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By Root 310 0

but it felt like we were, and everyone knows stories about what happens to kids if they get caught breaking the law. I don’t mean what I said about just riding in a train and being thrashed. We’ve got prisons in this city, and the prisons take kids quicker than they take men. You also hear stories of boys not even making it to prison, but I don’t know how much truth there is in any of it – everyone’s out to scare you with a story. I was told once about runaways, and it made me sick. How if a new kid shows up with nowhere to go, and the police get him – they wait till night, break his legs and put him on the tracks. They’re stories, and they may not be true, but I couldn’t stop thinking of them as I walked across that station, feeling small – nearly losing Rat, but Gardo by my side, up close. Both of us just waiting to be caught.

Rat kept going. Somehow he’d shaken off that twitch he gets, and was walking fast, looking happy as a kid. He stayed a little bit ahead of us. He had something in his hand, and I saw it was the key, so I guessed we must be near. We went under a bridge into some kind of hall with a low ceiling and lines of tube-lights. We kept walking, like we knew where we were going, and there they were: two long aisles of grey metal lockers – lines and lines of doors.

We kept on walking.

Some doors were big enough to take suitcases, and some, up above, were small enough for just a handbag. There were no police, no guards – no station boys – and Rat knew exactly where he was going, and he hung back for a moment so we drew level, and he said, ‘You keep moving, OK? Walk.’

There were two women opening one locker, and we went straight past them. They were far too busy with whatever it was they were putting in to notice us. A tall man at the far end was locking a door, and his back was to us. I could see the numbers: 110, 109, 108 – none of them were smashed, everything was neat and quite new, and there were still no police. Then, suddenly, Rat had turned and he had the key in the lock. We walked straight past him, and we heard the sound of metal. Nobody shouted, nobody even noticed. I was ten paces on when I heard the sound of a door closing, and then Rat was next to us again, and I could see he had something under his arm.

‘Don’t run,’ he said. ‘Slow down, OK?’

We did as he said but my heart was pounding. Gardo was smart enough to stop and play with a drinks machine, checking the slot for money. I was thinking, Look like nothing’s wrong! – three station kids making their way. Rat had the package under his shirt now. We went out onto platform four, and right along to the end, weaving through the people. We did start to run then, out of relief. We got down on the tracks, and we started to run fast. Five minutes later, we got among bushes and bramble, and there was a small pile of concrete sleepers to sit on, and we were out of breath.

Rat was grinning and laughing, and I was as well. He held the package in both hands, and offered it up like a present. It was a brown envelope, sealed up with tape, and it took me some time to get it open.

Inside was a letter, with a stamp in the corner, waiting to be posted.

There was writing in a thick pen: If found, please deliver. Then the address: Gabriel Olondriz was the name. Underneath that: Prisoner 746229, Cell Block 34K, South Wing, Colva Prison.

I felt myself go cold again, but I grinned up at Gardo and he looked hard, right at me.

I opened the letter and read it out loud. One page, and a little slip stuck to it, with just a line of numbers, making no sense. Then again, the letter made no sense: we understood none of it. All we were sure of was that we were in something deep, getting deeper.

PART TWO

1

My name is Father Juilliard, and I am the one pulling these accounts together – all names changed, for obvious reasons. You will understand the importance of this at the end: but it’s a story that had to be told. The next set of events is best left to me, and to one of my former staff.

I will just tell you that I have been running the Pascal Aguila Mission