All the Devils Are Here

CHAPTER 8

Armand put his arm out and stopped Reine-Marie from going any farther.

They’d let themselves into the apartment and were standing in the wide foyer. The archway into the living room was off to their left.

Reine-Marie, slightly behind her husband, couldn’t yet see the room, or the problem. But Armand could.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t have to. She saw his body tense.

He lowered the cardboard box and shoulder bag to the floor. Leaning forward, Reine-Marie saw what he saw.

The living room was a shambles.

“Armand—” she began but stopped when he raised his hand. A clear signal for silence.

He moved slowly into the room, Reine-Marie behind him. They stepped over and around overturned chairs and side tables, lamps and paintings.

She bumped into his back when he suddenly stopped.

Armand remained completely still for a few heartbeats. He was staring behind an overturned sofa. His face grim.

When he crouched down, she saw.

There was a man on the floor. Facedown.

Dead.

She took a step back, blanching.

Armand stood and looked around quickly. What he’d seen, which Reine-Marie had not, was that the man had been shot twice, once in the back. Once in the head.

The man was cold to the touch. It must have happened a number of hours earlier. But …

“There’s a slight scent in the air. Can you smell it?” he whispered.

She took a deep breath and shook her head. Then she caught it. Hardly there. Elusive. More a suggestion than a scent.

“Try to remember it.” His voice was urgent. His eyes sharp. His whole being alert.

Slightly citrusy, she thought. And sort of muddy. Not a perfume, a cologne. Definitely masculine. Not pleasant.

It was disappearing, even as she tried to grasp it.

“Is it his?” she whispered, not looking at the man again.

“I don’t think so. And it’s not Stephen’s.”

So it was someone else’s, and Reine-Marie immediately followed Armand’s thoughts. And understood his extreme alertness.

Colognes, eaux de toilette, didn’t hang around for long. They might cling to clothes, but did not float in the air. Certainly not for hours. Which meant someone had been there recently. Very recently.

And might still be in the apartment.

Instinctively, Armand moved Reine-Marie behind him and took a step back. Away from the body. Toward the door. His mind working rapidly.

“Armand, if there’s someone here, someone who did that…” She looked toward the corpse. “Will he…”

“Hurt us? Non,” he whispered. “He’d just want to get away.”

He could hear her breathing. Short. Rapid. Her hand on his back was trembling. And with good reason. Despite what he’d said, they were almost certainly still in an apartment with an armed murderer.

And while he didn’t say it, Gamache knew that the surest way for the killer to get out was to kill anyone in his way.

Armand said, loudly, “Stay behind me. We’re leaving.”

As they backed away, he brought out his phone and took several quick photographs.

Once at the door, he gave her his phone, then stooped and picked up the box.

“Take this,” he whispered, so softly she could barely hear. “Go to the Hôtel Lutetia. Call Claude. Send him one of the photographs.”

“You?”

But he’d already closed the door. She heard the double lock turn as she stood in the hall, holding the box.

Not waiting for the elevator, Reine-Marie took the stairs two at a time.

Armand leaned against the door, using his body to muffle the sound of the key turning in the lock. Then he replaced it in his pocket.

The intruder couldn’t leave without the key. There was a possibility he had one, but Gamache had to take that risk.

The other risk he was taking was locking himself in with someone who was almost certainly armed. He’d have disciplined any of his agents who did what he was doing. But whoever murdered this man was probably also responsible for the attempt on Stephen’s life. And Armand was not going to just let them go.

But there was another problem. Armand knew the apartment and knew there was another way out. He just hoped the intruder didn’t know.

Finding the killer was no longer his goal. Just the opposite, really.

What he needed to do was get to the kitchen, and the back stairwell. If he could lock that door from the outside, the intruder would be trapped.

He could see the kitchen, at the far end of what now seemed a very long and very narrow hallway. With nowhere to hide. Exactly the environment he taught cadets at the academy to never, ever enter.

The scent of cologne was slightly stronger now.

Bringing the keys out, he made a fist around them, the individual keys between his fingers, like brass knuckles. Not much of a defense. More psychological than practical.

He was halfway down the long hall when he heard a bang. He flinched, even as he realized it wasn’t a shot.

It was a door slamming.

“Damn.”

Racing into the kitchen, he yanked open the fire escape door and heard feet on the concrete stairs. He followed them down, taking the steps two, three at a time.

As he ran, he thought he heard a familiar sound. Muffled. A phone ringing. But not his. His was with Reine-Marie.

The sound of the intruder’s feet echoed in the enclosed stairwell. The person he was chasing was not young, Armand unconsciously noted.

But still, whoever this was, they had a head start and were moving quickly. Desperate to get away.

And it looked like they would.

If he could just catch a glimpse …

A door banged open, and he saw sunlight a few flights down. Then it disappeared as the door swung shut.

When he got to the bottom, Armand threw himself against it and staggered out onto a busy Paris sidewalk. Surprised pedestrians leaped out of the way as Armand swung around, looking this way, then that.

Nothing. Just men and women walking, some gawking. No one running.

He’d lost him.

Walking rapidly toward the Lutetia, Armand turned the corner and saw Reine-Marie hugging the cardboard box. Staring at the front door to Stephen’s building.

Willing Armand to appear.

He called to her, and she turned. Her relief was accompanied by the familiar wail of a police siren quickly approaching.