Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark

by Sidney Sheldon

  It really was too bad he was going to have to kill him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WE CANNOT WAIT UNTIL AFTER THE wedding. It’s out of the question. We have to strike now.”

  Rajit Kapiri, a senior officer in India’s elite IB (intelligence bureau) division, folded his arms across his chest, as if to indicate that the subject was closed. He was sitting in Interpol’s Mumbai field office across the table from Danny McGuire, whose body language was equally stubborn and uncompromising.

  “We can’t,” Danny repeated. “We must catch Azrael red-handed. It’s the only way to be sure of a conviction.”

  “But at what cost?” Kapiri spluttered. “Mr. Ishag’s life? I’m sorry, McGuire. I’m not going to sit by while you play Russian roulette with the life of one of Mumbai’s wealthiest and most prominent citizens.”

  Danny McGuire bit back his frustration. He couldn’t afford to alienate the IB officer. If Kapiri complained to Danny’s bosses at Interpol that the Azrael team was taking matters into its own hands and riding roughshod over local decision makers, Henri Frémeaux would disband the task force faster than you could say “spineless bureaucrat.” But Danny needed Rajit Kapiri’s cooperation for other reasons too. The IB had manpower, not to mention priceless local expertise when it came to intelligence gathering. It was they who’d provided the Azrael team with a shortlist of likely local targets—very wealthy, older, unmarried men based in Mumbai with no known family ties. Ironically David Ishag had only just made the cut, being so much younger than the other victims. But when it emerged that the electronics magnate had recently made sudden, unexpected wedding plans, and that his bride-to-be was a relative newcomer in town, McGuire’s surveillance team moved in. It wasn’t long before they’d tracked down Ishag’s fiancée, a woman calling herself Sarah Jane Hughes. Despite the lighter hair extensions and dowdy clothes, and the new identity as an Irish schoolteacher, the surveillance pictures showed that Sarah Jane bore an uncanny resemblance to Lisa Baring.

  “What if she kills him during the honeymoon?” Kapiri asked.

  “None of the attacks have happened during the honeymoon. They’ve all taken place in the victims’ own homes. She knows the territory there. Plus, let’s not forget that she’s not doing this alone. She needs her accomplice, and he doesn’t go on the honeymoons.”

  Rajit Kapiri still looked uncomfortable. A wedding and a honeymoon meant allowing the suspect out of his sight and jurisdiction, out of his control. Four prior police forces had made that mistake.

  Danny McGuire said, “I understand your anxiety. I share it, believe me. You think I’m not tempted to pick her up now?”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “I’ve told you why. Because this is our best chance, our only chance, to catch her red-handed, and to catch her accomplice too. If we move now, we’ll have her, but he’ll run.”

  The thing that bothered Danny most about the surveillance operation on Sarah Jane Hughes was that so far they had yet to make any sightings of a third man. If Frankie Mancini/Lyle Renalto was in Mumbai, he was lying very low.

  “We’ll track them on their honeymoon every step of the way. Remember we have a global network of agents. This is what we do.”

  “Humph.” Rajit Kapiri did not sound reassured.

  “As soon as they’re back in India, we’ll go to Mr. Ishag together and put him in the picture. Nothing will be done without his consent. If he declines to help us, you can arrest Sarah Jane then. Of course,” Danny added slyly, “she won’t actually have committed any crime on Indian soil at that point. Nothing you can prove anyway. You’d have to extradite her, probably to Hong Kong, so the Chinese authorities would get all the glory. But that would be your call.”

  Rajit Kapiri’s eyes narrowed. He knew he was being manipulated and he didn’t like it. On the other hand, if anything did go wrong during Mr. Ishag’s honeymoon, he had a formal record of today’s meeting and could lay the blame squarely at Interpol’s door.

  “Fine,” he said. “But I want to be kept informed of their movements the entire time they’re away.”

  “You will be. You have my word.” Danny extended his hand across the table. Grudgingly the Indian shook it. “I do have one other request. Our boy may well come out of the woodwork while the couple themselves are gone. I don’t have enough men to watch Ishag’s house and office as well as Sarah Jane’s school and apartment twenty-four/seven. Do you think you could help us out with that?”

  The American had the cheek of the devil. But even Rajit Kapiri had to admire his chutzpah.

  “I’ll see what I can do, Assistant Director McGuire. You just focus on keeping David Ishag in one piece.”

  LESS THAN FIVE MILES FROM THE building where the Azrael team was meeting, a woman stared at her naked image in the mirror.

  She ran her long fingers over each of her limbs, caressing the scars and bruises. They were the only parts of herself that felt familiar, that felt real. On her face she traced the faint signs of middle age that had begun to plague her in recent months: the fan of lines around the eyes and lips, the deepening of the purple shadows beneath her eyes, the more pronounced grooves running downward from the corners of her nose. She felt like crying. Not because she was getting older. But because the face was the face of a stranger.

  She felt like crying, but she couldn’t, she mustn’t. She had to stay strong for her sister. Her sister needed her. The woman clung to that need desperately, like a newborn monkey clinging to its mother. It was literally all she had to live for.

  “Why so sad?”

  The man walked up behind her, kissing her neck and shoulders. The gesture should have been tender, but it was not. It was possessive. Chilling. She shivered.

  “I’m fine. Just tired.”

  “Try to sleep, angel.”

  She had changed so much since they first met, but he had barely altered, inside or out. Behind her in the mirror he was still dazzling, his beauty as constant as the sun, as inescapable as death. A few months ago she had dreamed of escape. Now she knew how foolish that had been. Now she hoped only for her sister.

  One day soon, he had promised, her sister would be free.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  GOOD MORNING, MR. ISHAG. WELCOME BACK!”

  David Ishag smiled at his secretary. “Thank you, Sasha. It’s good to be back.”

  Oddly, it was good to be back. As perfect as his life was right now, David Ishag was ready for a return to something like normality.

  His honeymoon with Sarah Jane had been utterly magical. After an intimate, very private wedding service at the Catholic chaplaincy on Vidyanagara—only David’s best man, Kavi, and Sarah Jane’s colleague Rachel had attended—the happy couple flew to England to break the news to David’s elderly mother before jetting off on a grand European tour.

  “Do you think she’ll ever get over it?”

  Sarah Jane turned to David as they were touring St. Mark’s cathedral in Venice.

  “Who? Get over what? You must stop being so cryptic, my darling. I feel as if I’ve married a Times crossword setter.”

  “Your mother. Do you think she’ll ever get over you marrying a Catholic? And one so far beneath you too?”

  David stopped, cupping Sarah Jane’s perfect angel’s face in his hands. “Beneath me? You’re so far above me I get vertigo just looking at you.” He kissed her, then staggered backward, clutching at his head. “See? I’m dizzy already.”

  Sarah Jane giggled. “Idiot.”

  David Ishag had never been one to play the fool, or to go gaga over a woman. But he was a fool for his new wife and he wanted the world to know it. He took Sarah Jane to the finest hotels in the most romantic cities—the Georges V in Paris, the Hassler in Rome, the Dorchester in London, the Danieli in Venice. He made love to her in penthouse suites, on his newly refurbished Learjet and on the deck of his superyacht, Clotilde, as they cruised the Mediterranean together. But as joyous as the trip was, coming home to Mumbai was equall
y special, because it marked the start of their real life together.

  David had expected them to start trying for a baby right away. Sarah Jane was over forty, so they didn’t have time to waste, but surprisingly she was hesitant, insisting on going straight back to work at her school and taking things “day by day.” While David adored her independent spirit, and the fact that clearly her head had not been turned by his immense wealth, part of him wished he could lock her up in his castle and keep her all for himself.

  “You need to get back to your other love: work,” Sarah Jane told him. As usual, she was right. Walking into Ishag Electronics offices this morning David had felt a renewed fervor and sense of purpose. He had the energy of a teenager again, which could only mean better times ahead for the business.

  I should have gotten married years ago.

  “So,” he asked his secretary, “what’s on the agenda?”

  As ever, his schedule was packed. After an hour to respond to the most pressing of his thousands of new e-mails, David had a board meeting at nine, a business development presentation at ten fifteen, lunch with the CEO of Zenon Technology, one of Ishag Electronics’ clients, at one, then an afternoon reviewing new product sales figures with his head of components, Johnathan Wray. A board meeting at the end of the day meant David would be lucky if he got home to Sarah Jane before eight o’clock that night.

  Sitting down at his desk, he turned on his computer and immediately buzzed Sasha again.

  “Book me a table for two at Jamavar for eight thirty tonight. Something secluded, by the fire, if they can do it.”

  “Yes, Mr. Ishag. By the way, there’s a gentleman here to see you.”

  “There is? Who?”

  “He won’t give me his name and he’s not on your schedule.” There was no mistaking the disapproval in Sasha’s voice. “I’ve asked him to leave, but he refuses. He says he must see you in person. Shall I call security?”

  David hesitated. A mystery! He’d had a feeling today was going to be interesting. Since he married Sarah Jane—actually, since the day he met her—his life had become one long series of unexpected events. He hadn’t realized quite how dull it had been before.

  “No, that’s all right. The e-mails can wait a few minutes. Send him in.”

  A few moments later, David Ishag’s office door opened. He stood up, smiling broadly.

  “Hello there. I’m David. And you are?”

  The smile died on his lips when he saw the gun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU want?”

  Fear coursed through David Ishag’s body. A year ago, the idea of death wouldn’t have fazed him. If it was his time, it was his time. But now that he had Sarah Jane, everything was different. The thought of being torn away from her so soon after they’d found each other filled him with utter terror.

  The pistol protruded from the man’s inside jacket pocket. He reached for it. David closed his eyes, bracing himself for the shot. Instead, he heard a polite American voice asking him, “Are you all right, Mr. Ishag? You don’t look well.”

  David opened his eyes. The man was holding up an Interpol badge and an ID card. They must have been in the same pocket as the gun.

  The relief was so overpowering David felt nauseous. He clutched at the desk. “Jesus Christ. You almost gave me a heart attack. Why didn’t you say you were a cop?”

  Danny McGuire looked perplexed. “I didn’t have much of a chance.”

  David sank back into his chair. He reached for a glass of water with shaking hands. “I thought you were going to shoot me.”

  “Do visitors to your office often try to shoot you?”

  “No. But they aren’t usually armed either. Your inside jacket pocket?”

  “Ohhhhh.” Pulling his regulation Glock 22 automatic out of its holster, Danny McGuire laid it down on the desk. “Sorry about that. It’s standard issue. Half the time I forget I’m carrying it. Danny McGuire, Interpol.”

  The two men shook hands.

  Now that his heart rate had slowed to something approaching normal, David Ishag asked, “So how can I help you?”

  Danny McGuire frowned. This was going to be difficult. But he’d learned long ago that when you had bad news to break, it was best not to beat around the bush.

  “I’m afraid it concerns your wife.”

  Those six words ripped into David Ishag more powerfully than any bullet.

  “Sarah Jane?” he said defensively. “What about her?”

  Danny McGuire took a deep breath. “Not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. Ishag, but we think she’s planning to kill you.”

  EVEN IN DANNY MCGUIRE’S NO-NONSENSE, UNFLOWERY prose, it took over an hour to fill David in on the long and convoluted history of the Azrael killings. An hour during which David listened intently, searching for flaws in McGuire’s thinking, for reasons not to believe that any of this crazy story had anything to do with Sarah Jane, his wife, and the one woman on earth with whom he believed he could be truly happy.

  When McGuire finished, David was silent for a long time. He wasn’t going to roll over and simply accept that his marriage, his entire relationship with Sarah, had been a sham, just because some unknown police officer told him it was. Eventually he said, “I’d like to see the photographs of the other women.”

  “Of course. You can come down to our headquarters and see them, or I can have them e-mailed to you here.”

  “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say Sarah Jane has lied about her name and background.”

  “That much is a provable fact.”

  “Okay, fine. But it doesn’t make her a killer, does it?”

  McGuire felt bad for the guy. He didn’t want to believe that his wife was a murderer, any more than Matt Daley wanted to accept that Lisa Baring had conspired in Miles’s death, or than he, Danny, wanted to blame Angela Jakes for her husband’s death all those years ago. Even now, despite knowing what he did, Danny McGuire found that part the hardest to accept. That the Angela Jakes he remembered, that sweet, good-natured, innocent angel of a woman had never really existed. She was a character, an act, a shell. An identity assumed for a purpose—a deadly purpose—just like Tracey Henley was an act, and Irina Anjou and Lisa Baring and now Sarah Jane Ishag.

  Angela Jakes’s words on the night of the first murder came floating back to him.

  “I have no life.”

  If only he’d realized then that she meant it literally. Angela had no life. She didn’t exist, had never existed. And neither did Sarah Jane.

  “It makes her an accessory to multiple homicides,” Danny said bluntly. “It also makes her a liar.”

  David longed to jump in and defend Sarah’s honor, but what could he say? At a minimum she had lied to him. He clung to the hope that the pictures McGuire sent him of the other Azrael widows would somehow exonerate her, but deep down he knew that they would not. Interpol wouldn’t have sent a senior director to see him if all they had were wild accusations.

  Even so, it all sounded so preposterous, so impossible to believe.

  McGuire went on: “Clearly, she’s not acting alone. As I said, there’s been a sexual element to all the Azrael killings, with each of the ‘wives’ apparently raped and beaten at the scene. We have clear forensic evidence that a man was present at each homicide. We don’t know whether the rapes were conceived as a cover, to throw us off the scent, or whether violent sex is a part of the motive. This woman, whoever she really is, may get off on the sadomasochistic element.”

  David groaned. No, not my Sarah. She loves me. The pain was so intense that he felt it physically, like someone injecting acid into his veins.

  “Certainly money does not seem to be the primary motive. Despite the fact that all four prior victims have been wealthy, and their wills altered in their wives’ favor, most of the money has wound up going to children’s charities. May I ask if you and Sarah Jane signed a prenuptial agreement of any kind?”

  David stared out of the win
dow bleakly. “No,” he said wearily. “No prenup.”

  Sarah Jane’s voice rang in his head: “You might as well have written me a letter saying ‘I don’t trust you.’”

  “And your will?”

  David put his head in his hands.

  It had started out as a joke between them. One night in Paris, in bed in the palatial honeymoon suite at the Georges V, Sarah Jane had teased him for not wanting to make love.

  “Is this what I’ve let myself in for, marrying such an old man? Long nights of celibacy?”

  “It’s the wine we had at dinner!” David protested. “And then that Château d’Yquem with dessert. It’s done for me.”

  Sarah Jane shook her head in mock disappointment. “I knew I should have gone for a younger man. Next time around I’m going for a boy toy.”

  “Next time?”

  “When I’m living the life of a merry widow.”

  David grinned and rolled on top of her. “I’ll put a provision in my will. One sniff of a boy toy and you’ll be penniless.”

  Sarah Jane laughed, that deep sexy laugh that fired up David’s libido like a blowtorch. In the end, he made love to her that night with more passion than he’d ever felt before. The next morning, thinking back to their banter, he realized guiltily, Shit. She isn’t even in my will. I’d better change it before she has another cow about me not trusting her with money.

  He’d faxed the amendments to his attorney the next day.

  Danny McGuire asked gently, “Is she sole beneficiary?”

  David Ishag nodded. He looked so stricken that for one awful moment Danny McGuire feared he was going to break down in tears.

  “I understand how hard this is for you, Mr. Ishag, believe me. I’m truly sorry.” Hard? The understatement was so hilarious, David almost laughed.

  “But we need your help if we’re going to catch this woman and the man who’s helping her. We got to you in time. But if Sarah Jane figures out we’re on to her and takes off, her next victim may not be so lucky.”