Sidney Sheldon’s Angel of the Dark: A gripping thriller full of suspense

Danny promised he would, but he had failed. The animal was still out there.

Gradually, however, Danny did move on. His marriage to Céline was supremely happy. Two months ago, when Danny got promoted to head up the entire IRT division, running twenty-eight global response teams for both crime and disaster assistance, it felt as if everything had come full circle since the nightmare of 420 Loma Vista and Andrew Jakes’s murder. Professionally as well as personally, Danny McGuire was finally at peace.

Then he got the first e-mail.

Matt Daley’s first message had been titled simply Andrew Jakes. Just seeing those two words on a screen made Danny McGuire’s blood run cold. Daley gave little away about his own background, saying merely that he was an “interested party” and that he had “new information” on the case that he wanted to discuss with Danny in person. Dismissing him as a crackpot, Danny didn’t reply. But the e-mails kept coming, then the phone calls to Danny’s office, at all times of the day and night. Finally, Danny responded, informing Mr. Daley that if he had any new information he should make it available to the LAPD homicide division. But Daley wouldn’t be fobbed off. Insisting that he had to talk to him personally, Matt Daley announced that he was flying to Lyon next week and that he “wouldn’t leave” until Danny had agreed to see him.

Now, true to his word, he was here. Mathilde, Danny’s excellent secretary, had called an hour ago. A “blond American gentleman” was sitting outside Danny’s office, claiming he had an appointment and that it was urgent. What did Danny want her to do?

I want you to send him away. I want you to tell him to stop reminding me about Angela Jakes and to get the hell out of my life.

“Tell him I’m on my way in. But I don’t have long. He’ll have to make it quick.”

“MR. DALEY.” THERE WAS NO WARMTH in Danny McGuire’s tone. “You’d better come in.”

McGuire’s office was large and comfortable. Matt knew that the former detective had done well for himself since he left the LAPD, but he was surprised to find just how well. Photographs of a stunning, redheaded young woman were everywhere.

Matt picked one of them up idly. “Your wife?”

McGuire nodded curtly.

“She’s very beautiful.”

“I know. And she’s at home right now, waiting for me.” Danny glared at him. “What can I do for you, Mr. Daley?”

Matt’s heart rate quickened. So much for small talk. He took a deep breath and said, “You can reopen the investigation into Andrew Jakes’s murder.”

Danny frowned. “And why would I want to do that?”

“Because there’s new evidence.”

“Like I told you in my e-mail, Mr. Daley, if you have relevant evidence you should report it to the L.A. police. This case is no longer my business, or within my jurisdiction.”

“You’re Interpol,” said Matt reasonably. “The whole world’s within your jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Danny McGuire muttered.

“Well, I think it is.” Matt Daley leaned forward, fixing Danny with a gimlet stare. He was as stubborn in person as he had been on the telephone. “The LAPD doesn’t give a shit. They closed the case and gave up. That’s why you quit.”

Danny said nothing. He couldn’t argue with that.

Matt Daley’s next words turned his blood to ice.

“What if I told you there’d been another murder?”

Danny McGuire forced himself to sound calm. “There are a lot of murders, Mr. Daley. All over the world, every hour of every day. We humans are a violent bunch.”

“Not like this.” Reaching into his briefcase, Matt Daley pulled out a thick paper file and slammed it down on Danny’s desk. “Same exact MO. Old man violently slaughtered, young wife raped, leaves all the money to charity, then disappears.”

Danny McGuire’s mouth went dry. His hands shook as he touched the file. Could it be true? After all this time, had the animal struck again?

“Where?” The word was barely a whisper.

“London. Five years ago. The victim’s name was Piers Henley.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

LONDON 2001

CHESTER SQUARE IS SITUATED IN THE heart of Belgravia, behind Eaton Square and just off fashionable Elizabeth Street. Its classic, white-stucco-fronted houses are arranged around a charming, private garden. In the corner of the square, St. Mark’s Church nestles serenely beneath a large horse chestnut tree, its ancient brass bells pealing on the hour, conveniently saving the square’s residents the trouble of glancing at their Patek Philippe watches. From the street, the homes on Chester Square look large and comfortable.

They aren’t.

They are enormous and utterly palatial.

It’s an oft-repeated cliché in Belgravia that no Englishman could afford to live in Chester Square. Like most clichés, it is true. Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch owner of Chelsea football club, owned a house there, before he ran off with his young mistress and left the property to his wife. Over the years, Mrs. Abramovich’s neighbors included two Hollywood film stars, a French soccer hero, the Swiss founder of Europe’s largest hedge fund, a Greek prince and an Indian software tycoon. The rest of the houses on the square were owned, without exception, by American investment bankers.

Until the day that one of those American investment bankers, distraught over the collapse of his investments, put a rare Bersa Thunder pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. His heirs sold the house to a British baronet. And so it was that Sir Piers Henley became the first Englishman to own a house in Chester Square for over twenty-five years.

He was also the first person to be murdered there.

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR WILLARD DREW OF SCOTLAND Yard handed the woman a cup of sweet tea and tried not to stare at her full, sensual lips as she sipped the steaming cup. Beneath her half-open bathrobe, blood splatters were still clearly visible on her pale, lightly freckled thighs. The rape had been particularly violent. But not as violent as the murder.

While Inspector Drew interviewed the woman downstairs, up in the bedroom his men were scraping her husband’s brain tissue out of the Persian carpet. The master-bedroom walls looked like a freshly painted Jackson Pollock. An explosion of blood, of rage, of animal madness had taken place in that room, the likes of which Detective Inspector Drew had never seen before. There was only one word for it: carnage.

Inspector Drew said, “We can do this later, ma’am, if it’s too much for you right now. Perhaps when you’ve recovered from the shock?”

“I will never recover, Inspector. We’d better do it now.”

She looked directly at him when she spoke, which Inspector Drew found disconcerting. Beautiful was the wrong word for this petite redhead. She was sexy. Painfully sexy. She was creamy skin and velvet softness and quivering, vulnerable femininity, every inch a lady. The only incongruous note about her was her voice. Beneath her four-hundred-dollar Frette bathrobe, this woman was cockney to the bone.

Inspector Drew said, “If you’re sure you’re up to it, we could start by verifying some basic details.”

“I’m up to it.”

“The deceased’s full name?”

Lady Tracey Henley took a deep breath. “Piers … William … Arthur … Gunning Henley.”

PIERS WILLIAM ARTHUR GUNNING HENLEY, THE only son of the late Sir Reginald Henley, baronet, was born into modest, landed wealth.

By his thirtieth birthday, he was one of the richest men in England.

Never particularly successful at school—his housemaster at Eton had accurately described him as “a charming time-waster”—Piers had an instinctive gift for business. In particular, he possessed that rare alchemy that enabled him to sense exactly when a struggling company was at its nadir, if it would bounce back, when, and how far. He bought his first failing business, a small provincial brokerage in Norfolk, at the age of twenty-two. Everybody, including his father, thought he was crazy. When Piers sold the business six years later, they had offices in London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Paris and had reported pretax profits for that year of twenty-eight million pounds.

It was a small success for Piers Henley, but an important one. It taught him to trust his instincts. It also increased his appetite for risk. Calculated risk. Over the next thirty-five years, Piers bought and sold more than fifteen businesses and held on to two: his hedge fund, Henley Investments, and Jassops, a chain of high-end jewelers whose brand Piers had totally revitalized till they were outperforming the likes of Asprey and Graff. He also acquired (and later divested himself of) a wife, Caroline, and two children; a daughter, Anna, with his wife, and a son, Sebastian, with his mistress. Both children and their respective mothers were provided with comfortable homes and generous allowances. But Piers had neither the time nor the inclination to pursue a family life. Nor was he remotely interested in conventional notions of romance.

At least not until his sixtieth birthday, when a chance encounter with a young woman named Tracey Stone changed his life forever.