Minute for What (continued)

Saughton Gaol was out of a dark faerie story, prisoners locked inside like children in an oven. The hot reek of the holding area tested even the staunchest of the men packed there, and when Rob's turn came to be processed he resumed breathing without the assistance of his coat sleeve over his face.

"Give me a minute, Father," said the processing agent. Her office was larger than a kiln. Fluorescents sheened off the lime-yellow walls. Hints of freshly-brewed coffee lingered in the humid air. The agent sipped from an enormous thermos as she finished filling out the requisite fingerprint and photo forms and clipped them to Rob's file. That done, she lifted her gray head and smiled at him.

"Nobody recognized you, eh, Barclay? Don't take it personally, all we see cycling through the ranks are fresh cops in and out on their way to the real world of law enforcement."

"All except you, Jo."

The smile remained as she nodded. "All except me, that's right. I'm the only one still around old enough to remember Saughton's favorite reprobate, Father Roebuck Barclay, the terror of the city. We arrested you at so many protests, it was getting so you'd have a cot reserved."

The agent sat back and folded her hands on her stomach. "Then you stopped. I thought either you'd died or moved on to chase social justice elsewhere. Well, I can see you didn't die."

His file was thick, recorded on outmoded paper. It represented a full accounting of Rob's life up to and including the reason he stopped a life of protest and returned to the traditional duties of a priest; days of social agitation, once so crucial to a man of indeterminate faith, were long behind him.

"Says in there you took a trip to Luna," the agent said, slapping the top of the file. "Is that what cured you?"

"It restored my faith," Rob said.

"If that's so, then why am I privileged with your company once again, Barclay? The charges are serious."

"I know."

"Keeping company with half-baked killers was never your style."

They had stripped Rob of his belongings when admitting he and the boy, including the pistol that proved his guilt. Rob's presumption, thanks to his misfire at the woman he had attempted to mug, was that he would be held under the charge of attempted homicide and the boy, no more than an accomplice, would be let go.

"I don't understand," he said.

"The kid told us what you did. He'll be held on bail, but we should have you back on the street in no time."

TO BE CONTINUED