He picked up and said, “I know why you’re calling me.”
“Perdiou?”
“I win!” said Magnin. “I immediately thought of you when I heard the news. Do you think that his suicide could be linked to the robbery in Batz or the attempt on your life?”
“I don’t know, but frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me—unless you tell me that the guy was suffering from some kind of incurable cancer or that his buddies from the party were going to leave him high and dry.”
Magnin took a few seconds before answering. “To my knowledge, no, nothing like that. So?”
“So, I think that there may indeed be a connection.”
“Do you feel up to writing an article about it?” asked Magnin.
“Why not?” said Boizot, flattered by this vote of confidence. Everything about Magnin’s attitude told Boizot that his work was essential to L’Actualité.
Magnin, sitting in his home office in the charmless apartment he had occupied forever in the eighteenth arrondissement, close to the newspaper offices, heard his wife call out, “Eric! What are you doing? We will be late again!”
“I’m coming!” he yelled, annoyed.
He turned his attention back to Boizot, saying, “How do you see the article?”
“I could start by recalling that Perdiou gave his last interview to L’Actualité, and then slip in a mention of the burglary in Batz. Readers can make the connection between the two events without having it spelled out for them, and that way, we cover our own asses if it turns out that there was another reason for the suicide.”
“That he was lovesick, for example?”
“We could put it like that.”
“OK. I’ll call Drichon straight away. He’s running the paper today. Check with him about the details.”
Boizot hung up. He liked working with Magnin. His straight-talking manner and his apparent lack of doubt in Boizot’s skills instilled confidence. Of course, he would have to deal with Drichon, but for two days, he could tolerate him.
Ten minutes later, Boizot was getting out of the shower when he heard his mother call up to him that his cell phone was ringing.
“If it’s important, they’ll call back or leave a message!” he yelled.
And sure enough, when he walked into the living room, there was a text on the screen. It read: Can you call me right away? Claudio Boninsegna, Monsieur Perdiou’s secretary.
Boizot’s heart began to race; he sensed that this call could be important.
He dialed the number and a few seconds later heard the voice of the handsome Italian. “Monsieur Boizot! Thank you for calling me back so quickly. Have you heard?”
“Yes,” said Boizot. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, you know. In any case, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
The former pizza maker spoke in a soft, humble tone that betrayed his distress. Boizot was reminded of a lost child who clings to the first passerby.
“Um, yeah, no problem. Can we do it over the phone?”
“I would rather not. I’m still in Cabourg for the moment, but I’m heading back to Paris this afternoon.”
“This afternoon is no problem!” Boizot said.
The big clock on the wall of the newspaper office displayed three on the dot when Claudio Boninsegna came in and sat down at Boizot’s desk. News was trickling in slowly that afternoon, not surprising considering it was August fifteenth. Apart from Censier, Drichon, and Boizot, the offices were pretty much deserted.
Boizot immediately led his visitor into the large conference room. Boninsegna, dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt, was still devastatingly handsome, but his face looked haggard. Head hung low, he followed Boizot into the room, sat down, and immediately unfolded a sheet of paper.
Boizot, intrigued, read the short note, looked up, and asked, “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have the slightest idea. I knew Lionel for just under two years. He was never very talkative about his past life, and I never really thought to ask.”
Boizot turned the sheet of paper over, but the other side was blank.
“Where did you find this?”
“In the bathroom, by the sink.”
“And you haven’t told the police about this note?”
Claudio nodded. “I preferred not to.”
Boizot didn’t understand. “Why show it to me then?”
“It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try.”
Boninsegna then spoke of the change in Lionel Perdiou’s attitude since the night of the infamous burglary in Batz. “At first, I suspected that he was cheating on me with that man, Héron. But Lionel swore on his mother’s grave he was not. Recently, he started hanging around with his old friend Lullier, one of the bigwigs at Palonnier. I’m pretty sure they were up to something shady. I appreciated the articles you wrote on the burglary and the interview you did with Lionel, and I thought that you might be interested in the note. I’m confident you’ll conduct a more effective investigation than the police, who truly couldn’t care less!”
Boninsegna looked at the floor as he spoke. At no time did his eyes meet Boizot’s, but the journalist felt in his gut that the man was telling the truth.
He smiled. “I am very touched by your show of confidence, but I don’t have the means to investigate something like this in the way police could. I mean, I’ll try. But clearly, whatever happened on June 17, 1993, was not something trivial. It had to have been something unusual to drive him to commit suicide twenty-one years later.”
The former pizza maker nodded. He seemed worn out. Boizot questioned him about the circumstances of Perdiou’s death before letting him go and promised to do everything possible to unravel the mystery of the final message.
Chapter 34
Bent down over a sage plant that he was carefully trimming, Serge Tworkowski felt good. He had returned late the night before from his Parisian getaway, his head filled with Boizot’s revelations. Yet he’d had no trouble falling asleep and was in an excellent mood that morning as a result. In the kitchen, Anne-Marie was preparing a roast chicken for dinner later, the thought of which was already making him salivate.
He stood up slowly—now was not the time to put his back out—and proudly surveyed his little garden. In the morning sun, it looked beautiful with its perfectly straight rows, its lack of weeds, and its various green herbs. In the distance, he heard two Sunday cyclists ride by, conversing with each other by shouting.
His wife’s voice interrupted his reverie. “Serge, phone!”
Why did these rare moments of bliss always have to be ruined? He stretched his back a moment to prevent stiffness in his joints and called, “I’m coming!”
Anne-Marie was waiting for him at the French doors to the kitchen, his cell phone in hand.
“Who is it?” he asked before grabbing the phone.
“Madame Le Guen,” said his wife a little too curtly, betraying her annoyance at his work intruding on their day off. Tworkowski gave her a knowing look, signaling that he shared her sentiment, and then said, “Tworkowski speaking.”
“Good morning, captain, it’s Brigitte Le Guen. Have you heard about Lionel Perdiou’s suicide?”
“What?” roared Tworkowski.
At the other end, the judge was clearly delighted. “This death puts an end to the investigation,” she said, after recounting in detail everything she knew about Perdiou’s demise.
Tworkowski, who was pacing up and down the garden, stopped and cleared his throat before saying, “It’s still strange.”
He was hoping that Brigitte Le Guen would ask him what was strange, but she remained silent, waiting for him to continue.
Tworkowski then told her about his search of the Héron house and his interview with Boizot.
“If what he says is true, the
n it means that Perdiou lied to us,” said Tworkowski.
“Maybe, but maybe Boizot was mistaken. In any case, captain, the case will be closed. I just spoke to the prosecutor, who is in complete agreement.”
When Serge Tworkowski returned to the kitchen, his wife immediately noticed that his mood had darkened, but since the moment she’d heard the phone ring, she’d sworn that she would not let the intrusion spoil the day. She smiled, took the cell phone from his hands, gave him a peck on his unshaved cheek, and said cheerfully, “I think my Basque chicken will be succulent.”
Tworkowski looked at her affectionately. He was grateful that she knew the key to his heart. He smiled and said, “I think there’s still an excellent Madiran in the cellar—I’ll go see.”
As he walked downstairs, he remembered the advice his old friend Colemont had given him: don’t put too much thought into this case. In the end, this was a suicide that would make everyone happy, he told himself. No use in overthinking it.
Ernest Lullier had had exactly the same thought a few hours later. After diving in the blue waters of the Caribbean for an hour, he’d returned to the suite he had rented near Sainte-Anne. On the way, the receptionist had handed him an envelope. Inside, he discovered a terse message from José Léonard, asking Lullier to call him as soon as possible.
Surprised and worried, Lullier locked the door to the bungalow, then lay down on his bed and dialed José’s number. He looked at his watch: four o’clock where Lullier was; ten o’clock in France.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Hey, boss! You hear about Perdiou?”
Oddly, Lullier suddenly felt his throat tighten.
“No, what happened?”
Five minutes later, he hung up, completely reassured. All in all, the man’s death was convenient. There was no more risk of him screwing things up. He dialed the number to the front desk and ordered a bottle of champagne, relieved to be safe from any further mishaps.
Chapter 35
A knock on his door startled Boizot from his dream. He sat up feeling annoyed. It had taken him forever to fall asleep the night before.
“Dimitri, it’s almost eleven. The guests are coming at noon!” shouted his mother. Her tone of voice was familiar; it was the one she used when she wanted to express a mixture of exasperation and discouragement.
He muttered something incomprehensible—even to him. He had completely forgotten about the big family meal his parents had organized for Sunday. Once or twice a year, they loved to assemble their entire tribe for a blowout that lasted hours. The mere mention of one of these occasions usually made Boizot break into a cold sweat.
He sighed and reluctantly got out of bed. Fortunately, Sylvie would be there.
He knew that Simon and Anne-Catherine would talk about their recent trip to Tuscany. And that Stéphane would pretend to be interested in how their restaurant was doing.
Good old Stéphane Septidi. The man was barely forty-five but looked ten years older and was in a class of his own when it came to making boring conversations even more unbearable. Unfortunately, Boizot’s parents adored him. The beanpole had seduced them the first time Brigitte, Boizot’s younger sister, four years his junior, had brought him home. She’d still been a law student when Stéphane was cutting his teeth as a professor at the law school. The man specialized in property law. God only knew how he’d managed to seduce Brigitte.
Before she met him, she’d been the epitome of someone with a lust for life, carefree, always up for anything. Stéphane had managed in record time to turn her into a little housewife who raised her four children with the austere solemnity of a dowager.
They had lived in Tours for ten years, where Stéphane was a tenured professor at the University François Rabelais. The man was a right-winger—a far, far right-winger—and a practicing Catholic out of conviction and opportunism. Boizot hoped that working at a university that bore the name of that sacrilegious monk Rabelais was a torment for him. In reality, however, Boizot knew that Stéphane wasn’t smart enough to be troubled by that. He was far too busy, as he was also a municipal councilor, a member of the conservative party like Lionel Perdiou.
The party connection crossed Boizot’s mind as he was shaving: perhaps, for once, this family meal would not be as useless and annoying as he expected.
Brigitte, Stéphane, and their four children pulled up at noon on the dot. Among his many quirks, Boizot’s brother-in-law cultivated a rock-solid punctuality. Boizot always wondered how he consistently arrived right on time after traveling over 150 miles in his Renault Espace. Boizot had once asked Stéphane about this and had seen in his long, sorry face the beginnings of a smirk. “I dread being late,” he’d said. “I think punctuality is a necessary life skill, nothing less than the ritualized expression of an essential social bond combined with a form of tribute to those who await you.”
Thank goodness he never became a trial lawyer, Boizot had said to himself.
As usual, Stéphane was the first to appear at the door: he felt it was up to him to lead the troops. Brigitte followed, her tired old leather bag hanging from her shoulder. She hung onto that bag in a way that gave the impression that all her wealth was inside it. By her side, almost as drab as their parents, walked three boys and a girl. Pierre-André, Adrien, Ophélie, and Georges-Henri—veritable clones of their father—greeted “Grandpa” patiently at the door.
With the sun’s cooperation, they had cocktails in the garden. Just this once, Boizot arranged to sit next to Stéphane. “I heard you had an accident?” the man asked.
“Just a little attempted murder, same as everyone,” Boizot replied with a smile, immediately continuing to a different topic—no point antagonizing his brother-in-law with cheap humor.
Sylvie’s arrival allowed him to reorient the conversation while they waited for Simon and Anne-Catherine, who took great pride in being chronically late.
During the meal, Boizot found himself seated between his mother and Anne-Catherine. Opposite him, Sylvie sat between his father and Simon. He waited patiently, eager to take advantage of the fact that Stéphane had finished two glasses of wine and would be relaxed enough for Boizot to catch him off guard.
While the children played in the garden, Sylvie joined the women in the kitchen, where they were already attacking the dishes. Simon had left “to oxygenate himself a little” and his father dozed in a chair.
Boizot took the opportunity to swoop in. “So this summer in Batz-sur-Mer, I was briefly neighbors with Lionel Perdiou. Did you know him well?”
Stéphane, a little surprised by this unexpected question, evaded it. “You know, we ran into each other at party conventions, but he wasn’t really a friend. We didn’t run with the same crowds, if you know what I mean. That said, he was a great parliamentarian, very active.”
“And what do you think of his suicide?”
“What do you think I think? He had, let’s say, a very complicated love life.”
“That’s the least you could say,” conceded Boizot.
He had not heard Sylvie walk up, and he was surprised when she gently placed her hands on his shoulders. “Can I sit with you? I need some sun.”
Stéphane, always considerate, smiled at her and, pointing to a chaise longue, said, “Of course, by all means.”
Boizot kept at it. “He came to politics late in life, right?”
“He became a deputy when he was already well into his forties, yes, but he spent his time telling everyone that politics was his life’s passion.”
“He was a geologist, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he worked for a long time at Palonnier. Apparently, he was nearly fired from the company at one point.”
“Really?” said Boizot. “Why?”
“I don’t know all the details, but it was said that he had had a few . . . problems on a prospecting trip in Africa.”
“P
roblems related to his lifestyle?”
“Frankly, I don’t know, and I wouldn’t want to tell you any hearsay, but the matter seemed serious enough to threaten his career—I even heard a rumor of a man’s death. I’m telling you this only to illustrate Lionel Perdiou’s flexibility and ability to bounce back; not only was he not fired, he became the chairman of Palonnier. He was a very clever man.”
Night was beginning to fall over Vernouillet. All the guests had left, and the house had returned to its usual tranquility. In the living room, Boizot’s parents were watching a Sunday night film on the television. Boizot and Sylvie were outside, prolonging the evening, entwined on the swing in the garden.
“It’s funny,” said Boizot. “After spending four days here, I feel recovered. It is much quieter than Paris.”
“It’s nice like that, eh?”
Instead of answering, Boizot kissed her passionately, almost violently.
“Well,” he said, finally pulling away. “I’ll go get my bag, say good-bye to my parents, and it’s the Paris apartment or bust! You staying with me tonight?”
Sylvie nodded. “Before we go, there’s something I want to tell you. It’s been running through my head since your brother-in-law mentioned the problems Perdiou had in Africa.”
Surprised, Boizot listened without interrupting.
“I don’t know why, but what Stéphane said made me think of something: last year, at Jean-Mi’s funeral, I saw one of his old friends, a girl he had lived with long enough for my parents to think that they would get married. Her name is Nadine Lemeunier, I had met her a few times, and that day she mentioned something about a file that she had given Jean-Mi when they lived together. She wanted to get it back. I asked what was so important about the file, and she explained that it contained information about the death of a man in Africa, where her father was a doctor. It was her father who had put the file together, and she had somehow inherited it when he died. When she mentioned it to Jean-Mi, he was so interested that he kept the file—but I’ve never found any trace of it. It wasn’t in Jean-Mi’s apartment when we cleaned it out a few days after his death.”
Mortal Ambitions (A Dimitri Boizot Investigation Book 1) Page 20