Sanctus

Then she remembered the call.

She’d had the cell for years. It was so old she could barely send a text, let alone take a picture or surf the net with it. Not many people even knew she had it. Fewer still possessed its ex-directory number. She ran through the very short list of those who did while she waited for it to get up to speed.

Liv had adopted what she called her ‘home and away’ system shortly after starting work on the crime desk. The very first story she’d covered had required her to chase down and interview a particularly slippery attorney representing an even more slippery local property developer being sued by the State on several counts of bribery to obtain building licences. She’d left a number for the lawyer to get back to her. Unfortunately the man who’d called her back was his client. She’d been halfway up a cherry tree with a pruning saw in her hand when she’d taken the call. The force of the abuse he’d hurled at her had almost made her fall out of it, but she’d walked into the kitchen, grabbed a pen and paper and jotted down everything he said, word for word. The entire incident, and the direct quotes arising from it, became the cornerstone of the damning article she subsequently wrote.

She learned two valuable lessons from the incident. The first was never to be afraid to put herself in the story, if that was the best way to tell it; the second was to be more selective about who she handed out her number to. She bought herself a new cell and began to use it exclusively for work. Her old one, with a new SIM card and number, had subsequently been reserved exclusively for friends and family. It now shuddered in her hand as it ended its start-up sequence. She peered down at the screen. She’d missed only one call. There were no waiting messages.

She pressed the menu button and scrolled through to the missed-call log. Whoever had called her had done so from a withheld number. Liv frowned. As far as she could remember, everyone who had this number was also in her address book, so should automatically be recognized. She took a final drag on her cigarette, ground it into the damp pine needles and headed back towards the hospital to say goodbye to the human part of her human interest story.

33

The church that filled one side of the great square in the old town was always busiest in the afternoon. It seemed to scoop up the crowds who had spent the morning wandering around the narrow cobbled streets, staring up at the Citadel. The weary visitor would enter the cool, monolithic interior and be immediately confronted with the answer to their unspoken prayers: row upon row of polished oak pews offering, for no charge, a welcome place to sit and contemplate life, the universe and how unwise their choice of footwear may have been. It was a fully working church, holding services once a day and twice on Sunday, offering communion for those who wanted it and confession for those who needed it.