Mortal Ambitions (A Dimitri Boizot Investigation Book 1)

by Patrick Philippart

  Perdiou, already distraught, stood up and grabbed the paper Lullier handed to him. After putting it back down on the coffee table, he collapsed onto a chair, unable to speak.

  In the hallway, Claudio passed the French doors again, rubbing a Besson totem, a souvenir brought back from Africa.

  Lullier continued. “Well, it’s fine, there’s no use in having a heart attack. So he was able to discover the real identity of Marcel Orphelin. But when all is said and done, he still hasn’t gotten anywhere. What matters from now on is that we don’t let him get any closer.”

  Perdiou stared at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

  Lullier gave him a condescending smile. “Ah yes, that’s right, with your island vacation, you don’t know anything, do you? Would you believe that Dimitri Boizot, not content to question Héron’s parents in Biarritz, has gotten together with—brace yourself—Sylvie Flaneau?” He seemed to delight in Perdiou’s dazed expression. “For God’s sake! Would you ask your little boyfriend to stop shuttling back and forth? He’s making me dizzy!”

  Perdiou felt every last bit of confidence seep away. At that very moment, he was a far cry from the bold conservative who never hesitated to denounce the general moral laxity of the country on the floor of the Assembly.

  Without turning around, and with an annoyed wave of his right hand, he signaled to Claudio to get lost.

  The former pizza maker swore under his breath in Italian and returned to the office, slamming the door to show his bitterness at being treated like a minion. How could Lionel be so easily dominated by this oaf? That was the mystery. One he needed to shed light on if he wanted to preserve his future.

  “Sylvie Flaneau?” Perdiou felt he wasn’t understanding things clearly.

  “Yes, my friend, the sister of—”

  “But how?”

  “How do they know each other, you mean?” Lullier cleared his throat. “Well, you see that the case is potentially much more serious than we had thought. This morning, before coming to see you, I summoned José and I asked him not to leave our friend Boizot’s side. I told him I wanted to know everything. If I ever realize that it is a possibility, however small, that he might discover the truth, I will not hesitate to—”

  Perdiou stared at him incredulously. “You are not going to—”

  “Listen, everything is at stake for me. And if I have to choose between myself and others, it won’t take me too long to decide. Anyway, it’s already gone too far, there’s no turning back now. For you or for me. I needn’t remind you that we are bound together forever, whether you like it or not.”

  Perdiou nodded. He knew it all too well. Their connection had been ruining his life for too long already.

  “And what about the file?”

  “Vanished! José didn’t find anything in Saint-Cloud. Nor in Plesse’s country home. If you ask me, he must have put it in a safe-deposit box. That’s somewhat reassuring: obviously, the widow is not aware of anything, and even if the file does fall into her possession, I can’t picture her doing anything with it.” Perdiou looked down and stared at the tips of his shoes, one of which bore a tiny spot of mud. Then he turned his head to look outside. The big gray clouds rolling over the Paris sky made him depressed.

  Lullier stubbed out his cigarette and moaned as he stood up.

  “You know your couch is really awful?”

  Perdiou gave him a look of sympathy. Poor Ernest definitely had no sense of taste or style, and possessed about as much grace as a bull in a china shop. Indifferent to anything that could make life beautiful, he was motivated only by money. He had no shortage of it, of course.

  Sitting at her desk, Geneviève Murelle took advantage of her boss’s absence to do some tidying up. This was, however, tidying up of a somewhat special kind. Four cardboard file folders, each of a different color, were arranged on her desk. In one, she had put copies of contracts; in another, she had arranged a series of bills in chronological order; in the third, she had placed several illustrated reports; and in the last folder, she’d placed copies of anything that seemed important but did not fit in the above categories.

  Lullier can kiss his promotion good-bye, she thought.

  She was convinced that she had a damning case against her former lover. Of course she did. She’d been building it gradually over the last few years that she’d worked at Palonnier.

  Deep down, Geneviève Murelle was a good person and would have preferred to avoid this kind of ugliness. But Lullier was incapable of empathy or having any concern for the well-being of others. His own comfort and desires were all that concerned him. What others might endure didn’t matter to him.

  One of her greatest regrets now was that she had dumped poor Jean-Mi.

  At the time, however, she was convinced she had hit the jackpot: Lullier, even at his age, was attractive enough, and the power he wielded made him seem even more appealing.

  She had even, for a few months, believed that she had found her Prince Charming. He knew how to be attentive, even tender at times. But that had turned out to be nothing more than a smoke screen: when he’d had enough of her, he had tossed her aside and moved on to someone else without the slightest hesitation.

  She put a final document in the red file folder and placed it with the others in a large shopping bag that she stashed in the large lower drawer of her desk.

  She still had to resolve a fundamental problem: exactly what she was going to do with all the information. It wasn’t as if there were endless possibilities; she could think of only a few.

  One was to send it to Simon Estrepont: everyone in the company knew that he hated Lullier. He was probably especially angry now that he’d found out that Lullier would be replacing him. But Estrepont had fallen out of favor with the shareholders. Would he have the means to make himself heard? And in any case, she did not know him personally. She therefore quickly dismissed that possibility.

  She could also contact a board member. She knew Albert Chatellain pretty well, because he was an old friend of her father’s. But he was also a worn-out, spineless old man who would likely be too afraid to engage in any bold moves, especially since the chairman of the board was none other than Lionel Perdiou, with whom Lullier was on very good terms.

  She sighed and scratched her forehead. She had to act fast—once Lullier was the boss, she might as well head straight to the unemployment line.

  Just at that moment, her phone rang, jolting her from her thoughts. She quickly picked up. “Hello, secretary to Monsieur Lullier speaking!”

  “Hello. Madame Murelle?”

  She looked at the telephone screen; she was unfamiliar with the number that appeared.

  “Yes, speaking.”

  “My name is Dimitri Boizot, and I am a journalist with L’Actualité. Is this a bad time?”

  More and more surprised, Geneviève Murelle replied. “No, not at all. What’s this about?”

  At the other end, she heard a clearing of the throat, then, “Well, this may seem a bit strange, but I’m investigating the death of Jean-Michel Flaneau, which happened a little over a year ago. You knew him pretty well, I think.”

  Geneviève Murelle still felt unclear why this reporter was contacting her, but a funny little idea made its way into her head. Could this journalist be the solution? She wondered what might happen if she simply put the folders on Lullier into his hands.

  When she started paying attention again, Boizot was still talking. “I’m wondering if it might be possible to meet you to talk about him?”

  She smiled. “If you want. Where and when?”

  Moments later, having carefully noted the cell phone number of this Dimitri Boizot, who was possibly the right man for the job, she hung up.

  The office door then opened, and in burst Ernest Lullier. No hello, no nothing. Just a question: “Anything this morning?”

  She barely
had any time to answer him before he was already in his office, the door slamming behind him.

  You won’t be on your high horse for much longer, Geneviève Murelle thought.

  Chapter 26

  Boizot hung up. If indeed Jean-Michel Flaneau’s car had been sabotaged, this Geneviève Murelle could perhaps provide him with valuable information about the man’s life—privately and professionally.

  Across from him, his colleague Patrice Censier was immersed in an activity that seemed to require all his concentration. He was underlining entire passages of an official text and had not looked up for a good ten minutes.

  “Patrice, do you have a couple of minutes? I’d like to ask you something.”

  Without interrupting his work, Censier said, “Go ahead.”

  Boizot recapped with the greatest possible clarity everything that had happened since the burglary in Batz two weeks ago. He included everything: the phone call from Ludovic Corneau, who’d guessed that there was a connection to the burglary at Plesse’s home; and his discovery that the burglar in Batz was actually Franck Héron, who had a connection, at least a professional one, with Plesse. For the first time, he even mentioned Jean-Michel Flaneau and his bizarre death, which now looked like it had been anything but an accident.

  Censier finally put aside his work, his face as expressionless as a plate of pasta. He stared without blinking, his tiny eyes barely visible behind the glare of his glasses. For a moment, Boizot had the impression that he was confiding in a psychiatrist.

  “Oh yeah, and there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. In this story, two people have ties to the mining company Palonnier. Perdiou himself, who worked there as a geologist and is still chairman of the board of directors, and Flaneau, who worked there as an inspector.”

  Hearing the name Palonnier, Censier raised an eyebrow. “That’s funny. Would you believe that I just wrote a brief on Palonnier not too long ago?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, listen.” And he read from a small block of text:

  Next Monday, the Board of Directors of the Palonnier Group will formally appoint Monsieur Ernest Lullier, 52, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, replacing Monsieur Simon Estrepont, 58, who will remain a member of the board. He will be given a two-year assignment as head of the GPC (General Prospecting Company), a subsidiary of Palonnier. Monsieur Lullier, a geologist by training, has been head of the Department of Exploration and Development for the Palonnier Group since 1990. He will assume responsibility on October 1.

  Boizot nodded and said that that was the kind of information he had never been able to find interesting. Still, he remained curious about the company. “What exactly is Palonnier?” he asked. “Everyone knows the name and knows that they work a lot in Africa. But nobody seems to know exactly what they do.”

  “Palonnier is a prominent French mining company. Its operations are indeed mostly in Africa. It owns a series of companies operating in several countries, especially in Central Africa. It was started in the 1920s by a man named Jules Palonnier. The company grew larger but for a while remained under family control. Then, in the ’60s, it began to be traded publicly. Today, Palonnier has annual revenue of around one billion euros.”

  “Not too shabby!”

  “Yeah, but then again, the annual sales of the number-one company in the industry, an Anglo-Australian company called BHP Billiton, exceed thirty billion, so you see the difference.”

  “I see,” said Boizot. Then he added, “Tell me, Patrice, if you were in my position, what would you do now?”

  Censier thought for a moment, serious as always, and said, “The connection between these cases still seems pretty tenuous to me. But if I were you, I would dig deeper into the relationship between Héron and Plesse, probably by interviewing some employees at the temp agency in Saint-Cloud.”

  Boizot nodded. “That’s a good idea. You’re right. That’s what I’ll do.”

  Before heading to his car, which was parked on a side street, he walked over to the square opposite the newspaper’s offices to smoke a cigarette. Because of the weather and menacing dark clouds, it was empty, and Boizot was able to sit undisturbed on a bench.

  Magnin, to whom he had given a full report when he had arrived that morning, had given him carte blanche to forge ahead. His boss was delighted to see L’Actualité bringing readers fresh angles on the story. “What I want now is Perdiou’s reaction after learning of the burglar’s identity,” he’d said, handing Boizot a slip of paper. “Here’s his cell phone number.”

  Boizot had left a message on Perdiou’s voice mail, but doubted he’d get a call back. If there was no response, he’d call the man again early in the afternoon.

  A few minutes later, he was climbing into his old Renault with the plan of heading to Saint-Cloud.

  He automatically glanced in the rearview mirror as he pulled onto the highway, but since his return from Cahors, the Fiat Punto had fallen off his radar. Maybe they’d realized that his life was not very exciting. Unfortunately, he failed to notice a gray Mégane following him at a distance.

  Boizot felt mildly euphoric: his life was suddenly going through one of those blessed times when everything seemed to be going well. That morning, before heading to the newspaper, he had dropped Sylvie off at her place after another passionate night together. At the paper, Magnin had spoken to him with unprecedented respect, as if he’d discovered in him worthy new skills. For all these reasons, Boizot’s chronic depression was keeping a low profile.

  Even the dark clouds that rolled by overhead couldn’t dampen his mood. What if life is simpler than I thought? he mused. He glanced at the postcard on the dashboard that he’d received from his brother and Anne-Catherine. Postmarked from Florence, it showed the winding terraces of the Boboli Gardens behind the Ponte Vecchio. On the back, Simon had written: “Hi Sherlock, where are you in your criminal investigations? We’re investigating the grands crus in the region. To each his own.” They, at least, had found the key to happiness.

  For him, too, contentment felt close at hand for the first time in a long time. He was taken with Sylvie, in part because her charm did not at all seem superficial. She walked through life without asking herself too many questions and never sought to present an ideal version of herself.

  A natural woman, he concluded. That’s what she is. It was her authenticity that had seduced him.

  That was also what had attracted him to Andrée. When he had met her in college, he had first fallen for her thick, wavy black hair. It was medium-length and carefully combed. Unlike the other girls in class, whose looks and personalities transmitted a phony casualness, Andrée was not at all concerned with having perfectly tousled hair. She seemed to go through life like a queen, indifferent to the vagaries of the everyday. Boizot had long hesitated before working up the courage to speak to her.

  In fact, he had to admit, his ex-wife was the only woman he had ever really been in love with. Even today, he could not think about her without a heavy heart.

  But Sandrine had been a good shield against loneliness; what they’d shared in bed had saved him. Sylvie delighted him with her lack of inhibitions. She seemed to live in the present, without bothering to try to confuse him with mystery or intrigue.

  Job-Inter was located on Quai Marcel Dassault in Saint-Cloud on the ground floor of a stately four-story building. Boizot parked his old Renault a hundred yards down the road and walked the remaining distance to the agency.

  It was 11:40. When he walked up, he noticed the windows facing the street featured dozens of small HELP WANTED signs. He pretended to be interested in them at first, then opened the door and walked up to a small desk made of Formica and metal tubes, where an older woman with unkempt, curly hair sat enthroned.

  Seemingly not very affable, she watched him come in, as if sizing him up. Boizot wondered if Charles Plesse had taught her how to do this; the lo
ok had no other purpose than to belittle any poor wretch who ventured in with the hope of finding a job.

  Two other desks were occupied, but Boizot walked with a firm step toward the fat woman. Towering over her, he stopped and simply said hello with a broad smile. He had decided to be friendly that morning no matter what.

  Taken aback, she returned his greeting in a barely audible voice.

  “May I sit down?”

  “Please, of course.”

  She studied him, probably wondering exactly what category to put him in. So as not to let her stew for much longer, Boizot introduced himself, got the woman’s name, and asked, “May I have two minutes of your time?”

  Before answering, she glanced at her two colleagues, but they were not paying the slightest attention to her.

  “What about?” she said almost in a whisper, as if afraid of being overheard by the others.

  “About your boss, Monsieur Plesse. I don’t know if you read L’Actualité.”

  She gave a weak, disappointed smile. “I don’t have time to read newspapers.”

  “I understand. That’s also why I brought a copy of Saturday’s edition with me. Take a look.”

  She looked at the photo of Franck Héron, scanned the headlines, then folded the newspaper and returned it to Boizot, giving him a look of incomprehension.

  “Do you know this Franck Héron?”

  “Yes, of course, he was one of our clients, but not a regular one.”

  “Well, would you believe that this kid died on the same day and almost at the same time as your boss? At the time, he was attempting to rob a house in Batz-sur-Mer in Brittany.”

  Raïssa Rzaev nodded but raised her eyebrows in a way that signified to Boizot that she still did not see where he was going.

  “Don’t you find that odd?” Boizot insisted, raising his voice all of a sudden.