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Now they were crowded into the small study, holding mugs and staring at the laptop.

They had to wait for it to charge up.

We wait. We wait.

Isabelle had lifted three sets of prints off the computer.

“The majority belong to Charles Langlois. These here are Jeanne Caron’s.”

“The third?” asked Gamache.

“Marcus Lauzon?” asked Jean-Guy. “Castonguay?”

“Tardiff?” asked Nichol.

“Non,” said Isabelle. “Whoever it is isn’t in the records.”

But someone else had touched Charles’s laptop. Someone without a record. Someone who had never been arrested.

No longer able to hold it in, Nichol blurted out, “Tardiff’s going to have Lauzon killed.”

That got their attention.

“Pardon?” said Lacoste, looking up from the keyboard.

“I heard her on the phone. That’s why I came here. She thinks I’m sick. I told her—”

“Lauzon,” said Gamache, refocusing the excited young agent.

“Chief Inspector Tardiff was talking to someone. I think it was Moretti, but I only heard her side of the conversation. It was on her personal phone, so I couldn’t listen in or trace it. She argued a bit, saying it would be almost impossible, and if it succeeded, it could expose her, but finally she agreed.”

“When?” asked Gamache.

“I don’t know. She didn’t say, only that it would take time, and Moretti must’ve said they don’t have it. What does this mean?”

“It means Marcus Lauzon has more to say,” said Lacoste. “And they know it. They need to shut him up.”

“Bringing him down here yesterday must’ve triggered something,” said Gamache.

“Wait a minute,” said Nichol. “You took the former Deputy Prime Minister out of supermax and brought him here?”

She stared at Gamache. She’d known that he was powerful, but she had no idea he wielded that much.

Ignoring her, Beauvoir said, “If Tardiff told Moretti about the visit, that means she really is working for him.”

“Not necessarily,” said Gamache. His mind was moving quickly over the options. “If I was in her place, I’d have told him too. The only way to prove loyalty is to provide important information. Accurate, verifiable information.”

Beauvoir looked less than convinced. “So what do we do? Let them kill Lauzon?”

Gamache was staring at Yvette Nichol. Silence descended.

“She knows,” he finally said.

“I know nothing,” said Nichol, coloring furiously.

“Not you. Evelyn Tardiff knows that you were placed in her department to watch her and report to me.”

“What?” demanded Nichol. “How?”