally Tom Hancock sighed.
“With my luck, you’d be the one to go over the cliff.”
“That would be disappointing.”
Hancock smiled wearily. “I give up. No more fight.”
At the door Hancock turned. Gamache’s hand, with a slight tremble, reached for the latch. “I shouldn’t have accused you of trading on your grief. That was wrong.”
“Perhaps not so far off,” smiled Gamache. “I need to let it go. Let them go.”
“With time,” said Hancock.
“You mentioned the video just now,” said Hancock, remembering another question he had. “Do you know how it got onto the Internet?”
“No.”
Hancock looked at him closely. “But you have your suspicions.”
Gamache remembered the rage on the Chief Superintendent’s face when he’d confronted him. Theirs was a long battle. An old battle. Francoeur knew Gamache well enough to know what would hurt him most wouldn’t be criticism over how he handled the raid, but just the opposite. Praise. Undeserved praise, even as his people suffered.
Where a bullet had failed to stop the Chief Inspector, that might.
But he saw, now, another face. A younger face. Eager to join them. And denied, yet again. Sent back into her basement. Where she monitored everything. Heard everything. Saw everything. Recorded everything.
And remembered, everything.
TWENTY–SIX
“Give Reine-Marie my love,” said Emile.
He and Armand stood by the door. Gamache’s Volvo was packed with his suitcase and assorted treats from Emile for Reine-Marie. Pastries from Paillard, pate and cheese from J.A. Moisan, chocolate made by the monks, from the shop along rue St-Jean.
Gamache hoped most of it made it back to Montreal. Between him and Henri, he had his doubts.
“I will. I’ll probably be back in a few weeks to testify, but Inspector Langlois has all the evidence he
