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“It’s all yours.” Putting his hand on Gamache’s back, Beauvoir said, “If you need anything, or just want to talk, my door’s always open.”

Gamache recognized it as something he said to raw recruits. “When’s your last day again?”

Beauvoir laughed. “It’s good to have you back. Sir.”

Gamache took a deep breath. The place smelled of sweat. Of coffee burned to the bottom of the glass pot. Every day. For years.

For intelligent people, no one in homicide, it seemed, ever learned to turn the thing off. Or make a fresh pot.

It smelled of paper and files, and feet.

It smelled familiar.

When a nervous Agent Gamache had walked in, his first day at homicide, the place had been a riot of noise. Of agents yelling to each other. Phones ringing. Typewriters clacking.

Now there was a murmur of voices, the soft buzz of cell phones, and the tippity-tap of laptops.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

While the technology had changed, the job had not.

Killers were still killing, and Sûreté agents were still hunting them down.

Only then did Gamache realize how much, deep in his core, he’d missed this.

They left the island of Montréal, driving over the Champlain Bridge to the south shore.

He was in the passenger seat while Cloutier drove. Below them, the St. Lawrence River was packed with broken ice, as the spring melt took hold. Rivers across Québec were freezing and thawing, then freezing again. Creating massive ice jams. The rivers, swollen with melting snow and April showers, had nowhere to go. Except to burst their banks.

It happened every spring, the flooding. But this, he could see, was different.

Gamache hated heights, preferring to look straight ahead whenever he drove across the impressive bridge. But now he forced himself to look down. Feeling light-headed and slightly dizzy, he gripped the door handle and stared over the edge, at the huge, jagged columns of ice thrusting toward him out of the river.

As far down the St. Lawrence as he could see, there was ice. Cracked and heaved. And heading their way.

Turning to the front, he began breathing again, and with each breath he prayed to God the warm weather would take hold and melt the jams. Melt the dams. Relieve the rivers before they burst free.

But it didn’t look promising, he thought as the wipers of their vehicle swept wet snow off the windshield. And the sky ahead was choked with cloud.

“Tell me what you know,” he said to Agent Cloutier.

“Vivienne Godin and Carl Tracey live on a farm in the countryside not far from Cowansville. Before we left, I did a bit of digging. The local Sûreté detachment sent someone to her place yesterday, after Homer called them. They searched but found nothing. No evidence of violence.”

“And no Madame Godin.”

“Non. They’d been called to the home three times in the past, all for domestic violence. But each time they arrived, Madame Godin withdrew the complaint and refused to let them in.”

So her father had been right, thought Gamache. Something bad was happening.

“Officers no longer need a formal complaint,” he said. “They can make an arrest if they themselves see evidence of abuse.”

“Yes, but I guess there wasn’t enough evidence.”

“So no arrests?”

“Non.”