Lil hammered on the door of the Librarian’s Office. After a couple of minutes Logan flung it open, a furious look in her eye.
‘I want to speak to Marsha Quake!’ Lil demanded.
Logan pursed her lips and shrugged a ‘Who?’
Lil narrowed her eyes into the Penetrating Squint. ‘You know who.’
The librarian gave her a hard but considered look and then began closing the door, but Lil stuck her foot in it. ‘Not this time.’
Logan shook her head firmly.
‘No way!’ Lil shoved her shoulder between the door and the frame and tried unsuccessfully to lever it open with her body. ‘You’re not shutting me out,’ she yelled into the office.
Her weight still braced against the door, Logan looked back over her shoulder at something Lil couldn’t see. Then she sighed and took her hand off the door.
A voice called out from beyond. ‘I’m afraid that Marsha Quake isn’t here, Lil.’
‘You know me?’ Lil took a step forward, edging her way past the librarian. Nedly tried to pile in after her but got squished by the door as Logan stepped outside and closed it behind her. He melted through the wood with a ‘Gah!’ and immediately trod through Lil, who had stopped short. She gasped as the icy sensation struck her from behind and stumbled forward into the glare of a bright Anglepoise lamp that was aimed at her. Nedly darted into the corner. He sat down quickly with his hands under his legs, and tried to keep out of the way.
The person who was seated behind the lamp was no more than a shadow. Lil could just make out the shape of their head and the curve of their ears. There was something about those lines that didn’t add up.
‘Who are you?’
‘They call me Randall Collar, but that’s just an alias. You know me by a different name.’ The figure switched off the light. Lil blinked a few times, and then a few times more because she couldn’t believe what she was looking at. Even as her lips started to form the word it lodged in her throat and she had trouble making it leave her mouth.
‘Mum?’
‘Hello, Lil.’
‘You’re Randall Collar?’ Lil felt like she’d taken a kick to the guts. She staggered backwards until her heels hit the door and then she let it take her weight. ‘It’s you?’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.’
‘Because …?’
‘Because it was a secret.’
‘And you didn’t trust me to keep it?’ Lil didn’t need to try for the grim smile; it was on her face anyway. ‘How long have you been hanging out here on my patch at the library?’
‘The Klaxon has always been based here.’
‘So Logan is in on it too?’
Naomi laughed warmly. ‘Logan started it; the Klaxon was her idea. She’s the editor. She showed me that profile article you did on that lady, Delilah. It showed a lot of promise.’
Lil’s cheeks burnt with mixed feelings. ‘Delilah is dead – did you know that?’
‘No – I didn’t.’ Naomi got to her feet. ‘I’m sorry.’ Lil swerved her comforting hand.
They stood in silence for a moment, while Lil looked at an inky stain on the carpet, and then eventually she said: ‘So you knew A. J. McNair?’
Naomi blew her cheeks out and switched on a small kettle in the corner of the office. ‘That’s another story. One thing at a time.’
‘No!’ Lil said firmly. ‘Not one thing at a time. I want to know everything – right now.’
Naomi got two cups from the top of the filing cabinet and placed them by the kettle, which had started to make a low hissing sound, like an unspent breath being squeezed slowly from a corpse. ‘A. J. McNair wasn’t who you think he was.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘Here.’ Naomi took a framed picture off the wall. ‘This is the only picture we have of us all together.’
Lil stared at it. She saw her mother as a younger woman, just like in the photograph she had seen of her with Abe at the Nite Jar. She was wearing a beret, a turtleneck jumper and tortoiseshell glasses and sitting on a desk – the same desk she had been sitting behind when Lil came in. Next to her was a woman with long curly hair and a pencil skirt. Lil peered closer; standing behind them was Logan, in a checked blouse and slacks, smiling liberally with all her teeth. There were two men on either side of Logan, both wore white shirts with rolled-up sleeves, waistcoats and ties that hung loose.
‘Which one is he?’
Naomi took the picture from her and gazed at it sadly. ‘Lil, A. J. McNair isn’t a person at all. It was a code name used by a group of undercover reporters so that we could speak the truth without fear of reprisals.’ She turned the photograph towards Lil and pointed to each face in turn. ‘Roland Selznick, me, Logan Mackay, Jessica Coltrane and Idris Canto.
‘We had to create A. J. McNair, a mysterious fictional reporter who stood up against corruption in Peligan City, because as the truth became more dangerous we needed some kind of shield to hide behind. McNair was that shield. But he became much more than that, he became a symbol of resistance whose very existence gave Peligan hope.’
Lil’s heart felt impossibly full. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The water in the kettle started churning, bubbling up like voices all talking at once. Her mother continued the story, her voice rising to counter the sound.
‘An intrepid investigative reporter, never afraid to put his name to the truth, to bear witness to all the corruption and speak out against it. McNair was an example to everyone, and yet he was totally immune to intimidation, because he was so elusive – like a shadow.
‘And then we were proved wrong.’ The kettle clicked off and the room became suddenly very quiet. ‘We thought he was invincible – but, of course, no one is.’
Naomi poured water over the teabags, watching them sink and then bob back to the surface. ‘It was just before the election. Roland had dug up some pretty inflammatory evidence that Mayor Davious had been milking the public purse to finance his own property development company. At a press conference he popped some awkward questions, enough to get him thrown out. Davious went down a couple of points in the popularity rating after that, but Roland wasn’t around to celebrate. When he didn’t come in to work the next day we knew something was wrong.
‘A few days later his body was dragged from the Kowpye River.’ She stirred the tea slowly and then squeezed out the bags. ‘Davious’s retribution was crushing; that very day the Chronicle was closed down and in its stead the Herald was born. Its first headquarters were at City Hall.’
Naomi placed the mug of tea on the desk by Lil, sweeping aside the piles of documents and folders that were scattered there. Lil’s eyes went automatically to the pile; all these stories, all the digging, it was everything she had ever wanted. Top-secret files, research notes, scribbles in the margins; a hive of industry bringing the real news to the real people. Her gaze lingered over one file in particular – a manila folder with a red-elastic fastening.
Naomi twisted the dial on the front of the filing cabinet back and forth and then opened it, rummaged for a few moments and pulled out an old newspaper, which she handed to Lil.
‘Look.’ It was the first ever issue of the Herald and the cover story was the death of McNair. ‘We didn’t refute it. We didn’t have any means to; Peligan City had seen the last of reporters openly speaking out against City Hall. The free press was gone, Roland had been killed and we let A. J. McNair die with him. We – and Peligan City – lost hope.’
Naomi looked at her daughter with shiny eyes. ‘Roland was a great reporter. I wish you could have met him. You would have liked him. I did, I liked him a lot.’
Lil shrugged; she wasn’t really listening any more. She had heard enough. Under the cover of the old Herald she slid the manila folder out from the pile. It was labelled ‘Inquiry into Fellgate Prison’.
Her mother was still staring into the past. ‘Roland died a hero but no one will ever know what he did.’ She rubbed her eyes with her fingers, while silently Lil took hold of the folder and slipped it under her yellow mackintosh.
‘As long as the only newspaper in circulation was the Herald, City Hall had the perfect tool to manipulate the citizens. We knew Roland’s death should not have been in vain, there had to be another voice … and so Logan started the Klaxon and in Roland’s memory we kept true to the spirit of McNair. Marsha Quake even wrote a fictionalised biography of McNair, McNair and the Free Press, something to inspire a new generation of journalists. Of course it was banned as soon as it was printed, but there are still copies in circulation. I used to have one.’ She flicked her eyes up at Lil. ‘Over the years the Klaxon endured, and once again the figure of McNair became a standard behind which the good people of Peligan City gathered. People like you, Lil, and people like me.
‘For a long while I stood back and let the others carry on. You see, by then I had you, I had other things to worry about closer to home, like paying the rent and getting you through school. But as time went by I saw that things weren’t getting any better, they only got worse, because things don’t change unless people change them. The trouble was, so many people were just trying to get by; they didn’t have any fight left in them by the end of the day.
‘And then eight years ago I took a job at City Hall, working in the Public Records Department. An old colleague made contact one night and told me that they were working on a story, and they needed my help. I was perfectly positioned and as long as no one ever found out I could keep copying material for the Klaxon, helping them build their case to try to wipe out corruption at the top. Before long I was filing my own stories; to protect my identity I adopted the alias Randall Collar.
‘I knew it was dangerous. I had more to lose than ever by then, but I had realised that not doing anything would mean a much greater loss – we stood to lose the city, our freedom … We stood to lose everything.’
Lil surreptitiously hoisted the folder higher under her mac so she could get a pincer hold on it through the fabric at the back of her pocket. ‘It’s a great story. Were you ever going to tell me?’
‘I almost did, lots of times. A soon as Logan accepted that article I knew it wouldn’t be long before you figured it out, and I wanted to be the one to tell you.’
Lil snorted through flared nostrils. ‘You lied to me.’
‘I never lied. I just –’
‘Didn’t tell the truth?’
Naomi gave a heavy sigh. ‘I’ve had to make difficult decisions; I had to choose between the chance to save the city I loved, and you – my baby girl. And I chose you, Lil. You’re more important to me than anything.’
‘Is that right?’ Lil’s ears had turned a fiery shade of red, like two warning lights. ‘You chose me?’ She nearly choked on an unwanted tear. ‘Look at where we are, look at what you’re doing. You made a choice all right, that’s pretty obvious – but you didn’t choose me!’
Lil slammed the door so hard behind her that the sound reverberated through the room. Naomi stared at the space where her daughter had stood for a long time and then she let her body tip back until she was resting on the desk, gripping the edge tightly with both hands.
Nedly inched out of his corner. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll go after her.’
Naomi sighed and wearily got to her feet. She walked right through Nedly on her way to the sideboard to sort the files that Lil had been playing with back into some kind of order.