Françoise asked, “In your opinion, is this good or bad for the company, for us, for you?”
Geneviève heaved a great sigh as she looked at her friends. They knew—it had never been a secret—that she had for a time been sleeping with Lullier, but the affair had ended months ago. She had never fully processed the breakup, mainly because she had to work with him on a daily basis as his official secretary for the Department of Exploration and Development.
“If this is true, then I’ll have to find myself another job,” she said matter-of-factly.
Ever since he had dumped her for another girl, Geneviève could tell that Lullier wanted her gone. But as long as Estrepont was in charge, firing her was impossible. With his promotion, things suddenly didn’t look good for her.
“What can you do?” asked Françoise.
“Unfortunately nothing,” she replied.
But she didn’t tell her friends everything she was thinking. There was one idea she had been cultivating for a few months, one that she would now be obliged to implement very quickly, given the circumstances.
Every Saturday morning in August, the Jardin du Luxembourg is overrun with families, tourists, and dog walkers. So it wasn’t especially notable to see a big guy with curly hair wearing a tracksuit seated on a bench, catching his breath after a jog.
But the man wasn’t seated there long before he was joined by someone else: a barrel-shaped guy in linen pants with bulging pockets and a garish red shirt with dark spots of sweat beneath the arms.
“You could at least be on time,” grumbled the man in the tracksuit, refusing the hand that was held out to him.
“Excuse me, Monsieur Lullier, I was putting the finishing touches on my report!”
“That’s exactly it, Quiguer! You’re always behind the eight ball,” Lullier said in disgust. “It’s been forty-eight hours since you’ve lost Boizot, and you’re talking to me about ‘finishing touches’? How can you finish the report if you don’t even know where he is?”
“Listen, Monsieur Lul—”
“No! You listen to me! I should have hired the competition. If you lost track of Boizot and that girl, it means he spotted you and had a fucking easy time losing you, too!”
Quiguer’s red shirt was thoroughly drenched with sweat now. Wiping his dripping forehead, he handed Lullier a folder, looking hurt. “Well, in any case, Monsieur Lullier, here’s my report. It contains information about the girl who is now traveling with him.”
Lullier grumbled and opened the folder, quickly reading the pages inside. Quiguer saw him wince when he discovered the identity of the girl: the name Sylvie Flaneau definitely seemed to make an impression.
“You know her?” Quiguer asked.
Lullier looked up and glared at him for a moment, then resumed reading. When he had finished, he looked up, smiled, and said, “It’s good. I believe I’ve got enough now. I don’t need your services anymore. And I’ll tell you where Boizot is, so you don’t feel you’ve been wasting your time: he’s been in Biarritz for the last couple days and may still be there now.” And opening the newspaper folded in his hand, he shoved the front page of that morning’s edition of L’Actualité in front of Quiguer’s face.
Then he added, taking out his wallet, “How much do I owe you? Cash, of course.”
Ernest Lullier waited until Quiguer had disappeared from his line of sight before getting up. He needed to walk and get some fresh air before returning home. This Boizot fellow was really beginning to get on his nerves. When the journalist had first started conducting his little investigation into the burglary in Batz, he’d seemed more eccentric than dangerous. But then he’d discovered the true identity of Marcel Orphelin, and it had become clear that the man had a lot more resources and capabilities than Lullier expected.
Perdiou returns from his escapade with his pretty boy on Sunday, Lullier thought. I’ll summon him immediately, so we can agree on what we want to do with this Boizot.
A young blond jogger crossed his path. He automatically smiled at her and turned to follow her long, supple strides. But he soon returned to his thoughts: allowing this reporter to keep sticking his nose in their business was out of the question. But how to prevent him from doing so without calling on José’s services? That was another question entirely.
Meanwhile, in Le Croisic, Anne-Marie Tworkowski was picking up the phone. Normally she let her husband get it, but he was in the bathroom taking a shower.
“Hello, yes?”
“Madame Tworkowski? Brigitte Le Guen, examining magistrate, here. I’d like to talk to your husband.”
“He’s in the shower, I’m sorry.”
“This is urgent, Madame Tworkowski. We’re working a case together and I need to speak to him. Immediately.”
From the woman’s tone of voice, Anne-Marie realized that her only choice was to interrupt Serge in the shower.
When she walked into the bathroom and shouted over the noise of the water, “Madame Le Guen for you!” he cursed and turned off the water. She handed him a towel to dry his hands so he could take the phone, and he impatiently grabbed it, saying, “Tworkowski here.”
Anne-Marie left, taking care to close the door behind her.
“Hello, captain, I’m sorry to bother you, but have you had the opportunity to read the papers this morning?”
“Why?”
“Because today’s edition of L’Actualité reveals the true identity of Marcel Orphelin on the front page.”
Then, without giving the police officer enough time to respond, Brigitte Le Guen said curtly, “I myself was informed by the prosecutor, who had himself been informed—brace yourself—by that cut-rate journalist. You can imagine how this makes us look!”
Tworkowski stepped out of the shower, still dripping wet. He was furious. “Was it that Dimitri Boizot again?”
“Of course! You contact him and grill him for me. I want to know where he got his information. Let’s meet at noon in the prosecutor’s office. And let me warn you, he is not happy, not happy at all. So it’s in our interest to have something to offer him for the press conference he’ll be having this afternoon.”
She hung up. Serge Tworkowski put the phone down on the edge of the bathtub and picked up a towel. He’d definitely noticed that Brigitte Le Guen had said “our interest” and not “your interest.” Well, well, well, that was a good sign. Maybe she was beginning to understand that they were on the same team after all? Tworkowski smiled grimly to himself. He was going to read Dimitri Boizot the riot act. He had warned the man about meddling in this investigation. Clearly, he hadn’t listened.
Chapter 24
“Curious guy, your old buddy Dabos,” said Sylvie, as they were getting ready to leave the hotel.
“Curiosity is our bread and butter,” Boizot said. He was feeling a bit smug after having received the morning copy of L’Actualité, to which he had contributed so much.
“Maybe, but he was hardly sensitive in asking all those questions about Jean-Mi. I confess that at times I wanted to tell him to take a hike.”
Boizot walked to the car, opened the trunk, and quickly shoved the two bags inside. “It was still nice of him to do the research.”
“He clearly loves this story,” she said. “Your pal is already picturing himself with the scoop of the century! Incidentally, you could have warned me that you had already asked him to investigate Jean-Mi’s accident; it would have saved me from looking like an moron.”
Boizot sighed softly as he got in and started the car. “I assure you that you did not look like a moron. Not at all. And besides, I have to confess that I was a little afraid to talk to you about this issue before. In any case, we know the results now: your brother was the victim of a murder.”
The morning was clear and bright, and it was clearly going to be a gorgeous day in Cahors. But Sylvie didn’t seem to notice the sun.
She nervously chewed the inside of her mouth, appearing to reflect on what Boizot had just told her.
“I hate to bother you,” he said from the driver’s seat. “But do you have the map? What road will take us to Limogne?”
“Sorry,” she said, pulling out the map. “It seems simple: you first go over the Cabessut bridge, make a left after a quarter mile, and then you’ll hit the regional road 911. After that, it’s a straight shot. That said, I am very surprised that a journalist like you doesn’t even have GPS.”
“Good thing I have you,” Boizot said, grinning. An hour later, they were a few miles away from Limogne-en-Quercy, in the exact spot where Jean-Michel Flaneau had died in a fire in his car after slamming into a tree.
“I came here last year with my parents,” said Sylvie. “They insisted on making the pilgrimage. So you would think I would remember the place. But I don’t, not at all.”
Boizot was surprised by the almost harsh, resolute tone in her voice, as if this story did not concern her anymore.
“It doesn’t bother you to come back here?” he asked.
She shrugged: “Obviously, it does, but I’m not going to break down and start wringing my hands in pain and grief. We are not that kind of family.”
Boizot put his hand on her shoulder and tenderly kissed her hair. Then he examined their surroundings. “The turn is pretty dangerous, especially for someone who usually drove fast.”
“For someone who drove like a madman, you mean! He was always reckless. The police investigation at the time concluded that he had fallen asleep at the wheel. There wasn’t the slightest trace of brakes being used.”
“Right,” said Boizot, making a face. “For good reason, considering he had no brakes! What I still don’t get is why it happened here. What would he have been doing out here in the middle of nowhere at night?”
“Well, that is a mystery. My parents and I asked ourselves the same question many times, but never found an answer. In fact, when he died, Jean-Mi should have already been in Grau-du-Roi, where he had booked a hotel room for six days. He had left Paris late in the morning the day before the accident. What was he doing in those thirty-six hours between leaving the city and hitting this tree? We don’t know.”
“Did he leave Paris alone?”
“Yes.”
Boizot took a few steps away from the car and looked around. Since they had pulled over, not a single car had passed by. “This area is not busy.”
“There is a house over there though, a little farther up the road,” said Sylvie, pointing.
Boizot looked up and noticed a big stone building about three hundred feet away, half-hidden by a hedge.
“Should we go?” Boizot asked.
She stared at him blankly. “Go where?”
“We’ll go ring the doorbell and ask the occupants, if there are any, to tell us what they saw.”
“A year later?”
Boizot frowned. “You’ve come this far already . . . ”
By ten o’clock, Sylvie and Boizot were sitting in their hosts’ garden, hanging on to every word of their story.
“You bet, nobody could forget a scene like that! I had just fallen asleep when I heard the crash. Our bedroom is toward the front of the house, and since it’s very quiet here, the slightest noise is noticeable—the sound of that collision was like a thunderclap.”
The man must have been over seventy, but he emanated a sort of confidence that was both impressive and reassuring. He had opened the door after the first ring, as if waiting for someone. Without any hesitation, he’d introduced himself as Frédo and led his visitors to the garden. “Léone, can you make us some coffee?” he had said after introducing them to his wife, a round woman almost as large as he was, who without saying a word had gone straight into the kitchen.
“Besides, at my age, you start sleeping a lot lighter . . . So I got up, went to the window, and I saw the flames. I immediately understood what had happened. I called the fire department, got dressed quickly, and ran to the scene with the fire extinguisher from our kitchen. It was all I had.”
He looked only at Boizot as he spoke, as if afraid to rekindle painful memories for Sylvie.
“Of course,” Boizot said. “If I understand correctly, the car slammed into the tree and caught fire immediately.”
“Yes,” said the old man. “And what was really disgusting was that just as I left the house, I saw a car speeding off down the road. The driver didn’t even slow down after seeing the accident, but just continued on his way as if nothing had happened. What great times we live in.”
Boizot said, “What kind of car?”
“To be honest, I don’t remember. A kind of Range Rover I think.”
At that point, Léone brought out the coffee, which she served with a plate of cookies.
“I made them myself,” she said. “Tomorrow, our children are visiting: Frédo is celebrating his seventy-third birthday, and we already have three great-grandchildren!”
They thanked her for the cookies and then returned to the topic of conversation. “Yes,” Frédo continued, “I think the fire was instantaneous: the driver couldn’t have had enough time to realize what was coming.”
“Are there often accidents around here?” Sylvie asked.
Frédo looked at her sympathetically and rubbed his hand on his cheeks as if he wanted to check the status of his beard. After looking up for approval from Léone, he said, “Not often, but it happens, that’s for sure.”
“Especially on the weekends, with teenagers,” she added.
The man nodded.
Boizot glanced around. Behind the garden was a neat orchard with rows of plum trees. He took a sip of coffee and said, “Still, not all cars catch fire, do they?”
“Thankfully,” Frédo replied as he put his cup down.
Boizot didn’t want to let the subject drop quite yet. “At the time, were the police concerned with finding out why the car had caught fire so quickly?”
The old man chuckled. “That I don’t know; they hardly bothered to keep me updated. All I know is that the next day they came back here to examine the car. They took pictures; I’m guessing they had an expert with them. Then a tow truck came to haul away the wreckage. The end.”
Boizot looked at Sylvie: she seemed distraught. He stood up abruptly, “Well, we don’t want to bother you any longer. Thank you for the coffee.”
In the car, he put his hand on Sylvie’s knee. “The details are unbearable for you, aren’t they?”
She slowly nodded, unable to speak.
Boizot’s cell phone began to ring. He glanced at the screen. “It starts with 02, so I’m betting this is the judge or the captain from Le Croisic. They must have read my article by now. We’ll let them stew for a bit.” And with his thumb, he rejected the call.
They drove to Cahors in silence.
Marc Dabos had invited them to lunch, so their plan was to eat with him before heading back up to Paris. He lived in a beautiful house a few miles from town. Boizot and Sylvie arrived at eleven o’clock on the dot. Dabos was in the middle of the kitchen preparing food. “My wife and kids are in Royan for fifteen days. So I’m the one cooking. You’ll see, I’m the king of spaghetti carbonara!”
While Dabos stood over the stove, Boizot and Sylvie sat at the large pine table, which occupied most of the kitchen, and Boizot recounted the events of their morning.
“In short, you’ve learned nothing new?” asked Dabos.
“You could say that,” said Boizot. “But at least we now have testimony from someone who saw the accident. So there’s no longer any doubt about how it happened.”
“I’ve been mulling over this case since yesterday,” said Dabos. “I can’t stop thinking about something the expert explained to me. He told me that the way the brakes had been sabotaged, they would have given out the first or second t
ime they were used. So he must have just started driving before the accident took place.”
He turned away from the stove for a moment to look at Sylvie. “Your brother could not have driven so far if the brakes had been sabotaged in Paris. We must assume that he had to stop for some reason in the area, and that’s when someone took the opportunity to tinker with his car.”
Sylvie looked a bit dazed, as if her mind were elsewhere, and didn’t answer. Boizot replied, “Yes, it seems logical. But we’ll still need to find out the who, where, and why of the situation before we’ll get any closer to the truth.”
Chapter 25
That morning, the weather was stormy on the Ile Saint-Louis, and Claudio Boninsegna paced between the office and the apartment’s front entrance, unable to sit still. As he passed by the French doors leading to the living room, he quickly glanced inside.
There, sitting on a deep white leather sofa, Ernest Lullier could also not hide his nervousness. It was an unusual state for this man with the rugby player physique and Roman emperor attitude. His right foot was tapping out the beat of his anxiety, and he was chain-smoking, filling a large marble ashtray under the worried eye of Lionel Perdiou.
Claudio returned to the office and, planting himself in front of the window overlooking Quai d’Orléans, stared blankly at the Pont Saint-Louis and the towers of Notre-Dame. He sighed. The previous ten days had been wonderful: Mauritius had proven to be a perfect getaway, and Lionel had reverted to his relaxed, funny, and lighthearted self, reminding Claudio of what he’d been like when he’d first met him.
And then, scarcely off the plane, Lullier had called Lionel, and immediately he’d been plunged into a sort of hopeless melancholy.
Claudio ran his hand through his hair. What had happened in the villa in Batz that night? Lionel was clearly in a state. He puffed his cheeks and deliberately exhaled slowly, but in vain, as nothing soothed his rattled nerves.
In the living room, Lullier spoke in that way he had, which managed to mix insensitivity with mordant irony. “Frankly, I think it was a good thing you enjoyed your vacation, because the news I have for you is not great. Would you believe that the journalist to whom you so kindly gave an interview in Batz published a very nice article on Saturday?”
Mortal Ambitions (A Dimitri Boizot Investigation Book 1) Page 13
