The Long Way Home(98)

He gestured out the window to the huge ship they’d come in on. Clearly “fresh” was a sliding scale.

“You get many people off the ship?” Gamache asked. He cut into the crispy fish.

“Some. Most just want to stretch their legs. Like you.”

“Do many stay?” Jean-Guy took up the line of questioning while Gamache ate.

“Here? No,” the young man laughed. “Some hunters come for a week or so later in the season. Some fishermen. But no one lives here. Except us.”

He didn’t seem upset about that. If anything, he seemed relieved.

“We’re looking for a friend of ours,” said Gamache. It was Beauvoir’s turn to eat, and his turn to talk. “He’d have been on the Loup de Mer a few months ago. Tall, English.”

He showed the waiter the photograph.

“No, sorry,” said the waiter, after studying it and handing it back.

By now the restaurant was filling with people who called the young man Cyril. They ordered scallops and cod cheeks and all sorts of things not on the menu.

“Would you like to try some, b’y?”

One of the older women, stout and dressed like a man, came over and offered her basket of cod cheeks to Beauvoir.

He shook his head.

“Ach, come on. I can see you drooling from across the room.”

That brought laughter from the rest of the crowd, and now a middle-aged man joined her. “Come along, Mother. Don’t be bothering these nice people.”

“Oh, it’s no bother,” said Beauvoir. He’d seen the look of slight hurt in the old woman’s face. “Can I have one?”

He took one of the tiny, deep-fried nuggets from her basket, dipped it in sauce, and ate it.

The room grew quiet.

When he reached for another one, they cheered as though the World Cup was theirs.

The elderly woman pretended to bat Jean-Guy’s hand away.

“Cod cheeks for the table, Cyril,” the man beside her said.

By the time Clara and Marcel arrived an hour later, Myrna and a group of women were dancing in the middle of the room and singing along to the jukebox.

“Man Smart (Woman Smarter),” they sang and danced with their arms waving above their heads, to great cheers.

Jean-Guy was across the diner, chatting with some fishermen.

“Any luck?” Clara asked as she and Marcel slid into the booth beside Gamache.

“No. You?”

Clara shook her head and tried to say something, but the music and laughter drowned her out.

“Let’s go outside,” Gamache shouted into her ear. He held on to Chartrand’s arm, pinning the man in place. “Order the cod cheeks and chips. You won’t regret it.”

And then he and Clara left.

“What is it?” he asked. He’d noticed the urgency with which she’d tried to make herself heard in the restaurant.

“Marcel and I have been walking around the village and out along the shore,” she said. “It gave me time to think.”

“Oui?”

“That pilot shouldn’t have recognized Peter from the old picture.”

They’d walked rapidly through the town, and now stood on a small dock. The rowboat tied there knocked gently against the floats.

Gamache stared at her, remembering the image.

“It was too old, too small,” said Clara, watching as Gamache’s mind raced. “And Peter’s face was almost completely hidden behind the smoke.”

“My God, it was Massey,” said Armand, arriving at the same conclusion as Clara. “The pilot recognized Professor Massey, not Peter.”

He pulled out his cell phone. It was only just registering, clinging to one bar of contact with the outside world. He tapped the screen so rapidly and so expertly Clara was surprised. He always seemed the sort who’d be uncomfortable with computers and tablets and devices.

But watching him, she realized this was a tool as powerful as any gun. It gave him information. And no investigator could survive without that.

He tapped it a few more times, turned, walked quickly toward the village, then stopped.

The lone bar was wavering. Appearing, then disappearing. The thread to the outside world fraying and breaking. Then reappearing.

“Oui, all?,” he spoke loudly. “Is this Vols C?te Nord?”

Clara watched his strained face. The phone was pressed to his ear as though trying to grip that one bar.

“We took a flight this morning, from La Malbaie to Sept-?les—”

The person on the other end was obviously speaking, and Gamache’s eyes narrowed as he concentrated on the voice that faded in and out.

“That’s right. He let us off at Sept-?les. Is the pilot back yet?”

Gamache listened. Clara waited, trying to read his expression.

“When?”

Gamache listened some more.

“Can you patch me through to the plane?”

Even Clara, a couple feet away, heard the laugh.

“But you must be able to,” said Gamache.

Now Clara heard words, in rapid French, that sounded like “idiotic,” “impossible,” “delusional.”

“You can do it, I’ve done it before. And I insist. My name is Armand Gamache, I’m the Chief Inspector of homicide for Québec. Emeritus.” The last word was mumbled at best, and he looked at Clara and grimaced.