Page 158 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
AB:Was Holly distressed the baby had gone?
FP:She’d been through so much it was hard to tell. I’d have to say, no. [Pause. She’s lost her train of thought. EC]
AB:Sorry. Sorry to interrupt. What did Holly say had happened the previous night?
FP:She said the angels had organised an assembly to destroy the Antichrist. An alignment of stars meant its death would rid mankind of evil. If it survived the alignment, mankind was doomed.
AB:Right … What had gone wrong with that plan?
FP:She said the archangels were stopped from fulfilling their mission by the dark forces and they all had to die because they’d failed.
AB:All of them?
FP:The angels were all dead except her and Jonah. That’s what she told us.
AB:Gabriel escaped, though. He was arrested days later. He went on the run.
FP:Perhaps she was protecting him. Hoped we wouldn’t go looking for him. She was under his spell. They all were.
AB:Yep. I understand he’s a charismatic individual.
FP:I wasn’t there so can’t say. I know Gabriel had already killed a man by then. The young Indian boy—
AB:Harpinder Singh.
FP:Yep.
AB:Farrah, I’m going to show you something I haven’t shown anyone else. Here.
FP:[There’s quite a pause. EC] What am I looking at?
AB:The scene of the angels’ massacre.
FP:That’s a grisly one.
AB:I know. It was taken by Gray Graham, a local reporter. Old-school newshound. He was first on the scene. When this photograph was taken, Holly had been escorted from an upper-floor room by two heel-kicking beat coppers who thought she was a psychiatric case. She’d left this scene earlier, climbed the stairs and called an ambulance for her and the baby.
FP:I’ve never seen that picture before.
AB:No one has. It was among Gray Graham’s things when he died last month. Along with his notebooks. [Shit, Mand, you never mentioned this picture. EC] Can I show you something?
FP:Sure.
AB:See that body. Alan Morgan or Elemiah. There, Michael, real name Dominic Jones. Nowhere in any of these shots is Christopher Shenk, or Raphael. Police statements say his body was found on a half-landing, a flight of stairs away from the basement. However, I’ve received anecdotal evidence he was somewhere else entirely that night. This arm is that of the teenage boy Jonah, he’s alive and uninjured, but clinging to a third body. The archangel Gabriel.
FP:Really? How can you tell?
AB:I scanned the print and enlarged it. Here, compare it to the mugshot of Peter Duffy, aka Gabriel Angelis.
FP:He can’t have been dead. He must’ve got up and run off after this was taken. [Long pause while she no doubt studies this picture again. EC] Well, whatever. He was caught and put away, that’s what matters.
AB:Yep. Although Holly told you hours later thatallthe adultangels were dead, and here’s a picture that backs that up. Something terrible happened to cause this bloodbath. But something else happened after that. I don’t think even Holly knows what that was. Do you? [She pauses again. This woman either knows more than she’s letting on or doesn’t want to know. EC]
FP:Do I agree thatsomethinghappened, or do Iknowwhat it was?
AB:You tell me.
FP:[Does she shake her head here? There’s some kind of non-verbal communication. Only you know what it is. EC] And that’s all I can say.
