‘Well, you know if I could I’d move into my office and live off vending machine coffee. I have no life and my family despises me.’

‘I’ve heard that about you, Armand. In fact, I despise you.’

‘And I you.’

The two men smiled. ‘I would want someone to do this for me, Marc. It’s pretty simple and pretty selfish. If I was murdered I’d like to think the case wouldn’t just sit unsolved. Someone would make an extra effort. How could I deny someone else that?’

It was simple. And it was right.

Marc Brault reached out and shook Gamache’s large hand. ‘Done, Armand, done.’

‘Done, Marc. And if anything happened to you, it wouldn’t remain unsolved.’ It was said with great simplicity and it surprised Brault how much it meant.

And so for the past few years the two men had met in the parking lot at Sûreté headquarters to exchange boxes, ironically, on Boxing Day. And each Boxing Day Armand and Reine-Marie opened the boxes and looked for murderers inside.

‘Now this is odd.’ Reine-Marie lowered her dossier and caught him staring at her. She smiled and continued. ‘Here’s a case from just a few days ago. I wonder how it made it into the pile.’

‘Christmas rush. Someone must have made a mistake. Here, give it to me and I’ll put it in the out tray.’ He held out his hand, but her eyes had dropped once again to the file and she was reading. After a moment he lowered his hand.

‘I’m sorry, Armand. It’s just that I knew this woman.’

‘No.’ Gamache set his own dossier aside and came beside Reine-Marie. ‘How? What’s the case?’

‘She wasn’t a friend or anything. You probably knew her too. That bag lady down by the Berri bus station. You know, the one with all the layers in all weather. She’d been there for years.’

Gamache nodded. ‘Still, it can’t be considered an unsolved case yet. You say she’s only been dead a few days?’

‘She was killed on the twenty-second. And this is strange. She wasn’t at the Berri bus station. She was over on de la Montagne, by Ogilvy’s. That’s a good, what? Ten, fifteen blocks away.’

Gamache resumed his seat and waited, watching Reine-Marie as she read, a few strands of her graying hair falling across her forehead. She was in her early fifties and lovelier than when they’d married. She wore little make-up, comfortable with the face she’d been given.

Gamache could sit all day watching her. He sometimes picked her up at her job at the Bibliothèque nationale, intentionally arriving early so he could watch her going over historic documents, taking notes, head down and eyes serious.

And then she’d look up and see him watching her and her face would break into a smile.