With the years the eighteen-inch TV had grown muffled and low, and Arthur Simpkins was forced to turn it up.

He sat in the mustard armchair, his feet again in the bowl of hot water which he had carried through, a threadbare towel on the maroon carpet, trousers rolled up. His old legs were maps of veins. His mouth had dropped open in half-sleep. On the screen in black and white, tanks rolled across a wasteland. A voice boomed out of Beirut.

Then a shadow moved between Arthur Simpkins and Beirut.

Silence exploded in the room like a shell.

Arthur Simpkins awoke.

The TV had gone. Someone had switched it off.

He looked up, and for the first time he saw the face of Malach, aureoled in a cloud of burning white.

"Oh, Gawd," said Arthur Simpkins. He tried to rise and his feet slipped in the Fairy Liquid water, and he fell back. "How did you— Don't hurt me. Don't you hurt me. I'm an old man."

Malach nodded across the room.

Arthur Simpkins turned and saw, over the chair, the picture of the Queen in red.

"So," said Malach, "these are the gods you pray to."

"I'm an old man," said Arthur Simpkins. He dribbled, his false teeth slipping as his body shrank in fear. "Don't do nothing."

Malach looked down from his height like something on the wing.

And then he had shifted, and was behind the chair.

"Your hair," said Malach. He placed his hands, the left with its bracing of silver rings, upon Arthur Simp-kins's head. The fingers curved, and rested at the hairline. "Your hair is too long."

Arthur Simpkins felt a sting, like that of a wasp. Eight times. The nails of Malach had torn into his flesh. Very deep. He screamed.

Before he could scream again, in two neat perfect strips, Malach scalped him.

The moon was up, a lion's mask, the same as if above a desert.

Malach came out of the front door and quietly closed it.

He was immaculate.

The street was empty in the curse of the orange light. Then a man slipped from the shade between the lamps. He ran to Malach like a messenger on some quay of the Nile; and reaching him, at the gate of Arthur Simpkins, who by morning would be dead, the man bowed.

He wore an unfashionable raincoat in the warm night, thick trousers, cumbersome shoes.

Malach looked at him, and the man spoke rapidly in an undertone, perhaps in a foreign language. He gestured, into space, and Malach nodded. He touched the man on the shoulder and went by.

The man stood, a messenger out of time who had been touched by a king who was a god. Malach had disappeared. Up the street, a black taxi pulled out from the curb.

CHAPTER 20

OVER THE SOUND OF SINATRA'S LAMENT, the knocking on the door was uncouth and illogical. Lorlo Mulley waited unbelievingly for it to end.

It did not end.