Mortal Ambitions (A Dimitri Boizot Investigation Book 1)

by Patrick Philippart

  Larrieux continued. “I would like to know, Monsieur Boizot, the nature of your relationship with Madame Murelle.”

  Obviously, Boizot thought, this cop did not read the paper this morning and doesn’t know what happened to me, but when Drichon’s article comes out tomorrow, he’ll be up to speed in no time. So it’s in my interest to play fair—or almost fair.

  “In fact, I did not know Madame Murelle.”

  “Really?” said the officer, taken aback.

  “Let me explain: I called her on Monday from the offices of L’Actualité, the newspaper where I work, to set up a time to chat with her. We were supposed to meet at noon yesterday.”

  “Why?”

  “Madame Murelle had been the mistress of a certain Jean-Michel Flaneau.”

  Boizot told the increasingly amazed young officer about his suspicions surrounding Flaneau’s death. “That’s why I wanted to speak to Madame Murelle, but fate decided otherwise.”

  “But why did she call you Monday evening and early Tuesday morning?”

  “Monday night, she wanted to know a little more about what I was going to ask her. That often happens: when you ask for an interview with someone, the person accepts on a whim and then starts to have second thoughts. Sometimes they renege on their decision and flat-out refuse to see you, or they call you back asking for clarification and reassurance.”

  The young cop had pulled out a notebook and was jotting down notes. He looked up. “And at four thirty?”

  “I have no idea. I was woken up by a call, but there was no one on the line. At least, that’s what I thought.”

  “Monday night on the phone, did Madame Murelle seem normal to you?”

  Boizot thought for a moment before answering, “Yes, at least I didn’t notice anything. Her speech seemed fine, she didn’t seem to be drunk or on drugs, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “It’s still strange that this lady, just before committing suicide, called you. She could have called relatives, friends, right?”

  “I don’t know. What goes on in the mind of someone who wants to commit suicide?”

  “Good point,” admitted the officer. “Monsieur Boizot, what you just told me about this cover-up of Jean-Michel Flaneau’s murder—did this information result from an investigation you personally conducted or from police sources?”

  “A personal investigation. I intended to notify the police after meeting Geneviève Murelle, but I’ve had some problems myself.”

  Boizot explained what had happened the previous morning. This time, the police officer seemed out of his depth.

  At that moment, the intercom in the hallway rang.

  “Do you mind?” said Boizot, getting up.

  He buzzed the door for Sylvie, who had finished changing the tire, then returned to the living room, leaving the door ajar.

  “In your opinion, could Madame Murelle’s suicide be less cut-and-dried than it seems?”

  “I don’t know. Frankly, I couldn’t tell you. Sorry.”

  “It’s no problem,” said the officer, getting up. “Just one more thing and I’ll leave you alone: Do you intend to tell the police about the Flaneau case?”

  “I have a friend on the crime squad. I’m planning to talk to him.”

  “Fine. I will contact you again if I need an official deposition. Good-bye, Monsieur Boizot.”

  On the landing, he passed Sylvie, who had just come up the stairs, her sleeves rolled up and her hands completely black. He gave her a surprised look and left.

  “Who was that?” asked Sylvie as she walked inside.

  Boizot told her.

  “You didn’t tell me about this call in the middle of the night,” she said when he finished.

  “Well, excuse me,” Boizot said with a laugh. “But I had some other things to deal with at the time.”

  “That’s true. Still, what a strange phone call: Geneviève Murelle is about to commit suicide, according to the official version, and she can’t think of anybody else to call but you—and when you pick up, she says nothing? Let’s say she didn’t commit suicide, that someone helped her fall. We can assume that it was that person who called you, knowing full well that police would examine the cell phone and discover your number.”

  The girl’s definitely not lacking in brains, an increasingly admiring Boizot thought.

  “I thought about that,” he said. “But there is an obvious paradox: If Geneviève Murelle was murdered, and if they did everything to make her murder look like suicide, why try to implicate me in it?”

  “There is only one logical explanation: the call was a warning intended to make you understand that you should lay off on your investigation.”

  “Yeah, well, so much for that. I have no intention of giving up.”

  Chapter 31

  Sitting on the patio, Boizot took advantage of the last rays of the sun. His eyes half-closed, he let himself aimlessly drift. From inside the house came the familiar and reassuring sounds of his mother preparing dinner. For a moment, he thought he had traveled thirty years back in time.

  He had almost forgotten how easy and simple life could be in this small house in Vernouillet where he had spent part of his youth.

  Back then, everything had seemed easy. Today, however, life felt like a huge obstacle course.

  An hour earlier, he had tried unsuccessfully to reach the National School of Geology in Nancy, following up on his earlier request for the names of all students in the photograph he’d seen in Perdiou’s office, but getting in touch with someone at a college in the month of August was an impossible task.

  He was thinking about everything he hadn’t accomplished that day when his cell phone rang.

  “Monsieur Boizot, it’s Ludovic Corneau. Is this a bad time?”

  Boizot closed his eyes and sighed. This was all he needed. What had the man discovered this time?

  “Hello. No, not at all.”

  “I called to see how you were doing. I read this morning about what happened to you, and I confess that I felt a bit . . . responsible.”

  “Responsible? Why?”

  “Well, if I hadn’t called you the day after the burglary in Batz, you might never have gotten caught up in this.” Boizot opened his eyes, fixing his gaze on the linden tree he had planted with his father in the garden on his tenth birthday, without really taking it in.

  “I confess, Monsieur Corneau, I don’t follow what you’re saying.”

  “But it’s clear. In the article written by your colleague, it says that if you are in fact a victim of attempted murder, then it is doubtless connected to the investigations you are currently conducting. So I thought—”

  “Don’t read too deeply into it, Monsieur Corneau. You know, I don’t have just one iron in the fire, and in the course of my career, I’ve written many articles that could have made me enemies. There’s no evidence connecting the attempt on my life to the burglary. Besides,” he added insincerely, “I’ve gotten nowhere with the case.”

  “Really?” said Corneau, seemingly disappointed.

  “You can’t always succeed in everything,” quipped Boizot.

  “That’s true, but you still identified the burglar in Batz, and that seemed like a good start.”

  “Not bad, true, but it wasn’t enough to establish a connection with your friend Plesse. Good-bye, Monsieur Corneau, and thank you for your call!”

  He hung up without leaving time for the man to get a word in edgewise. Did Corneau have nothing better to do than to chat on the phone and read the newspaper? Boizot lit a cigarette and exhaled the smoke, feeling good for the moment. The pain that had assailed him for two days had given up in the face of sedatives, but he knew it was only a ceasefire and that the pain would return with greater intensity in an hour or two.

  At the same time, in a luxurious apartment on Avenue Foch
, Elisabeth Plesse was lying on her bed, dozing, overcome by tranquilizers. She’d been taking them for the last two weeks. Fortunately, the children were on vacation with her brother and sister-in-law’s family in Cap d’Ail, leaving her with plenty of time to rest, which was what she wanted.

  But her semi-sleep was troubled by dark thoughts: tomorrow was the last day the agency would be open before the two-week closure. She needed to decide what to do. The other day, she had reassured the employees, but what she had discovered in the accounts gave her little hope of keeping the company afloat.

  She sighed. She didn’t even have anyone to discuss her fears with. Her parents would be smug. They’d never liked Charles and had always considered him an incapable fool and a womanizer. They would lecture her with nauseating self-satisfaction. She was far past the age of sobbing in her mother’s lap.

  The intercom rang. She glanced at the clock radio. It was six thirty, and she wasn’t expecting anyone. She decided not to answer.

  But a few seconds later, she heard a second ring, this time more insistent. Elisabeth Plesse sighed deeply and slowly walked to the vast front hall. On the small color screen of the intercom, she saw a young woman with curly blond hair that seemed familiar to her.

  “Yes, what’s it about?” she said.

  “Hello Elisabeth, it’s Sylvie Flaneau, Jean-Michel’s sister. Would you happen to have a few minutes to talk?”

  Sylvie Flaneau! The last time she had seen her was at Jean-Michel’s funeral. They had never hung out together much, and she wondered what she was doing there all of a sudden.

  “Sylvie! Come in, the apartment’s on the fourth floor!”

  She ran to the bathroom, quickly brushed her hair, and made sure that her outfit wasn’t too wrinkled. The doorbell rang.

  Small and frail, lost in a T-shirt and pair of jeans that seemed too large for her, Sylvie Flaneau looked like a kid. She smiled shyly as the door opened. Elisabeth Plesse, more pleased than annoyed that someone had interrupted her solitude, grinned and, leaning toward her, planted a kiss on each cheek.

  “Please, come in, Sylvie!”

  In the vast, light-filled living room, Sylvie immediately noticed an Oriental rug that clashed with the modern furniture. Elisabeth followed her gaze and said, pointing at a couch, “Yes, that was where Charles was killed.”

  Under the tan that was already beginning to fade, Sylvie noted that the widow’s features were worn and her eyes were swollen. She suddenly felt pity for this woman, whose usual arrogance now seemed like distant memory.

  “The sudden death of a loved one, especially in such tragic circumstances, is always hard. Since I learned what happened to Charles, I’ve been thinking about you a lot, Elisabeth. I decided to come to you because while I was going through some of Jean-Michel’s papers, I stumbled upon this.”

  From her purse, she pulled a postcard that showed a reproduction of an old map. She handed it over, saying, “Read it!”

  Elisabeth took the card and read the text beneath the image: “Picturesque Lot. Saint-Géry, typical view taken from the Route du Causse.”

  She looked up and, smiling slightly, said, “Saint-Géry. What a great time.”

  Sylvie smiled back. “You can read what’s written on the back, too.”

  Elisabeth obediently turned the card over, reading aloud: “Hey, pal! From here, I can assure you that my Paris worries seem very distant.” It was signed Charles and addressed to Jean-Michel in Paris. She looked at the postmark, but it was almost unreadable.

  “Jean-Michel kept this card?”

  “Yes. The two had a true friendship. That’s why I came here today, to show it to you. I thought it might cheer you up.”

  “You thought right.”

  Elisabeth placed the postcard on the coffee table.

  “It was sent two years ago,” Sylvie continued. “Is Saint-Géry still where you spend your vacation?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve been going there since I was little. My parents fell in love with the area and bought a house when I was four or five years old. For years, my parents, my brother, and I spent the whole month of July there. My father redid the place from top to bottom, and even today, we spend a few days there each summer. By the way, isn’t Saint-Géry where your brother spent his last day before his terrible accident?”

  “Do you realize what this means?”

  Sylvie was incredibly excited. She had arrived in Vernouillet at eight thirty on the dot. Boizot and his parents were finishing dinner, and Sylvie, under the pretext of taking Boizot for a little walk, had dragged him outside to relate the conversation she had had with Charles Plesse’s widow.

  As they walked toward the Seine, Boizot stared at her blankly. It was as if his ideas were idling in his head—the effect of sedatives, no doubt.

  “I mean, it’s all so clear now!” said Sylvie. “On July eighteenth of last year, Jean-Michel was killed, certainly not by accident, barely an hour after leaving the Plesse house in Saint-Géry. He died less than twenty miles away. Who could have sabotaged his car’s brakes, in your opinion?”

  “Charles Plesse?”

  “Maybe, but Elisabeth Plesse also told me that—get ready for this one—Franck Héron was at their house in Saint-Géry that same day.”

  This time, Boizot understood what Sylvie was saying perfectly.

  “And what the fuck was that guy doing there?”

  “Listen, it gets really interesting. On July seventeenth, Elisabeth Plesse and her children were supposed to return to Paris. Charles Plesse, Franck Héron, and Jean-Michel remained at the house in Saint-Géry. Héron was there for three days because Plesse had asked him to install new flooring in the bedrooms.”

  “So Plesse and Héron knew each other well.”

  “Apparently, yes. As for Jean-Michel, he had arrived in the early afternoon for a quick hello on his way to the place he planned to vacation. And he was the one who took Elisabeth and the children to the station in Cahors to catch the TGV back to Paris. Meanwhile, Plesse and Héron remained at the house and had enough time to sabotage the brakes on Jean-Mi’s car.”

  “Your brother didn’t drive his car to the station?”

  “No, that’s just it. She said they drove to the station in the Plesses’ car, a Range Rover.”

  “Shit!”

  Boizot, who felt tired now that they’d reached the Seine, sat down on a bench. As predicted, his pain was beginning to return.

  He turned to Sylvie. “Until today, you didn’t know that Jean-Mi had spent his last day with the Plesses?”

  “Of course not. Now we know why Charles Plesse didn’t shout it from the rooftops. Fortunately, his widow is much more talkative. But there’s still one question that I haven’t been able to answer: If Plesse murdered Jean-Mi, with or without Héron’s help, why? What was his motive?”

  Chapter 32

  The next morning, Boizot awoke in his Paris apartment to see a nasty drizzle falling outside.

  Sylvie had driven him back from Vernouillet the previous night. On the journey, he’d been overwhelmed by a fatigue that left him feeling completely sapped. “I feel empty,” he’d said as he accompanied Sylvie to her car.

  On the drive, he had kept looking in the rearview mirror. For the last two days, he had been unable to shake his fear. Whoever had tried to kill him would likely try again. At least he ran less of a risk on the streets of Paris, where all he had to do to blend in was stand in the middle of a crowd.

  He left the apartment in the afternoon and drove to the Place Saint-Michel, parked without much of a problem, and consulted his watch: it was almost three o’clock. He walked, tucking his head under the collar of his raincoat, to the brasserie on Boulevard du Palais where he was supposed to meet his buddy from the crime squad, Paul Vendroux.

  At that hour, the bistro’s customers consisted mainly of tourists. Vendroux was busy readin
g the newspaper at his favorite spot at the back of the dining room, next to the bathrooms. “Here at least, I can chill out,” he liked to say.

  Boizot waved and sat down across from him.

  Vendroux was a sort of giant, nearly six-foot-five and over 250 pounds. All muscle, he had always reminded Boizot of those gladiators who earned—or, more often, lost—their living in the arenas of Rome. As usual, there was a single espresso in front of him on the table. Vendroux ran on coffee and Diet Coke. “I’ve never had a drink in my life,” he often said, “and I’m not about to start.” With a father and an uncle who were alcoholics, he had realized as a child that booze could destroy a family.

  “How are you?” he said when he saw Boizot.

  Vendroux had learned like everyone else what had happened to him two days earlier. “OK. I’m tired and I’m sore all over, but I’m fine. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about any of that. I want to talk to you about your investigation into the Plesse case.”

  “You got something for me?” asked Vendroux after downing his espresso in one gulp.

  In the exaggerated features of his face, Boizot easily recognized an air of incredulity.

  “Yes, something solid.”

  The night before, as they slowly walked from the Seine back to his parents’ house, Boizot had tried to convince Sylvie that he absolutely had to let Vendroux in on the secret.

  “For at least two reasons,” he’d said. “First, he will be able to mobilize resources that we do not have to reopen the investigation into the death of your brother. And second, I’m sure that if there is a connection between Jean-Michel’s murder, Plesse’s murder, and the mysterious robbery in Batz, he will find out what it is.”

  He had paused for a few moments, looked Sylvie in the eye, and resumed. “I have to admit I don’t really feel big enough anymore to fight opponents who are this powerful and this determined.”

  A long silence had followed. Then, as they walked along together, Sylvie had said, “Maybe the two of us can work something out ourselves. What’s most important to me is shedding light on Jean-Mi’s death, OK?”