Suddenly, a light went on in Boizot’s head: Perdiou was the name of a deputy from Paris. Details started coming back to him. The man’s full name was Lionel Perdiou, and he was a formidable conservative, always ready to mount the barricades to defend the family and the cross. Yet he was not all that traditional: he had a solid reputation for being a night owl and frequent patron of gay clubs in Paris. Physically, however, he was a tall, frighteningly skinny beanpole of a man. He looked more like a decrepit clergyman than a Chippendale in the prime of his life.
Magnin’s going to be happy as a clam, thought Boizot. If I give him a headline screaming that Perdiou is a vigilante, a self-defense hero, it might really sell some papers.
Boizot immediately forgot how tired he was, and his chronic depression fell away. For a moment, he felt like he might start doing cartwheels in the garden like some idiot kid.
The excitement of a newshound going after a story, which he’d felt so often long ago, had finally grabbed hold of him again.
On the other side of the hedge, the judge was still talking. “Have you ever been a victim of a burglary in this house before?”
“Never. This place is usually quiet and safe.”
“It is,” she said, reassuringly. “Shall we go back inside?”
Boizot heard a door slam shut. The voices faded away.
Chapter 2
At three o’clock in the morning, even in July, there are few travelers on the road that connects La Baule to Le Croisic along the Wild Coast, the small, craggy peninsula that juts off Brittany.
In the two hours that Boizot had been positioned in front of Perdiou’s home, he’d seen only two cars pass by.
He was casually leaning against the hood of the forensic examiner’s Peugeot. In his jacket pocket, he had a notepad and pen. He stood there smoking, trying not to miss anything that was going on inside.
At the same time, he could not help but relive the week he had just spent with Claude and Mireille. He had done his best to make the visit feel fun and keep them both happy. He had tried to give them everything they wanted, while staying within the narrow confines of his meager financial resources. But nothing had worked: things simply hadn’t clicked with Claude. He wondered why his eldest seemed to harbor such animosity toward him. What had gotten into his son? And he couldn’t blame his ex-wife’s boyfriend, Jean-Christophe, for being a bad influence: Boizot’s relationship with his son had always been rocky, even before the divorce.
Earlier, he’d heard the judge ask Perdiou if he had any idea who the intruder might have been. Boizot had smiled in the darkness: the judge knew, like everyone else, the deputy’s predilections, and she had been more or less tactfully trying to find out whether someone had died because of a quarrel after a one-night stand, or in fact because of a botched robbery.
Perdiou, who was no fool, had gotten the message loud and clear. “I arrived here yesterday early in the evening. Alone. And I went out for dinner in La Baule, still by myself.”
“Which place?”
“Saint-André. I was there until ten thirty or eleven. I left by myself, your honor, and returned home with one goal in mind: to lie down and go to sleep. I was worn out—I still am, for that matter. You know, this year has been, well, hard.”
Perdiou’s voice struck Boizot as both charming and emphatic, yet it also had an edge. When he spoke, a threat always seemed to be on the verge of surfacing. He had the kind of voice that can only belong to a guy accustomed to being obeyed.
Unquestionably, Perdiou was a skilled orator. Boizot imagined him punctuating each of his sentences with sweeping hand gestures.
At that moment, a silhouette appeared behind the house’s glass front door. Boizot guessed it was the forensic examiner. He promptly stubbed out his cigarette and took out his notepad.
But when the man emerged, he didn’t want to chat. “I have nothing to say. Talk to the judge,” he said. Then he got into his car and immediately drove off.
“Real nice, doc,” Boizot grumbled. At the same time, the examiner’s surly attitude seemed like a good sign. It bolstered Boizot’s belief that this was no ordinary news story. Everyone involved seemed to want to keep it quiet. In all likelihood, this meant that even the cops and judges would try to cover up the story. That was to his advantage: the competition wouldn’t be alerted as quickly. He really was going to get his scoop!
All he had to do was stick around. The undertakers would arrive soon to take the body.
Just then, three lab guys emerged from the house along with a cop. The latter was young, obviously a rookie fresh from the academy. He walked over to Boizot and tipped his cap. “You waiting for something, monsieur?”
Boizot pulled out his press card. “I’m a journalist with L’Actualité. I’m waiting for the judge. I want to ask her a few questions.”
“There’s no point in waiting, monsieur. They are far from finished in there.”
“No problem. I’ve got time.”
“As you wish.”
The cop turned away and walked back to the guys from the lab. One of them, who reminded Boizot of a fat sausage stuffed into white coveralls, talked with the cop for a minute and shot an exasperated look Boizot’s way. Then he cursed loud enough for Boizot to hear him and followed it up with, “They really are everywhere, those guys!”
It wasn’t surprising to meet people at a crime scene who didn’t like journalists. He lit another cigarette. The animosity didn’t upset him; it just meant that he’d have to be even sharper than usual.
The lab guys got into an old Volvo station wagon and pulled out of the driveway, the tires crunching over the gravel, and left without so much as looking at Boizot. Nevertheless, he waved good-bye in a gesture that was half-friendly, half-ironic.
It was shortly after four thirty in the morning when the judge, still flanked by her sorry clerk, left the house. At the doorstep, she said farewell to Perdiou, whose tall, stooped silhouette was instantly recognizable to Boizot. Then she walked down the driveway, accompanied by a heavyset man in his fifties as bald as the French soccer star Fabien Barthez. The man was wearing a light-colored suede jacket. It had to be the man Boizot had imagined embodying Inspector Maigret.
Boizot pulled out his press card again in order to get straight to the point.
“Why aren’t you taking Lionel Perdiou into custody?” he shouted. “Has legitimate defense been proven?” He hoped his authoritative tone would destabilize his audience.
But clearly it was going to take more than that to unnerve the old officer. The man barked, “Who are you and what are you doing here? I’ve never seen you in the area. Who do you work for?”
Boizot smiled. “I am a reporter for L’Actualité. And you are . . .”
The man, who had an odd, bulldog-shaped head, stared at him from eyes sunk under heavy, drooping eyelids.
“I’m Captain Serge Tworkowski, and not someone you want to fuck with,” the man said. “You couldn’t have come from Paris so quickly. So keep talking.” He frowned.
“From Paris, no. From the villa next door, where I am on vacation? Yes!”
Boizot noticed that the judge suddenly seemed interested. He continued, “I was woken up by the siren and I came outside to see what was happening.”
“You just mentioned Monsieur Perdiou in your questions,” said Tworkowski. “How did you know he was the owner?”
Boizot lied. “Everyone knows here. So . . . self-defense?”
This time, it was the judge who replied: “According to our initial findings, there is no reason to doubt that is the case.”
Boizot nodded, trying to look as though he were wrapped up in his important thoughts.
Then he added, “So the identity of the intruder isn’t known?”
The judge shook her head. “He had no ID on him, no distinguishing features. We will launch an investigation to identify hi
m.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like everyone else. Thirties, medium height and build, wearing nondescript blue jeans and a T-shirt.”
Boizot scribbled down a few notes, then looked up. “An article published in the newspaper might help you, right?”
Captain Tworkowski glared at him.
“So,” continued Boizot, “the story is simple: a burglar without ID breaks in at night—around what time?”
“Monsieur Perdiou was woken up at one forty-five,” said the judge.
“One forty-five? OK . . . so Monsieur Perdiou walks downstairs, armed, to investigate. He comes face-to-face with a stranger who was also armed. Is that correct?”
“Yes, he caught the intruder in the living room trying to break into a chest. Monsieur Perdiou yelled at him, and the man turned around and fired immediately. The bullet just missed Monsieur Perdiou’s head. He returned fire and killed the stranger . . . speaking of which, you didn’t hear gunshots, did you?”
“No, I must have slept through them. A siren woke me up shortly after two o’clock, and I came outside to see what was going on. I was curious, of course.”
“You say you’re on vacation?” Tworkowski asked.
“Yes, one of my colleagues at the newspaper owns the house next door, and he lent it to me for two weeks.”
“Anyone else staying with you?”
“Until yesterday, I had my two children with me, but now they’re back with their mother in Paris.”
Tworkowski nodded.
“One more question,” said Boizot. “How did the guy get into the house?”
“Apparently he entered through the garden and broke through the kitchen door. It was the sound of the breaking glass that woke Monsieur Perdiou.”
“Thank you very much for all the details,” Boizot said, tucking away his notebook.
Once the judge and the investigator left, Boizot returned home, deeply troubled. Why was Perdiou claiming that everything had happened around one forty-five, when Boizot had clearly heard the first gunshot at 1:14 a.m. and the second ten minutes later?
There were only two possibilities: either the police and judges had cooked up an official version to clear Perdiou of all wrongdoing, or Perdiou was taking everyone for a ride. I’ll start writing my story first thing in the morning, Boizot thought. I’ll call Magnin to clue him in. If there was one thing his boss loved, it was a scoop like this.
Chapter 3
At 6:04 a.m., the TGV slowly left La Baule-Escoublac station. Ernest Lullier tried to get comfortable in his seat. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply in an attempt to calm down.
The night had been short, but he didn’t feel tired. Rage kept him wide-awake. With a nervous finger, he scrolled through his cell phone’s address book for the contact. He didn’t give a damn if the man was still asleep. After all, there was no reason why Lullier should be the only one to suffer.
As he waited for the phone to connect, he told himself that in three hours he would be in Montparnasse and have a lot on his plate.
A man picked up and said urgently, “Talk to me!”
Lullier could tell from his contact’s tone of voice that he was wide-awake too. Before speaking, Lullier cast a quick glance around to make sure nobody could hear him.
“It’s me. The news is not good, not good at all. José and his buddy were unable to get their hands on the file in Paris.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that they turned the whole apartment upside down and found nothing. And knowing José, if he tells me that there was nothing, there really was nothing.”
At the other end of the line, Lionel Perdiou suddenly started to sweat. If the file was gone, it would be a huge disaster because it would mean that someone else still had it. So the Sword of Damocles, which they had thought they would be able to get rid of once and for all by mounting this operation, still hung ominously over their heads, ready to fall at the first opportunity.
“What can we do?”
“Think. The way I see it, there are three possible places where we can get our hands on that damn file. Either it was deposited in a bank vault, or it was stashed at the agency in Saint-Cloud, or it was quite simply brought to the guy’s second home.”
“If it’s in a safe-deposit box, I don’t see how we could recover it.”
“Indeed. So first I will ask José to visit Saint-Cloud. We have no choice. What about you? How’d it go?”
“Well, the cops bought it all. The judge, too, apparently.”
Lullier, his ear glued to the cell phone, his gaze lost in the blur outside his window, smiled: Perdiou had always thought he was smarter than everyone else. He tended to underestimate others. The man was fortunate Lullier was there to take care of all the details.
“Not too many pesky questions, then?” he asked.
“Could have been worse.”
“Good. I left your car right outside the station as agreed.”
The line went dead. Lullier ran his hand through his thick, curly hair and heaved a great big sigh.
The night was short for Captain Tworkowski as well. He had slipped back into bed with his wife at five in the morning, taking care not to wake Anne-Marie, whose light snores were interrupted for only a few seconds.
He lay sleepless for a while, on his back, eyes wide open and staring into the almost pitch-black darkness of the room. Some elements of this case were bothering him. He had noticed that the lady judge had, in spite of herself, been impressed by Perdiou’s confidence, glibness, and social position. And there was nothing worse than starting an investigation from a position of inferiority. Especially if, on top of that, the investigation was going to be under political pressure. Veteran that he was, Tworkowski had no doubt in his mind that politics would come into play. After all, Perdiou wasn’t just anyone: a few months earlier, his name had been mentioned as a possible power player in the new government. He would need to be handled with kid gloves.
He was also an unpleasant guy; the cop despised his unctuous manner. Much as Tworkowski tried to pretend that his personal preferences played no role in his investigations, he knew all too well that it was impossible to ignore his personal feelings.
He had no intention of going light on Perdiou. Beyond that, although in theory this was an open-and-shut case, something seemed off. To start with, there was the disconnected alarm, as if Perdiou had been trying to facilitate access to his house for this supposed “burglar,” who happened to lack any sort of identification. A burglar who, moreover, had gone to the trouble of bleaching his hair and getting a perm. Furthermore, there was Perdiou himself: he seemed like a bad actor hamming it up in a role.
Was he going to talk about this later, during the ten o’clock meeting in Brigitte Le Guen’s office? It might be better to let the judge uncover this news for herself. That way, he could see where the wind was blowing before putting his cards on the table.
He had barely fallen asleep when Anne-Marie came to wake him: as on every morning for the past twenty-two years, his breakfast was waiting for him on the kitchen table.
Chapter 4
Magnin was on vacation, replaced by Etienne Drichon, who was at first skeptical when Boizot explained the reason for his call. “Are you sure that it’s Lionel Perdiou? Because it’s strange that nothing came in over the wire.”
Boizot hated this young man, who’d been aptly nicknamed “The Dictator” by his colleagues at the paper. But he controlled himself and replied in the most neutral tone possible, “Etienne, not only am I sure, but I also got an exclusive.”
In the silence that followed this comment, Boizot could easily picture the sudden scowl on Etienne’s face. The idea of being one-upped by a simple puff-piece writer whom he took for a big fool was clearly infuriating.
“Awesome!” Etienne seemed to force himself to say. “And wha
t did he tell you?”
“He tried to downplay everything, as you can imagine. But there was something off about that guy, that’s for sure.”
In fact, when Boizot had rung Lionel Perdiou’s door, the man had appeared to be in a complete panic.
Boizot had thought of trying to catch him off guard just a couple minutes after the last investigator had left the house. As soon as the final car had driven off and the villa’s garden was deserted, he had pounced. He’d mumbled something unintelligible into the intercom. Perdiou, no doubt believing that it was one of the cops returning to ask him one last question, had opened the door.
Standing opposite him, Boizot was struck by his height—he had to be at least six foot three—and judging from his sickly pallor, he was a man at the end of his rope. Stationed at the half-open door, he stared blankly at Boizot.
“Monsieur Perdiou, sorry to bother you under such difficult circumstances. I’m Dimitri Boizot. I’m living for the moment in the villa next door.”
Obviously, the words failed to sink in because Perdiou still looked dazed.
Boizot felt it was the perfect time to try to pry something out of him.
“I am also a journalist. I work for L’Actualité in Paris.”
At the mention of Paris, Perdiou suddenly seemed to be shaken from his stupor.
“Oh yes, I am quite familiar with L’Actualité,” he said, more alert already.
“Glad to hear it. As luck would have it, I’ve just heard that you’ve been the victim of a burglary, and I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind answering two or three quick questions.”
A seasoned politician, Perdiou clearly knew better than to refuse an interview. There were two reasons for going ahead with it, as Boizot well understood: first, saying no would risk needlessly getting on Boizot’s bad side, and second, saying yes would give him the chance to tell his version of the story. So he regained a bit of his composure and said, “Please come in. I don’t know if I can be of much help to you, Monsieur, I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name.”
Mortal Ambitions (A Dimitri Boizot Investigation Book 1) Page 2
