Published by Hybrid Publishers

      Melbourne Victoria Australia

      (c) 2010

      All rights reserved.

      Copyright (c) by John Chesterman

      This publication is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests and enquiries concerning reproduction should be

      addressed to the Publisher,

      Hybrid Publishers

      PO Box 52, Ormond 3204.

      www.hybridpublishers.com.au

      First published 2010

      National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Chesterman, John, 1967-

      While I have Pedro / John Chesterman.

      9781921665165 (pbk.)

      People with mental disabilities - Fiction. Fire investigation - Fiction.

      A823.4

      Cover design: (c) Gittus Graphics

      Front cover based on ‘Gelmeroda IX’, 1926 by Lyonel Feininger

      Digital Distribution: Ebook Alchemy

      ISBN: 9781877006180 (Epub)

      ‘The hard part is being good

      when things are going badly.’

       Pedro

       For C, J & E

      One

      I love relays. I don’t care whether they’re races, like at the athletics or in the swimming pool, or if they’re just people passing something along, such as the Olympic torch. I like things to be done in a certain order. I know it sounds stupid, and it probably is stupid. But it keeps me calm, just thinking about relays. Maybe if the police had thought more about relays I wouldn’t have ended up in jail. I mean, I was there. I saw the place burn to the ground. If I think about it, which I do all the time, I can even hear the screams of the woman trapped inside. And I didn’t help her. I couldn’t. But I didn’t light the fire. I just knew it was going to happen.

      I’m Red, by the way. I’d like to say that you wouldn’t notice me if you passed me in the street. But you would. For a start, I’m tall. Six foot three. But I also walk with a limp. I shuffle with a limp is probably more correct. As if that’s not enough, you’d certainly notice me if you tried to talk to me. Some stupid problem in my brain doesn’t let me curl my lips around any words. So, basically, I grunt. People who know me, like Pedro, can understand some of my words. Parents often tell their kids to think before they speak. That is my entire life, in one statement. It’s what they’ll put on my grave when I die. ‘He thought before he spoke’. My brain’s fine, I reckon, though some, like Professor Battersly, phd, franzcp, disagree. My problem’s always been proof. I can’t write. I can’t really even hold a pen. I can tap tap tap very slowly on the computer, but I usually hit the wrong keys. Just like I hit the wrong notes on the piano when I had my one lesson with Mrs Smart, who to be honest I don’t think was worthy of her name.

      There are four things that are really important to me: Pedro, my Diary of Important Dates, newspapers and my scrapbooks. My mum is sort of important, my brother is a little bit important. What’s all this got to do with a woman dying in a fire? Everything, is the answer, but you’ll have to wait or you won’t understand. The lady trapped inside the church won’t be grateful for the explanation, but the next unlucky person might be, so just let me do things in order.

      I actually love newspapers, I don’t just like them. Pedro once told me that you like something if you’d prefer to have it than not have it. You love something if you get excited just thinking about it. Me + newspapers = excitement. I buy one every morning at the milk bar. And I read the local one, which is delivered every Tuesday, or sometimes on Wednesday if Marjorie’s knees are playing up again. I collect all kinds of details. I’m not really interested in politics or world affairs, but I follow all the sports results, especially when there’s an athletics or swimming carnival. I could tell you who won any relay you care to think of, better than most, if I could talk properly. Just knowing information like that has to count for something, I reckon, even if I can’t actually tell anyone about it. I also know all about the weather forecasts, what the governor has been up to, and which ships are coming in and leaving Melbourne. I’m interested also in all the local events and problems here in bayside Melbourne. I know about all the robberies and attacks from reading the local paper. This year there have been three men arrested for flashing near the beach, so I read (and they weren’t taking photos). Last year there were two. I should know because I was one of them, but I wasn’t trying to be rude. I was just having a wee and a young woman saw me. She screamed, and I have to agree that I got pretty excited, but I didn’t mean to scare her. The police let me go pretty quickly and even drove me home, which was nice. I’m not sure how many were arrested the year before because I don’t think the newspaper ever said.

      The last thing you need to know before I tell you what happened, and this is also very important, is how to turn things on and off. To understand this you need to think of baseball coaches. I know a lot about them because I once read a very interesting article in the sports pages called ‘what you need to know to be a baseball coach’. That article went straight into the old scrapbook - I’ll tell you more about my scrapbook later, because you need now to concentrate on baseball coaches. Question: how does a baseball coach tell a runner on second base what to do when the other team are watching him and when his team is playing in a big baseball stadium with supporters yelling really loudly? A coach might want to tell the runner on second base to steal a base and run to third base, though you’d need to be Carl Lewis (last runner, 4 x 100 metres, five times world record holder) to steal from second to third. It doesn’t happen very often. But let’s pretend Carl Lewis is on second base - god knows how he got there because to my knowledge he can’t play baseball. But we’re pretending. How does his coach give the signal to the next batter, and to Carl Lewis, that Lewis is going to steal? The more I think about this example, the worse it gets, because if you had Carl Lewis on base everyone in the world would expect him to steal, because he is Flash Gordon himself. He’d probably steal home and get there before the pitch did. But we are just pretending. Go with me, as Alfie says. How does the coach give the signal?

      Simple. They have a secret way of turning the message on. The team might know that when the coach touches his elbow, then that turns the signal on. Touching his cap might mean a steal is going to happen. But if the coach just touches his cap, it means nothing because the signal hasn’t been turned on. It’s only after he touches his elbow that the signal is on. Simple: elbow, cap, Lewis to third.

      I do pretty much the same thing in my life - the signals, that is, not the running - and I don’t think there’s anything too silly in it. For instance, when I’m sitting at the table having dinner I sometimes like to have salt. On Thursdays we often have chips, and I like salt on those. Things are automatically switched on at the table, so if I’m on my own at the table, I can have salt. Why wouldn’t I? It’s just salt. It’s not very good for your heart, I read. But I think I have other problems that are more important than my heart just at the moment. So things are always turned on at the table, unless they’re turned off. And they can be turned off quite easily. If Johnny touches