While I Have Pedro. John Chesterman
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churches. He used to own one, sort of. Well, he went there all the time. He wouldn’t want anyone hurt, but especially anyone at a church, I would think. He always said it doesn’t matter how much you don’t like someone you shouldn’t hurt them. Even if they take away something you really like. I’ve tried to remember that. But I do find it hard to remember when I’m cross. Pedro says that’s the very time you need to remember it. So I need to do better, as always.
Alfie saw me reading the newspaper article about the fire and he said, ‘bloody Muslims should leave their wars in their homelands’. I don’t know how he knew so much about it, but he seemed pretty sure, so I didn’t doubt him.
The local newspaper, which took Marjorie until Wednesday to deliver that week - because of her knees - also had a little bit about the fire. It also said that there had been attacks on Jews in the neighbourhood earlier in the week. I ripped that article out, even though it was about the same fire, so I still only had forty fires in my scrapbook, not forty-one. I count fires, not articles. I also ripped out an article from the local newspaper about how someone had been stealing women’s underwear from clotheslines. I thought I should keep that because I remember once a pair of my undies ended up on the front lawn, and I don’t know how. I don’t think anyone in the house would be stealing underwear, but it doesn’t hurt to collect information.
Pedro once said to someone that I kept a very good scrapbook of newspaper clippings. That made me proud, even though the scrapbook doesn’t really have clippings because I can’t really hold scissors. My scrapbooks really contain tearings or rippings. I rip out articles of interest by tearing the newspaper down longways. It usually ends up pretty neat. Then I paste the articles into my scrapbook. I’ve got about twenty of these huge scrapbooks in my room. I glue things in, and I quite like the smell of the glue, which is the truth so help me god. I take something out of the newspaper every day. That’s a lot of ‘just in cases’ I know, but I think it’s better to be too cautious. I reckon, too, that I’m not hurting anyone doing that. I’ve got lots of ‘just in case’ pieces, waiting for their moment.
So I’ve told you about the November fire. In April this year there was another church fire, this time at St Mark’s in Cheltenham, and a man died. I didn’t know him. There is no reason why I would know him. He was just a man who happened to die. The big newspaper had the story on its front page. It said the man had died in the church before the fire had been lit and there were no suspicious circumstances. That made me wonder how bad something had to be before the police would think it was suspicious. Maybe more than one person had to die for it to be suspicious, but then why do they report robberies and so on where no one dies?
I’ve only been to church a couple of times. Once Mum took me and the priest put his hands on my head and said a heap of stuff about cure this man of his illness and so on. The other time was for my brother’s wedding. Stretch’s wife, Karen, is the most beautiful woman in the world. She says she’s not, which is what the most beautiful woman in the world would have to say. If she didn’t say that she wouldn’t be quite so beautiful.
Now, trumpets please, to my Diary of Important Dates. This diary, which Pedro gave me five years ago on my birthday, February the 4th, is not like a normal diary. It goes on year after year. Every date has something written next to it, but it doesn’t have the day marked. That way, says Pedro, it can go on forever. It tells you all sorts of things that happen on any particular date. For instance, did you know that my birthday is also Independence Day in Sri Lanka? That, as Alfie would say, was news to me.
I still shake my head when I realise how long it took me to use my Diary of Important Dates to help me solve the riddle of the church fires. It was there, sitting on my bookshelf, the whole time. It was right next to my bed when I went to sleep. You would think it might even cause me to dream certain things it’s so close to my head at night.
That’s not to say that I’d been ignoring my Diary of Important Dates. I’d been looking at it every day. I loved knowing what else was happening around the world each day. Which countries had holidays. Most days have five or six things happening in the world in total. Christmas Day is a real bonanza for holidays. There’s more things marked on Christmas Day than any other day. New Year’s Day is probably next.
So I’d been looking at my Diary of Important Dates each day, including on the days of the fires. But the problem was that I didn’t know that the fires were being lit on those days. I only knew some days later about the fires being lit, when I read about them. What I hadn’t realised was that I needed to use the information I learned about the fires and then go back in my Diary of Important Dates to those dates when the fires were lit. That’s if I wanted to help solve the problem.
I can tell you the exact day that I put two and two together. It was June 15th. I looked through my Diary of Important Dates that day, as usual, and found that June 15th is the day the Magna Carta was signed, whatever that means. More important, though, was what my Diary of Important Dates told me about the fires I had been tracking. The first fire, I knew from the newspaper, had been lit on November 30th. When I checked this date out in my Diary of Important Dates it said that November the 30th is Independence Day in Barbados. But it is also a holiday in Scotland, where it is St Andrew’s day. That was a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think. St Andrew’s church going up on St Andrew’s day. I also knew that the fire at St Mark’s church was lit on April 25th. When I looked at my Diary of Important Dates for April 25th I found that it was Anzac Day in Australia. Essendon takes on Collingwood that day at the MCG. I’ve been there once, and I yelled so hard I lost my voice, even though I don’t barrack for either team. Alfie took me and said that if you don’t barrack for Collingwood then you have to barrack for whatever team is playing them. You can’t barrack for Collingwood just for one match. You’re just not allowed. So the bombers got the benefit of my lungs that day. Fancy cheering for the bombers on Anzac Day, Alfie said, though that was long after they’d won.
As well as being Anzac Day, did you know that April 25th is also Liberation Day in Italy? More important, though, it is also St Mark’s day. That really is terrible luck, you’d have to say, to have two fires being lit on the churches’ special days. But when I discovered all that, something happened in my brain. I guess I had been thinking a lot about those fires. No-one knew who had lit them, at least there was never any mention in the newspapers of anyone getting caught.
The pattern was so obvious that I couldn’t believe no-one knew what was happening. The first mistake I made was to try and tell the police that the same person did the two fires. That was the first mistake. As luck would have it, I ended up making four mistakes. I’ll get to the others in a minute. We have to do everything in order.
I had worked out, thanks to the newspapers and my Diary of Important Dates, what was turning the fire lighter on. He, or maybe it was a woman -because you don’t know that it’s a man, even though I do - was lighting fires when his (or her) Diary of Important Dates told them it was a special day for the place they were setting alight. I didn’t know who was lighting the fires. But I did know why they were doing it. They were just doing things in order. And like Pedro always tells us, you should show people what you think.
Pedro wasn’t at home when I made this discovery, so I couldn’t tell him what I knew. Alfie was there, and he doesn’t understand me like Pedro does. I tried to show Alfie what I knew. I held my scrapbook in front of him and showed him the article about the fire at St Andrew’s. I even said ‘fire, fire’, and he said ‘that’s interesting, Red. Lucky no-one was hurt’. Then I showed him my Diary of Important Dates, which I had open on the week that showed St Andrew’s day in November and he said, ‘Mate, that’s ages away. Let’s live one week at a time.’
That was probably when Johnny came up to us. Johnny, as I’ve mentioned, is like Rav, he doesn’t talk. Pedro tells visitors that they are non-verbal, though he’s never said that about me or Phil, because we can say things. To be honest, I can make sounds and Phil can say three words, but that’s just Pedro being generous, as usual. But Johnny and Rav are definitely non-verbal. Johnny only ever makes one sound. He walks up to you and looks at you. He stands so close you can smell his breath. Then he makes a high-pitch hum, right in your ear. He stares at you with his slightly cross-eyed look and a bit of a smile the whole time. If