7 Intelligence

Sometimes we police believe a member of the public might be at risk of serious death and/or injury but we’re not in a position to arrest the person or persons we believe to be a threat. This might be due to lack of evidence, the intended victim being unwilling to give a statement or, as in the case of Dame Jocasta Hamilton, having no fucking idea who might be trying to kill her.

Beyond the possibility that they were the Angel of Death. Or at least an angel of death.

In these cases the police are obliged to issue a ‘threat to life’ warning, otherwise known as an Osman letter, named after a famous case which established that members of the public had a right to know when someone was out to kill them. The counterpart of an Osman letter is a ‘Disruption Letter’, which is what gets sent to whoever we suspect is thinking of murdering someone in the hope of making them think twice.

‘Bugger,’ said Seawoll, when me and Guleed returned to Belgravia to brief him and Stephanopoulos. ‘Who the fuck are we supposed to say is after her?’

He held up a hand to stop me from speaking.

‘And you better not be just about to say an angel of bloody death,’ he said.

‘I was going to say person or persons unknown,’ I said.

‘Liar,’ said Stephanopoulos.

‘What’s Dame Jocasta’s level of security now?’ asked Seawoll.

‘Nightingale has stayed on site,’ said Guleed, which pleased Seawoll.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘If anyone can twat an angel it’s going to be him.’

‘What do we do if she asks for protection?’ asked Stephanopoulos.

It was a good question. Contrary to what people think, the Metropolitan Police are not in the habit of stashing potential victims in safe houses. For one thing, we don’t have any safe houses, and for another, we don’t have the manpower to protect everyone who’s vulnerable. But if you want an entertaining hour of shouting, get Stephanopoulos started on the subject of the underfunding of women’s refuges.

‘It would have to be at the Folly,’ I said.

‘Good,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘Problem solved.’

Me and my mouth, I thought, and headed back to the Folly to tell Molly to prepare a guest room just in case.

I’d parked up the Asbo in the coach house and was crossing the atrium when Professor Harold Postmartin, MA, DPhil (Oxon), FRS, AFSW came bounding in from the front lobby. He stopped when he saw me and caught his breath.

‘An angel?’ he said. ‘Really?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But that’s what she looked like.’

He threw himself down on one of the green leather sofas and waved at me to join him. He was a tall thin man in, I guessed, his seventies, with a stereotypical shock of white hair and a vast collection of tweed jackets, all with suede patches on the elbows. When I first met him he’d seemed physically older, slower – but recently he’d seemed full of energy.

Being the suspicious type, I’d asked him whether he’d been consorting with fairies or collecting mystic portraits in his attic, but he insisted it was Molly’s cooking.

‘Nothing motivates a man like a proper suet pudding and custard,’ he’d said.

Toby ran up to Postmartin and barked twice, turned to give me a reproachful look and scampered off in the direction of the kitchen stairs. Postmartin gave me a less reproachful look. I shrugged. Now that I lived full-time with Bev, I’d lost track of the intricate weirdness of life in the Folly.

Postmartin wanted details on my encounter.

‘It’s hardly likely to be an actual biblical angel,’ he said when I’d finished.

‘Why not?’

‘In a world chock-full of murderous blaspheming bastards,’ he said, ‘why would an omnipotent and omniscient deity pick a couple of obscure Brits to do away with in such a public manner.’

‘Maybe they did something particularly bad?’

‘Have you looked at the news recently?’ said Postmartin. ‘It would have to have been something truly magnificent to get that manner of personal attention.’

‘So you’re ruling out religion?’ I said, and then started as Molly materialised beside my seat and placed a tea tray on the coffee table in front of me.

‘Ah, lovely,’ said Postmartin. ‘Thank you, Molly.’ He leant over to pour the tea. ‘I’ve been wrestling Hatbox for rare books and that always gives me an appetite.’

Elsie ‘Hatbox’ Winstanley was a senior librarian at the British Library, and frequently feuded with Postmartin over his attempts to acquire rare books for the Folly archive in Oxford.

‘It could be religiously inspired, though,’ I said. ‘A genius loci or High Fae that thinks they’re an angel.’

Postmartin dunked a biscuit and took a bite before answering.

‘Or something we’ve never encountered before,’ he said.

‘There’s been a lot of that recently,’ I said.

I was thinking of that moment when something had scrutinised me out of the shadows as the Mary Engine spun magic out of nothing in a warehouse in Gillingham. I’d had a definite sense of it being vast, aware and not very friendly.

‘We’ve long known that early folk traditions practised ritual magic,’ said Postmartin. ‘Why not Christianity as well?’

Ritual magic, in which a single practitioner could lead untrained participants in a ritual which generated a magical effect, was Postmartin’s passion. It was his contention that early religions, particularly those of the ancient world, regularly employed such magic to boost crops or aid hunting or get their orgies off to a really good start.

He asked me for a detailed description and when I got to the wings of flame, the halo and the burning spear, he smiled and shook his head.

‘Traditionally,’ he said, ‘angels are not described that way. According to Ezekiel, the cherubim had the face of a man, the face of an ox, the face of an eagle and that of a lion. Also, if I recall, four sets of wings and the hooves of a bull.’

Then there were the angels composed of interlocking wheels covered in sparkling eyes, and the seraphim who had six wings and spent their days circling God’s throne, bigging him up through song.

‘There are human-shaped angels in the New Testament,’ said Postmartin, ‘who act as the messengers of God. They’re described as shining, but no wings were involved.’ The wings first turned up in the sixth century with De Coelesti Hierarchia, written by the strangely named Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. ‘And, of course, they’re all over the late medieval annunciations.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘The annunciations.’

‘This manifestation,’ said Postmartin, ‘strikes me as being very late medieval. I think I may have to see what the library upstairs has about angels. I seem to remember a number of the early Victorian practitioners getting rather exercised on the question.’

With Postmartin hitting the books for mentions of angels, Belgravia MIT looking to trace the people in the ‘cult’ photograph, and Nightingale hanging around Dame Jocasta on the off-chance the Angel of Wentworth Street returned, I was left sitting in the atrium wondering what do next.

The twenty-third rule of modern policing is don’t duplicate the efforts of your colleagues. Not only are they probably better at whatever it is than you, but chances are you won’t get the credit if you do get a result. Instead, work out what you’ve got that nobody else has. In my case – lots of friends amongst the demi-monde.

Well, I say friends, but what I really mean is potential informants. Only these days CHIS, Covert Human Intelligence Sources, are supposed to have a separate controller. The idea being that if you segregate intelligence-gathering from operational policing, there will be less of the quid pro quo or tactical grassing that was a feature of the ‘good old days’ and led to the many exciting miscarriages of justice that enlivened the television documentaries of the 1990s.

It was time to get seriously old-fashioned and do some community outreach in a completely non-covert open and accountable manner.

I took Danni with me because I figured it would be educational.

‘She’s back,’ said Zach, when we caught up with him behind the bar in the Quiet Saloon at the Royal George Pub off Charing Cross Road. He spoke quietly because down here in the basement the clientele preferred whispers.

He didn’t say who ‘she’ was.

‘She sent me a letter,’ I said, keeping my voice low. ‘How did you know?’

Zach sighed. He’d been Lesley May’s on–off lover while she’d been working for Martin Chorley.

‘Your lot came round to see me this morning,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where she is and you’d have to be fucking stupid to think she’s going to come see me.’

My ‘lot’ would have been officers from the Directorate of Professional Standards or DPS – who were still, technically, the lead branch in the hunt for Lesley May. They liaised with Nightingale but they tried to keep me out of the inquiry as much as possible. It’s not that they suspected I was colluding with my former friend, but they weren’t about to take any chances either.

‘I’m not here about that,’ I said. ‘I want to know where the Goblin Fair is today.’

‘What makes you think I know?’ asked Zach, who, if questioned, would deny his own existence out of sheer habit.

‘Because you always do,’ I said.

‘What’s in it for me?’ he asked.

‘I’ll get you an invitation to the christening.’

Zach squinted at me.

‘What if there isn’t a christening,’ he said. ‘It’s not like either of you are Christians.’

‘There’ll be something,’ I said. ‘You know it’s inevitable. It will be loud, go on for hours and involve a fuckton of food and drink. What it’s called isn’t really important, is it?’

‘Oh, that’s deep, innit?’ said Zach. ‘Also a bit reductionist.’

I wasn’t sure that meant what Zach thought it meant, and I made a mental note to ask Bev that evening.

‘You want to come or not?’ I asked.

‘Lloyd Square,’ he said, and gave me a house number.

Demi-monde is French for half-world and, according to Abigail, is an abusive misogynistic term coined in nineteenth-century France. For us in the Society of the Occasionally Wise, it refers to the subculture that exists amongst the magical, the supernatural and others who have drifted into their orbit. They have their favourite pubs, clubs and hotels – the Quiet Saloon at the Royal George is one. You might well have drunk or stayed the night in one and never known it. You might have thought it had an ‘atmosphere’, been strangely serene or you might have had a strange urge to run screaming into the street – that’s the demi-monde.

Then there’s the Goblin Fair, where like-minded people gather together to chat, exchange gossip and sell each other the sort of things that you don’t want getting into general circulation. Since the Folly really doesn’t want some of these things being sold to unsuspecting members of the public either, we don’t try to shut them down. It’s that famous discretion that police are supposed to exercise in the course of their duties – plus it means we can do our community outreach all in one place.

Lloyd Square was a late Regency square in Islington that had the distinction of being neither square nor flat. The address we were looking for was part of a terrace that was staggered to cope with the slope. They were typical two-storey mansions – three, if you counted the basement – but missing the rusticated stucco and columns that were usual for the time. Instead, their flat faces were made of London brick in an unmistakable Dutch bond and fitted with deeply recessed sash windows.

‘You’re a bit of an architectural trainspotter, aren’t you,’ said Danni when I pointed this out.

I could only surmise that the actual address we were heading for matched its neighbours, because it was wrapped up in the kind of serious boards, scaffolding and Monarflex sheeting that indicates major structural surgery was under way. If any of the interior features survived the operation, I would be surprised. On the human-sized door in the hoarding had been spray-stencilled the words THE CIRCUS – AUTHORISED PERSONAL ONLY.

‘Why here?’ asked Danni as we approached the hoarding.

‘They pick a location,’ I said, ‘usually one that’s being renovated or left derelict, and move in for a couple of days. I think there’s some underlying pattern to the locations but I’m not sure I’ve figured it out yet.’

I did the police knock, a series of hard slaps with the palm of my hand, on the word CIRCUS and it opened by ten centimetres to reveal a teenaged white girl dressed incongruously in a blue knit twinset and pearls and a blond pageboy wig.

‘George sent me,’ I said.

‘Fuck off,’ she said. ‘We’re rammed.’

‘Alice,’ I said, ‘why do we have to do this every time I come to the fair?’

The girl shrugged.

‘One – you’re the filth,’ she said. ‘Two – you’re still barred from that time in Kentish Town, and three …’ She held up three fingers but managed to give the effect of two. ‘I’m not joking, we’re fucking rammed in here – come back later.’

‘You don’t want us to come back later,’ I said. ‘Let us in and I promise nothing will get broken. Promise.’

‘Swear?’

‘Swear.’

‘Swear on your about-to-be kids’ lives,’ she said.

Christ, I thought, does everybody in the demi-monde know about the twins?

‘I swear I won’t start nothing,’ I said. ‘Unless you don’t let me in.’

The door opened and Alice stepped aside to let us in. Once inside, I glanced down into the basement area and was surprised to see it full of punters. As was typical of the demi-monde, they were mostly white and dressed as variedly as any London street crowd. Maybe more hats than you might see normally – three or four pork pies, some baseball caps and one operatic topper, the last belonging to an elderly gent in a cape and black three-piece suit. Despite the drizzle, they were standing around chatting with drinks in their hands like a bunch of smokers outside a pub.

The actual front door was completely missing, as was the door frame and the exterior casing. Beyond, a generously proportioned hallway ran into the house, with a staircase a third of the way in. This, too, was so crowded that it reminded me of the pound parties I went to in my teens – all that was missing was a massive sound system vibrating our ribcages and clouds of ganja smoke. I asked Alice where the stalls were and she pointed down.

‘Hallo, darling,’ said a white person with an androgynous face, blue-black hair and a raven perched on their shoulder. The bird gave me a suspicious look, although I think the ‘darling’ might have been for Danni. ‘Fancy a drink?’ they asked brightly.

‘Maybe later,’ I said, and squeezed past.

‘Fair enough,’ they said.

Downstairs was much bigger than upstairs, and I realised that house must have been undergoing one of those super basement extensions beloved of all those rich people who think living in London as nothing more than a shopping opportunity. This was obviously going to be a combination gym and swimming pool – making it modestly sized by oligarch standards – and since I nearly once drowned in a basement pool I was quite glad that the builders hadn’t finished it yet. Instead, the pool area had been dug out and lined with cement but not painted or filled. A wooden ramp extended down to the bottom, where half a dozen full-sized market stalls were arrayed. Builders’ lights in metal cages hung from the ceiling and patches of what looked like red soundproofing material had been attached to the walls at random intervals.

At the front of the house, still with its original door out into the area, a makeshift bar had been set up on trestle tables and was keeping a crowd suitably lubricated. I could smell spilt beer and wet coats, but underneath was the piping grind of a fairground automatic organ murdering something baroque by Handel. I knew it was Handel because the older Thames girls are very big on his music for some reason. To fit a decent-sized pool in, the builders had been forced to butt one side right up against the wall. But the other side had what I assumed was going to be a lounging area. Along that area smaller stalls had been arranged and one, near the far end, I recognised. It seemed a good place to start.

I told Danni to check down in the pool area and see if she could see if anyone was selling jewellery.

‘I see someone I know,’ I said.

The stall was tall and narrow, with a miniature proscenium arch elaborately carved with small birds, branches, grinning theatrical masks and frowning moon faces, all painted metallic silver or gold. The stall was topped with a black pointed witch’s hat of a roof made from pleated black canvas. The whole thing looked like a gothic Punch and Judy booth. The sign above the opening read Artemis Vance: Purveyor of Genuine Charms, Cantrips, Fairy Lures and Spells.

I slapped my hand on the side of the booth and called ‘Shop!’

A young white man popped up from somewhere in the recesses of the booth. He had silver-white hair cut short at the sides and gelled up into spikes at the top. He was wearing a blue and red pinstriped jacket over a ruffled white shirt. This was Artemis Vance. I saw, from the widening of his eyes, that he recognised me straight away.

‘No refunds!’ he said loudly.

‘No refunds for what?’ I asked.

In fact, come to think of it, the last time we’d met he’d sold my cousin Abigail a completely worthless charm. But then, had it been truly enchanted I wouldn’t have let her keep it.

‘Just no refunds in general,’ said Artemis – deflating somewhat. ‘As a general principle.’

‘You remember me, right?’

‘I’m not going to forget the Isaacs, am I?’ he said. ‘So what can I, in my humble capacity as purveyor of quality enchantments, do you for?’

‘What do you know about jewellery?’

‘And in what form does your desire for adornment find its expression?’

‘Enchanted jewellery,’ I said. ‘Rings, in particular.’

‘Aha!’ said Artemis, and dropped briefly out of sight before popping up again with a pair of blue jeweller’s trays. He laid them out before me, each with six rings gleaming amongst the velvet. Most of them were gold and half of them had stones. Of the non-gold rings, none appeared to be platinum.

‘Are they enchanted?’ I asked.

Artemis straightened up, puffed out his chest and made a theatrical gesture at the rings.

‘They are as puissant as they are required to be for the purposes for which they have been wrought,’ he said.

‘So no,’ I said.

‘Not so you’d notice,’ said Artemis.

He watched, frowning, as I brushed my fingertips over each ring in turn – it always pays to be thorough. None of them were enchanted, though, and I’m pretty certain half of them were costume jewellery.

‘Got anything with a bit of zing?’ I asked, and Artemis gave me a bland look.

‘Define “zing”,’ he said, and I gave him the police stare. The aim of the stare is to convey cynicism combined with weary patience. I know you’re about to lie to me but because I am a hugely magnanimous agent of state power, I’m willing to give you a moment to think better of it. Seawoll probably gave his midwife that stare just after she smacked him, but it took me years to perfect it.

Artemis licked his lips.

‘Not rings,’ he said. ‘Alas, nobody seeks to enchant jewellery any more.’

Apparently enchantment, as it was practised in these ‘degenerate modern times’, was confined to low-level protective charms cast on door locks, bicycles and family shrines. So I asked who used to enchant jewellery.

‘The Sons of Wayland,’ he said without hesitation.

Of course, I thought. Them again.

‘And where can I find these sons of Raymond?’ I asked, because know-it-alls can never resist ignorance.

‘The Sons of Wayland,’ he said, and gave me a suspicious look. ‘I thought you Isaacs knew all about them.’

‘I’m just a lowly constable,’ I said, which made Artemis laugh.

‘You’re the Herald of the Dawn,’ said Artemis. ‘The harbinger of the new world.’

I’ve been getting this a lot recently and since nobody seems to have a clue about what it actually means, I try and not let it get in the way of work. So I asked about the Sons of Wayland again, but Artemis didn’t know any more than I did.

He did try and sell me another charm – this one against cockerels. I declined.

I looked down into the empty pool – in time to see Danni being handed a small package wrapped in black paper which she quickly stuffed into her bag. The stall wasn’t one I’d seen before, and seemed to specialise in T-shirts and studded leather accessories. When I met her at the top of the ramp she did a little guilty start.

‘I need to check it,’ I said.

‘Check what?’

‘Whatever it was you bought.’

‘Why?’

‘In case it’s cursed,’ I said, which got a sceptical look.

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ I said. ‘I need to make sure it’s safe before you take it away.’

Danni sighed, pulled the packet from a shoulder bag, unwrapped it and handed over what looked, to me, like a small mop head made of leather. It had a handle fashioned of wood wrapped in leather and the strands were neatly stitched. When I held it up and let it unfurl I saw it was a small flail whip.

I looked at Danni, who gave me a defiant grin.

It wasn’t magical but it was beautifully made.

I handed it back and Danni put it away.

I didn’t ask what she wanted it for and she didn’t volunteer the information.

Danni hadn’t found any jewellery on the stalls down in the pool, just T-shirts, whips, death masks, books and candles.

I was about to suggest we head upstairs to see what else we could find when someone poked me in the back. I turned to find Alice, the teenaged door warden, looking up at me.

‘My old man wants to see you,’ she said.

This was new. We had intelligence that Alice’s family ran the Goblin Market but never any confirmation. Even Nightingale admitted that he’d never had an audience.

‘Oh yeah?’ I said, trying to keep the eagerness out of my voice. ‘What’s he want, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alice. ‘I think maybe you should ask him yourself.’

She led us back out the front of the house and pointed us at where a Ford Transit with a Luton box body was parked across the road by the park. It looked like a typical removal van, except stencilled down the side were the words BACK OF THE LORRY DELIVERIES and the silhouette of a bird. It might have been a sparrow, a crow or a blackbird for all I knew. There was a door on the left side just behind the cab. Placed on the pavement before this door was a beautifully carved set of mahogany steps. Alice skipped up the steps to open the door for us and, hopping down, gestured for us to enter with an oddly formal half-bow.

As I stepped through, I smelt old paper and beeswax – things I associate with the mundane library back at the Folly, especially after Molly had been cleaning. The source was obvious as soon as we entered – both sides of the interior were lined with bookshelves from floor to roof. The upper shelves were crammed with large leather-bound volumes, but the lower shelves were filled with neat rows of modern box files.

Not books, I realised – ledgers.

Halfway down the length there was space for an antique mahogany writing desk – an escritoire Postmartin would have called it – with a fold-down work surface and a double bank of small ebony box drawers behind. On a matching leather upholstered swivel chair sat a short slender white man in a blue shirt and tan trousers held up by red braces. His hair was cut long to hang down to his shoulders and was that dull brown colour that blond hair fades to in middle age. He snapped shut the MacBook he’d been working on and rose to greet us. He had a narrow chin, widely spaced grey eyes, a long straight nose and a wide mouth that, when he smiled, seemed weirdly familiar.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said, and shook our hands. His grip was dry and firm. ‘Please have a seat.’

He gestured at a low green leather sofa that sat opposite the desk. I sat down and Danni followed – her eyes curious but her mouth shut.

Me and Nightingale had drilled this protocol into her on the first day of training. When meeting a supernatural power, watch, learn, follow your more experienced partner’s lead.

And this was a supernatural power and then some, for all that he lacked the flashy burst of vestigia that some give off. Instead, there was a sense of an enormous depth, as if an entire age had been wrapped up in his skin and set in motion.

‘My name is Robin Goodfellow,’ he said. ‘You must be the famous Peter Grant – and this is …?’ He inclined his head at Danni.

‘Detective Constable Danni Wickford,’ I said.

He didn’t, I noticed, offer us a cup of tea or any small talk.

‘I have a problem I need your help with,’ he said.

‘If I can,’ I said. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Numbers,’ he said. ‘Too many punters, not enough floor space.’

The number of people visiting the Goblin Market had been steadily increasing since Robin Goodfellow took over the family business in the late 1970s. According to his grandfather’s records, which went back to the 1950s, they were now attracting quadruple the punters they did in 1963 and the trend was upwards.

‘You’ve seen it,’ he said. ‘It’s like the Tube in there.’

They needed to operate from bigger premises.

‘A permanent site?’ I asked.

‘If that’s what it takes,’ said Mr Goodfellow.

‘You’ll have to go official,’ I said. ‘That’s a lot of paperwork.’

Mr Goodfellow chuckled and pulled a box file from a nearby shelf. Opening it revealed it was filled to the brim with paper. The top page was titled ‘Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Health and Safety standards for market operators, market stalls, mobile caterers and street food sellers’.

‘I have three more boxes of this,’ said Mr Goodfellow. ‘Mundane bureaucracy I can cope with.’

‘So what do you need us for?’ I asked.

‘We need to make a change to the Agreement,’ he said.

The relationship between the Folly, the demi-monde and the other powers, such as the Rivers, was governed by a series of informal traditions and agreements. According to Postmartin, it was a typical British mixture of archaic tradition, handshakes between gentlemen, and a stubborn refusal to engage with anything that might smack of dangerous continental legalism.

Still, I sensed an opportunity to inject a bit of rationality into the demi-monde, and after a moment I detected a more immediate advantage as well.

‘I’m sure it can be done,’ I said, channelling my inner Del Boy. ‘But it will cost you.’

‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

‘Information.’

‘How much information?’

‘Let’s start small,’ I said. ‘By way of down payment.’

‘I’m listening,’ said Mr Goodfellow.

‘What do you know about the Sons of Wayland?’

The trouble with foxes is, if you let one into your house they don’t half take the piss. Although Abigail is quick to point out that with the talking variety, at least they don’t literally mark their territory.

‘Come on, I need to do some washing,’ I said.

The fox currently curled up inside my washing machine gave me an appealing look.

‘Do you have to now?’ it asked. ‘Only this is so nice.’

‘Yes, now,’ I said, but, because I am weak, I added, ‘You can climb back in afterwards.’

‘Hooray,’ said the fox.

It slunk out of the machine and watched, stretching and yawning, while I loaded my laundry and carefully selected the correct cycle. I’m no expert, but I’ve been around these foxes long enough to recognise one or two. This was Indigo, who was my cousin Abigail’s right-hand vixen.

And if she was hanging around the house …

‘Where’s Abigail?’ I asked.

‘She’s off with Maksim acquiring a diggy thing,’ said Indigo.

‘What’s a diggy thing?’ I asked.

‘You know – a big thing,’ said Indigo. ‘For digging.’

Maksim already had shovels and spades racked neatly in the garden shed. A horrible thought occurred to me.

‘How big is this big diggy thing?’ I asked.

‘Big!’

‘As big as me?’

‘Bigger.’

‘As big as a car?’

Indigo gave this some thought.

‘As big as a big car,’ she said.

‘And what are they planning to dig with this big digger?’

‘That is beyond the scope of my need to know, fam,’ said Indigo. ‘But it would be nice to have a permanent den here – with cushions.’

‘What’s Beverley doing now?’ I asked.

Indigo raised her head, her ears twitching back and forth like radar dishes.

‘She’s in the TV and snack room watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,’ she said, and jumped up on top of the washing machine as it started its churn cycle. ‘This is nice,’ she said, and lay down flat on top of the machine.

‘Which do you think it was?’ asked Beverley when I returned to the living room. ‘An angel or an alien?’

She muted the TV and looked at me expectantly.

‘Are there angels?’ I asked.

‘I’ve never met one,’ said Beverley.

‘Before I met you, I didn’t know there were river goddesses,’ I said.

‘But you did believe in rivers,’ she said. ‘The existence of angels – the traditional messengers of God – implies a god. Which is a significant claim.’

‘What’s the digger for?’ I asked.

‘Maksim’s going to do some work on the garden,’ said Beverley. ‘But leaving aside the existence or otherwise of a monotheistic god, is it possible that our conceptions of angels are based on something else?’

‘What kind of work do you need a big diggy thing for?’

‘Focus, Peter – this is important,’ said Beverley. ‘I don’t like the idea of you having a beef with someone who might be connected.’

‘Connected to who?’

‘Or what?’ said Beverley. ‘What worries me more than who.’

‘Well, what will have trouble finding me, then,’ I said. ‘I’m going to Manchester tomorrow.’

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