Angel of the Dark

DAVID ISHAG PULLED INTO HIS UNDERGROUND garage. The clock on the dashboard said 7:30 P.M.

In five minutes, I’ll see Sarah Jane.

In half an hour, we’ll have dinner together.

By midnight, she’ll have tried to kill me.

None of it felt real, except his nerves. The tight knot in his stomach, the sweat running down his back. Mentally he ran over the plan again. He would go inside and act as natural as possible around Sarah Jane. They would have dinner. By nine o’clock it would be safe for David to go up to bed. At some point Sarah Jane would join him, and soon afterward her mysterious accomplice would presumably burst in. David’s job then was to feign a heart attack, momentarily confusing his would-be killers and hopefully buying enough time for McGuire and his men to show up and make their arrests.

Raj, David’s valet, greeted him as calmly as ever. “Good evening, sir. How was your day?”

None of the staff knew what was going on, for their own safety. David trusted Raj implicitly, but Danny McGuire had been insistent on total secrecy.

“It was fine, thank you, Raj. Is Mrs. Ishag at home?”

Please say no. She’s gone out. She’s changed her mind. She couldn’t go through with it after all.

“She’s in the drawing room, sir. Waiting for you.”

When David walked in, Sarah Jane was facing the window, her back to him. She was wearing a long scarlet jersey dress with a scooped back that David had bought for her in Paris, on their honeymoon. Her hair was piled up in loose coils on top of her head. She looked stunning.

“You dressed up.”

She turned and smiled at him shyly. “I thought I’d make an effort for once. Do you like it?”

David’s throat went dry. “You look incredible.”

Walking over to him, Sarah Jane wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thanks.” She kissed him tenderly on the lips and David felt his resolve weaken. He tried to think about the photographs of the other Azrael widows, Sarah Jane’s alter egos; about her voice on the police tape, plotting his death. But both those things felt like a dream, utterly unconnected with the real Sarah Jane, the Sarah Jane whose soft lips now pressed against his own.

Was it possible to love someone you knew was going to try to murder you?

“Shall we eat?”

BACK IN THE SURVEILLANCE VAN, DANNY McGuire’s mind was racing.

The “new” delivery driver was not Lyle Renalto, as he’d half hoped, half expected.

The new driver was Matthew Daley.

Danny’s thoughts lurched wildly from past to present, questioning everything. Could Daley really be involved? Could he be Azrael’s accomplice?

Every instinct in him told him that this wasn’t possible. Matt Daley hadn’t met the woman now calling herself Sarah Jane Ishag till her most recent previous incarnation as Lisa Baring. And that meeting had happened after Miles Baring’s murder, a crime Matt couldn’t have committed because was in L.A. at the time.

And yet…

What did Danny McGuire actually know about Matthew Daley? Only what Matt had chosen to tell him. That he was a writer from Los Angeles, that he had a sister called Claire and an ex-wife called Raquel and that he was Andrew Jakes’s biological son. The sister was real enough. Danny had met her. As for the rest of the story, McGuire had taken it all on trust. What if it was all bullshit?

Forcing himself to calm down, Danny tried to analyze things rationally.

Let’s say what he told me was true. Let’s say he really is Jakes’s son.

According to Daley, Jakes had abandoned him and his mother and sister, apparently cutting them off without a penny. Was that enough of a motive for murder? Sure. Matt would have been in his midtwenties when Andrew Jakes was killed, more than old enough to plan and carry out a homicide. What if he didn’t meet Azrael as Lisa Baring? What if he already knew her as Angela Jakes, his father’s second wife? And later as Tracey Henley and Irina Anjou, and now as Sarah Jane Ishag?

But if that was the case, where did Lyle/Frankie fit into all this? And why, more importantly, would Matt Daley have flown to Lyon to see Danny McGuire in the first place? To point out to Danny the links between the various Azrael killings and convince him to reopen the case? Surely, if Matt were involved in the murders, that made no sense.

Unless he wants to get caught.

Wasn’t that the classic psychopathic mind-set? That there was no point committing the perfect crime if the world never got to know how brilliant you were? Danny pictured Matt Daley, first in L.A. then later in London and the South of France, waiting for the police sirens, for retribution, for the knock on the door that never came. Perhaps the anonymity had gotten to be too much for him?