Angel of the Dark

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.