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“Some, true. But I didn’t know about the biggest payoffs. The bribes I helped with came from Canadian companies to get lucrative government contracts. I knew nothing about the American ones. Those were worth billions, not millions.”
Caron sounded annoyed at being cut out of the big payoffs.
There was, in fact, nothing that connected her to those huge bribes to her boss. What they didn’t know at the time of the poisoning plot, had only just discovered, was that those massive payoffs had been laundered through a small, insignificant, easily overlooked, struggling nonprofit.
Action Québec Bleu.
And now there was one more thing that linked AQB to the poison attack and what might be happening next.
Chief Inspector Gamache had just stuffed a twenty-dollar bill into the offering box at the door to Marie-Reine-du-Monde when the message from Isabelle Lacoste arrived.
Woman with Moretti is Margaux Chalifoux, head of AQB.
It wasn’t easy to surprise the head of homicide, but this message did just that. He stared at the message from Lacoste, then fired off a reply.
Ask Agent Fontaine to call me, please. Then pick me up at the basilica when you’re finished with Caron.
He took a seat in the quiet cathedral, breathing in the musky, slightly cloying fragrance of a century’s worth of incense. It smelled of guilt and sin and a promise of forgiveness and a place in heaven, if you ate fish on Fridays.
When the call came in, he gave Agent Fontaine her instructions.
Jeanne Caron put on her coat.
“You said that Frederick was shot in the back of the head. So, it would’ve been quick. He wouldn’t have suffered.”
“He didn’t suffer.”
Caron nodded, reached for the door handle, then turned back. “Thank you for that.”
“For what?”
“The lie. I don’t know why I even asked. We both know that while his death might’ve been instant and painless, the lead-up to the shot must have been … harrowing. I know. I saw it.”
For a split second Isabelle thought she was confessing that she’d been at Frederick’s execution, then she realized Caron was referring to Gamache’s.
Both men would have been kneeling. Hands tied behind their backs. Defenseless. Waiting. Praying perhaps. Heads pushed forward, the guns pressed to the base of their skulls. They’d have been in shock that it should have come to this …
It would have been … harrowing.
“I could save one,” said Caron. “But not the other. Poor little shit.”
Minutes later, Isabelle pulled the vehicle to the side of the busy street and Gamache jumped in, waving apologies to the drivers honking and gesturing.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Back home. You realizing it’s Chalifoux with Moretti is huge,” said the Chief. “I’ve sent Agent Fontaine to volunteer at Action Québec Bleu, undercover.”
“Good idea. She’s young and new, no one knows her yet. What about Shona Dorion? She’s volunteering there too.”
“I’ve sent a message to her to get out of there. It’s too dangerous now that we know AQB isn’t just implicated in the government bribes, but that the head of the organization is involved with the mob.”
He looked down at his phone.
Still no reply from Shona. He shifted uneasily in the passenger’s seat. Worried now. She hadn’t replied to his earlier message either, about not needing to pursue the other series of numbers on Charles’s map, as they now knew it was the password to get into his files.
He wrote a message to Agent Fontaine: Find Shona Dorion at AQB. Do nothing, just report to me.
As soon as they arrived home, they were met at the door by Jean-Guy.
