Angel of the Dark

“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?”