Gift of the Gab

by Morris Gleitzman

  My eyes must have been bulging with the effort of thinking so hard because Mr and Mrs Rocher were looking at me, concerned.

  I gave them a smile to show I was OK.

  Then I nearly fainted.

  Everything fell into place.

  Guilt.

  That’s why a bloke would go all the way to Australia to leave a person’s favourite sausages on her grave.

  Guilt at knocking her down with his car.

  Twelve ears after killing her, he was still trying to make himself feel better.

  Got you, I thought.

  I would have roared it out if I could.

  I’m hurrying to the post office now as fast as I can to get Mr Didot’s address. It’s not that fast because Mr and Mrs Rocher insisted I take the sausages and the bag’s really heavy.

  Plus I’m feeling a bit of guilt myself. I’m wondering if what I did to Dermot Figgis’s car was a bit much given that he didn’t even put dog poo on Mum’s grave.

  No, I’ve just decided he still deserved it for mocking the memory of a fine woman.

  When all this is over, but, I am going to try to learn to control my temper.

  First, though, I’ve got something much more important to do.

  I can see the post office up ahead.

  Soon I’ll know where Mr Didot lives.

  And then I can meet that murdering mongrel face to face.

  I was just about to go into the post office when I caught a flash of pink out of the corner of my eye.

  Across the street, watching me, was the young woman in the pink jeans who’d been staring at me outside the sausage shop.

  I waved.

  She ducked behind a parked truck.

  I dumped the bag of sausages. This was no time to be loaded down with smallgoods. Then I kept on walking.

  After a bit, I glanced back. As I thought, she was following me.

  I wasn’t worried, but. I’ve been followed heaps of times. There’s a kid in my class, Darryn Peck, who used to follow me with his mates and make dumb comments about my throat.

  I’m good at getting rid of people who follow me.

  I walked casually for a bit, then ducked into a supermarket.

  Supermarkets are good for losing people because they always have a back door leading out to the carpark. At least, Australian ones do.

  This one didn’t.

  I stood in a panic, staring at the fruit and veg display where the back entrance should have been.

  If the woman in the pink jeans followed me in I was trapped. She was probably a detective who worked with Mr Bernard. The local council probably had her keeping an eye on me, ready to pounce and arrest me if I got too close to exposing Mum’s killer.

  I was getting very close.

  She wouldn’t like that.

  I thought I could hear her creeping towards me down the cereals and dry goods aisle, handcuffs at the ready.

  I didn’t dare turn around.

  Not more than halfway.

  Which was enough to see a plastic swing door between a display of lightbulbs and a freezer cabinet.

  I threw myself at the door and burst into a gloomy corridor and sprinted down it to a storeroom full of boxes.

  A man’s voice shouted at me in French. I saw a patch of daylight and ran for it, knocking over a box of fruit and stubbing my toe on some tins.

  I ducked under a half-open roller door, sprinted down a narrow lane, across a road, into a park, wriggled through some thick bushes, came out into a sort of square, crept between some parked cars and found myself standing in front of a building with big windows.

  Through the windows I could see shelves of books.

  It looked like a public library.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  I went in.

  Nothing looks more suspicious than a person gasping for breath outside a public library. They’re obviously either on the run or having an anxiety attack because their library books are six months overdue.

  Inside I went straight to the shelf furthest from the door and the window, ducked down behind it and grabbed a book.

  I pretended to read it.

  It was in French of course, but luckily it had lots of pictures so I didn’t have to pretend too hard. They were black and white photos. I stared at them in amazement.

  For a sec I thought it was a book about the dangers of using too much spray on paddocks. The photos showed areas of land that were totally and completely wrecked. Just mud and dead cows and splintered trees.

  It looked even worse than the paddock Paige Parker had sprayed.

  Then I spotted something else in one of the photos. There were trenches in the ground with soldiers in them wearing World War One uniforms.

  It wasn’t sprays that had wrecked the land, sit was war.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  I spun round and looked up, panicking.

  But it wasn’t the detective in the pink jeans, it was a plump lady trying to get past with a librarian’s trolley.

  I jumped up and got out of the way. The woman smiled and pointed to the photo I’d been looking at.

  ‘Ici,’ she said.

  I didn’t know what she meant. I hoped that in France librarians aren’t allowed to make arrests on behalf of the local council.

  Then I realised from her hand-movements that she was saying the photo had been taken nearby. Locally. Something like that.

  I thanked her, put the book back and hurried out of the library and round a couple of corners.

  She didn’t follow me.

  I wandered around lost for a while, then found a street I recognised and hurried back to the post office. I had to find Mum’s killer before the detective in pink jeans found me.

  I looked around carefully as I approched the post office.

  No sign of her.

  My bag of sausages was still on the footpath. I grabbed a couple for evidence and hurried into the post office.

  There was a public phone booth in the corner with a phone book on a string. I went over to it, heart pounding. Somewhere in that book was the address of the man I’d come round the world to find.

  I opened it at the Ds, praying there was only one Didot.

  A hand grabbed me by the shoulder.

  I froze.

  Please, I begged silently. Please let it be the librarian with more information about local World War One battles and not the detective in pink jeans.

  I turned round.

  It wasn’t either of them.

  The face looking steadily at me with bloodshot eyes had stubble on it and black curly hair on top.

  It was Mr Didot.

  I was in shock.

  Total and complete shock.

  That’s the only reason I let Mr Didot lead me out of the post office without kicking him and biting him and letting him have it in the privates with whatever stationery I could lay my hands on.

  That’s the only reason I let him put me into his car.

  It was only when we were driving down the street that my brain started working again and I realised what I’d done.

  I’d let him kidnap me.

  And now he was going to make sure I couldn’t tell anyone he’d killed my mum.

  Lock me away somewhere.

  Or worse.

  I felt sick and weak and panicky, but I knew I mustn’t give in to the feeling.

  I wondered if Mr Didot’s car had central locking. If not, perhaps I could fling the door open and dive out.

  If only he wasn’t driving so fast. Doesn’t anyone in France drive slowly? I asked myself gloomily. Not maniac hit-and-run drivers, that’s for sure, I replied bitterly.

  Then I noticed something very weird.

  The way he was looking at me. With a gentle, concerned expression.

  Caring.

  I’ve seen psycho-killer movies at friends’ houses and psycho killers often pretend to be gentle and concerned and caring but you can always tell they’re faking it.

  With Mr D
idot I couldn’t.

  His caring expression looked real.

  Well, I wasn’t going to be sucked in.

  I scribbled angrily in my notebook, ripped the page out and held it in front of his face.

  ‘You killed my mother,’ it said, ‘and I’ve got the sausages to prove it.’

  He stared at the page, frowned and kept on driving.

  At least he wasn’t looking concerned and caring any more.

  Which would make it easier for me when I had him put away for life.

  A few minutes later we pulled into the driveway of a house.

  I made a mental note of as many details as I could to help Dad find me if I was able to get a message to him. The driveway was gravel. The house was two-storey with a slate roof and white shutters. The window-ledges all had flower pots on them. The flowers were all red.

  Blood red.

  I forced myself to calm down.

  If I got hysterical thinking about the danger I was in, I’d never get a confession out of the killer.

  I let Mr Didot lead me into the house. He took me through a living-room full of rich-looking old furniture and into an office with used coffee cups and plates all over the desk.

  I decided to go for the direct approach. Dad always does and it usually works for him.

  ‘I confess,’ I wrote in my notebook. ‘I killed her. Signed . . . . . .’ I put dotted lines where I wanted Mr Didot’s signature to go, tore out the page and handed it to him.

  He stared at it with a blank expression, then went over to the desk and switched on a notebook computer.

  I couldn’t believe what he did next. He typed the confession into the computer. Yes, I thought, heart pounding. The years of guilt have got too much for him. He’s going to sign the confession but he doesn’t want it to be in my untidy handwriting.

  Boy, was I wrong.

  Mr Didot didn’t print out the confession.

  Instead he reached for the mouse button and clicked on a French flag at the top of the screen. Almost instantly my English words on the screen turned into French words. I stared, amazed. It was a computer program that translated from one language to another.

  He looked at the confession on the screen, sighed, looked at me and shook his head.

  Then he typed some French, clicked an English flag and it turned into English.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Rocher from the sausage shop rang me and told me you’d probably be thinking I killed your mother,’ he’d written. ‘I didn’t. I was in hospital the night she was killed.’

  ‘Prove it,’ I typed and clicked the French flag.

  ‘That’s why I’ve brought you here,’ typed Mr Didot.

  He opened a drawer in the desk and took out a folder. It was full of forms. He let me look at them. They were all in French, but printed on the top of each one was what looked like the name and address of a hospital.

  I noticed the same French word on several of the forms.

  Rein.

  I typed it into the computer and clicked the English flag.

  Kidney.

  Mr Didot looked uncomfortable. I wondered if it was because the forms didn’t prove a thing. He could be a caterer with a contract to supply food to the hospital, including kidneys.

  Mr Didot tore the top off one of the forms and gave it to me.

  ‘The hospital will tell you I was a patient that night,’ he typed.

  While he was typing I noticed that a photo had fallen out of the folder. I picked it up. It showed a younger Mr Didot in a hospital bed connected to a medical-looking machine. The weird thing was, he was wearing a party hat and grinning. The people crowded round the bed looked like they were having a party. Even the machine was wearing a party hat.

  Mr Didot saw I had the photo and snatched it from me. He stuffed it back into the folder and shoved the folder back into the drawer.

  He seemed anxious I’d seen it.

  I was confused.

  Was he making the stuff up about the hospital?

  It didn’t look like it.

  But I wasn’t letting him off that easily.

  ‘If you didn’t kill Mum,’ I typed, ‘why did you go to Australia and leave sausages on her grave?’

  Mr Didot looked startled. Then he let out a sigh and typed for a long time.

  ‘I knew your father from when he was here twelve years ago,’ he wrote. ‘About a month ago, when he first knew the media were investigating the sprays, he wrote to me.’

  I stared at the screen. A month ago? That meant Dad knew the media were sniffing around several weeks before I found out. Why didn’t he say anything?

  He was hoping the whole thing would blow over, probably.

  ‘I’m an industrial chemist,’ typed Mr Didot. ‘Your dad asked me to check up on the sprays he was using. It is very hard because the chemical companies do not want to answer my questions. I am spending many nights on the Internet.’

  I looked at Mr Didot’s bloodshot eyes. Either he was telling the truth or he’d been lying awake worrying like guilty killers do on videos.

  ‘Last week I went to Australia,’ typed Mr Didot, ‘to talk to the TV people. To tell them they cannot accuse your dad without more proof. They wouldn’t listen to me. They wouldn’t even let me switch my computer on. I did not want the whole trip to be a waste. So I went to your mother’s Australian grave to pay my respects. With her favourite food. It is a custom in my family.’

  I’ve known some pretty good liars in my time. Darryn Peck, for example. He had the whole school fooled when he claimed it wasn’t him who let off the starting pistol in assembly.

  But he didn’t fool me.

  I looked hard at Mr Didot. He looked back at me steadily with sad, gentle, concerned, bloodshot eyes.

  I wanted him to be lying.

  I wanted to have found Mum’s killer.

  But deep in my guts I wasn’t sure. His hands hadn’t wobbled guiltily once while he was typing.

  I let Mr Didot put me back in the car to drive me to Mr and Mrs Bernard’s. I felt sick and numb with disappointment.

  As we drove past the sausage shop, Mr Rocher came running out carrying a sort of meatloaf wobbling on a plate.

  Mr Didot stopped.

  Mr Rocher tried to hand me the plate through the window.

  Suddenly I couldn’t stand it.

  I leaped out of the car, pushed past Mr Rocher and ran. Along streets. Across squares. Down alleyways.

  Finally I found Mum’s cemetery.

  The grass on her grave is soft against my face.

  But it’s not making me feel better. The longer I lie here, the worse I feel.

  It’s not fair.

  I just wish everyone would stop being so nice to me and tell me who killed my mum.

  If you want to find out the truth, play a mouth­organ in a cemetery, that’s my advice.

  I started playing mine to cheer myself up. And to let Mum know I wasn’t beaten.

  I can only play part of one tune. Dad taught me ‘Waltzing Matilda’ on the plane over, but we’d only got halfway through when the flight attendant took the mouth-organ away and locked it up till we’d landed.

  I was sitting next to the grave, sadly playing half of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ for about the sixth time, when a small black dog ran up and sat in front of me. It gazed up, panting happily.

  I stopped playing.

  The dog jumped up and barked.

  It wouldn’t stop. I decided to try and distract it so I started playing again.

  The dog sat down and listened contentedly.

  Despite everything that had happened, I started grinning. A French dog that liked ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Weird. Trouble was, every time I grinned I had to stop playing and every time I stopped playing the dog started barking.

  After a while I realised someone was standing behind me, watching.

  I stood up.

  It was an old bloke, even older than Grandad. He was so frail, his clothes looked like they were propping him up.

&nb
sp; He was smiling.

  ‘Her favourite tune,’ he said, nodding towards the dog. At least I think that’s what he said. ‘I play the record for her all the time at home.’

  I stared at him.

  Not because it’s unusual to play records to dogs.

  Because he was speaking with his hands.

  ‘You speak sign,’ I said. Then I stuffed my hands in my pockets. I hate it when they embarrass me by saying really obvious things.

  The old bloke’s smile faded. ‘When I was very young there was a battle near our house. A banana exploded too close. It blew up my ears.’

  Some of his hand-movements were a bit different to the ones I know, but I got the gist. I was pleased to see his ears were still in one piece. On the outside, at least.

  I pulled my hands out of my pockets. ‘How did you know I speak sign?’ I asked.

  He frowned at me, thinking.

  ‘Fry them with garlic and onions,’ he said.

  I realised we had a bit of a language problem. I asked him again, making my hand-movements slow and big.

  ‘Ah, I understand,’ he said, making his slow and big too. ‘How do I know you speak sign? I know much about you Australian visitors. I watch people’s lips. I have been hoping to meet you. I love all Australians.’

  Boy, I thought. You obviously haven’t met Dermot Figgis or Darryn Peck.

  The old bloke’s face wrinkled into a scowl and for a sec I thought he had.

  Then he said, ‘Nobody told me about the party at the cafe last night.’ He sighed and gave a shrug. ‘Perhaps it’s because they know that me and Simone go to bed at seven-thirty.’ He patted the dog.

  ‘Why do you like Australians?’ I asked.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I will show you.’

  He led me out of the cemetery and across a big paddock. It was a long, slow, muddy walk.

  Probably the best long, slow, muddy walk I’ve been on in my life.

  While we walked, the old bloke told me how during World War One the town was attacked by a German sausage. That’s what I thought he said. Then I realised he’d said German army.

  There were French soldiers defending it, he went on, and English, but mostly Australian.

  Suddenly he stopped.

  We were at the other side of the paddock. Running along by the fence was a deep trench, too wide to jump across. I could tell it was old from the weeds and rain gullies in the dirt walls. Parts of it had caved in, but other parts were about twenty times as deep as Erin’s sandpit at home.