Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark

by Sidney Sheldon

  “Well then, you’ll just have to get rid of it.”

  Lucille was horrified.

  “An abortion? What do you think I am, a monster?”

  “But, chérie, be practical.”

  “Jamais! Non, Didier. There is only one solution. You must marry me.”

  The Camus divorce was the talk of Cannes that year. A heavily pregnant Lucille Camus married her boy-toy lover, and for a few wonderful months, Didier was genuinely famous. But then the baby died, Jean Camus took the grief-wrecked Lucille back, and the ranks of the film community closed around them. For the next eight years, until Jean died, Didier Anjou couldn’t get so much as a laundry-detergent commercial in France. He was washed up at twenty-three.

  It wasn’t until he hit thirty that things finally started to look up. Didier married his second wife, Hélène Marceau, a beautiful, innocent heiress from Toulouse. Hélène was a virgin, unwilling to sleep with Didier until they were married. This suited Didier perfectly. He fucked around throughout their courtship, all the while looking forward to the day when he would take possession of Hélène’s tight chatte and fat bank balance. Who could ask for more?

  The wedding was a coup, the happiest day of Didier’s life. Until night fell and, alone at last in the marital bed, Didier discovered why his new bride had been so coy about sleeping with him. It appeared that poor Hélène had grotesquely deformed genitals, a secret she’d kept since birth. The whole innocent, scared-of-sex shtick had been a front, a ploy. The bitch had trapped him!

  The union was miserable from the start, yet Didier stayed with Hélène for five years. Naturally he cheated on her constantly, siphoning off every last franc of her fortune into privately produced movies, all of them star vehicles for himself. Hélène knew what her husband was up to, but loved him helplessly anyway. Didier had this effect on women. Each day Hélène prayed fervently that Didier would see the light and come to return her love, despite her unfortunate physical affliction. But it never happened. At thirty-five, famous for the second time in his life and rich for the first, Didier Anjou finally divorced Hélène Marceau. He was back on the market.

  Next came Pascale, another heiress who made Didier even richer and bore him two sons but took a regrettably inflexible view about his extramarital dalliances.

  One of these dalliances, Camille, became the fourth Madame Anjou the year Didier turned fifty. Thirty years his junior and stunningly beautiful, the top fashion model of her day, Camille reminded Didier of himself at her age. Physically perfect, selfish, ambitious, insatiable. It was a match made in heaven. But after three years of marriage, Camille slept with Didier’s teenage son, Luc. With Lucien Desforges’s help, Didier cut both of them off without a penny and vowed never to marry again.

  He retired to Saint-Tropez, where he became legendary for his vanity, in particular for the vast collection of toupees that he housed in a special dressing room at Villa Paradis, much to the amusement of the Russian hookers who regularly warmed his bed there. No one, least of all his lawyer, ever expected Didier Anjou to take another wife.

  But four months ago, out of the blue, the old roué had done just that, secretly marrying a Russian woman whom none of his friends had ever heard of, never mind met. Her name was Irina Minchenko, and the general assumption was that she was one of the hookers and had somehow managed to bewitch Didier into wedlock.

  The general assumption was wrong. In her midthirties, aristocratic and educated, Irina was wealthy in her own right. Even if she’d been poor, she was far too beautiful and smart to be a hooker. From the day they met, at a house party in Ramatouelle, Didier was besotted.

  He took his new bride to Tahiti for their honeymoon, to a secluded beachside cottage. For the first time in his life, Didier Anjou did not want the media to follow him. He told Lucien, by now a friend, “Irina is too exquisite to be shared with the world. Whenever I see someone so much as look at her, man or woman, I want to kill them. It’s crazy what she does to me!”

  Whatever Irina did to him, it’s over now, Lucien thought wryly, strolling around onto the villa’s private rear terrace. Just two weeks back from the honeymoon and Didier Anjou had called him, literally howling with rage and fury.

  “I want a divorce!” he’d screamed into the phone. “I want to fuck that bitch over, do you hear me? I won’t give her a goddamn penny!”

  That was last night. Hopefully Didier would be in a calmer mood this morning. It was too early for screaming.

  Unfortunately, when Lucien Desforges stepped through the French windows into the living room, the screams were deafening. But they weren’t Didier’s.

  They were his own.

  CHAPTER TEN

  DANNY MCGUIRE STARED AT MATT DALEY for a long time. Or rather, he stared into space for a long time. Matt’s crooked, genial, hopeful face just happened to be in the way.

  Of course, Danny knew about Didier Anjou’s murder. Like everybody else in France, he’d heard about it on the TV and read about it in the papers. Everyone from Le Monde to Le Figaro had published accounts of Anjou’s colorful romantic past and speculated as to which wronged husband or unpaid creditor might have ordered a hit on the elderly roué. But little had been written about the matinee idol’s latest wife, other than that she was Russian and was believed to have returned to her home country after the killing. Certainly Danny had heard nothing about a rape. He said as much to Matt Daley.

  “No official complaint was ever made,” Matt agreed. “But the blogs are alive with rumors that Mrs. Anjou was sexually assaulted by the killer, and that the guy who discovered the crime scene found the two of them tied up together. Problem is that, once again, the widow’s not around to ask. She’s gone.”

  “Yes, but only back home to Russia. She hasn’t vanished like the others.”

  Matt shrugged. “So the papers say. But who knows what the truth is. The police down there are so corrupt they make Chicago City Hall look like the Peace Corps.”

  Danny laughed. But it was a hollow laugh, one filled with foreboding. If Andrew Jakes’s killer really was still out there, repeating his awful crimes, then two more innocent men’s deaths were on Danny McGuire’s conscience. And what about the widows, the beautiful young women who had so conveniently disappeared just weeks after the killings? If they were dead too, he had even more blood on his hands. This man, this animal, would be getting more emboldened with every successful hit. Danny couldn’t just sit by and do nothing, let him strike again. On the other hand, what he’d told Matt Daley was true. It wasn’t just his reluctance to reopen old wounds and upset Céline that was holding him back. Without a local police force requesting Interpol’s help, officially Danny’s hands were tied.

  He told Matt Daley, “We can’t be sure it’s the same man. I don’t know about Sir Piers Henley, but Didier Anjou had a long line of people who wanted him dead.”

  “I agree we can’t be sure,” said Matt excitedly. “That’s why we need to reopen the case. Or start a new case, looking at all three murders together. There’s so much we don’t know. All I can tell you is I feel in my bones that this is one guy, one crazed fucking lunatic, and that we’re getting closer to him.”

  Danny McGuire thought, He’s using we already. He’s assuming I’m in.

  “I’ll make some calls to Scotland Yard and the local French police. See what I can dig up. But I can’t promise anything.”

  If Matt was disappointed, he hid it well. “I understand. I know it probably sounds weird, seeing as my father abandoned my sister and me and all. But I’d like to see justice done for him. I figured, if you had this information, maybe you could help.”

  “What will you do now?” asked Danny. “Are you heading back to the States?”

  Matt looked at him incredulously. “Back to the States? Hell no. Why would I do that? Like I told you, I think the killer’s here, in France. I’m on a flight to Nice at six o’clock tonight. I should be in Saint-Tropez by ten.”

  “Be careful,” Danny warned. “If the Maf
ia was involved in Didier Anjou’s death, you could be putting yourself in danger.”

  “You don’t really believe it was a Mafia hit? Come on. That’s just lazy detective work, the path of least resistance.”

  “I don’t know,” said Danny. “I don’t know anything concrete at this point and neither do you, Mr. Daley. Blog gossip does not a homicide case make. Plus, even if you’re right, and the three killings are all connected…”

  “…which they are. You know they are.”

  “…local French police don’t take kindly to outsiders trampling all over their turf and meddling in their investigations. Especially Americans.”

  Matt threw his arms out wide in a gesture of innocence. “Don’t worry about me.” He grinned. “I’ll charm them into submission.”

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, IN THE DEPARTURES lounge at the Lyon airport, Matt Daley tried out his charm on his wife.

  “I’ll be here another week, honey, ten days at most. I’ll bring you back some goodies from Chanel, how about that?’”

  “I don’t want goodies!” Raquel snarled. “I want our share of that money! Don’t you realize that every day you’re gone, those fucking charities are spending our cash? I can’t fight this alone, Matt, and I can’t fight it with no money. There’s a lawyers’ meeting on Tuesday in Beverly Hills. I expect you there.”

  “But, honey, this Anjou murder—”

  “Is not gonna pay our bills,” snapped Raquel. “I mean it, Matt. Either get home by Tuesday or don’t bother getting home at all.”

  ACROSS TOWN, AT HOME WITH CÉLINE, Danny McGuire lay sprawled out on the bed in postcoital bliss.

  “How did it go today?” his wife asked him. “Your meeting, with that American. Your stalker! What did he want in the end?”

  “Hmm? Oh, nothing.” Reaching out, Danny caressed her breast. “He’s some TV guy, making a documentary about the LAPD. It wasn’t important.”

  It was the first time Danny could ever remember lying to her. The guilt of it lay heavy in his stomach, like lead.

  That night, while Céline McGuire slept, Danny lay awake, thinking of Angela Jakes’s perfect face.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MATT DALEY STARED OUT OF THE window of Hélène Marceau’s medieval château feeling like he’d strayed into the pages of a fairy tale. It wasn’t just the house. It was the entire town of Eze, a ludicrously picturesque hilltop village less than twenty miles outside Monte Carlo. Walt Disney couldn’t have drawn the place better, with its turrets and steeples, its winding cobblestone streets, its gas lamps and flower boxes and quaint, higgledy-piggledy artisans’ cottages. Matt thought: It’s perfect. A ready-made movie set for Beauty and the Beast.

  Twenty years ago, Hélène Marceau would have made a wonderful Belle. Even now, in her fifties, Didier Anjou’s ex-wife number two was an attractive woman. With her slender figure, fine bone structure and sparkling emerald eyes, Hélène could still turn heads. Of course, everybody in Eze knew the rumors: that Hélène was déformée, down there. But it didn’t seem to have prevented her from landing two more husbands after Didier, both of them wealthy. The furniture in this room alone must be worth six figures.

  “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, Mr. Daley.” Hélène’s English was perfect. “But Didier and I hadn’t had any contact for many years. I read of his death in the newspaper, like everybody else.”

  Matt sighed. Much to Raquel’s fury, he had been in the South of France for nine days now and badly needed a lead. Any lead. He took a sip of his thé au citron. “Did you part on bad terms?”

  “Didier left me, Mr. Daley. Just as soon as he’d spent every centime I had to my name.”

  “I see. So you did part on bad terms.”

  Hélène smiled. “We divorced, Mr. Daley. It’s fair to say that, at the time, Didier was not at the top of my Christmas-card list. But I’m not a great bearer of grudges. Time passed. I remarried. I was sorry when I heard what had happened to Didier. Nobody deserves to end their life that way.”

  One glance at Hélène Marceau’s face told Matt that she was sincere. This woman did not wish Didier Anjou dead, and clearly had nothing to do with his murder. It was the same story with his other exes. Matt had tracked each of them down. Lucille Camus was now a frail octogenarian, barely able to remember her own name, still less plot a murder of a man she hadn’t seen in decades. Pascale Anjou had remarried a Greek property tycoon and was far too rich to care. Camille, the fourth Madame Anjou, still lived happily with Luc, Didier’s estranged son, on a farm in the Pyrenees. She sounded genuinely upset when Matt contacted her to ask about Didier’s murder.

  Not that Matt had ever had much faith in the “hell hath no fury…” theory, which seemed as flimsy to him as the Mafia link that the police were so keen to pursue. He was sure that the same man who killed his father and Sir Piers Henley had done away with Didier Anjou. But Danny McGuire was right. They needed more than conjecture to build a criminal case, or even to make a half-decent documentary. Matt had to explore every angle.

  Of course, the one ex he really did want to talk to still eluded him. The police claimed that Irina Anjou had returned home to Russia, as she was entitled to do after giving her witness statement. But no one seemed to know where, exactly, she had gone, who her family was or, indeed, anything about her at all. All Matt’s inquiries about Irina had been met by bored Gallic shrugs from the Saint-Tropez police, and few locals seemed ever to have met her. Only one man was willing to talk to Matt about Irina Anjou. Taking his leave of Hélène, Matt Daley set off to meet him.

  SET IN THE VERY HEART OF Saint-Tropez’s bustling harbor, Café Le Gorille was the place to see and be seen. Sipping your morning coffee as the superyachts sailed in, ogling the glamorous occupants as they emerged on deck in their Cavalli silk shirts and Eres bikinis, you could almost imagine you were one of their number. Privileged. Golden. Untouchable. And all for the price of a café au lait and an hour sitting on the rather uncomfortable wicker chairs that made the backs of one’s thighs look like you’d sat on a waffle iron.

  Lucien Desforges recognized Matt Daley instantly. Not because they had met before, but because Matt had that earnest, trusting, idiotic look common to untraveled Americans. How odd, Lucien thought, that a nation of people so generally loathed abroad should have such unparalleled faith in their own likability.

  “Mr. Daley.”

  “Monsieur Desforges. Thanks for seeing me.”

  Lucien Desforges had thought twice about agreeing to today’s meeting. He’d had nothing to do with the police since they effectively ignored what he’d told them about Irina Anjou having been violated. “One crime at a time,” the moronic detective in charge had told Lucien, making no effort to record the details of his statement. If the lady declined to report it—and apparently she had—the rape did not officially exist. Less hassle, less paperwork, and everyone was happy.

  Everyone except Lucien Desforges, who still had nightmares about the things he’d seen at Villa Paradis that awful morning. The blood everywhere, on the walls, the carpet, the couches. The horrific wounds to Didier’s neck and face. Irina, naked and bruised, trussed together with her husband’s tattered corpse. Truth be told, he no longer wanted to talk about it, not with this persistent young American, not with anyone. But in the end curiosity got the better of him. Matt Daley claimed that his father had been killed in the same sadistic fashion as poor Didier. There had been a rape in that case too, and Daley seemed convinced that there was a link between the two killings. So convinced that he had given up his job and traveled halfway across the world to pursue it.

  “I don’t know how much help I can be,” Lucien confessed.

  Matt said, “Well, you can’t be any less help than the cops, that’s for sure. Those guys take ‘not interested’ to a whole new level.”

  Lucien Desforges’s face hardened. “They failed in this case. The killer is gone and they know nothing. We French do not like to be reminded of failure. Especially by Americans. How
can I help you?”

  Matt pulled out a pen and notepad. Like most writers, he carried a pen and pad everywhere, in case he saw or heard something funny he could use as material. Investigating a murder wasn’t exactly like writing a sitcom, but it still required a scrupulous attention to detail.

  “I want to know about Irina.”

  “What do you want to know? I told the police that she was raped. The poor thing had bruises all over her thighs and breasts and choke marks round her neck. She was hysterical when I found her. But nobody gives a shit.”

  “I do,” said Matt. “I need to know more about who she was. Who she is. They were planning to get divorced, right?”

  Desforges nodded.

  “How bad were things between the two of them?”

  “Bad enough, I guess.”

  “What I mean is, none of Didier’s other exes wanted him dead. But did Irina?”

  Lucien Desforges took a sip of his coffee. “I am a divorce lawyer, Mr. Daley. In my experience most women want their husband dead at one time or another. However, I can tell you one thing with certainty. There is no way that Irina Anjou had anything to do with Didier’s murder. The rape…what she suffered…” He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge the memory. “This man, this animal, he is not normal. His is fou, crazy. Détraqué.”

  Matt noticed the blood rushing to the lawyer’s face and waited for him to regain his composure.

  “Didier wanted to get out of the marriage. That’s why I was going to the villa that day, to discuss a divorce. He was furious with Irina about something, but I never found out what it was.”

  “Do you know anything about her background?”

  Lucien Desforges shook his head. “Not really. She was Russian, new to the area. I never met her until that day. The marriage surprised everyone. But I understand she was wealthy in her own right. She had no need of Didier’s money. Which is not to say that others didn’t. Didier Anjou kept some pretty shady company right to the end of his life. He was ‘friendly’ with a number of senior Mafia figures in Marseille.”