The court case had been uglier than Lang described.
I spent the next three days buried in transcripts and witness statements, turning my small hotel room into a war room of yellowed paper and ink-stained fingers. The rain never stopped. It fell in steady, relentless sheets outside the window, washing Cardiff clean while I drowned in the filth of what had really happened. The gas lamp on the desk cast everything in harsh black and white — the papers looked like old photographs, the shadows sharp as knives. Color had abandoned the room entirely, as though the angel with the burning red-orange hair had passed through here too and drained the world of warmth.
I read every line until my eyes burned.
The case had begun six weeks before Hawthorne's death.
Thomas Griffith, a wealthy landowner with influential friends and deep pockets, had been accused of brutally murdering his poorer neighbor, Evan Pritchard. The killing had been savage — seventeen stab wounds, many delivered long after Pritchard was already dead. Defensive cuts covered Pritchard's hands and arms. Blood had sprayed across the walls, the floorboards, even the ceiling of the small stone cottage where the argument had exploded. Multiple witnesses had heard Griffith threaten Pritchard in the weeks leading up to the murder. The motive was as old as humanity itself: a bitter land dispute over a shared boundary strip that both men claimed.
It should have been a straightforward conviction.
But Reginald Hawthorne — the same elegant, silver-tongued lawyer who would later die in his own study — had taken the defense. And he had worked miracles.
I read the trial transcripts slowly, smoking one Turkish cigarette after another until the room filled with blue haze. Hawthorne had not denied the stabbing. Instead, he had spun a masterful narrative of fear and self-preservation. He painted Evan Pritchard as the aggressor — a violent, unstable tenant farmer obsessed with the land dispute. He produced "witnesses" (I was certain they had been paid) who swore under oath that Pritchard had been making death threats for weeks and had even been seen carrying a knife.
Hawthorne stood in the courtroom like a conductor, his voice smooth and commanding. He introduced a conveniently discovered letter — almost certainly forged — in which Pritchard supposedly boasted about "teaching Griffith a lesson." He brought in character witnesses who described Pritchard as a man with a violent temper, while portraying Griffith as a respectable family man who had acted in pure terror for his life.
The jury had bought it.
Self-defense.
Griffith walked free.
I could almost hear the courtroom that day as I read Lang's final outburst, transcribed in stark black ink:
"This is not justice!" Prosecutor Victor Lang had shouted, his voice cracking with raw fury. "This system is rotten to its core! A rich man buys his freedom with silver and influence while a dead man's widow and children receive nothing but graves! If this is the law, then the law itself has been murdered today!"
The judge had threatened him with contempt. The courtroom had erupted. And in that single moment of uncontrolled rage, Lang had sealed his own fate.
Barely a week later, Reginald Hawthorne — the man who had orchestrated the acquittal — was found shot dead in his study.
The perfect red herring had been created.
I leaned back in the chair, rubbing my temples. The rain outside drummed harder against the window, turning the glass into a black mirror. In it, I saw my own reflection — older, worn, dark-haired, with lines etched by years of chasing monsters. And behind that reflection, I imagined the younger, perfected version of myself: luminous red-orange hair glowing like living flame, gentle eyes full of false absolution, that perfect smile that made people want to follow him into damnation.
The angel hadn't chosen Hawthorne randomly.
He had chosen him because he knew exactly how Lang would react. He had chosen him because the resulting outrage would make the prosecutor the ideal suspect. One elegant strike, and suspicion landed exactly where the false messiah wanted it.
I stood and walked to the window. Rain traced black rivers down the glass. I pressed my forehead against the cold pane and whispered to the night:
"You're not just killing them. You're conducting them. Like instruments in your private orchestra. You make them love you, then you make them destroy each other… and the world thanks you for it."
The false messiah.
Seductive. Perfect. Younger. More beautiful. More dangerous.
He looked like the man I had been twenty years ago — before time, loss, and too many corpses had dulled my edges. He was what I might have become if the world had never broken me. And that truth hurt more than any bullet could.
I returned to the table and kept reading. The family of the murdered Evan Pritchard had been devastated. His widow had testified, tears streaming down her face, describing how her husband had only wanted fair boundaries. But money and influence had spoken louder. The corrupt undercurrent of the court system had shown itself in full — witnesses changing statements, evidence quietly misplaced, pressure applied in the right rooms.
Lang had been right to rage.
And that rage had made him the perfect pawn.
I sat there until the small hours, the rain never ceasing its loyal service to the angel somewhere out there in the night. No new killings had been reported since Belgium. The silence was worse than the violence. It gave him time to weave his web. Time to plant more disciples. Time to let suspicion settle on convenient targets while he moved untouched, crowned in living fire.
I finally extinguished the lamp. The room plunged into darkness, broken only by the faint glow of the red-orange hair strand on the desk — the single point of defiant color in a world gone monochrome.
He was younger than me.
More perfect than me.
And he was winning.
As I lay on the narrow bed, listening to the rain obey its master, one question refused to leave me:
If the angel with the fiery hair could make the world love its own destruction so beautifully…
How long before I, the older, broken version, started wanting to follow him too?
The rain fell harder outside, as though answering with cruel applause.