Genius Squad (43 page)

‘He’s not!’

‘Clever people don’t end up hog-tied and shut in store cupboards,’ was Prosper’s disdainful response. ‘I honestly despair of you, sometimes. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life with people like Hazel Donkin, and that ludicrous Currey creature? Or are you
trying
to annoy me, because you’ve entered your rebellious teenage phase?’

Slightly winded by this accusation, Cadel struggled to comprehend Prosper’s outlook, which was so different from his own. The contrast between their views of the world was stark enough to make Cadel dizzy, as if he was trying to peer through somebody else’s prescription glasses.

How could such a bright man have such a blinkered attitude?

‘I like to think that underneath all this silly acting-out, you fully grasp your situation,’ Prosper went on. ‘You’re not stupid – you must see that I’m the only one who can offer you any kind of life. What can you look forward to otherwise? More foster-homes? Extradition to my cousin’s pig-farm? A dreary existence spent looking after all the rejects you’ve managed to collect along the way?’ Before Cadel could protest, Prosper hammered home his argument, point by point. ‘What makes you think I’ll
allow
you to waste your talents? You know perfectly well that you’re a shining star. I’m not about to let you hide your light under a bushel.’

Deeply discouraged, Cadel gazed up into Prosper’s clever, confident face. It looked implacable. But Cadel remembered when he himself had believed what Prosper believed. Surely there had to be some small chance of convincing Prosper that his reasoning was flawed? That it didn’t take certain things into account?

‘You don’t understand,’ Cadel began. ‘I know you want the best for me, but you don’t understand how I feel – ’

‘Of course I do.’ Prosper wouldn’t let him finish. ‘I realise you must have felt abandoned over the past few months. It was unfortunate, and I’m sorry. Though if it hadn’t been for
your
actions, I would never have been locked up in the first place.’ His lips twisted into a reluctant smile. ‘But that’s all water under the bridge for me. And for you too, I hope. My point is that I never lost sight of you, or stopped working to improve your situation. I’ve been watching your back, Cadel.’ Suddenly his smile turned wolfish. ‘Do you think that your friend Mace would have received his just deserts if it hadn’t been for me?’ he said.

Cadel’s gasped. He felt almost winded.

‘Come now,’ Prosper chided, as Cadel struggled to draw breath, ‘surely you must have worked
that
out?’

‘How – how – ’

‘My dear boy, I can’t tell you how many complaints have been lodged against that deplorable child, by various parties – your social worker, for one. It was in the system: Vee found out what Mace had been doing, and passed it onto Alias, who passed it onto me. So when I happened to encounter your antagonist’s brother in the prison exercise yard, I struck up an acquaintance.’ Prosper shook his head, as if the sheer depths of human ignorance continued to sadden and astonish him. ‘
What
a fool. He was actually under the impression that
you
had been tormenting
Mace –
what with the magazine incident, and so forth.’

Prosper went on to explain, with a glint of cold malice in his hooded eyes, that Mace’s brother had sought advice as to how Mace might engineer his revenge against Cadel. Whereupon Prosper had suggested ‘planting evidence’, in the sure and certain knowledge that Mace would be caught by the police surveillance team if such a ploy was ever attempted.

‘I even proposed encouraging that other kid – the little one – to ask for your address,’ Prosper smugly revealed. Then his smile faded suddenly; his expression became serious. ‘Because I’ve always looked after you, Cadel, and I always shall,’ he concluded. ‘I’m your father. You have to come to terms with that. You have to understand what it means.’

There followed a long pause, during which Cadel had to wrestle with his conscience. Prosper was so
persuasive
. So self-assured and articulate. So proud of his only son.

Defying him seemed oddly churlish, especially for someone like Cadel, whose life had never been exactly well stocked with doting family or friends. In holding fast to new loyalties – in choosing to trust Sonja and Saul – he had to pull against a strong, dark undertow of attachment.

He had to fight against his own heart.

‘Prosper?’ It was Alias who finally broke the silence – or, at least, it was Alias’s voice. But the figure standing in the doorway didn’t look like Alias at all.

When Cadel turned, he saw only a fat, middle-aged woman with lots of greying hair, and egg stains on her cardigan.

The transformation was so complete that Cadel peered past her as he tried to locate Alias. Then she spoke again, and he realised who she was.

‘What do you think?’ said Alias. ‘Best I can do, at short notice.’

‘Very impressive,’ was Prosper’s opinion. ‘In fact you’re making my skin crawl.’

‘Your own stuff’s laid out,’ Alias declared. ‘But you’ll probably need my help with it.’ He cast a troubled glance at Cadel. ‘Unless you don’t want him here on his own? Only I’m not sure we’ll all fit in the bathroom . . .’

‘Don’t worry about Cadel,’ said Prosper, with absolute certainty. ‘Cadel wouldn’t leave his little friend in
my
tender care – would you, dear boy? And he knows that he wouldn’t get far if he tried to take her along.’ Without waiting for a response, Prosper began to exit the room, tossing suggestions to Cadel over his shoulder as he did so. Why not indulge in a short nap? Or watch a little TV? Prosper would be busy for a few minutes, but when he had finished disguising himself, they would all be ready to hit the road.

‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you a laptop,’ he added. ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t trust you with a computer, just now. But rest assured that when you finally come to your senses, Cadel, you shall have all the technology you need. In fact I’ll build you your
very own
War Room, if that will make you happy.’

Then he disappeared, taking Alias with him. And Cadel found himself in a wholly unsupervised state, free to walk out of the house if he desired.

Except, of course, that he wasn’t free. Not as long as Sonja needed his help.

Not as long as he continued to play what was undoubtedly an important role in Prosper’s plans for the future (whatever they might be). All his life, Cadel had been shackled by one restraint after another: high expectations; constant surveillance; his own reputation for mischief; even the carefully constructed destiny imposed on him by manipulative men with warped morals. Never once had he felt unsupervised, even when he was completely alone. Never once had he viewed his existence as anything but a locked room with bolted windows.

I’ll never escape
, he thought.
How can I, when Prosper’s in my blood?
This awful insight made him want to scream aloud with fury and frustration. To pound his fists on the floor.

Before he could vent his feelings, however, his gaze fell on Sonja’s wasted physique. And for perhaps the fiftieth time, he reminded himself that, compared to his best friend, he was as free as a mountain eagle.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Cadel was familiar with the tactic of switching cars. It was a ruse much favoured by Prosper, who had often used it to good effect. Cadel himself had once taken part in an elaborate escape from a police headquarters, involving several changes of vehicle. On that occasion, however, there had been no garment-switching. No one had changed so much as a pair of socks in order to avoid detection.

This time, it seemed that Prosper was leaving nothing to chance. The four people who emerged from his secret safe-house at around three a.m. on Tuesday morning bore very little resemblance to the four people who had arrived some two hours previously. Cadel had been transformed into a young auburn-haired girl. Alias had assumed the appearance of a blowsy, overweight housewife. As for Prosper English, he was no longer an imperfect replica of Zac Stillman. Instead he was pretending to be a harmless old grandpa, with white hair and a white goatee, broken veins across his cheeks and nose, lousy teeth, bifocals, a bad stoop and a shabby tweed jacket.

Only Sonja remained unchanged. According to Alias, there was very little point in trying to disguise her. ‘You can’t pass her off as anything but a spastic,’ was how he bluntly put it (much to Cadel’s disgust), before adding, ‘On the plus side, though, people often can’t tell the difference between one spastic and another. So we might just pull this off. Because the police will be looking for a cripple with three men, and she’ll be a cripple with one man and two women.’

Prosper sniffed. ‘I very much hope that by the time the police start looking for
anyone
, she’ll be a cripple safely tucked away out of the public eye,’ he said. But in case he was being unduly optimistic, he decided to put her on the floor of their getaway car, and cover her with a sleeping bag.

‘You can’t do that!’ Cadel protested. Even Alias pointed out that if the police should stop them, a concealed body was bound to look suspicious. ‘The trick is to make everything seem totally above board,’ he said. ‘That’s why I didn’t choose a van. Coppers don’t like vans, because they can’t see what’s going on inside.’

His plan, he explained, was that everyone in the getaway car should give the impression of being part of a family. And no normal family would hide one of its members under a sleeping bag. Regardless of how deformed she might be.

But Prosper wouldn’t be persuaded.

‘She’s drugged,’ he said. ‘It’s obvious. Besides, I’m not sitting around while the police search this car. If they get close enough to see Sonja, they’ll also be close enough to talk to Cadel. And I don’t suppose
he’ll
keep his mouth shut.’ Placing a long, bony hand on the back of Cadel’s neck, Prosper outlined his strategy. ‘The purpose of using these disguises is to discourage the police from pulling us over in the first place. We have to make sure that we
don’t attract attention
. Which means staying under the speed limit. And wearing our seatbelts. And behaving . . .’ he smirked ‘. . . like a family on a road trip.’

Cadel wondered sourly what someone like Prosper could possibly know about families on road trips, but said nothing. After everyone except Sonja had paid a final visit to the bathroom, the whole team bundled into a blue four-wheel drive that was parked at the rear of the house, concealed from public view by a tall fence. Cadel was instructed to sit beside Sonja’s swaddled form, in the back of the car, and pretend to be asleep. He was also told to keep his mouth shut.

Then Prosper (who was in the driver’s seat) engaged the safety locks.

‘We don’t want you jumping out and hurting yourself,’ he remarked. ‘Nor do we want you signalling for help. That’s why you should put this up.’ And he passed Cadel a shirt on a hanger, to suspend from the handle above the window next to him. ‘It’ll give you a little privacy.’

‘I think
I
should be on the nod, too,’ Alias suggested, from the seat beside Prosper’s. ‘It would look more realistic at this hour of the morning.’ In a slightly anxious tone, he observed that a car full of party animals would have been even more realistic, and possibly a better disguise. Only he’d been worried about the effect it might have on any passing police officers.

Prosper assured him that the right choice had been made. ‘Your execution has been flawless,’ said Prosper, as he turned his key in the ignition. ‘So – are we ready now? Have we put out the garbage? Locked all the doors? Fed the fish?’ He grinned mischievously. ‘Yes? Good. Off we go then.’

And off they went. Before long they had traversed the surrounding labyrinth of suburban streets and were cruising down a freeway, heading west, towards the mountains. Cadel was mystified by this tactic. He had expected that Prosper would attempt to flee the country in some kind of sea-going vessel. By travelling inland, they were not only abandoning the coast and all its possibilities, but were leaving behind them almost every international airport in Australia.

Unless they were making for Perth? Or Adelaide?

‘Where are we going?’ Cadel queried.

‘You’ll see,’ Prosper replied.

‘To the mountains?’ said Cadel.

‘
You
’
ll see
.’

‘Is Dot going to be there?’

Prosper sighed impatiently, as if he was being importuned by a fretful toddler wanting ice-cream.

‘You asked me that question before,’ he said. ‘I was astonished to hear it then, and I’m doubly astonished now. I can only assume that you’re tired.’ He glanced into the rear-view mirror. ‘What do
you
think, Cadel? Do you think Dot is going to be there?’

Cadel pondered this inquiry, which had been delivered in a very patronising tone. ‘I think she’d be stupid if she was,’ he said at last. ‘If she disappears now, the police are bound to suspect her. But if she stays put, and pretends to know nothing about you . . . well, she might just get away with it.’

‘She might,’ Prosper agreed, without taking his eyes off the road.

‘I guess that’s what Trader will do, too.’ Cadel was thinking aloud. ‘I guess he’ll pretend you took him by surprise. It might even work, if nobody finds out about the War Room.’

‘My dear boy, why should anyone find out about that?’ Prosper seemed to be enjoying Cadel’s step-by-step display of logical analysis. ‘After all, nobody’s actually looking for it.’

‘The trouble is, Saul will wonder how you tracked me down,’ Cadel continued. ‘He’ll be suspicious of everyone who knew where I was. He’ll be asking a lot of questions.’ A vivid mental image of Saul’s face suddenly assailed him like a blow, so that he flinched, and shut his eyes briefly. The pictured face wore a grimly determined expression. ‘You shouldn’t underestimate Saul,’ he added. ‘I know him. You don’t. You’re basing your conclusions on incomplete data.’

‘No, dear boy, that’s what
you’re
doing,’ Prosper declared. He then proceeded to explain that, when the police came to investigate how he had walked unopposed out of a holding cell, they would discover certain carefully placed clues. ‘They’ll realise that the same hacker who broke into the computer system of the Department of Corrective Services
also
broke into another database containing your DoCS case file. Which, of course, happens to include all your contact details. And since the hacker in question doesn’t have anything to do with Genius Squad . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Well, let’s just say I’ve illumined one particular line of inquiry. While the road to Clearview House remains shrouded in darkness.’