Angel of the Dark

She was not happy because all the excuses Danny was about to give her for his lateness would be lies, but she was too frightened to challenge him with the truth:

Angela Jakes was back in their lives.

Sometimes Céline likened Angela Jakes to a mistress. Pretty pathetic to be jealous of a woman your husband has never made love to and never will, a woman who’s almost certainly dead. This time around, Céline saw Angela more as an addiction, like alcohol or crystal meth or a glistening white line of freshly cut cocaine. After five happy years, Danny had fallen off the wagon. The addict’s lies had already started.

“Frémeaux called me into a meeting.”

“Mathilde’s off sick so I got stuck with a load of paperwork.”

“The IRT division’s up for a review next month. I’m gonna have to put in some extra hours.”

Céline had checked out each story, but she already knew what she’d find. If you want to lie through your teeth, Danny, you shouldn’t have married a fellow detective. He hadn’t even had the balls to tell her that a new investigation—Azrael—had been authorized, still less that he was heading the team. But if Danny’s lies were laughably transparent, Céline’s own tactics were just as risible. Fancy meals. Date nights. Sexy clothes. As if she stood a chance against his addiction. Against Angela.

“Sorry I’m late.” Danny burst through the door, a stack of files under one arm and a bursting-at-the-seams briefcase under the other. “You didn’t cook, did you?”

“What do you think?” snapped Céline, glancing over her shoulder at the smoky remains of the beef.

Danny looked stricken. “I’m sorry, honey. You should have told me.”

“I should have told you? I should have told you?” She stormed past him, an angry flash of red silk, grabbing her coat from the peg by the door on her way out. “Fuck you, Danny. And fuck Azrael.”

Before Danny could say another word, she was gone.

Azrael. So she knows already. Shit.

His instinct was to go after her, but he knew from experience that when Céline was this mad she needed space. Anything he said to her now would only fan the flames of her wrath. Wearily, he set down his work on the kitchen table. It had been a long, draining, fruitless afternoon. He’d spent most of it on the phone to L.A., tracking down every lead and calling in every favor he could think of in an effort to get hold of Lyle Renalto. But no one had seen or heard of the guy since 1997. He quit his law practice in that year apparently, barely twelve months after Andrew Jakes’s murder and ten since Angela’s disappearance. The same year Danny left town himself.

According to colleagues, Lyle was supposed to be taking up a new position back in New York—he was from the city originally—but Danny could find no trace of him in any of the public-records databases he checked there. Phone and utility bills, DMV, Social Security Administration, all had drawn a blank. Of course it was early days. But key players in the Jakes investigation had an uncanny tendency to evaporate into thin air just when Danny wanted to talk to them. Already the old feelings of frustration and helplessness and despair had started to return. Back in L.A. in the nineties, Danny had felt as if the truth he was seeking was a wet bar of soap: in his grasp one moment, but slipping through his fingers the next. Was that how it was going to be with Azrael?

He wondered for a moment who had spilled the beans about the investigation to Céline, then let it go. What did it matter, really? He should have told her himself. Now she would never understand, never forgive him. Unless I solve the case quickly. Unless I succeed this time, catch this bastard and put an end to this nightmare once and for all.

After a hastily made supper of a Brie-and-jambon baguette washed down with ice-cold Sam Adams—the French did a lot of things right but beer wasn’t one of them—he began working through his mountain of notes. It was almost ten before he got as far as checking his voice mails. Three were internal memos about budgeting, one was a lead on a case his division was working on in Bogotá and the fifth was from his mother in L.A. asking if he’d remembered his grandmother’s ninetieth birthday (he hadn’t). But it was the sixth and final message, from Inspector Liu, that made the hairs on Danny’s arms stand on end.

Lisa Baring had a lover. All of a sudden Demartin’s wild theory wasn’t looking so way out there anymore. Was it Lyle Renalto, all these years later, using a different name and identity? He’d be older, of course, in his late forties by now, but he was probably still attractive enough to lure a lonely, bored young housewife into his net.

Liu said something about him staying at the Barings’ Bali villa. If it were true, if there was even a chance of it being true, they couldn’t let him slip away again.

He thought about calling Liu back, but decided it could wait. What if Renalto, or whoever it was, was packing his bags right now, and Lisa’s. Spiriting her away so he could kill her like he had the others? Liu had asked for help with the local Balinese police, and that’s what Danny was going to give him.

Danny dialed the number for the Interpol switchboard.

“I need clearance for an operation in Bali. Put me through to the chief of police in Jakarta.”

INSPECTOR LIU CHECKED HIS BLACKBERRY. STILL no word from Lyon.

Interpol could go fuck itself and so could the Indonesians.

This is my investigation. I’m done asking for permission.

THE CALL TO INDONESIA DID NOT go well.

They had not requested Interpol assistance and knew nothing about the Azrael murders.

The Hong Kong police had already made a nuisance of themselves, harassing private citizens on Indonesian territory. Having failed to observe the basic courtesies, Inspector Liu now had the audacity to demand their cooperation, asking them to issue an arrest warrant despit

e having provided no evidence of any criminal activity by anybody at Villa Mirage.

Inspector Liu (and Interpol) could stick their demands where the sun didn’t shine.