Angel of the Dark

“Yes, sir. A Westerner. They had breakfast together on the terrace this morning. They looked…”—the detective searched for the appropriate word—“intimate.”

Had Inspector Liu been a different kind of man, he would have punched the air with excitement. Lisa Baring’s lover! She’s smuggled him in! It was hard to believe that anyone could be so reckless. Surely she must know that the police would still be watching her? Inspector Liu had never been in love and he hoped he never would be. What fools passion made of people.

All they needed now was some physical evidence. If this man’s fingerprints or any trace of his DNA were found at the Baring house, they’d have enough evidence to arrest the two of them. Danny McGuire from Interpol had warned him that the killer was likely to stay close to Mrs. Baring. That as long as Liu held Lisa Baring, he held the bait.

The problem was that Inspector Liu no longer “held” Lisa Baring.

He had to get inside that villa.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ALONE AT THE CORNER TABLE OF a quiet café, Danny McGuire picked flakes from the top of his pain au chocolat and waited for his team to arrive. After Inspector Liu formally requested Interpol assistance, Danny’s boss, Deputy Director Henri Frémeaux, had reluctantly authorized a small task force to devote “no more than eight hours per week” collating evidence for the case now code-named Azrael.

“It’s from a poem,” Danny had explained to Frémeaux, back at headquarters. “Azrael’s the Angel of Death.”

Frémeaux stared at him blankly. He wasn’t interested in poetry. He was interested in statistics, facts and results. Danny had better justify this use of manpower, and quickly, if he wanted his agency support to continue.

By “small task force,” it turned out Henri Frémeaux meant two additional men. Danny chose Richard Sturi, a German statistician with about as much personality as the croissant Danny was currently eating, but with an uncanny gift for seeing meaningful, real-life patterns in unintelligible strings of numbers, and Claude Demartin, a forensic specialist. For the nitty-gritty detective work he would have to rely on himself and Matt Daley, his “mole on the ground” in Hong Kong.

So far, Daley had been his biggest disappointment. He’d seemed so gung ho in the beginning. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for Matt Daley, the Azrael investigation would never have gotten off the ground. But after a fruitless first week in Hong Kong, Matt had sent Danny precisely one brief e-mail about “casting his net further afield” and proceeded to disappear on some jaunt around Southeast Asia. After weeks of unreturned e-mails and phone calls—other than a single voice mail left in the middle of the night assuring Danny that Matt was “okay” and “working on it”—Danny had officially given up. Inspector Liu threw him occasional tidbits of information, but like most local police chiefs, the man in Hong Kong was more interested in receiving data from Interpol than sharing his own. As Henri Frémeaux reminded Danny repeatedly, “This is a Chinese case, McGuire. Our job is merely to support and facilitate.”

It was then that Richard Sturi showed up, wearing his usual suit and tie and clutching his laptop like a security blanket. Sturi’s eyes blinked uncomfortably in his round, owl-like face as he took in the “unusual” meeting place Assistant Director McGuire had chosen. External team meetings were unusual at Interpol, and frowned upon, but Danny was determined to get his little team bonding and throwing ideas around outside of the stifling atmosphere of HQ. When he arrived moments later, Claude Demartin was also formally dressed, but being French, unlike Sturi, he was never averse to meeting in a café. He ordered himself a café crème and a croque-monsieur before things got started.

“Okay, guys,” Danny began. “Right now we have nothing tangible out of Hong Kong. What we do have is a huge paper file on the Jakes case, which I believe you’ve both seen, and you’ve been inputting into the I-24/7. Richard, is that right?”

The German statistician nodded nervously. He seemed to do everything nervously and wore the permanent expression of a man who was about to be hauled before the Gestapo and summarily shot.

“In terms of maximizing the use of our time, I suggest we focus on the Henley and Anjou cases, see if we can dig up anything that the local investigators missed.”

“Are the local police being cooperative?” asked Claude Demartin, downing the last of his coffee.

“In a word, no. We’ve all got to tread carefully and try not to upset too many applecarts. There’s a lot of professional pride on the line. Up to now this guy has gotten away with murder three times, and it looks as if he’s going to make it a fourth in Hong Kong. Frémeaux’s already looking for an excuse to shut us down, and if we piss off Scotland Yard or the

LAPD or any of the other local forces, he’ll have one. You understand what I’m saying?”

Two nods.

“Good. So what do we have so far? Our killer is male. He targets wealthy, older men with young wives. His motivation is at least partially sexual. And he is unusually savage in his murders. Anything you would like to add to this?”

Claude Demartin looked like he was going to say something, then thought better of it and clammed up.

“What?” Danny urged.

“I’m a forensics guy. I’m not an expert in any of this other stuff.”

“I’m not looking for experts. I’m looking for ideas, theories. Just go with your instincts.”

Richard Sturi visibly winced.

“Okay,” Demartin began. “Well, then I’d say he’s a sophisticated man.”

“Because?”

“He’s well traveled. Probably he speaks several languages. The crimes took place all over the globe.”

Danny nodded encouragingly. “Good.”

Demartin warmed to his theme. “Also he plans pretty meticulously. And he seems to have a knack for handling complicated security systems. Makes me suspect he’s an electrical engineer or a computer whiz of some sort.”