“Three Pines.” Fleming smiled. “Nice place. Pretty place. It was a kind of rock, with time moving around it, but not through it. It wasn’t really of this world. Is that where you live? Is that why you’re here? Because the Whore of Babylon was disturbing your hiding place? Marring Paradise?” Fleming paused. “I remember there was a woman who sat on her porch and said she was a poet. She’s lucky so many words rhyme with fuck.”

He didn’t just remember Three Pines, every detail seemed etched in his memory.

“I’m not the only prisoner in this room, am I?” Fleming asked. “You’re trapped in that village. You’re a middle-aged man waiting out his days. Do you lie awake at night, wondering what’s next? Are your friends growing bored with you? Do your former colleagues tolerate you, but cluck behind your back? Is your wife losing respect for you, as you grip the bars and look at her through the prison of your days? Or have you dragged her into the cell with you?”

John Fleming was looking at him. Triumphant. He’d filleted Gamache after all. Eviscerated him. The man lay gutted before Fleming. And both knew it.

Fleming throbbed, emitting malevolence on a scale Gamache had never known before.

“Mary Fraser,” Gamache said, his voice low.

He felt a slight hesitation in the force of personality across from him, and he used it to push forward.

“She’s in Three Pines,” said Gamache. “Along with Delorme.”

He thrust the words at Fleming, then followed them with his body. Ignoring the throbbing in his head, he stood up and leaned forward, hands splayed on the cold metal table, only stopping when his face was within an inch of Fleming’s.

Fleming also stood and closed the tiny gap between them, so that his nose was actually touching Gamache’s. His fetid breath was in Gamache’s mouth in a mockery of intimacy.

“I don’t care,” Fleming whispered.

But what Fleming had done was confirm he knew who they were. Up until that moment it had been a guess on Gamache’s part.

“They know everything,” said Gamache.

“Now that’s not true,” said Fleming, and while Gamache was too close to see the smile, he felt it. “Or you wouldn’t be here. You might have the gun, but you haven’t found what really matters. What only I can find.”

“The plans,” said Gamache. “You took them from Bull when you killed him in Brussels.”

But by Fleming’s reaction, he could see that was wrong. He thought quickly, trying not to be distracted by Fleming’s face touching his. He stared into those eyes, their lashes almost intertwining.

And then Gamache moved away, back across the table.