They focused on a newspaper each. Lil spread them out on the desk and turned on the green glass lamp; it buzzed and grew dim whenever Nedly moved near it until Lil hissed at him to ‘Keep still!’
They worked in silence apart from Nedly’s repeated requests for Lil to turn the pages. After a few minutes she lost her temper.
‘Look, it’s taking twice as long to find the articles because I have to keep turning the pages for you as well as my own!’
‘I’m trying to help.’
‘I know, but … Forget it.’ She turned the next page and started scanning it, then stopped and looked up at him. ‘It’s just occurred to me, Nedly –’ she swivelled round to face him – ‘that you’re sitting on that chair.’
‘I know.’
Lil raised her eyebrows. ‘So you can’t turn a page or pick up a satsuma, but you can sit on a chair? That doesn’t make any sense.’
Nedly was horrified. He stared at his legs with dread as though he was about to see them sink through the wooden seat.
Nothing happened.
‘You shouldn’t be able to do that. It’s the same as walking on a pavement or up stairs; if you can’t touch an object then you shouldn’t be able to do any of it.’
Nedly gulped; he looked like he was trying not to panic. ‘What are you saying?’
Lil looked pleased. ‘I’m saying you can catch a satsuma and you can also turn the pages. Maybe you just have to concentrate more, or maybe there’s some kind of knack to it. I don’t know, but the fact is – it’s possible. You should at least try.’
She had to hand it to him, Nedly really did try. The table rattled, and his chair fell over. Lil sat through a series of crashing and straining sounds as he attempted to force the pages to turn. He flapped his hands at them, blew at the edges, windmilled his arms, he even commanded them to turn in a low and terrible voice. If anyone but Lil had heard him they would have come running to see what the commotion was but no one could, so Lil sat there, apparently alone in the study area, stewing in an irritable silence with her fingers jammed in her ears and a permanent grimace, until finally she had enough.
‘OK, OK! she yelled. ‘Forget it!’
For a few moments the only sound in the library was Lil’s angry breathing, and then they heard a rattle of footsteps. Lil jumped up to peer round the shelves but whoever it was had vanished, leaving the door to the librarian’s office swinging shut. Logan was still sitting at her desk marking up some documents.
Lil sat back down thoughtfully and murmured. ‘That’s always happening in here and I never see who it is.’
Nedly shouted in frustration, ‘I’ve tried everything!’
The mystery of the unknown occupant of the Librarian’s Office had distracted Lil enough for her temper to die down. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll turn the pages; it’s no big deal.’
‘It’s a big deal to me.’ Nedly slammed a white-knuckled fist on the desk. Lil noticed that the scratch on the back of his hand, the raised white line with a thin blood-beaded centre, hadn’t even begun to heal yet.
Lil nodded at the clenched fist. ‘You shouldn’t have been able to do that either.’
As Nedly glared at her and then at the inanimate paper. One of the pages began to curl up, as though lifted by a breeze. Lil held her breath. Nedly bored his unblinking eyes into the pages with a look of complete determination, until they began to twitch with the effort. Lil was about to advise him to give up before his eyeballs burst when, all of a sudden, it happened. In a flurry of newsprint the pages fluttered over in quick succession, like a sprung deck of cards.
‘Not bad!’ she said.
Nedly’s eyes shone, but he shrugged modestly and said, ‘It was too fast to actually read anything.’
‘But it’s a start.’
Lil smiled to herself. She thought there was probably a whole lot that Nedly could do, if he could work out how. She didn’t even comment on how annoying the intermittent rustling sound was as Nedly practised rifling the pages, reading each spread in random order depending on where the paper opened.
After almost an hour of searching the Herald for the missing person report Lil noticed that Nedly was no longer turning the pages and had fallen silent. The air in the room had turned icy and the shadows cast from the desk lamp started to loom.
‘You’ve found it then?’ she whispered.
The article was small and near the back.
Concern for Missing Boy
Ten-year-old orphan Ned Stubbs was reported missing from the Hawks Memorial Orphanage last Tuesday morning. Despite the assurances of the local police force, the orphanage caretaker, Mr Emil Kolchak, told the Herald yesterday that he did not believe that Stubbs would have run away and is concerned for his welfare. They have engaged local Private Investigator Absolom ‘Abe’ Mandrel to find the boy. Citizens with any information as to his whereabouts should contact Mandrel at his offices on Wilderness Lane.
There was a blurred picture of Ned Stubbs. It must have been a school portrait as he was wearing a tie, a V-neck jumper and a forced smile.
Lil watched Nedly’s eyes move back and forth across the page as he read through the text over and over again. Finally they settled on the photograph. He reached out a finger to touch it, but it slipped through the paper, and he drew back sadly. ‘It says here I’m an orphan.’ His mouth turned down. ‘At least no one missed me.’
Lil looked at the date. ‘You’ve been … you know what … for a whole year already.’ She watched Nedly trying to blink back the tears that had welled up under his eyelids. ‘It must be a bit of a shock, right, seeing it there in black and white?’ She tried to put a comforting arm round his shoulders but whipped it away again when it dropped through his back, jolting her with an icy shudder. Nedly didn’t seem to notice. His pale face had turned white and filmy; his shoulders curled in, making him look even thinner.
‘I bet they missed you at the orphanage, Nedly. They hired this Mandrel guy, didn’t they?’
‘Yeah. A year ago.’ He got to his feet. Three of the four globe lightshades that hung down from the ceiling pinged and went out. He swallowed hard. ‘I can’t do this. I don’t want to know. I need to get out of here. I need some … air … or something.’ Nedly started skirting the walls looking for an open door.
Lil called quietly after him. ‘Wait for me outside. I’m going to check out this detective.’
She watched Nedly give up trying to find an exit and disappear through a bookshelf. A row of box files fell off in his wake, one after the other like synchronised swimmers. Logan appeared round the bookshelf, frowning, and Lil quickly scribbled the name ‘Absolom “Abe” Mandrel’ on a fresh page in her notebook, tore it out and handed it to her before she had a chance to start tidying the box files away.
A short while later, the librarian carried over a thin pile of newspapers and placed them on Lil’s desk with the index card.
Lil laid them out in front of her, sharpened her pencil and started taking notes.
The first and oldest article was from the Chronicle and mentioned a Detective Constable Mandrel who had single-handedly busted an illegal bootleg operation in a downtown warehouse and had received an award for Outstanding Service to the Police Force. The next two articles were dated five years on and just name-checked him as part of the Serious and Organised Crime Squad (SOCS) that had infiltrated and then brought down a rare-diamond smuggling ring and then, two years later, a protection racket based out of the Lick and Spittle Boxing Club.
The biggest story was a double-page spread from an early edition of the Herald. Mandrel had been in charge of a large-scale operation that had led to the capture of the notorious Lucan Road Mob. The ringleader, mob boss and extortionist Ramon LeTeef, his associate, renegade scientist and inventor Dr C. Gallows, and their assorted henchmen had been arrested on numerous charges, which included theft, embezzlement, fraud, kidnap, violent assault, blackmail, armed robbery and two counts of attempted murder.
Under the subheading ‘Scourge of the Underworld’ there was a picture of Detective Mandrel in his police-issue trench coat, his trilby pulled down and shading one eye. His wide jaw was set in grim determination, his glare was steely, and there was, Lil noticed, the slight suggestion of a shadow under his eyes. She looked closely at the face of the man in the picture and then slowly reached into her rucksack and pulled out her copy of McNair and the Free Press, flicking through the pages until she found the photograph of her mother.
As she held it up against the grainy newsprint image of the detective her heartbeat started to thrum like a double-bass solo. One man had a twinkle in his eye and a lopsided grin, the other was grave-faced and almost scowling, but there was no doubt in her mind that it was the same man, and that for whatever reason and albeit many years ago, this great detective was someone her mother had once known – which made him practically a friend of the family.
She licked her fingers and turned to the last article. It was a front-page story. Lil read it through quickly.
Is this Justice?
The trial of the deranged mastermind behind the Lucan Road Mob’s most startling crimes was concluded at Peligan City Courthouse yesterday.
Dr C. Gallows was found to be criminally insane and will be committed to Rorschach Asylum for the indefinite future. On account of his testimony against the doctor and other notable henchmen, former mob boss Ramon LeTeef has been granted impunity from criminal prosecution.
When asked what he thought of the outcome of the trial, Detective Absolom ‘Abe’ Mandrel, who was in charge of the original investigation, made no comment.
There was a picture of Mandrel leaving the courthouse, one hand up to block a camera, the other arm in a sling.
Lil swung her chair back on two legs and chewed thoughtfully on the end of her pencil. ‘Sounds like a stitch-up,’ she said to the photograph. ‘You must have been fuming.’ She looked at the date on the paper. It was published more than twelve years ago. There was no mention of Mandrel in the papers from that entry until the Missing Boy article. So where had he been all that time?
Pondering this thought, Lil tore out one final page before closing her notebook, wrote two words on it and then heaved both piles of newspapers into her arms and carried them back to the desk.
She handed the paper to Logan and waited. Last one.
Lil was almost ready to give up by the time the librarian appeared behind her, her green spectacles only just visible above the pile of newspapers she was carrying. They were all the Herald and behind her was a trolley loaded with more editions.
Lil looked at the pile in a way that said, All of these?
Logan put a copy of the paper on the desk and flicked through to the last pages. She reached the personal ads and ran a finger down the page until she found what she was looking for. Lil quickly read the ad. She looked over at the piles and raised her eyebrows in a way that meant: ‘Is there one of these in all of those?’
Logan nodded.
Lil smiled a Thanks and got to her feet.
Nedly was sitting on the back of a bench opposite the library staring up at the dirty grey stone columns stained a murky green with exhaust fumes and algae. On the roof stood four figures, the old gods of learning, philosophy, truth and wisdom, looking balefully down on the city as their limbs crumbled away. The large leaded windows were boarded up and covered in graffiti. Amongst all the tags and obscene sketches Nedly picked out a phrase in red spray-painted letters. It read ‘Ipsa scientia potestas est’, and the trademark tag of a ‘K’ in a circle. It was the same ‘K’ as was on the cover of the Klaxon.
Lil hopped up to sit beside him. ‘It means “Knowledge itself is power”.’ Nedly didn’t look as impressed as she’d hoped. ‘It’s a saying. In Latin. Which is an old language no one speaks any more,’ she added.
‘I know what Latin is,’ Nedly grumbled; still slumped on the bench, chin in his hands and shoulders sagging.
‘Cheer up,’ said Lil. ‘I’ve got some amazing news!’
Nedly stared down at his shoelaces and sighed. ‘What?’
‘That private investigator, Mandrel, the one who’s been looking for you –’
‘The one that didn’t find me.’
‘The one that hasn’t found you yet. Well, I know him already – sort of. I mean, he’s an old friend of Mum’s.’ She pulled the picture from her pocket and jabbed a finger at the trilby-hatted man. ‘This is him, right there.’
‘You said he was a nobody.’
‘Well, it turns out he’s a somebody – a famous detective!’
‘Great.’ Nedly sighed again.
‘You don’t sound so thrilled.’
‘No, I am. It’s really great,’ Nedly said, not sounding any more thrilled than before.
Lil’s eyes were shining. ‘We should meet him, as soon as possible. I mean, you know, to find out about your case. I reckon we can solve this thing in no time with the three of us working together.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Oh, I nearly forgot. I have something to show you.’
Beside the bench was a litter bin; inside were the remains of the morning’s paper that had been soaking up the grease from a chip wrapping. Lil picked it out and turned to the second-to-last page. She held it up for Nedly to see and pointed to the advert.
Appeal for Missing Boy
Please help. Do you have information relating to the disappearance of Ned Stubbs? Reply to the Hawks Memorial Orphanage, Bun Hill, Peligan City West.
Nedly didn’t look at her. ‘So? They put out an advert. Big deal.’
‘Not just one – there are hundreds in there. Someone at the orphanage has put that advert in the Herald every day for the last year. You should have seen the pile.’
Nedly squinted up at her. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. So someone cares what happens to you, a lot. And they’re not the only one, so …’
Nedly shrugged despondently.
Lil jumped down off the bench and turned to face him. ‘Look, I know you’ve had … a bad time lately and you probably think you’ve got nothing to …’ She faltered. ‘… go on for … but a whole year has gone by and not even this Mandrel guy could find you. Whoever did this probably thinks they’ve got away with it. So we’ve got to solve this, Nedly; we’ve got to prove them wrong!’
The silence that followed Lil’s speech was broken only by the wheels of a tramp’s trolley as an old woman passed between them.
Lil softened her voice. ‘I know you’re worried, Nedly, but I won’t let you down.’
After a couple of long seconds he cracked a begrudging smile. ‘OK. What’s first?’
‘First, we better hook up with Mandrel and find out what he knows. Believe me, Nedly, with him on the case, you’ve got nothing to worry about – he’s the business.’
There was a well-thumbed directory in a nearby phone box. Lil flicked through to the right section and ran her finger down the page until she found it.
‘Mandrel, Absolom. There’s an address on Shoe Street – wait, there’s more below it. Absolom Mandrel Private Investigations, 154c Wilderness Lane. OK, let’s go! I’ve got a good feeling about this, Nedly.’