Chapter 52: High Wire

At the very moment David Tennant revealed his magic sword to the courtroom, revealing to the demons that he and I were about to reveal the hidden truth that angels and demons walk amongst us, a crack team of undercover secret commando angels were breaking into the demons’ Paris headquarters, the address of which I’d found when I was scurrying furtively around their Master’s mansion trying not to be shot by R Kelly, David Beckham, et al. When it became clear to the Teacher that I was definitely going to reveal all in the courtroom, she had snapped into her usual brisk efficiency. ‘You will need proof, Miss Park. It will seem like madness. What proof do you propose to give?’

‘I expected you to be able to think of something.’

‘How rash of you.’

‘And yet I see you have an idea.’

‘Touche, Miss Park,’ and she gave a wintry smile. ‘The demons cleared out their London office in preparation for the bomb, but Paris will be occupied. To extract anything will be costly. Some will die, maybe many, but it is the last days, and I can see no other way.’

‘If…’

‘No, Miss Park. You are the Chosen One. This strategy of yours is naturally uncomfortable to me, after these millennia of secrecy, but it is what we have, for good or ill. You do your part, and I will do mine.’
***

Of the sixteen angels that broke into the Paris headquarters, only seven survived, but they escaped with plans, details, lists and more.

The world’s press had treated the previous day’s revelations as more or less a joke – an extraordinary claim in a soap opera celebrity trial that was distracting the world, ludicrously, from the sabre-rattling between military-law France and the rest of Europe. But then we started giving evidence on le Pen’s career, and the careers of other demons in the French armed forces. The prosecution said, ‘France is not on trial! This is irrelevant. All that is relevant is whether David Tennant killed Gavin Wishton.’

‘My client killed Gavin Wishton. I thought you had established that clearly?’

‘But…’

‘Your honour, as we established, Mr Tennant’s innocence rests on his claim that murder is a crime committed by humans. We must be allowed to prove to the court that no such crime was committed.’

‘This trial is a farce…’ began the judge.

‘Yes!’ said the prosecuting counsel. ‘The defence is…’

‘Hear me out! The evidence submitted for my consideration this morning should be seen and will be seen. I have been informed by the defence that the newspapers will be presented with it, but I have also been assured that this will not happen until it is seen in court. In light of this…’

‘We object most strongly! The jurisdiction of this court…’

‘You will not interrupt me again and remain in the room, counsel, is that clear?’ The prosecuting counsel sat mutinous. ‘This is my courtroom. Extraordinary times make certain demands, and while I am yet to be convinced, I am impressed by the defence’s restraint in not having forced my hand by feeding their tales to the press, and the defence’s clear desire to allow the jury to decide on the basis of evidence unmediated by public hysteria. I am perfectly sanguine about the possibility that what happens today may be overruled, but I will not stop the defence from presenting its case.’

The atmosphere was electric. The evidence we had gathered was absolutely convincing proof that le Pen was the product of a conspiracy which had also placed France under his military control. It also demonstrated that Vladimir Putin was part of the same conspiracy, which underpinned his shock decision to sign a non-aggression pact with France. But as the prosecution kept pointing out, it did NOT prove that the conspirators were timeless regenerating demons. ‘How can you stand here denying the humanity of David Tennant, who has been examined by a variety of medical experts over the course of his professional career, for insurance purposes, as we can demonstrate, and who has never once been told he cannot be insured because he is not human.’ My witnesses repeated what David had said about the sword. The science that allowed the angels and demons to blend with the world was sufficiently advanced that from our human perspective, it seemed like magic. The judge emphasised that the jury were only debating the merits of this case. If they thought David Tennant and Gavin Wishton were human, it must be murder. The jury nodded wisely.

We showed a video of the battle for Centrepoint, which claimed five lives, including brave Davina McCall. The jury were duly horrified. And then I called Boris Johnson to the stand. After all, our defence was all about theatre. ‘Are you an angel?’ I asked.

‘Of course I am, old thing. Always have been, always will be. Fight the good fight.’

‘Can you prove it?’

‘Afraid not. We lost access to the science of our ancestors when we arrived on this planet. This is not about proof. This is about reasonable doubt.’

‘Objection! It’s not Mr Johnson’s job to tell…’

‘Objection sustained.’

‘Your honour,’ I said. ‘All I have is enormous volumes of circumstantial evidence. I am convinced the jury will believe it, and I will keep presenting it as long as you allow me. May I please ask Mr Johnson some questions which will allow us to explain more quickly?’

‘On the condition that he does not try to do my job for me.’

Boris was funny, eloquent and charming. He gave details of his life as Churchill, including where to find a graffito in one of the toilets at Blenheim that showed a scratched picture of a black dog widdling on Hitler. He also handed over a key to a safe-deposit box where, as Churchill, he had deposited a diary of every crucial decision in World War II which had been based on work done secretly by the angels. It was a story of heroic sacrifice which paralleled rather than diminished the heroism of the known story. ‘We should perhaps have revealed ourselves many years ago, but secrecy became a habit, and we feared prejudice. We are so few, and we are the last of our kind. We only reveal ourselves now because le Pen and his monsters want to start a new war, and the world must know what it faces.’

As we knew when we started, fine points of law were nothing to do with the jury’s eventual decision. When Boris revealed that no nuclear weapons would work any more because the angels had disarmed them for fear that they might end up under demon control, as indeed had now happened, there was almost a cheer. From that moment, we knew we had won.

Of course, victory was only the beginning.