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

Her beautiful face clouded over. “We don’t ’ave kids. It was me. I couldn’t.”

Inspector Drew blushed. “Oh. I’m sorry. I saw the bedrooms upstairs and I assumed …”

Tracey shrugged. “That’s all right. Why wouldn’t you assume? Was there any other questions?”

“Just one.”

She’d already been incredibly helpful, giving detailed descriptions of the stolen items of jewelry—Lady Henley knew a lot about jewelry, settings, carats, clarity, you name it—as well as of her attacker. He was masked at the time of the attack, so she never saw his face, but she described him as being of strong build, stocky, with a scar on the back of his left hand, a deep voice, and a “strange” accent she couldn’t quite place. Considering the ordeal she’d just been through, it was a lot to remember. She was certain she’d never met him before.

“This might be difficult,” Inspector Drew said gently, “but did your husband have any enemies? Anyone who might have borne a grudge toward him?”

Tracey laughed, a full, raucous, barmaid’s laugh, and Inspector Drew thought what fun she must have been to be married to. A few hours ago Sir Piers Henley must have considered himself one of the happiest men alive.

“Only a few thousand. My ’usband had more enemies than Hitler, Inspector.”

Inspector Drew frowned. “How so?”

“Piers was a rich man. Self-made. In the ’edge fund business, wasn’t he? Nobody likes a hedgie. Not the blokes who do up their kitchens, not their partners, not their competitors, not even their investors half the bloody time, no matter ’ow much money you make them. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, Inspector, and my Piers was a fuck-off Doberman with a mean set of teeth.” Tracey Henley said this with pride. “People hated him. And that’s just ’is fund. If you want to get into the personal stuff, there’s the bloke he gazumped to buy this place, the car dealer he never paid for the Aston ’cause he didn’t like the way he looked at me, everyone he blackballed at White’s—that’s a long list, I can tell you. Then there’s ’is ex-wife, ’is ex-mistress. His current mistress, for all I know.”

Inspector Drew found the idea that any man married to Tracey Henley would seek sexual pleasure elsewhere extremely hard to believe. According to her statement, she was thirty-two but she looked a decade younger.

“Piers had an army of enemies,” Tracey continued. “But he only had one real friend.”

“Oh? And who was that?”

“Me.”

For the first time that night, Tracey Henley gave way to tears.

CHAPTER EIGHT

DANNY MCGUIRE LOOKED UP FROM THE file in front of him as if he’d just seen a ghost. He’d been reading, in total silence, for the last twenty minutes.

“How did you hear about this case?”

Matt Daley shrugged. “I read about it online. I got interested in the Jakes case and I … well, I came across it. The Henley killing was a big deal in England. There was a lot of press at the time.”

“What exactly is your interest in the Jakes case, Mr. Daley?” Danny asked. “You never said in your e-mails.”

“I’m a writer. I’m fascinated by unanswered questions.”

Danny’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You’re a journalist?”

“No, no, no, a screenwriter. TV. Comedy, mostly.”

Danny looked suitably surprised. He nodded toward the file. “Not much to laugh about in here.”

“No,” Matt agreed. “But I also have a personal connection. Andrew Jakes was my father.”

Danny did a double take. Had Andrew Jakes had children? It took him a few moments to dredge up the memory. That’s right. There’d been a first wife, decades before he met Angela. One of the junior members of his team had gone to check out the lead but obviously thought it was nothing significant. Was there a kid? I guess there must have been.

“I never knew him,” Matt explained. “Jakes and my mother divorced when I was two. My stepfather adopted and raised me and my sister, Claire. But biologically, I’m a Jakes. Do you see any family resemblance?”

An image of Andrew Jakes’s almost severed, graying head lolling from his torso flashed across Danny’s mind. He shivered.

“Not really, no.”

“When I learned my father had been murdered, I got curious. And once I started reading up on the case, I was hooked.” He grinned. “You know how addictive it can be, an unsolved mystery.”

“I do,” Danny admitted. And how painful. This guy seems nice, but he’s so eager, like a Labrador with a stick. He wouldn’t look so happy if he’d seen the bloody carnage in that bedroom. The bodies trussed together. Jakes’s head hanging from his neck like a yo-yo on a string.

“When I read about the Henley case, I tried to get in touch with you, but that’s when I learned you’d left L.A. I tried Scotland Yard directly, but they weren’t too helpful. Didn’t want to talk to some crackpot American writer any more than the LAPD did.” Matt Daley smiled again, and Danny thought what a warm, open face he had. “You cops sure know how to close ranks when the shit hits the fan.”

That’s true, thought Danny, remembering his own years in the wilderness, begging for help finding Angela Jakes, before he joined Interpol. It felt like a lifetime ago now.

“Anyway, it took me awhile after that to track you down. I couldn’t believe it when I discovered you were at Interpol. That you were actually in a position to help me.”

Danny McGuire frowned. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I agree that the two cases have similarities. But for my division to get involved, for Interpol to authorize an IRT, we have to be approached by a member country’s police force directly.

Matt leaned forward excitedly. “We’re not talking about ‘similarities.’ These crimes are carbon copies. Both the murder victims were elderly, wealthy men, married to much younger wives. Both wives were raped and beaten. Both wives conveniently disappeared shortly after the attacks. Both estates wound up going to charity. No convictions. No leads.”

Danny McGuire felt his heart rate began to quicken.

“Even so,” he said lamely, clutching at straws. “It could be a coincidence.”

“Like hell it could. The guy even used the same knot on the rope he used to tie the victims together.”

A double half hitch. Danny McGuire put his head in his hands. This couldn’t be happening. Not after ten years.

“Look, I know you have procedures you have to follow,” said Matt Daley. “Protocol and all that. But he’s still out there, this maniac. Matter of fact,” he announced, playing his trump card, “he’s in France.”

“What do you mean?” Danny asked sharply. “How could you possibly know something like that?”

Matt Daley leaned back in his chair. “Two words for you,” he said confidently. “Didier Anjou.”

CHAPTER NINE

SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE 2005

LUCIEN DESFORGES SAUNTERED DOWN THE RUE Mirage with a spring in his step. Life, Lucien decided, was good. It was a gorgeous late spring day in Saint-Tropez with omens of summer everywhere. On each side of the road running from La Route des Plages down to the famous Club 55, bright pink blossoms were already bursting forth from the laurel bushes, pouring like floral fountains over the whitewashed walls of the houses. Lucien had often been struck by those whitewashed walls. It seemed incongruous to have such humble exteriors surrounding such lavish mansions, each one stuffed full of every luxury money could buy.

Lucien was on his way to one of those very mansions, one that many Tropeziens considered the grandest of them all: Villa Paradis.

Terrible name, thought Lucien. Talk about vulgar. But then what was one to expect from a former pop star and matinee idol, a street kid from Marseille who made fantastically, miraculously good? Certainly not good taste.

Villa Paradis was owned by one of Lucien’s clients. One of his best, most important, most consistently lucrative clients. True, he wasn’t always the easiest of clients. His continued association with the organized criminals he grew up with, two-bit Marseillais mafiosi with a taste for extortion, fraud and worse, had caused Lucien innumerable headaches over the years, as had his utter inability to keep it in his pants (or, if out of his pants, safely shrink-wrapped in Durex). But at the end of the day, Lucien Desforges was a divorce lawyer. And if there was one thing Villa Paradis’s owner knew how to do, expensively, publicly and repeatedly, it was get divorced.

Over his morning coffee in Le Gorille earlier, Lucien had laughed out loud when he realized that he had, in actual fact, forgotten how many divorces he had handled for this particular client. Was it four, or five? Would this one make five? Lucien had made so much money in fees from this man, he’d lost count. Que Dieu bénisse l’amour!