‘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.