Free Devil's Food by Kerry Greenwood

from the person whom I have always thought of as ‘me’. Whoever she is.
    I wandered into the bakery and found someone standing at the Calico Alley door. He was tall, clothed in black robes, and was in the act of putting the hood back from his face. Two others, in brown, stood behind him. He must have been a solidly fleshed man once, but was now thin and flabby, with drooping wattles of empty flesh under his chin. He was holding one of my famine loaves.
    ‘Well?’ I asked. ‘You didn’t like the bread?’
    He was taking deep breaths, I noticed, as though he appreciated the scent of fresh baking which flowed past him, but he said only, ‘You made it too well.’
    ‘Too well?’ That was not a usual complaint. The Brother’s voice was rough, as from a raw throat.
    ‘You included some salt, I believe. A little too much baking powder.’
    ‘And what do you want me to do in future?’ His air of restrained menace was getting to me. I broke off a bit of the bread and tasted it. Pah. Dry as ashes. I could not detect any flavour at all except a fugitive taste of carbonised chickpeas.
    ‘Make it worse,’ he said.
    Then, with a flick of the robes, he and the others were gone. I paused, searching for an appropriate swear word. Nothing occurred. I binned the famine bread. I would not put that into my bag for the Soup Run. Or even the destitute would be complaining.
    Daniel came in with news, but it was not good news. I could tell from the way he walked. A slow plod rather than a fast stride. I knew he had gone to talk to Constable Wellesley, the ‘nice policewoman’ at Missing Persons.
    ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘He was picked up by the police in St Kilda Road exactly two weeks ago. They thought he might have been drunk or drugged but he was neither.’
    ‘Then why did they pick him up?’ I asked, pouring soup into a cup. A china mug, for special patrons. ‘It’s — and I acknowledge that I ought to put an exemption clause into this statement — a free country.’
    ‘It is,’ Daniel conceded. ‘But even free men are not allowed to walk along the middle of the road and they are really discouraged from lying down in front of a tram.’
    ‘He lay down in front of a tram,’ I said evenly. I was proud of myself. I didn’t spill one golden drop of the remarkable Jason’s pumpkin soup.
    ‘Repeatedly,’ said Daniel, sipping. ‘So they picked him up and stuck him in the cells until the Crisis Assessment Team arrived and they said he wasn’t mad so they let him go again.’
    ‘To go and lie down in front of another tram?’
    ‘He promised not to do that again.’
    ‘Damn,’ I said angrily. ‘Couldn’t they have taken him to a nice safe loony bin so that we could find him again?’
    ‘They were abolished,’ said Daniel, breaking off a piece of herb muffin. ‘There’s almost nowhere to put someone if the CAT team says they’re not dangerous. If I say Previous Government again will you promise not to throw anything?’
    ‘Never did before,’ I told him.
    ‘Frying pan,’ he pointed out, and I had to concede this.
    ‘But it was only once. And I sort of dropped it, I didn’t really throw it.’
    The deep brown eyes considered me as he absorbed more soup. Dispassionate eyes, my Daniel’s, problem-solver’s, social worker’s, private detective’s eyes, eyes which had seen a lot of prevaricating, most of it more convincing than I was presently being. I gave up.
    ‘Okay. Sometimes I throw things, stress of emotion, it runs in the family. My very own grandpa said that his grandfather called his wife an “argumentatious, pan-flinging female”. Any idea where the man went after they let him out of the cells?’
    ‘Last seen wandering vaguely towards the city,’ said Daniel. ‘That was really wonderful soup. Cheer up, my pan-flinger, it’s not all bad news. I got something else. He had to give the arresting officers an address and he did, and I’ve got it. Interesting thing, though. He had a passport