Read Online Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark by Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe - Free Book Online Page B

in tracking suspects across borders, he eventually traced Angela Jakes to Greece and began liaising daily with the authorities in Athens, trying to track her down, but to no avail. Meanwhile, back in L.A., his other leads dried up one by one, like tributaries of a drought-stricken river. Andrew Jakes’s killer had vanished, just like his wife and the stolen art and jewelry. Indeed, all that was left of the Jakeses’ life together was Andrew’s fortune, which found its way safely (and tax-free) into the coffers of two different children’s charities, both of which were naturally delighted to receive it.
    Danny’s LAPD superiors were deeply embarrassed. They ruthlessly killed any press interest in the Jakes case, ostensibly so as not to encourage “copycat killings” but actually to cover their own hides. The case was closed. Motive: theft. Assailant: unknown. Danny was moved off of homicide onto the fraud squad, a clear demotion, and told to forget about Angela Jakes if he wanted to keep his job.
    But he couldn’t forget. How could anyone forget that haunting face? And he didn’t want to keep his job. Quitting the force, he spent the next two years and virtually all his savings traveling around Europe frantically searching for Angela. Working as a private individual, he found he got precious little cooperation from local police forces, and had to rely on unscrupulous private detectives to help him keep the trail alive. Finally, broke and depressed, he wound up in France, where an old contact in Lyon told him Interpol was hiring and suggested he apply for a job there.
    Slowly Danny rebuilt his shattered career. He joined as a junior member of a crime IRT (Interpol Response Team) and rapidly earned a reputation for himself as a brilliant original thinker and strategist. IRTs could be deployed anywhere in the world within twelve to twenty-four hours of an incident in order to assist a member country’s forces. Adaptability, quick thinking and an ability to work as a team under strained circumstances were all key to the unit’s success. Danny McGuire excelled at every level. He won plaudits for his bravery and skill in a Corsican gangland murder case. Not many foreign cops could have persuaded people in that tight-knit community to talk, but Danny won over hearts and minds, successfully convicting five of the gang leaders. After that there was the ax murder of an Arab sheikh in North Africa—that one wasn’t so tough to crack; the guy helpfully left his prints all over the victim’s apartment—and the disappearance of a beauty queen in rural Venezuela. The girl in question was the mistress of a wealthy Russian oil magnate, and it proved a great case for Danny, who got a nice clean conviction. (Not so great for the beauty queen. Her body parts were eventually found in trash bags in a Maracay motel.)
    Danny enjoyed the work and the novelty of living in France, and began to feel his confidence slowly coming back. Meeting and marrying Céline had been the icing on the cake. But through all his later triumphs, as he rose meteorically through Interpol’s ranks, he never forgot AngelaJakes. Who was she before she married her husband? Why did she run? He knew it couldn’t have been his questioning that scared her off, as Lyle Renalto claimed. There must have been another reason. Most importantly of all, Who had raped her and killed her husband in such a hideous, bloody manner? The official line, that a robbery had gotten spectacularly out of hand, was clearly nonsense. Art thieves didn’t slash an old man’s throat so forcefully they all but severed his head.
    In the end it was Céline who had finally persuaded Danny to drop it. Sensing that there was more to her new husband’s feelings for Angela Jakes than professional interest, she told him straight out that she felt threatened.
    â€œShe’s gone,” she told him tearfully, “but I’m