Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may be too busy.
As the car containing Helophel, Magariel, Atoziel and Oloriel nears Birmingham, Helophel phones Keel and Curtis again. Anything to take her mind off Atoziel's driving. Alas for the angels' plan to launch a surprise interview, they claim to be really too busy to meet up this evening. The sounds of tortured rubber and distant gunfire add verisimilitude to an otherwise completely convincing tale, as far as Helophel's resonance is concerned. Eager not to be drawn the the attention of CI5 any more than is necessary — for some reason Helophel seems to think that recruiting the entire organisation is beyond her! — the angels don't press.
Instead, they go and have dinner at Angelo's. They don't need food, but what the heck, they've come all this way, they might as well check out a place with a personal recommendation from the Archangel of Creation. The food isn't anything particularly special, but the barman (Angelo himself) claims to do excellent cocktails to order. Magariel gets creative (and enthusiastic) in his ordering, allowing his Cherub of Creation attunement to determine that Angelo is human, self-taught, and damn good. Oops, I mean blessed good.
While the travellers head back to London, Blakely is busy ensuring that Roberto Raposo's corpse will be found somewhere plausible. This will allow him to wrap up the air crash from the point of view of the police, since he knows that the unmatched prints in the cockpit are Raposo's.
The Cenotaph offices have been collating intelligence that might be of interest to CI5, at Helophel's request. The one major interesting item that they come up with relates to Juan Cerrido, the drug-runner who Curtis and Keel were waiting for at Heathrow. Apparently, although his arrival was known of, none of the major London dealers were expecting or planning to meet him. Cerrido was a moderately big shot, and wasn't listed as changing planes at Heathrow, making this more than somewhat unusual.
Arriving back in London, Magariel decides to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing story by staying for a second night in the Sheriden Hotel. It's been booked, after all.
In the morning, Magariel pings her resonance and is alarmed to discover an increase in the danger level around Jenny. She checks out of the hotel and calls Atoziel and Boriel. Atoziel agrees to wander down Beverley Road and sing the Celestial Song of Memory, with which he discovers no disturbances in the past couple of days (i.e. nothing since the one he already knows about). Boriel reports only one phone call of interest, from David, which amounts to an invitation to drop in, which she does. Jenny sounds worried on the recording, which does nothing to ease Magariel's worries. Checking her resonance for watchers, Magariel finds that Jenny is being observed by Boriel, an Agent of Hell she meets intent on physical foul play, an Ethereal (probably Zack or his mysterious sponsor), and David.
Alarmed at the "Agent of Hell" bit, Maggie drops round on the Weavers. Jenny looks distressed as if she had been crying in the recent past. She admits to there being trouble between her parents, serious this time she thinks, resulting in her mum going off to manage a signing tour at short notice. David and Maggie pull an effective impromptu double act to distract her and cheer her up, and the three of them go out to see a movie. John Travolta in Michael, sadly.
Meanwhile, Blakely gets to do some scene-of-crime forensics. Wells and Herald's car has been found (not far enough away from Beverley Road for his comfort, since that seems to be Celestial Central at the moment). A painstaking examination leads Blakely to conclude that someone in the back seat clubbed both people in the front seat over the head, then drove the police car. Also the first aid kit has been used by someone other than the officers, and most of the bandaging is missing. This is no great surprise, the pair were acting as an ambulance. Similarly, the back seat is covered in multiple patches of blood, making it hard to tell more with any certainty. Blakely doesn't have DNA/blood samples of Wells or Herald on file, so he can't rule out the possibility that one of them did the clubbing, but the last prints on the steering wheel belong to neither of them.
Back in the office, Blakely confirms for Helophel that Cerrido was the person found battered to death with his portable computer, the one that CI5 were interested in. There was nothing more complicated about that one, he's sure; he's just finished dictating the post mortem report after all!
Helophel meanwhile takes the opportunity to increase her knowledge of recruiting (i.e. she talks to people at the Cenotaph offices) and arranges more backup. Since it seems like Magariel is going to be distracted, Helphel arranges to get someone — preferably a Mercurian — who is used to Soldiers to help out, and verifies Oloriel's availability. The plan is to meet in the Carpenters Arms, with Oloriel sitting at a different table, apparently not related to Helphel but able to see Curtis and Keel. The CI5 agents, when they phone in the afternoon, fail to derail this plan.
Atoziel has also been busy, trying to trace Debra Weaver. A phone call the previous night is tracked back to the Great Northern Hotel in Peterboro, and a check against the credit card records reveals Debra but triggers an alarm in the system. Atoziel bales, covering his tracks expertly.