It was a dingy pub, the ceiling obscured by a pall of cigarette smoke. If the Gatekeeper had sat in my office and chain-smoked for a couple of millennia, he couldn't have produced a fog that thick and stale. The carpet was threadbare and I took a guess that vaudeville was still the in-thing, entertainment-wise, last time the place had been decorated. The beer was weak.

"There's a topless barmaid on in an hour," Rossiter said.

We were sitting at a table near the jukebox. The juke was playing one of those pisspoor boy bands — a cover of a song that hadn't been much cop first time round. I leaned over and slapped him.

"Listen, pal," I said, "it's time you got with the program. I know it's rejectionsville at the moment, but you're not the only one. Plenty of writers suffer obscurity and indifference, but they win out through persistence. And so will you. But it ain't gonna happen overnight, I'll tell you that right now."

"Who are you? How do you know..."

"Shut up. Just listen. I shouldn't be telling you this, but I don't have the time to go through the usual procedure. Ten years, pal, and you're gonna be Mr. Big Time. I'm talking bestseller lists, literary awards, a whole new movement in contemporary writing."

He looked dumbfounded. I got another round in. "I don't know why," he said at length, "but I know you're telling the truth. It's like you have an inner light. I can't explain it. I'm in the presence of something, aren't I? It's like ... I don't know .... "

"An epiphany?" I suggested.

---

I decided to go back to the office and bone up on Wilberforce-Smith's book before I paid him a visit.

The book was gone. The office had been turned over. The filing cabinet was lying on its side, an amber pool spreading out from under it. I grunted a word that was less than celestial. I hate seeing good bourbon go to waste.

I felt someone behind me and turned round. The Gatekeeper stood there, shaking his head. "They were cold customers," he said. "They went in, tossed it, came out again, and it was like the temperature had dropped below zero. I kept out of it, man."

"Who were they?"

He glanced nervously around. "AIBs."

I straightened my chair and sat down behind my desk. "Come again?"

"AIBs, man. Angels in black."

"I know what it means," I said tiredly. "But it's just a spook story. An urban legend."

The Gatekeeper was an edgy kind of guy, true, but I hadn't pegged him as a conspiracy theorist.

"The mean mothers who did this" — he waved an arm expressively — "were way friggin' real."

"Whatever," I said. "Do me a favor, will you? Tidy this place up a bit while I use your phone."

I called the Records Office and asked to speak to Laura. There was a long pause and no hold music. I was about to hang up when her voice came on the other end.

"Carter?"

"Yeah."

"Have you found anything out?"

"I've spoken to Rossiter. I don't think he knows anything about Samangelaf. The way he acted when I showed up, he's never seen an angel before."

"What about Henry Wilberforce-Smith?"

"He's next on my list. But before I go down to earth again, I need to know one thing. Who assigned Samangelaf to safeguard Rossiter?"

"Raphael."

It made sense. Raphael was an archangel. He'd been around, in a key position, since the universe was created. His job description was 'guardian of human souls'. It stood to reason that he'd assign someone to take care of a man of Rossiter's potential.

I thanked Laura and told her I would call her when I'd made further inquiries. Then I went back to the office, turfed the Gatekeeper out, and got ready for another trip.

---

Rossiter let me in. "You're my own personal guardian angel, aren't you?" he asked.

"Two out of three ain't bad," I said.

"Pardon?"

"Yes, I am an angel. Yes, I saved your sorry ass, so I guess that makes me your guardian angel. And no, I ain't nobody's personal anything. You dig?"

He dug.

"I've gotta hole up a while, track somebody down and work out an angle."
He frowned. "How can you hole up and track somebody down at the same time?"

"Subcontracting," I said. "You got a library card?"

 

He was gone most of the day, and returned laden with books, photocopies and pages of handwritten notes. I caught up on my sleep while he was out, then raided his fridge, cracked open a beer and watched some TV. You mortals really watch some shit, it has to be said.

As per my instructions, he'd checked out a copy of Wilberforce-Smith's Mythology of Angels. I sent him off to the spare room with his portable typewriter and a ream of paper and told him to put the kettle on when he'd finished chapter one.

The brief biog on the dust jacket said that W-S was Professor of Religious Studies at Nottingham U. How very fortuitous. I still couldn't bring myself to believe that Rossiter and the Prof were unconnected, even though what little I'd learned from Rossiter pointed to the contrary.

What if it was the location of Samangelaf's death that was the key factor? Rossiter was in Nottingham, but any angel could have sorted him out. Wilberforce-Smith was also in Nottingham, and he and Samangelaf were already known to each other.

I was so sure this avenue was the way I would solve the case that I didn't pay as much attention to the Prof's book as I should have done. I merely flipped through it as indifferently as I had the copy in Samangelaf's cell. If I'd checked Samangelaf's name in the index and done my homework properly, I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble.

Rossiter came in with a mug of coffee and said there was a halfway decent soft porn film on Channel 5. I gave him a slap and told him to focus his mind on the way, the truth and the light, and sent him off to get stuck into chapter two.

---

Next day, I braced the Prof.

Lurking outside the lecture hall, I could hear his clear, confident tones. Listening, I twigged to something: here was someone within an insider's knowledge, dumbing down the truth to what his audience could cope with.

A throng of gawky students were badgering him as he came out. I grabbed his arm and hauled him through a maze of corridors. By the time I'd got him out into the car park, he was protesting strenuously. I shucked the trenchcoat off my shoulders and gave him a flash of wings.

"All right, pal," I said, shrugging the coat on again. "What's your name and when did you fall?"

"Fall, my arse! I was banished."

"Call it what you like. God gave you the heave-ho. Now suppose you tell me who you are, when you fell and what the deal is with you and Samangelaf."

"You call me a fallen angel one more time and I knock you back into the Kingdom Come." He didn't sound very professorial. He sounded, actually, as if he meant it.
This wasn't what I was expecting, and I wondered how to play it.

"Well, you Threshold-hopping little tosser, what's it to be? Are you going to level with me or do we trade blows?"

Contrary to popular belief, we private eyes are not eternally up for a bit of rough 'n' tumble.

"My name's Carter," I said, leveling with him, "and I'm looking into Samangelaf's death."

"I've heard of you. Private detective, right?"

"Right."

"Laura hire you?"

"Correctomundo."

He shook his head sadly. "Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"Anywhere we can talk?" I asked.

"Follow me."

Following him was like following a speed freak with a heightened sense of paranoia. He hopped along, glancing around at random but annoyingly frequent intervals. Occasionally he doubled back, or ducked into a sidestreet or alleyway. In the windows of shops and the glass-fronted display cases of advertising bulletins, he scrutinized the reflected shapes behind him.