Mortal Ambitions (A Dimitri Boizot Investigation Book 1) Read online

  ALSO BY PATRICK PHILIPPART:

  Return to Combergueil

  (A Dimitri Boizot Investigation)

  Disappearance

  (A Dimitri Boizot Investigation)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2013 Patrick Philippart

  Translation copyright © 2014 Patrick F. Brown

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Mortelles Ambitions by the author in France. Translated from French by Patrick F. Brown.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle.

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477820476

  ISBN-10: 1477820477

  Cover design by David Drummond

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014912679

  To Florence and Bozena

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Prologue

  The phone rang for the fourth time.

  “Pick up!” he grumbled.

  He looked at his watch—it was eleven o’clock on the dot—and shivered in the cool nighttime air. He was sitting on a bench on Boulevard Darlu, close enough to the Atlantic Ocean that he could hear the crash of the waves. During the daytime, the beach was the main draw of this resort town on the coast of Brittany. At night, there were other attractions. A few dozen yards away from where he sat, the lights of Casino de la Baule glittered like candles on a birthday cake. He listened grimly as the phone continued to ring. Finally, someone picked up.

  “Talk to me,” said a man’s voice.

  His heart was pounding. A couple strolled past him on a late-night dog walk, Labrador in tow. He took a deep breath to steady his voice.

  “Everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine. You?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “OK, then. Give me a call back at one o’clock, as we planned. Ciao!”

  “Ciao!”

  He stuffed his cell phone into the pocket of his jeans and watched a cop car cruise down the boulevard. Police were all over the place in this town. It wasn’t that surprising. There was no shortage of wealthy people to protect.

  Not that he was one of them. He was always hard up for cash, not because he was dumb; he just hadn’t made the best choices. Or, he sometimes thought, maybe he hadn’t had any real choices.

  He gazed again at the view. Stunning. He hadn’t spent much time in Brittany when the weather was clear; on his previous visits, the region had lived up to its reputation for having gloomy skies and frequent rain. He felt his pulse return to normal now that the phone call was behind him. Soon, this would all be over. In two hours, when the deal was done, he was going to have so much money that any vacation spot would be within reach—the Seychelles, Mauritius, or perhaps Réunion. He’d be able to indulge his every whim. He stretched his legs and heaved a great sigh. Who knew where he’d end up? The thousands of tiny lights twinkling in the distance seemed like an invitation to travel. A few feet away from him, the moped was parked and ready for him to make a break for it.

  A million euros. It was crazy.

  True, he would get only three hundred thousand, unless he ran off with the million by himself. But that was risky and would draw attention. No, he’d planned to stick with three hundred thousand: he’d get his freedom and be left alone. If he went for the million, he would get his freedom, maybe, but he’d also be in for a whole lot of trouble, that was for sure.

  And he didn’t want any more trouble. All of a sudden, he shivered; it seemed that the wind had just picked up. A little farther away, a group of kids out having a good time were shouting things he couldn’t quite catch.

  OK, time to get going.

  Chapter 1

  A bang startled Dimitri Boizot from his half sleep. He’d been slumped in one of the lousy plastic chairs on the patio—they were about as comfortable as pews, only less sturdy—when the loud noise roused him. He shook his head to clear it, trying to decide whether the sound might have been a gunshot.

  It was the middle of the night and too dark to see, but he glanced around the garden anyway. Everything seemed quiet. The relentless roar of the ocean crashing against the rocks on the other side of the road, about a hundred yards from the villa, was the only sound he could hear.

  Boizot looked at his watch: 1:14 a.m. He’d been dozing for more than an hour, trying to catch up on the sleep that kept eluding him for longer periods each night.

  That morning, he’d put Claude and Mireille on the TGV high-speed train to Paris. He had hugged them a little too tightly before their departure. Claude, his eldest child, had petulantly pulled himself away from the embrace in the type of move that Boizot associated with spoiled brats, not his own children.

  “Give mom a hug for me!” Boizot had shouted as he’d waved good-bye. Neither of his children had replied, although Mireille had waved once more. He had quickly turned away so they would not see the tears streaming from his eyes. It was a major weakness of his, his tendency to cry at the drop of a hat, yet it was an embarrassing habit he couldn’t seem to break. At least most of the time, he managed to hide it somehow.

  How old did one have to be to be considered a definitive loser? He’d tried to fight off the malaise. Forty-two isn’t old, he’d told himself as he’d poured his first glass of wine. But once the bottle of Bourgueil was empty, his fleeting self-confidence had abandoned him as he’d climbed the stairs to bed.

  He’d collapsed onto the mattress, but dark and disjointed thoughts had kept him awake despite his exhaustion. Finally, sick of his own ruminations, he’d gotten up to go smoke on the patio. The coolness of the night had gradually restored his sense of calm.

  Now, though, his hard-won tranquility had been interrupted by the sudden noise. He sat up straight, listening for another gunshot-like sound, but none came. H
e tried to breathe regularly, scratched the top of his nearly bald skull, and yawned. Maybe it had been fireworks. Maybe it was time to go back to bed.

  As he headed inside and locked the French doors behind him, he thought he heard another bang. He checked his watch: 1:24 a.m. Shit! He paused, listening, but heard nothing else.

  Three minutes later, he’d made it upstairs to his bed and was snoring.

  At first, he thought he was dreaming, but then the wail of the siren became so loud that he felt forced to sit up. His pulse started racing. The digital alarm clock read 2:12 a.m. Suddenly, the siren stopped.

  Boizot’s thoughts were confused, but he felt propelled to investigate. Perhaps the noises he’d heard had been gunshots? He jammed his feet into his sneakers, dying to find out what had happened. He opened the gate to the street and saw a cop car parked outside the neighbor’s house.

  He shivered as he realized that he was wearing just a T-shirt and boxers, and returned inside to get dressed. As Boizot pulled on pants and a sweater, he ignored the inner voice telling him to go back to bed and avoid any involvement. There was no way he was going to ignore this opportunity. The floodlights of the police car on the street had the same effect on him as a porch light had on a moth. The prospect of getting a scoop was irresistible.

  When he walked out of the house fully dressed a couple minutes later, he headed straight for the police car. If he could pick up a small news item while on vacation, why not? These types of stories were the kind he did best. Maybe that was why he had been stuck writing puff pieces for L’Actualité for the last twenty years. He suspected that his superiors thought he wasn’t capable of doing anything else.

  The house next door was yellow brick, and as Boizot approached, he spotted a police officer standing on the porch. Their eyes met in silence. Cops were used to curious onlookers, even at two in the morning.

  The front garden of the house was harshly lit by two bright halogen spotlights. Lights had been turned on inside, and on the first floor, to the right of the front door, Boizot could make out the silhouettes of a few people.

  At that moment, a dark Peugeot sedan pulled up behind the cop car, and a man emerged from the driver’s side. He was small and thin with shaggy gray hair and a bushy mustache. He pulled a suitcase from the trunk and walked straight toward the house.

  Boizot cleared his throat. “Hi,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  The man did not bother to answer him and proceeded to walk up the gravel driveway.

  “Thank you,” Boizot said, annoyed at the brush-off. But he wasn’t surprised. He recognized the type. The guy was probably just one more small-town forensic examiner who bragged about his job during the daytime but complained when he had to get up in the middle of the night for work.

  And then Boizot smiled a little: a forensic examiner always meant murder. If there were serious injuries instead, wouldn’t there be an ambulance? He felt certain a homicide had been committed.

  He was going to find out more, and he hoped it would give him the chance to thumb his nose at his local colleagues—they’d be mortified if Boizot, a Parisian, beat them to a lead on their own turf.

  Maybe some domestic dispute had escalated to murder because of a fit of jealousy or a drunken rage? Either way, he thought, I don’t see Magnin putting it on the front page.

  He could have walked away then, but a kind of sixth sense told him that this was no ordinary crime.

  With the cop car and the Peugeot parked in front of the yellow brick house, the next two cars to arrive pulled up in front of Boizot’s place. Five people got out—two women and three men. The guys looked to be in their twenties and were sporting the standard cop uniform: jackets, jeans, and sneakers. In contrast, the two women wore professional-looking business suits. He guessed that showing a serious side was probably key to getting respect on the job.

  This time he introduced himself, directing his speech to the older of the two women.

  She definitely looked like the one in charge, and not just because she was taller than Boizot. Judging by her air of authority, he guessed that she was the juge d’instruction in the case, the one who would gather evidence, question witnesses, and handle the formal investigation. It was possible she already knew some details that could help him. He decided to try to be charming. After all, it never hurt to be nice to a judge.

  “Hello,” he said, hoping she could see his friendly smile in the darkness. “Dimitri Boizot from L’Actualité. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Seemingly caught off guard to discover someone from the press at the scene already, the judge did not have the presence of mind to walk by him in silence.

  “We don’t know much yet,” she said. “Apparently, it was a burglary gone wrong.” The three young cops passed them on their way to the crime scene.

  The second woman, a miserable-looking skinny brunette in her thirties carrying a small brown leather briefcase, stood slightly behind. Boizot guessed she was a clerk for the judge.

  He ignored her and spoke to the judge. “Is there a victim?”

  She sighed to show her exasperation. “Yes, it seems that a burglar was shot by a homeowner in self-defense, according to what I have been told. But that still needs to be confirmed, of course. Good evening, monsieur.”

  She turned and walked into the garden, the skinny brunette following like a shadow.

  Boizot inspected the gate, which was illuminated by the spotlights in the garden and the light streaming out of the windows. There was a house number but no indication of who lived there. Just a mailbox and an intercom.

  Since just hanging around was useless, he went back to the house that Dédé had so kindly lent him. In the yard, he tiptoed over to the privet hedge, which, at a good six feet high, separated the two houses.

  He crouched down and tried to make out something through the thick greenery, but it was no use. Dédé could have at least had his hedge trimmed.

  But Boizot didn’t think there was much to see anyway. From what he could tell so far, everything had happened inside.

  Just my luck, he thought, as he stood.

  Then he heard a door open and realized from the sound of voices that two people had just entered the yard on the opposite side of the hedge.

  “So you think the intruder entered your home through the back door?”

  In the nighttime quiet, the man’s voice boomed, his tone at once strong and stern. Given the situation, Boizot could almost believe that the speaker was the fictional Parisian detective made famous in all those bestselling novels, Inspector Maigret. He pictured the speaker exactly like him: massive and stolid, close to retirement, entrenched in his ways.

  “That’s my guess,” came the reply. This voice also belonged to a man, but its tone was higher in pitch and a bit affected. “The entrance gate was closed, and it is probably easier to get in through the back.”

  “The alarm doesn’t work?”

  “To be honest, when I’m here, I don’t set it. I never thought thieves would be interested in this house.”

  Even though he was invisible in the darkness and separated from them by the hedge, Boizot crouched down. It felt like the two men were talking right next to him, and he worried they might see him through the foliage.

  “What’s behind the garden?”

  “It borders Dr. Prédault’s house,” the man said. “The properties are separated by an old wire fence that we had planned to replace this fall.”

  At that point, Boizot heard a third voice—this time, a woman’s—coming from inside the house. “Monsieur Perdiou, could you come here, please?”

  “Her honor has no doubt discovered a major clue,” quipped the man with the strong, stern voice, clearly amused. Then he added, “Go ahead, Monsieur Perdiou, don’t make her wait. I’m going to take a look at the fence.”

  Perdiou: the name sounded familiar to Boizo
t. But for the time being, he was incapable of remembering where he had heard it before.

  He listened to the door slam behind Perdiou as the man walked inside, and he realized there was no point in continuing to hide behind the hedge.

  He went inside the house, climbed the stairs, grabbed his pack of cigarettes from the bedroom, and walked back down to the patio. That way, he would have a ringside seat. As he smoked, he tried to remember why the name Perdiou sounded so familiar. It wasn’t a very common name, yet he couldn’t remember for the life of him where he’d heard it before.

  Next door, Maigret completed his inspection of the garden and returned inside, slamming the door behind him.

  You’ll be back, Boizot thought, stubbing out his cigarette.

  If the police weren’t imbeciles, he would soon be receiving a visit from them. Maybe not now, in the middle of the night, but surely first thing in the morning.

  What would he say to them? That he had heard a shot at 1:14 a.m. and then a second shot ten minutes later? Or would he keep that to himself? Maybe he could just act confused and get them to tell him their theories on what had happened.

  He decided quickly it would be better to find out the official version of the case first, before telling the cops what he knew. And besides, if he seemed to have details, they might want to question him. He had little desire to be cited as a witness in a case handled by Breton police, hours from Paris.

  Paris. He had to head back there in a few days, and he wasn’t very excited by the prospect.

  He heard a door opening at the neighboring house, then recognized the strong, stern voice he’d guessed belonged to Maigret.

  “At the back of the garden,” the man said. “To the right, see if you can find some usable stuff!” Boizot guessed he was talking to guys from the lab.

  The next person to speak was a woman, and he pegged her as the judge. She must have also stepped outside. “Monsieur Perdiou, do you often reside in Batz?”

  “This is an old family home, and I come as often as possible, on weekends for the most part. I got here yesterday. The parliamentary session recently ended, so I took the opportunity to relax here for a few days.”