The Angel of Death - a Tommy & Moon Story

I cannot - for reasons that will soon become clear - tell you exactly where we were working.  What I can say is that it was an Arts & Crafts church somewhere in the south of England.  Given the number of non-Arts & Crafts churches across the country, this detail narrows it down tremendously.  I will also say that it’s one of the finest examples of a church built in response to that movement that exists today.  I would like to say I shed a small tear of joy when I first saw it, but I didn’t.  I probably said to Moon ‘Blimey O’Reilly, that’s a bit nice, ennit?’, or words to that effect as we walked through the lychgate.

I also wouldn’t like to tell you the poem we were carving in the churchyard for fear of narrowing down the possible churches even further.  Suffice it to say, it was a lovely poem, and more than worthy of being carved beside one of the most beautiful churches I’ve ever seen in my life.  The poem and the experience of carving it with Moon left such an impression on me that a week or two after we’d finished I learnt it by heart.  If you were here with me now, I would recite it to you and you would surely fall in love with it as I did.

Our client was a tall, easy-going and incredibly wealthy man of about sixty.  He lived within walking distance of the church and was happy to have us stay in his house while we worked there.  I’m going to call him Mr H because he had a helicopter.  And he was a happy chap.  I’d met Mr H when he came to visit the workshop, arriving in style by said helicopter, which he piloted himself, but he was away on business during our time there.  Moon couldn’t even hazard a guess as to Mr H’s net worth, but he owned all the land surrounding the church as far as the eye could see and I suspected the value of his assets ran into the hundreds of millions.  A woman whose connection to Mr H was unknown to me appeared in the graveyard wearing a long black strapless dress, her sudden presence catching us completely by surprise.  I thought she might be Mr H’s wayward daughter, or a niece who’d grown up in a religious cult somewhere along the Bible Belt.  But I dispensed with those theories quickly.  There was more of a story here.  

She was beautiful in a daunting, angular kind of way, backlit slightly by the crisp morning sun, her shadow stretching out in front of her.  We each offered a cheery hello but she didn’t respond.  She just stood there stock-still, a fleshed-out apparition looking over us.  We felt a hard stare watching us carving for a few minutes.  We were working on our knees, carving into a length of stone that was more or less at ground level so the feeling of being watched was more pronounced.  I felt like we’d been dropped into a scene from a British cult horror film.  She didn’t introduce herself and we never found out her name.  We couldn’t even say for sure that she was an actual living person.  Then a deep voice that uprooted the eery silence:

‘My husband is in the SAS,’ she said.  ‘He looted Bin Laden’s compound.  We have one of his rugs.’   

‘Okay,’ said Moon. 

She left less than a minute later without saying another word and we never saw her again. 

‘Is she—’

‘His girlfriend, yeah.’

‘Wow,’ I said, taking a moment to take it in.  ‘Quirky love triangle we’ve got here.’

‘Do you think she’s The Angel of Death?’  Moon asked.

‘She’s the Angel of something,’ I replied.  Then nothing was said about it until we were walking back to the house that afternoon.  

‘She’s spooked you, hasn’t she?’ I asked. 

‘I’m drinking tonight,’ Moon replied.  ‘It’s the only way I’ll be able to sleep.’

‘The air changed when she appeared.  Did you feel the air change?’

‘What if her SAS husband storms the house and thinks I’m her lover?  I need a gun.  Or in the very least a long stick.’

‘Her husband should be the least of your worries.  You’ll need a priest and some holy water for the things his demon wife unleashes.’ 

‘I’ll make a cross.’

‘Let’s just hope her husband gets here first.  We know he likes rugs,’ I said.  ‘Maybe you could roll one up and put it next to your bed as a peace offering.’

‘He might use my own skin as a rug.  He might use my skin as a cover for Bin Laden’s rug.’

I tried to put Moon's mind at rest as best I could.

‘The best case scenario,’ I said, ‘is that he kills you in your sleep.  The worst case scenario is that you’re woken by him breaking in and he kills you in a terrifying game of stab-chase.  If he kills you in your sleep, you’ll be none the wiser and he’ll be satisfied with his highly efficient and enjoyable act of retribution.  He’s killed his wife’s lover – or so he believes.  If he kills you in a struggle, he’ll forever know he’s lost his edge.  A far cry from his Bin Laden days.  His wife will finally divorce him.  And take the rug.’      

‘Wow, Tommy-Boy.  You’ve really put my mind at rest.’  

‘I’m quite excited.  I’ve always thought I’d be victim of mistaken identity.’

‘Mr H has left a fridge full of Rosé for us.  Let’s find a good film and drink ourselves into a coma.’