The Fallen Angel

It is dark.

He sings to himself. It is a song by his favourite band, the Fallen Angels. He thinks of the lead singer, Ange Davis: her ghostlike complexion and impish eyes. “She has a voice that woman,” he says to the darkness. The memory of another night shudders through him. The night he arrested Ange Davis during a raid on a brothel. He recalls her pallid body scored with lash-marks, a sight that reminded him of the crucifixions he had studied in galleries with awe. Christ’s five stigmata through which man’s sins could be expiated. He knew the symbolism from reading Huysmans. He recalls the sound of the rushing whip, her face… most of all he remembers her face: her impish eyes roving the room, embarrassed, ashamed, guiltily. This was the highlight of his career thus far.

The prostitute he recalls just as clearly. She had wiry grey hair and a blue vein distended her forehead. She was older than any prostitute he had encountered during the many raids he had been involved in and she had a familiar kind of face, like a screen actress whose frequent but small roles ensure you are continually asking yourself ‘What was she in?’ She had a habit of rolling her eyes, he remembers, and she kept saying the same thing again and again. What was it she said? He can’t remember.

Tonight, as a member of the Transport Division, there are no raids, only clean-ups. He casts a knightly figure in the darkness. Daylight would reveal the tired, lidded eyes; the low forehead as though weighed down with grief; the corners of the mouth permanently turned down as though accepting of fate; and the weakly skinned chicken-jowl. But it is dark.

He feels the dread rising up through him as usual, his darkness-cloaked face haggard with anticipation. He takes a few seconds to adjust to the mechanical mindset with which he confronts the inevitable, thrusting his hands deep into his trouser pockets and squaring his shoulders. He steps forward, the swirling blue light of his patrol car stroking his face through the darkness, studying the wreckage of the two speeding vehicles with a trained eye. He blocks out the noises around him, the sudden screeching of brakes from the opposite carriageway, the ignorant car horns from the queue further along this carriageway, the distant pulse of another police siren threading its way towards the scene. A fine drizzle is developing.

“Here goes,” he says, crossing himself. He opens his wallet and touches the face of his wife and daughter in the passport photo. It is part of his routine, which has become almost ritualistic, superstitious. He has convinced himself that the day he doesn’t go through with these formalities will be the day the victim in one of the cars will be frighteningly familiar, will be one of his family. He hasn’t seen his wife for a week – she’s been staying with her sister in the countryside so as to concentrate on her novel – it unnerves him to realise that she has probably driven along this road earlier this evening.

“We haven’t got all day Dean, do you think we’ve got all day?” shouts his colleague from the patrol car in a voice fuelled by urgency. “Stop dithering and see what’s what, for Christ’s sake.” This colleague’s stripes designate him a Sergeant; his tone of voice is dignified; he enjoys the luxury of seniority from the car. Otium cum dignitate.

The cars on the opposite carriageway have slowed, their drivers rubbernecking eagerly to see what has happened. They see an upturned red van wrapped around a lamppost, tendrils of chromium angling from the bodywork; they see a white car facing in the wrong direction, its bonnet concertina’d and its engine exposed, one of the headlights still, impossibly, casting a futile rod of light into the night; they see a leather seat torn from the first vehicle in a gesture of recklessness. Some of these passers-by are shaken up by what they see; others remain indifferent.

Dean has now shone his torch beam upon the first victim. He crosses himself, touches the passport photo again in an attempt to fend off the nauseous sensation that overwhelms him. The body is held upright by the steering column jammed against the torso, the blood-soaked shirt and grey face peppered with shards of windscreen glass. Taking in the scarred, bruised cheeks and blood-dyed hair, the policeman is struck with a pang of fear. He thinks he recognizes the mould of the face through the blood and glass and he turns away sharply. He takes a deep breath and looks again: No I’m wrong, he thinks, it’s not her.

“Anything of interest?” asks his approaching colleague, resting a heavy hand on the back of Dean’s shoulder. Dean remains leaning into the window frame bereft of glass, blinking away the strong smell of the Magic Tree air freshener that mingles with the perfume. He swallows to regain his composure and answers in a steady, distant voice:

“Nah, usual stuff; I don’t like this part of the job.” He observes the pound coin in the pocket beneath the handbrake that was ready – he conjectures – for the Dartford toll crossing a mile ahead. His gaze settles upon something on the floor beneath the passenger seat.

“Are you going to take it?”

“Take what?” He is surprised that the Sergeant has seen it too.

“The coin! What do you think I mean? God, lighten up will you; it was only a joke.”

“Oh, I thought you meant—” his gaze remains fastened on the floor beneath the passenger seat. There is an intense quietness.

“Come on, let’s get going; don’t you think we should get going?” resumes the Sergeant. “What’s keeping you?”

Dean leans further into the wreckage. “Just hang on a second, I think I’ve found something—” he stops abruptly. His heart also seems to stop.

“What?” the Sergeant speaks through his teeth.

“There’s this manuscript on the…” he steps back from the car, holding it tremulously under his torch beam. An image of his wife’s work flashes in his… but No, it’s not an ‘image,’ more like a physical presence weighing him down. He clenches his eyes like teeth and tries to shake the feeling loose. He knows the fear is irrational, why should a stranger have his wife’s manuscript?

“For Christ’s sake, what does that matter?” He grabs it impatiently. “Let’s get back to the station, I’m ready to knock off for the night, aren’t you wanting to get away from here?” He reluctantly looks down at the manuscript. Handing it back he rolls his eyes. It is a gesture that pokes at Dean mockingly… there was the prostitute who did that. He remembers what it was she kept saying now: “Do you fear God? – Do you fear God?”: over and over with the persistence of a piston.

“Yes but…” I thought this girl’s face looked familiar and, and…” he is choking on the realization of whom this is. He flips open the manuscript and reads an arbitrary passage:

[My childhood was pretty ordinary, was touched by glimpses of sadness and moments of elation. The naïve bliss that I recall so patchily brings a tear to my eye. If only I could recall everything! … I remember when I was nine or ten, when my best friend died in a car crash and I cried because it meant she wasn’t coming to my birthday party the following week…]

A tear forms in the corner of his eye, reading what he assumes is an autobiography. He can’t adjust to the mechanical mindset now; by reading those sentences he has forged an emotional connexion with the victim. Sometimes, he realizes, he prays for anything but what he dreads, only to find that the ‘anything’ Providence provides still hurts as though to make him feel guilty for the insensitivity and selfishness of his initial prayer.

“Spit it out, Dean. You look like you’ve seen a ghost! Who is she, are you going to tell me who she is?”

“It says on the front ‘Bondage Queen.’ That’s that Fallen Angel’s song, right?” In his shock he doubts himself. “And like I say, her face looks familiar.”

“You think she’s from the Fallen Angels?”

“Yes Sergeant.” His narrow voice can’t contain the rest of his suspicions.

“Not… Ange Davis herself?” and the ubiquitous tune of the previous summer floats ghostlike on the shadowy night.

A chill runs through him. “Yes Sergeant, at least I think so.” He draws his free hand across his strained eyes and reads another passage, this time from the final page:

[I wake up each morning and cry. I have no motivation to do anything anymore… not since the day I was arrested and my sexual preferences scattered across the headlines like broken glass. How that one night, that arrest has pained me. I thought being caught beneath a raised whip was humiliating enough (kind of ironic, I was there for pain and humiliation) but since then— I don’t remember the physical pain, you never do, but I remember the mental anguish… the policeman wearing his uniform like a knight’s armour. How he’s slain me! How I hate him! I feel like someone has ripped something from inside of me. I feel so empty.

I’ve been reading that novel by Ballard, ‘Crash.’ It’s the only thing that’s kept me sane. The idea is one I find erotic: the car crash death. Right now I feel like Goya’s dog in the quicksand, slipping, sinking. Life is too much for me to cope with. I’ve always been running, from life, from God, from newspapers … That night, its torment inescapable: the thrill was always in the danger, like an attendee of a Black Mass fearing God; getting caught was never part of the equation. I feel as foolish as the pious, as…] (at this point the manuscript continues with a series of denouncements of Christianity).

Reading these final, despairing words he realizes that this is no accident. He feels somehow responsible, and how could he have considered that arresting her was the ‘highlight’ of his career. How insensitive. How selfish. He prays for forgiveness, restraining his tears. Then he thinks of her blasphemous words: how could she? He doesn’t understand; she was his idol. He feels as though the ground has fallen from beneath his feet, his heart is somewhere in his throat. He reads over her rant against religion and it feels dangerous, he can only liken it to an early schoolboy experience of reading a porn magazine over a friend’s shoulder during lunch break, fearing the teacher; except the teacher is replaced by a higher being in this instance. That phrase, ‘How I hate him!,’ hurts: he was the cause of her agony more than any physical pain. But the blasphemies? He may have caused her hurt but she was now causing him mental pain. “God protects my family,” he whispers at the corpse.

“Okay, I know you had a thing for her but come on and check this other vehicle, don’t you think you’ve got a job to do?” says the Sergeant without a grain of pity.

He walks over to the second vehicle, crossing himself stubbornly: a car horn sounds in the lonely night: he neglects to touch the passport photo as his superstition dictates. His brow furrows under its confused weight; he doesn’t realize what he has neglected to do. It is about to get darker.

paul hansbury
March 2002