Angel of Death

A little silence fell while they stared at each other. A coldness crept through her bones at something in his eyes, a thought which leapt from him to her.

‘You can’t think of anyone who might?’ His voice held no particular inflection, yet she knew what he was hinting.

She slowly shook her head, refusing to believe what she realised he was suggesting.

‘Someone couldn’t be trying to silence you?’ he persisted.

‘Terry wouldn’t do something like that,’ she burst out. ‘No. The idea’s ridiculous. Terry’s not a murderer.’

‘But you believed his son killed that girl.’

She bit her lip, remembering those sounds in the bathroom. Sean was so young, a boy with fresh, apple-blossom skin and clear eyes – it was hard to think of him as a cold-blooded killer. If he had killed his pregnant girlfriend it must have been in a fit of crazy rage. He wouldn’t kill again, Sean wasn’t a natural killer; she couldn’t believe he would try to kill her.

‘You didn’t believe a word I said!’ she accused and saw his eyes flicker. Suddenly she began to realise there was something behind his visit, something he had not yet told her. ‘Why have you really come to see me, Sergeant?’

He hesitated, then reluctantly said, ‘We have had some further information. A girl has been reported missing. She shared a flat with another girl, who went into a local police station yesterday to report her missing. She went out on Sunday morning, and has not been seen since. I saw the report and went to see the flatmate who told me that her friend had been seeing Sean Finnigan for a few months.’

Her eyes were stretched wide in shock and a strange sort of relief because she could see at once that the police no longer thought she was crazy and had imagined the whole thing.

‘So you believe me now!’

He didn’t say yes or no, he simply shrugged. ‘When I heard a car had tried to run you down I was concerned, obviously. It seemed a big coincidence, and we had several witnesses too, who seemed sure the car had driven straight at you, hit you, then gone on without stopping or even slowing. In fact, it seems the car accelerated after hitting you. A pity you didn’t see who was driving it.’

‘I told you, it happened too quickly.’

‘Yes. But if you had seen the driver . . .’ He broke off, seeing her face tense. ‘What is it? Have you remembered something? Did you see someone?’

‘Not in the car,’ she said huski

ly, shivering. ‘But before . . . and afterwards, after I was knocked down. I was conscious for a while. There were people all round me and one of them . . .’ She swallowed convulsively.

‘Yes?’

‘One of them was a man I recognised. I saw him first outside my apartment building, standing on the other side of the road. In fact, that was why I ran round the corner. He scares me, I didn’t like the way he was staring at me. And then when I was lying in the road I saw him again, among the crowd.’

‘Who was he? Does he know the Finnigans?’

‘He’s a Greek . . .’

‘A Greek?’ the policeman interrupted sharply.

‘Yes, he’s called Alexandros Manoussi, and he’s a client.’

‘Of the Finnigan firm?’

‘Yes, we . . . they . . . make the navigational computers he puts into his boats. He’s a boat builder, back in Greece.’

‘And you saw him outside your flat before the accident?’

‘Yes.’

‘And again, after you were knocked down?’

She nodded, remembering her foreboding the minute she set eyes on him after the accident, the strong sense she had had that she was about to die. She did not tell Sergeant Maddrell her fears. Or that she had always called Alexandros Manoussi the Angel of Death – he would look at her incredulously, then revert to his first belief that she was crazy.

Miranda knew how it would sound. She also knew for certain that she wasn’t mad, or even irrational. The way the Greek showed up just before something terrible happened was more than just coincidence. She didn’t really know what it was, only that she was terrified whenever she saw him.

Strange how she remembered so distinctly seeing that picture of the Angel of Death in her childhood. It had petrified her; the stern, dark eyes, the commanding hand beckoning, the black armour, those wings. Her grandfather had told her the Angel of Death came for children, maybe that had disturbed her? She had never seen the picture again, yet she recalled every detail as if she had seen it yesterday. But then childhood memories were like that. If they sank into your mind at all, they stayed there, unchanged, year after year.