All the Devils Are Here

CHAPTER 2

Jean-Guy Beauvoir could almost feel the chill enter the room, despite the sun streaming through his office window.

He looked up from his screen, but already knew who he’d see. Along with the lowered temperature, a slight aroma always accompanied his deputy department head. And while Beauvoir knew the chill was his imagination, the smell was not.

Sure enough, Séverine Arbour was at his door. She wore her usual delicately condescending smile. It seemed to complement, like a silk scarf, her designer outfit. Beauvoir wasn’t aware enough of fashion to say if Madame Arbour was wearing Chanel, or Yves Saint Laurent, or maybe Givenchy. But since arriving in Paris he’d come to at least know the names. And to recognize haute couture when he saw it.

And he saw it now.

In her forties, elegant and polished, Madame Arbour was the definition of soignée. A Parisienne through and through.

The only thing she wore that he could name was her scent.

Sauvage by Dior. A man’s cologne.

He wondered if it was a message and considered changing his cologne from Brut to Boss. But decided against it. Things were complex enough between them without entering into a war of fragrances with his number two.

“Lots of women wear men’s cologne,” Annie explained when he told her about it. “And men wear women’s scents. It’s all just marketing. If you like the smell, why not?”

She’d then dared him ten euros to wear her eau de toilette into work the next day. A dare he took up. As fate would have it, his own boss, Carole Gossette, chose that very day to invite him out for lunch. For the first time.

He went to her private club, the Cercle de l’Union Interalliée, smelling of Clinique’s Aromatics Elixir. The exact same scent the senior VP at the engineering giant was herself wearing.

It actually seemed to endear him to her.

In a quid pro quo, Annie went into her law offices smelling of Brut. Her male colleagues had, up to then, been cordial but distant. Waiting for the avocate from Québec to prove herself. But that day they seemed to relax. To even pay her more respect. She, and her musk, were welcomed into the fold.

Like her father, Annie Gamache was not one to turn her back on an unexpected advantage. She continued to wear the eau de Cologne until the day she took maternity leave.

Jean-Guy, on the other hand, did not put on the perfume again, despite the fact he actually preferred the warm scent to his Brut. It smelled of Annie, and that always calmed and gladdened him.

Séverine Arbour stood at the door, her face set in a pleasant smile with a base note of smoky resentment and a hint of smug.

Was she biding her time, waiting for her chance to knife him in the back? Beauvoir thought so. But he also knew that compared to the brutal culture in the Sûreté du Québec, the internal politics of this multinational corporation were nothing.

This knifing would, at least, be figurative.

Beauvoir had hoped that, with the passage of time, Madame Arbour would come to accept him as head of the department. But all that had happened, in the almost five months he’d been there, was that they’d developed a mutual suspicion.

He suspected she was trying to undermine him.

She suspected he was incompetent.

Part of Jean-Guy Beauvoir recognized they both might be right.

Madame Arbour took the chair across from him and looked on, patiently.

It was, Beauvoir knew, meant to annoy him. But it wouldn’t work. Nothing could upset him that day.

His second child was due any time now.

Annie was healthy, as was their young son, Honoré.

He had a job he enjoyed, if didn’t as yet completely understand.

They were in Paris. Paris, for God’s sake.

How a snot-nosed kid went from playing ball hockey in the alleys of East End Montréal to being an executive in Paris was frankly still a bit of a mystery to him.

To add to Jean-Guy’s buoyant mood, it was Friday afternoon. Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache had arrived from Montréal, and tonight they’d all be having dinner together at one of their favorite bistros.

“Oui?” he said.

“You wanted to see me?” Madame Arbour asked.

“No. What gave you that idea, Séverine?”

She nodded toward his laptop. “I sent you a document. About the funicular project in Luxembourg.”

“Yes. I’m just reading it.” He did not say it was, in fact, the second time through, and he still didn’t understand what he was looking at. Except that it was an elevator up a cliff. In Luxembourg.

“Is there something you want to say about it?” He removed his glasses.

It was the end of the day and his eyes were tired, but he’d be damned if he’d pass his hand over them.

Instinctively, Jean-Guy Beauvoir understood it would be a mistake to show this woman any weakness. Physical, emotional, intellectual.

“I just thought you might have some questions,” she said. And waited. Expectantly.

Beauvoir had to admit, she was beginning to dull his sense of well-being.

He was used to dealing with criminals. And not petty thieves or knuckleheads who got into drunken brawls, but the worst of the worst. Killers. And one mad poet with a duck.

He’d learned how not to let them into his head. Except, of course, the duck.

And yet somehow Séverine Arbour managed to get under his skin. If not, as yet, into his skull.

But it wasn’t for lack of trying.

And he knew why. Even the brawling knuckleheads could figure it out.

She wanted his job. Felt she should have it.

He could almost sympathize with her. It was, after all, a great job.

Beauvoir had had his regular Friday lunch with his own boss, Carole Gossette, in a nearby brasserie. But the previous lunch had been at thirty thousand feet, on the corporate jet, as they flew to Singapore.

Two weeks before that, he’d gone to Dubai.

His first trip had been to the Maldives to look at the reef-protection system they were installing on the tiny atoll in the Indian Ocean. He’d had to look it up, and finally found the cluster of islands hanging off the southern tip of India.

A month earlier he’d been rolling around in the ice-encrusted muck in Québec, trying to arrest a murderer and fighting for his life. Now he was eating langoustine off fine china, and approaching a tropical island in a private jet.

On the flight, Madame Gossette, in her fifties, small, round, good-humored, filled him in on the corporate philosophy. On why they chose to do certain projects and not others.

A mechanical engineer herself, with a postdoc degree from the École polytechnique in Lausanne, she explained, in simple terms, the engineering, avoiding the infantile tone Madame Arbour used.

Beauvoir found himself turning to Madame Gossette more and more, for guidance, for information. To explain certain projects. Where perhaps he’d normally be expected to talk to his deputy head, he found he was avoiding Arbour and going straight to Madame Gossette. And she seemed to enjoy the role of mentor to the executive she’d personally recruited.

Though she did gently suggest he lean more on his number two.

“Don’t be put off by her attitude,” said Madame Gossette. “Séverine Arbour is very good. We were lucky to get her.”

“Didn’t her previous company go bust?”

“Declared bankruptcy, yes. Overextended.”

“Then she’s the lucky one, to find another job,” said Beauvoir.

Madame Gossette had simply shrugged, in an eloquent Gallic manner. Meant to convey a lot. And nothing.

Jean-Guy lapsed into silence, and went back to reading the documents Madame Gossette had given him when they’d boarded. About coral, and currents, and buoys. About shipping lanes and something called anthropogenic disturbance.

Finally, nine hours into the ten-hour flight to the Maldives, he’d asked the question he’d been dying to pose but was a little afraid of the answer.

“Why did you hire me? I’m not an engineer. You must’ve known that I can barely read these.”

He held up the sheaf of paper. Part of him suspected they’d hired the wrong Jean-Guy Beauvoir. That somewhere in Québec there was a highly trained engineer wondering why he hadn’t gotten the job with GHS Engineering.

“I was wondering when you’d ask,” said Madame Gossette, with a hearty laugh. Then, still smiling, she looked at him, her eyes keen. Intelligent. “Why do you think?”

“I think you think there’s something wrong in the company.”

That, of course, was the other possibility. That she had hired the right Jean-Guy Beauvoir. The senior investigator with the Sûreté du Québec. Skilled, trained. Not in engineering, but in finding criminals.

Madame Gossette sat back in her seat. Examining him. “Why do you say that? Has something come up?”

“Non,” he said, careful now. “It’s just a thought.”

To be fair, it wasn’t something that had occurred to him until he’d said it. But once it was out, he could see that it might be true.

“Why else would you hire a cop to fill a senior management job when clearly it should be taken by an engineer?”

“You undervalue yourself, Monsieur Beauvoir. We have plenty of engineers already. They’re thick on the ground. Eh bien, another engineer was the last thing we needed.”

“What did you need?”

“A skill set. An attitude. A leader. You convinced men and women to follow you into life-and-death situations. I’ve read the reports. I’ve seen the online videos.”

Beauvoir bristled at that. Those stolen videos should never have been posted. But they had been, and there was no undoing the damage.

“You’re not expecting me to do the same for you,” he said, managing a smile.

“Lead us into battle? I hope not. I’d make quite a target.” She laughed and put her hands on her substantial body. “No. You’re heading up a new department, created to provide another level of scrutiny. Each project is carefully evaluated before we choose to bid on it. It must be both profitable and have some benefit to the larger population.”

He had noticed that. It was one of the reasons he’d accepted to work for GHS. As the father of one child with another on the way, he was waking up to certain frightening truths about the state of the world.

GHS designed dams and highways, bridges and planes.

But at least half of its projects were water treatment plants, anti-erosion methods, reforestation. Alternatives to fossil fuels. Disaster relief modules.

“But,” said Madame Gossette, breaking into his thoughts, and leaning forward, “it’s always wise to have disinterested observers making sure all is going according to plan. That’s your department.”

“Then nothing’s wrong?” he asked.

“I didn’t exactly say that.” She was choosing her words carefully now. “It’s one thing to have a philosophy. It’s another thing to follow through. That’s what we expect from you. Not to come up with the plan, others will do that, but to make sure it doesn’t … what’s the word? Corrupt.”

“You suspect corruption?”

“No, no, not that sort of corrupt. Our concern is that, with all good intentions, some project managers might start cutting corners. It’s easily done. Don’t be fooled by the trappings.” She glanced around the cabin of the corporate jet. “This sort of success comes with a lot of pressure. There’re deadlines, penalties, bank loans, violent regime changes. And our people are stuck in the middle. Priorities can become muddy. It would be natural for some to feel that pressure and choose speed over quality. And try to hide it when something goes wrong. Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re people. That way lies tragedy.”

“Which isn’t good for business,” he said.

She spread her hands. It was a simple truth. She reached for her tea. Then, after taking a sip, she said, “Are you familiar with the poet Auden?”

Oh, shit, Beauvoir thought. Not another one. And here he was, trapped at thirty thousand feet. What was it about bosses?

“I’ve heard of him.” Her?

“And the crack in the tea-cup opens / A lane to the land of the dead.”

“Is there a crack in your cup?” he asked.

She smiled and put it down. “Not that I know of. If one occurs, it’s your job to find it.”

He understood then what she meant. And, miraculously, what Auden meant.

“But how can I tell if something’s wrong if I don’t even know what’s ‘right’?”

“That’s why you have a department full of engineers, including Séverine Arbour. She’s a first-rate engineer. Use her.” Madame Gossette’s eyes held his. “Trust her.”

Beauvoir nodded, but quietly wondered why, if Arbour was such a great engineer, she was in his department instead of working on actual projects.

“So ‘Quality Control’ is a bit misleading. It’s really policing. I’m an enforcer?” asked Beauvoir, cutting into his profiterole.

“You must’ve suspected that when we gave you those brass knuckles in your welcome basket.”

He laughed then.

“No, you’re not an enforcer,” she said. “You’re our safety net. Our last hope if things go wrong, to stop something horrible from happening.” She held his eyes, deadly serious. “I don’t expect it, don’t suspect it. But I need to be sure.”

It was interesting, thought Beauvoir, that she said “I,” not “we.”

“I’ve told you why I hired you, now you tell me why you took the job. You turned it down a number of times.”

She was right. He’d declined it twice, but finally relented. And the reason?

He was worn down, worn out by his work in the Sûreté du Québec. He’d headed up the homicide department after his mentor and chief, and father-in-law, Armand Gamache, had been suspended.

Beauvoir had watched the humiliation Gamache had been put through. The insinuations of wrongdoing. The failure by politicians to protect and defend Gamache. Though they knew he’d only acted in the service’s, in the citizens’, best interest.

Chief Inspector Beauvoir himself had been reinstated after an almost equally humiliating series of investigations.

Each day they tracked down killers. Each day they put their own lives on the line.

And in return they were scapegoated. Chained to the ground, food for politicians looking for reelection.

The salary was modest compared to private industry, the risks incalculable, the rewards harder and harder to find. Jean-Guy had a young family, who he hoped to see grow up. He had a daughter arriving who’d need both her parents.

And so the third time GHS Engineering had approached him, shown him the salary they were offering, told him the job was in Paris, he’d discussed it with Annie. And they’d agreed.

So Jean-Guy Beauvoir had left the Sûreté, just as Chief Inspector Gamache had returned. Beauvoir handed the job back to the once and future head of homicide.

But he wouldn’t tell Madame Gossette all that.

“It was time for a change,” he simply said as the flight attendant cleared their plates.

And change it certainly was proving. Though perhaps not quite as much of a change as he’d thought.

“What happens if I find something’s wrong?”

“You come to me.”

“How do I know the—how did you put it?—crack in the teacup didn’t come from higher up? It often does, you know. Start there.”

“Oui. I guess that’s where your investigative skills come in.” Once again she leaned forward, as the plane banked and prepared to land on the tiny island in the middle of the vast and impossibly blue ocean. “Voyons, I have absolutely no reason to suspect anything’s wrong. If I did, I’d direct you to it. You’re here to make sure we don’t, intentionally or not, open a lane to the land of the dead.” Her gaze now was hard. Almost fierce. “We design things that improve quality of life. But that, if they fall apart, take lives. We need to make absolutely sure. You understand?”

She stared at him so intently, he was taken aback. Until that moment he’d seen the job from his perspective.

A soft landing after the harsh realities of the Sûreté. A salary far in excess of anything he ever thought he’d make. They’d be safe. They’d be comfortable. They’d be in Paris.

Now he saw it from Madame Gossette’s perspective.

Lives were at stake. And his job was to make sure none were lost.

“I can’t possibly keep an eye on all the projects,” he said. “There are hundreds.”

“Which is why you have a staff. Don’t worry, once you get comfortable, you’ll be able to get a sense when something’s off. To sniff it out.”

Sniff? he almost said. What exactly did she think investigating was? And yet he had to admit when something went corrupt, there was a certain odor.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir had thought about that conversation a lot in the following weeks and months. And he thought about it again as he looked at his deputy head of department, radiating Dior and resentment.

“I think I can muddle through the Luxembourg plans, Séverine. Merci. How’s work going on the Patagonia project?”

A part of him sympathized with Madame Arbour. But if she hadn’t accepted him by now, hadn’t gotten on board with his leadership, then one of them would have to go.

And it won’t be me, thought Beauvoir.

“Patagonia? I know nothing about Patagonia.” She got to her feet. “I’m sorry. I was under the impression you’d want to talk about the Luxembourg project.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Well, the final safety tests are next week. Maybe you’d like to be there for that?”

“I don’t see why. Would you like to go? Is that why you’re here?”

“No, no. That’s okay.”

It was, even by Séverine Arbour standards, an odd and off-putting exchange.

“Is there something you want to say, Séverine, about Luxembourg?”

“No.”

As she left his office, Jean-Guy considered looking at the Luxembourg report. Again. But it was past five. He had to get home and help feed Honoré, let Annie nap before their dinner out.

Luxembourg would wait.

Grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair, he walked next door to Arbour’s office and said, “I’m going home. Have a good weekend.”

She glanced up, then back down to her screen. Without a word.

When she was alone in the office, Arbour looked around. She was about, she knew, to pass what pilots called the point of no return. One more keystroke and she’d be totally committed to this course of action.

Through the window she could see the Tour Eiffel in the distance.

A marvel of French engineering. A monument to innovation and audacity. Something to be proud of.

Then, returning to her laptop, she pressed send.

Gathering her Chanel handbag, she left, pausing only to sign out.

“Bon weekend,” said the guard, after he’d searched her bag.

She smiled, wished him a good weekend, too. Then headed to the métro.

There was no turning back now.