Angel of the Dark

The wedding was a coup, the happiest day of Didier’s life. Until night fell and, alone at last in the marital bed, Didier discovered why his new bride had been so coy about sleeping with him. It appeared that poor Hélène had grotesquely deformed genitals, a secret she’d kept since birth. The whole innocent, scared-of-sex shtick had been a front, a ploy. The bitch had trapped him!

The union was miserable from the start, yet Didier stayed with Hélène for five years. Naturally he cheated on her constantly, siphoning off every last franc of her fortune into privately produced movies, all of them star vehicles for himself. Hélène knew what her husband was up to, but loved him helplessly anyway. Didier had this effect on women. Each day Hélène prayed fervently that Didier would see the light and come to return her love, despite her unfortunate physical affliction. But it never happened. At thirty-five, famous for the second time in his life and rich for the first, Didier Anjou finally divorced Hélène Marceau. He was back on the market.

Next came Pascale, another heiress who made Didier even richer and bore him two sons but took a regrettably inflexible view about his extramarital dalliances.

One of these dalliances, Camille, became the fourth Madame Anjou the year Didier turned fifty. Thirty years his junior and stunningly beautiful, the top fashion model of her day, Camille reminded Didier of himself at her age. Physically perfect, selfish, ambitious, insatiable. It was a match made in heaven. But after three years of marriage, Camille slept with Didier’s teenage son, Luc. With Lucien Desforges’s help, Didier cut both of them off without a penny and vowed never to marry again.

He retired to Saint-Tropez, where he became legendary for his vanity, in particular for the vast collection of toupees that he housed in a special dressing room at Villa Paradis, much to the amusement of the Russian hookers who regularly warmed his bed there. No one, least of all his lawyer, ever expected Didier Anjou to take another wife.

But four months ago, out of the blue, the old roué had done just that, secretly marrying a Russian woman whom none of his friends had ever heard of, never mind met. Her name was Irina Minchenko, and the general assumption was that she was one of the hookers and had somehow managed to bewitch Didier into wedlock.

The general assumption was wrong. In her midthirties, aristocratic and educated, Irina was wealthy in her own right. Even if she’d been poor, she was far too beautiful and smart to be a hooker. From the day they met, at a house party in Ramatouelle, Didier was besotted.

He took his new bride to Tahiti for their honeymoon, to a secluded beachside cottage. For the first time in his life, Didier Anjou did not want the media to follow him. He told Lucien, by now a friend, “Irina is too exquisite to be shared with the world. Whenever I see someone so much as look at her, man or woman, I want to kill them. It’s crazy what she does to me!”

Whatever Irina did to him, it’s over now, Lucien thought wryly, strolling around onto the villa’s private rear terrace. Just two weeks back from the honeymoon and Didier Anjou had called him, literally howling with rage and fury.

“I want a divorce!” he’d screamed into the phone. “I want to fuck that bitch over, do you hear me? I won’t give her a goddamn penny!”

That was last night. Hopefully Didier would be in a calmer mood this morning. It was too early for screaming.

Unfortunately, when Lucien Desforges stepped through the French windows into the living room, the screams were deafening. But they weren’t Didier’s.

They were his own.

CHAPTER TEN

DANNY MCGUIRE STARED AT MATT DALEY for a long time. Or rather, he stared into space for a long time. Matt’s crooked, genial, hopeful face just happened to be in the way.

Of course, Danny knew about Didier Anjou’s murder. Like everybody else in France, he’d heard about it on the TV and read about it in the papers. Everyone from Le Monde to Le Figaro had published accounts of Anjou’s colorful romantic past and speculated as to which wronged husband or unpaid creditor might have ordered a hit on the elderly roué. But little had been written about the matinee idol’s latest wife, other than that she was Russian and was believed to have returned to her home country after the killing. Certainly Danny had heard nothing about a rape. He said as much to Matt Daley.

“No official complaint was ever made,” Matt agreed. “But the blogs are alive with rumors that Mrs. Anjou was sexually assaulted by the killer, and that the guy who discovered the crime scene found the two of them tied up together. Problem is that, once again, the widow’s not around to ask. She’s gone.”

“Yes, but only back home to Russia. She hasn’t vanished like the others.”

Matt shrugged. “So the papers say. But who knows what the truth is. The police down there are so corrupt they make Chicago City Hall look like the Peace Corps.”

Danny laughed. But it was a hollow laugh, one filled with foreboding. If Andrew Jakes’s killer really was still out there, repeating his awful crimes, then two more innocent men’s deaths were on Danny McGuire’s conscience. And what about the widows, the beautiful young women who had so conveniently disappeared just weeks after the killings? If they were dead too, he had even more blood on his hands. This man, this animal, would be getting more emboldened with every successful hit. Danny couldn’t just sit by and do nothing, let him strike again. On the other hand, what he’d told Matt Daley was true. It wasn’t just his reluctance to reopen old wounds and upset Céline that was holding him back. Without a local police force requesting Interpol’s help, officially Danny’s hands were tied.

He told Matt Daley, “We can’t be sure it’s the same man. I don’t know about Sir Piers Henley, but Didier Anjou had a long line of people who wanted him dead.”

“I agree we can’t be sure,” said Matt excitedly. “That’s why we need to reopen the case. Or start a new case, looking at all three murders together. There’s so much we don’t know. All I can tell you is I feel in my bones that this is one guy, one crazed fucking lunatic, and that we’re getting closer to him.”

Danny McGuire thought, He’s using we already. He’s assuming I’m in.

“I’ll make some calls to Scotland Yard and the local French police. See what I can dig up. But I can’t promise anything.”

If Matt was disappointed, he hid it well. “I understand. I know it probably sounds weird, seeing as my father abandoned my sister and me and all. But I’d like to see justice done for him. I figured, if you had this information, maybe you could help.”

“What will you do now?” asked Danny. “Are you heading back to the States?”

Matt looked at him incredulously. “Back to the States? Hell no. Why would I do that? Like I told you, I think the killer’s here, in France. I’m on a flight to Nice at six o’clock tonight. I should be in Saint-Tropez by ten.”

“Be careful,” Danny warned. “If the Maf

ia was involved in Didier Anjou’s death, you could be putting yourself in danger.”

“You don’t really believe it was a Mafia hit? Come on. That’s just lazy detective work, the path of least resistance.”