Page 58 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
Gabriel’s eyes bore into the Baby.
GABRIEL
Neither.
The Baby kicks and MEWLS.
GABRIEL
It’s the Antichrist.
To request the full manuscript contact Clive Badham on the number below.
A further email from amateur sleuth David Polneath, 9 July 2021:
TO:Amanda Bailey
DATE:9 July 2021
SUBJECT:Re: The Alperton Angels
FROM:David Polneath
Dear Amanda,
There are several people I could put you in contact with, but I can’t risk using email to communicate their details. We must meet in person to exchange such sensitive information.
Why am I so fascinated by this case? Where to begin? Perhaps where I started a couple of years ago. I’d read about the Alperton Angels at the time and something chimed with me. So when I retired I decided to read up about it. The more I read the more engrossed I became and the more I wanted to know.
Everyone is familiar with the story by now: four men, who call themselves Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Elemiah draw vulnerable teenagers into a cult-like existence by convincing them they are all angels sent to earth with a divine purpose – to kill the newborn Antichrist. Each has a different, but equally important, role to play in this mission.
Holly and Jonah had both absconded from the care system and the cult becomes their family. It brings meaning to their lives that wasn’t there before: focus, routine, hope, positivity. It gives them confidence. Much of the behaviour exhibited by Gabriel and the other ‘angels’ is typical of controlling predators. They isolate the teenagers, keep them occupied with tasks that make them feel as if they are working towards a collective purpose. But these are kids who could easily drift into gangs or drugs, so their involvement in this ‘cult’ has its upside.
The angels have killed an innocent young waiter in pursuit of their purpose. Just as they are about to sacrifice a perfectly ordinary baby they claim will grow up to destroy humankind, Holly, the baby’s mother, comes to her senses and escapes with the child and Jonah, the teenage father. Three of the main perpetrators are ritually sacrificed instead.
And all this takes place in the nondescript suburb of north-west London called Alperton.
You ask what drew me to this case and why I remain interested in those teenagers and what happened to them. It’s because I found myselfin a comparable situation at a similar age, many years ago. Like them, I looked for a new ‘family’, but discovered too late they did not have my best interests at heart. I know how those young people felt and how they feel now, as well as how they will feel in ten years’ time, twenty, thirty. How they will feel in old age.
When you are forced into a place as dark as that, you spend the rest of your life on the return journey.
David
WhatsApp messages between Oliver Menzies and me, 9 July 2021:
Oliver Menzies
Woke up to the mad squaddie’s alarm call and then this email.
Thanks very much. You got me back.
Forwarded email:
TO:Oliver Menzies
DATE:9 July 2021
SUBJECT:The Alperton Angels
