Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark

by Sidney Sheldon

  Tracey Stone was in her late twenties, with short, spiky red hair, dark brown eyes and a skinny, boyish figure that looked quite preposterously sexy in her black-and-white maid’s get-up. She’s like a human matchstick, thought Piers, sent to light me up.

  And light him up Tracey did.

  When Tracey agreed to go on a date with Piers, her friends thought she was crazy.

  “He’s about a hundred and nine, Trace.”

  “And posh.”

  “With a cock like a burned cocktail sausage thanks to you.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  Piers’s friends were equally scandalized.

  “She’s younger than your daughter, old boy.”

  “She’s a waitress, Piers. And not even a good one.”

  “She’ll rob you blind.”

  Neither of them listened. Tracey and Piers knew their friends were wrong. Tracey wasn’t interested in Piers’s money. And Piers couldn’t have cared less if Tracey’s parents were as cockney as Bow Bells. She had switched on a part of him that he had believed long dead. As the burns on his groin slowly began to heal, all he could think about was going to bed with her.

  On their first date, Piers took Tracey to dinner at the Ivy. They roared with laughter through three delicious courses, but afterward Tracey hopped into a black cab before Piers could so much as give her a peck on the cheek.

  On the second date, they went to the theater. It was a mistake. Tracey was bored. Piers was bored. Another cab was hailed and Piers thought, I’ve lost her.

  The next morning at seven A.M., the doorbell rang at Piers’s flat on Cadogan Gardens. It was Tracey. She was carrying a suitcase.

  “I need to ask you summink,” she said bluntly. “Are you gay?”

  Piers rubbed his eyes blearily. “Am I…? What? No. I’m not gay. Why on earth would you think I was gay?”

  “You like the theater.”

  Piers laughed loudly. “That’s it? That’s your evidence?”

  “That and the fact you never try to shag me.”

  Piers looked at her incredulously. “Never try…? Good God, woman. You never let me within a mile of you. And by the way, for what it’s worth I don’t like the theater.”

  “Why’d you go there, then?”

  “I was trying to impress you.”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “Yes, I noticed. Tracey, my darling, I would like nothing more than to try to ‘shag’ you, as you so poetically put it. But you’ve never given me the chance.”

  Pushing past him into the hall, Tracey dropped her suitcase and closed the door behind her. “I’m giving you the chance now.”

  The lovemaking was like nothing Piers had ever experienced. Tracey was silken hair and soft flesh and pillowy breasts and wet, warm, delicious depths that craved him like no woman had ever craved him before. When it was over, he proposed to her immediately. Tracey laughed.

  “Don’t be such a tosser. I ain’t the marrying kind.”

  “Nor am I,” said Piers truthfully.

  “Then why’d you ask me? You must stop asking me to do things that you don’t even enjoy yourself. It’s a bad habit.”

  “I asked because I want you. And I always get what I want.”

  “Ha! Is that a fact? Well not this time, your lordship,” said Tracey defiantly. “I ain’t interested.”

  Piers couldn’t have loved her more if she’d been dipped in platinum.

  They married six weeks later.

  THE FIRST EIGHTEEN MONTHS OF THE Henleys’ marriage were blissfully happy. Piers went about his business as usual, and Tracey never complained about his long hours, or his habit of taking telephone calls in the middle of dinner, the way that other women he’d dated had. Piers had no idea how his wife occupied her time during the days. At first he’d assumed she went shopping, but as the monthly AmEx statements rolled in he saw that Tracey had spent almost nothing, despite having an unlimited platinum card and a generous cash allowance. Once he’d asked her, “What do you do when I’m at the office?”

  “I make porn films, Piers,” she replied, deadpan. “That’s Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesday’s armed robbery. Thursday’s me day off.”

  Piers grinned and thought, I’m the luckiest man on earth. He carried her up to bed.

  Tracey was the perfect sexual partner, always eager, always inventive, never demanding on the nights when he was too tired or stressed with work to screw her. The only cloud on the marital horizon was the fact that, according to Tracey, she could not have children.

  “Nothing doing in that department, I’m afraid. Me equipment’s broken,” she told him matter-of-factly.

  “Well, what part of your equipment?”

  “I dunno. All of it, I ’spect. Why? Aren’t you a bit old to be thinking about changing nappies, luv?”

  Piers laughed. “I won’t be changing them! Besides, you’re not old. Don’t you want a child of your own?”

  Tracey didn’t. But no amount of her repeating this message would make her husband believe her. Over the next year, Piers dragged his young wife to every fertility specialist on Harley Street, subjecting her to round after round of IVF, all to no avail. Determined to “think positive,” he bought a large family house in Belgravia and hired an interior decorator from Paris to design children’s rooms, one for a boy, one for a girl and one in neutral yellow.

  “What’s that for? In case I give birth to a rabbit or summink?” Tracey teased him.

  She remembered what he’d said to her the night he proposed. “I always get everything I want.” Unfortunately, it seemed that in Mother Nature, Sir Piers Henley had met his match.

  “YOUR CHILDREN.” DETECTIVE INSPECTOR WILLARD DREW tore his eyes away from Tracey’s breasts, enticingly encased in a peach lace La Perla bra. For such a slender woman, Lady Henley was remarkably well endowed and she did seem to be having enormous trouble keeping her bathrobe belted. “They’re away for the night?”

  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-w
ife, ’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!

  Keying the familiar code into the intercom on the gate, Lucien wondered how long he could draw out this latest marital parting of the ways. His client had only been married to this particular wife for a matter of months, so the case wouldn’t be as lucrative as some of those from the past. If only the old goat had fathered a child with her. Then we’d really be in business. But as the gates swung open and the crystal-blue Mediterranean twinkled before him like an azure dream, Lucien reminded himself never to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  The point was that Didier Anjou was getting divorced.

  Again!

  It was going to be a beautiful day.

  THE MARRIAGE HAD BEGUN SO WELL. Which was strange, given that all of Didier Anjou’s other marriages had begun so very, very badly.

  First there was Lucille. Ah, la belle Lucille! How he’d wanted her! How he’d pined! Didier was twenty at the time, and starring in his very first movie, Entre les draps (Between the Sheets), which was exactly where Didier longed to be with Lucille Camus. Lucille was forty-four, married, and played Didier’s mother in the movie. The director had begged her to take the role. He’d always had a soft spot for Lucille.

  It was probably why he’d married her.

  In 1951, Jean Camus was the most powerful man in French cinema. He was
a Parisian Walt Disney, an old-world Louis B. Mayer, a man who could make or break a young actor’s career with a nod of his shiny bald head or a twitch of his salt-and-pepper mustache. Jean Camus had personally cast Didier Anjou as the male lead in Entre les draps, plucking the handsome boy with the black hair and blacker eyes from utter obscurity and propelling him into a fantasy world of fame and fortune, of limousines and luxury…and Lucille.

  Looking back, decades later, Didier consoled himself with the fact that he’d never really had a choice. Lucille Camus was a goddess, her body a temple begging, no, demanding to be worshipped. Those swollen, matronly breasts, those obscenely full lips, always parted, always tempting, inviting…Didier Anjou could no more not seduce Lucille Camus than he could breathe through his elbows or swim through solid stone. Elle était une force de la nature!

  Of course, had he stopped at seduction, things might have worked out better than they had. Unfortunately, three weeks into their affair, Didier got Lucille pregnant.

  “I don’t see the problem.” A baffled Didier defended himself, dodging another hurled item of china that Lucille had propelled furiously onto a collision course with his skull. “Chérie, please. Just say it is Jean’s. Who’s to know?”

  “Everyone will know, you cretin, you imbecile!” Didier ducked as another plate narrowly missed his windpipe. “Jean’s infertile!”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. Oh.”