Free Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark by Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe Page A

murder?”
    Danny McGuire forced himself to sound calm. “There are a lot of murders, Mr. Daley. All over the world, every hour of every day. We humans are a violent bunch.”
    â€œNot like this.” Reaching into his briefcase, Matt Daley pulled out a thick paper file and slammed it down on Danny’s desk. “Same exact MO. Old man violently slaughtered, young wife raped, leaves all the money to charity, then disappears.”
    Danny McGuire’s mouth went dry. His hands shook as he touched the file. Could it be true? After all this time, had the animal struck again?
    â€œWhere?” The word was barely a whisper.
    â€œLondon. Five years ago. The victim’s name was Piers Henley.”

C HAPTER S EVEN
    L ONDON
2001
    C HESTER S QUARE IS SITUATED IN THE heart of Belgravia, behind Eaton Square and just off fashionable Elizabeth Street. Its classic, white-stucco-fronted houses are arranged around a charming, private garden. In the corner of the square, St. Mark’s Church nestles serenely beneath a large horse chestnut tree, its ancient brass bells pealing on the hour, conveniently saving the square’s residents the trouble of glancing at their Patek Philippe watches. From the street, the homes on Chester Square look large and comfortable.
    They aren’t.
    They are enormous and utterly palatial.
    It’s an oft-repeated cliché in Belgravia that no Englishman could afford to live in Chester Square. Like most clichés, it is true. Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch owner of Chelsea football club, owned a house there, before he ran off with his young mistress and left the property to his wife. Over the years, Mrs. Abramovich’s neighbors included two Hollywood film stars, a French soccer hero, the Swiss founder of Europe’s largest hedge fund, a Greek prince and an Indian software tycoon.The rest of the houses on the square were owned, without exception, by American investment bankers.
    Until the day that one of those American investment bankers, distraught over the collapse of his investments, put a rare Bersa Thunder pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. His heirs sold the house to a British baronet. And so it was that Sir Piers Henley became the first Englishman to own a house in Chester Square for over twenty-five years.
    He was also the first person to be murdered there.
    Â 
    D ETECTIVE I NSPECTOR W ILLARD D REW OF S COTLAND Yard handed the woman a cup of sweet tea and tried not to stare at her full, sensual lips as she sipped the steaming cup. Beneath her half-open bathrobe, blood splatters were still clearly visible on her pale, lightly freckled thighs. The rape had been particularly violent. But not as violent as the murder.
    While Inspector Drew interviewed the woman downstairs, up in the bedroom his men were scraping her husband’s brain tissue out of the Persian carpet. The master-bedroom walls looked like a freshly painted Jackson Pollock. An explosion of blood, of rage, of animal madness had taken place in that room, the likes of which Detective Inspector Drew had never seen before. There was only one word for it: carnage.
    Inspector Drew said, “We can do this later, ma’am, if it’s too much for you right now. Perhaps when you’ve recovered from the shock?”
    â€œI will never recover, Inspector. We’d better do it now.”
    She looked directly at him when she spoke, which Inspector Drew found disconcerting. Beautiful was the wrong word for this petite redhead. She was sexy. Painfully sexy. She was creamy skin and velvet softness and quivering, vulnerable femininity, every inch a lady. The only incongruous note about her was her voice. Beneath her four-hundred-dollar Frette bathrobe, this woman was cockney to the bone.
    Inspector Drew said, “If you’re sure you’re up to it, we could start by verifying some basic details.”
    â€œI’m up to it.”
    â€œThe deceased’s full