The Genius Wars

  Larry’s grunt signified approval. He began to call up various review menus, while the screens that he wasn’t using continued to jump automatically from viewpoint to viewpoint. Vacant room succeeded vacant room. Wind-tossed glade succeeded wind-tossed glade.

  As he stared at the swaying trunk of a distant palm tree, something pricked at Cadel’s subconscious like a hot needle. That palm tree, he knew, was delivering a very important message. That palm tree was bugging him. It was practically waving at him. ‘Hey! Hey! Look!’ it was saying. ‘Can’t you see what’s wrong?’

  But he couldn’t. Not yet. And before he could solve the puzzle, he was distracted by another movement.

  Someone was walking down an upstairs hallway, wearing a grey tweed skirt and blood-coloured twin-set. Cadel recognised her instantly.

  Weak-kneed, he had to grab at the edge of the desk.

  ‘Wilfreda!’ he croaked.

  ‘What?’ Larry didn’t even glance up. He probably didn’t know that Wilfreda had worked for Prosper English back in Australia. After Prosper’s arrest, she had disappeared; no one had ever been able to discover her whereabouts.

  Until now, of course. Now Cadel knew exactly where to find her.

  She was walking briskly into the bedroom next door.

  ‘It’s Wilfreda! She’s in the house!’ he squawked. And this time he made an impression. Larry looked at Wilfreda, caught his breath and jumped to his feet.

  ‘She’s in the next room,’ Cadel whispered. He didn’t know if she would be able to hear him through the wall that divided them, but he didn’t want to take any chances. ‘What if she can get in here? What if she has a key, or a code?’

  ‘Is she armed?’ Larry, too, had lowered his voice to a hiss. For a moment he watched Wilfreda open all the drawers in a bedside cabinet, one by one, as if she were searching for something.

  Cadel couldn’t hear the drawers slam shut.

  ‘There must be some kind of insulation,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I don’t think we need to keep quiet. I think this room is soundproofed.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe not,’ Larry murmured. Without taking his eyes off Wilfreda, he pulled a handgun from the shoulder holster beneath his jacket. ‘You know how to use a walkie-talkie?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You press this button to send, and this one to receive.’ Shoving the police radio into Cadel’s damp palm, Larry edged towards the door, his attention still fixed on Wilfreda’s blurred image. Having briefly disappeared into the wardrobe adjoining the second bedroom, she had re-emerged to peer under the bed. ‘She doesn’t seem to have a gun,’ Larry continued, very quietly. ‘And she might try in here, if she doesn’t find what she’s looking for out there.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘As soon as I’ve got her in my sights, you can call Agent Platz. Okay?’

  ‘Okay, but –’

  ‘There’s no one outside, is there?’ Larry’s shifting gaze fastened on a shot of the main bedroom, before Cadel could even answer. ‘No. It’s all clear. Make sure you lock this door behind me.’ Under his breath, he added a fierce, final directive. ‘Don’t come out. Not until you hear from Agent Platz.’

  Then he ducked into the next room, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

  Cadel immediately engaged the lock, as instructed. When he turned back to the monitor screens, he saw a foreshortened Larry sidling out of the main bedroom, poised for action. Meanwhile, in the bedroom next door, Wilfreda had finished rummaging through the walk-in wardrobe. She was now standing with her hands on her hips, surveying her immediate vicinity with a dissatisfied air.

  Thank God Rex Austin’s so paranoid, Cadel thought. Without access to such an intrusive CCTV network, he would never have been able to follow Larry’s progress out of the main bedroom and into the hallway outside. It looked very much as if Wilfreda was about to enter the same hallway. She shook her head, spun around and …

  Suddenly the screen went black.

  Cadel was startled into an exclamation. ‘What the –?’ He leaned forward, fruitlessly jabbing at switches. He squatted down to check for loose cables beneath the desk. Then – upon seeing nothing untoward – he straightened up again, examining the radio in his hand. What had Larry said? Press this button to send and this one to receive? Or was it the other way around?

  ‘I’ll take that,’ a crisp voice remarked behind him.

  And Cadel dropped the radio onto the floor.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Prosper English stooped to pick up the walkie-talkie.

  ‘Dear me,’ he said. ‘I think you might have broken this. But I’ll turn it off, just in case.’

  He wasn’t wearing orange overalls – or a tweedy jacket, either. Instead he was dressed in shapeless corduroys, and a knitted jumper so shabby that it was beginning to unravel at the hem. Both garments looked too big for him. Though he had always been thin, it was obvious that he’d lost even more weight; his cheeks were hollow, his hands were like claws, and his long nose seemed beakier than ever. As for his complexion, it was dull and pallid, as if he hadn’t been out in the sun for months.

  Behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, his eyes were still as black as a snake’s, and as sharp as a hawk’s. But they were also pouchy, bloodshot, and ringed with dark smudges.

  When Cadel opened his mouth, no sound emerged.

  ‘Don’t bother. They can’t hear,’ Prosper drawled. A wolfish smile crept across his haggard face. ‘As you so insightfully remarked, this room is soundproofed.’

  Cadel flung himself at the door. He wasn’t fast enough, though; Prosper yanked him back, hauling him by the collar. Choking and gasping, Cadel was dragged through a dark hole that had opened up in one wall. Only later did he realise that this hole had previously been concealed by the cupboard full of toilet paper. For the moment, his only concern was getting air into his lungs again.

  Suddenly he was released. Dropping to the floor, he coughed and spluttered, vaguely aware that Prosper was pulling the cupboard shut behind them both. Something went click. Something else jingled.

  Cadel began to crawl away. He staggered to his feet just as Prosper caught his elbow.

  ‘Calm down,’ said Prosper. But Cadel pulled free.

  ‘Get off!’ he yelled, kicking out wildly. They were in a small, narrow, windowless space with a door at each end. Fluorescent tubes overhead illumined nothing in the way of potential weapons: no stools or lamps or fire irons. The walls were lined with yet more cupboards.

  When Cadel lunged for the nearest doorknob, he was grabbed again.

  ‘Calm down.’ Prosper spoke sternly, his fingers clamped around Cadel’s wrist. ‘There’s no need to panic …’

  ‘Let go! Let go of me!’ Cadel swung at Prosper, who promptly seized his other wrist. No matter how furiously Cadel jerked and tugged and wriggled, he couldn’t loosen the iron grip that restrained him.

  ‘Help! Help!’ he bellowed, and Prosper sighed.

  ‘For God’s sake, boy, use your head. I just told you this place was soundproofed.’

  Cadel barely heard. He was hysterical with fear, pumping adrenaline and deaf to all arguments. He tried to bite one of the psychologist’s bony hands.

  ‘STOP IT!’ With a single shove, Prosper slammed him against a cupboard. Cadel found himself squeezed between a hardwood panel and an arm like an iron bar.

  Then Prosper lowered his head, until they were eye to eye.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Is that clear? Cadel?’

  ‘You’re lying!’ Cadel sobbed. ‘You tried to kill me!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve been trying to kill me!’

  Prosper blinked. As he withdrew his face a little, Cadel tried to escape by sliding towards the floor. But it didn’t work. Prosper simply applied more pressure.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about!’ Confronted by raised eyebrows and pursed lips, Cadel lost his temper. ‘You tried to
push me downstairs! And run over me! And drown me in concrete!’

  ‘I did what?’

  ‘Of course you did! I know you did! Do you think I’m stupid?’

  ‘Okay, listen.’ Prosper took a deep breath, adjusting his hold so that one elbow was wedged painfully into Cadel’s sternum. ‘We’re going to discuss this, but not right now. Right now I need to get you downstairs so you can address yourself to a little problem I’m having.’ His bright, black gaze bored into Cadel’s skull. ‘Are you going to be sensible? Are you going to be smart? Or am I going to have to truss you up like a bag of old clothes?’

  ‘You’ll never make it downstairs!’ Cadel spat. ‘There’s an agent right outside!’

  ‘Who can’t get in again. And by the time he works out how to unlock two sets of reinforced doors, we’ll be long gone.’ Seeing Cadel’s brow crease in perplexity, Prosper grinned. ‘My dear boy, I won’t be using the outer staircase, I’ll be using the inner one. That panic room out there is just the tip of an iceberg.’

  Bemused and distracted, Cadel stopped fighting. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Haven’t you worked it out, yet?’ Prosper seemed surprised. ‘When I heard you ask for a measuring tape, I thought you must have hit on it. That’s why I was forced to take action.’ He grew impatient when Cadel continued to stare at him, blankly. ‘Isn’t it obvious? A panic room wasn’t enough for our friend Rex. He built himself a panic house, as well.’

  ‘A panic house?’

  ‘Concealed inside the other one. There’s a hidden staircase. And a hidden kitchen between the pool and the basement. And a hidden bedroom behind the chimney flue –’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because Rex was paranoid. He was afraid of kidnappers. And escaped convicts. And former employees. The list goes on and on.’ Prosper’s tense frame relaxed a little as he mulled over Rex Austin’s peculiarities. ‘In my opinion, the whole panic-house concept was a failure. It made him over-confident. And men of his generation simply don’t understand the kind of things a hacker can accomplish, nowadays.’

  Cadel winced. He knew enough about Prosper to understand that the word ‘over-confident’, when used in this context, was very bad news. ‘Where is Rex? What did you do to him?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll discuss that in a minute. When we get downstairs,’ Proper replied. Then he stepped back, gesturing gracefully towards the nearest door. ‘Shall we go? It’s not far. And it’s really quite interesting.’

  Cadel hesitated.

  ‘I swear I won’t hurt you. Unless you kick up a fuss,’ Prosper assured him. ‘Believe me, if you’ve been having trouble, it wasn’t my doing.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Cadel scoffed. ‘Are you saying it was Com who tried to run me over?’

  ‘If it was, he’ll answer for it.’

  ‘Don’t give me that rubbish!’ Cadel said harshly, rubbing his wrists. ‘Why would Com want to kill me? Why would anyone, except you?’

  Again Prosper sighed, in a long-suffering manner, as if unreasonable demands were being placed on him. ‘I’m hardly in a position to answer that,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s not as if I’ve had any direct contact with my Australian team, recently.’

  ‘So you admit it!’ Cadel pounced on this confession like a cat on a bird. ‘You admit you hired Dot and Com!’

  ‘Well, of course,’ Prosper said mildly. ‘I had to keep track of you somehow.’

  ‘And Vee?’

  ‘Ah. Well.’ A smile tweaked at the corner of the psychologist’s mouth. ‘Let’s just say that Vee’s not in Australia, at the moment.’

  ‘But he’s been tracking me, hasn’t he? With security cameras?’

  ‘I believe that is one of his more ingenious techniques, though I gather the grunt work is usually done by Com –’

  ‘Was it Com who stuck you into the CCTV footage?’ Suddenly Cadel was ravenous for information. Suddenly he was desperate to know if he had miscalculated, somehow. ‘Why would he do that? When I was minding my own business? It was stupid!’

  For the first time, Prosper looked puzzled. He frowned, and seemed to forget that there were more urgent matters to attend to.

  ‘What footage?’ he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘You know. Around Sydney.’

  ‘Around Sydney?’

  ‘Don’t try and pretend you don’t know all this. You must know all this.’

  But even as he spoke, Cadel began to wonder. Prosper’s face wore a grim look.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better tell me what’s been going on,’ he said.

  Cadel eyed him, torn between terror and suspicion. ‘Your digital double kept popping up all over the place,’ he quavered. ‘And then I worked out it wasn’t really you.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘After that, Sonja’s wheelchair was hijacked. It nearly killed me, and Sonja ended up in hospital. Naturally I thought you did it.’

  There was a brief pause. At last Prosper said, ‘Naturally.’

  ‘And then I tracked down Com, but he got away. And then someone destroyed my house by remote control. And when I hid in a basement, it was pumped full of cement.’ Realising that this litany of horrors seemed to be having very little effect on the psychologist (who was nodding thoughtfully), Cadel blurted out, ‘Why would Com do all that?’

  ‘Because you tracked him down, I suppose.’ Prosper’s tone was casual. ‘It sounds as if he was trying to protect himself.’

  ‘Yeah – by that time, maybe. But I didn’t start it! You started it, when you stuck yourself into all that footage! Of course I was going to get involved, after you turned up on my doorstep!’

  ‘That wasn’t my idea.’

  ‘Hah!’

  ‘Listen. Use your head, for a moment.’ Prosper placed a hand on Cadel’s shoulder – and kept it there, despite the way Cadel flinched and squirmed. In a dry, pleasant, precise voice, the psychologist then proceeded to hammer home his argument, apparently ignoring the fact that outside, not far away, all hell might be breaking loose. ‘Do you honestly think that, if I’d wanted to kill you, you wouldn’t be dead already?’ he murmured. ‘There are any number of trained assassins I could have hired to do the job, and they wouldn’t have messed it up with over-complicated things like concrete.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘That CCTV program was built so that I could pretend to be in Stockholm, or Capetown, or Montreal. The possibilities are endless. So why would I pretend to be in Sydney, and get you all stirred up?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cadel mumbled. ‘It never did make much sense.’

  ‘Of course it didn’t. Because you were no kind of threat at all.’ As Prosper continued, he couldn’t suppress an undertone of sneering disdain. ‘I mean to say,’ he said, ‘there you were, acting like a little angel, all wrapped up in your quiet little suburban life, with your homework and your wholesome friends and your charitable projects.’ He stopped suddenly; no doubt it had occurred to him that blatant contempt might alienate the very person he was trying to win over. After clearing his throat, he proceeded in a gentler fashion. ‘Why do you think I hired Dot and Com in the first place? I did it because I wanted to make sure that you were behaving yourself. I needed to know that you weren’t – how shall I put it? Collaborating with the police?’

  ‘I wasn’t!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then –’

  ‘You must have put the wind up them, somehow.’ Prosper was adamant. ‘You must have done something to make Dot or Com really nervous.’

  ‘I didn’t, though!’

  ‘You must have. And they, in turn, must have thought that if I showed up – or appeared to show up – my presence would scare you into minding your own business.’

  ‘But that’s stupid!’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘Why on earth would they think that? Couldn’t they see it would have the opposite effect?’

  Prosper smirked. He appeared to be genuinely amused. ‘My dear boy,’ he said, ‘we’re
talking about Compton and Dorothy Daniels. Those two weren’t born; they were assembled. So they’re not exactly the most sensitive, insightful pair when it comes to human motivation.’ For one fleeting instant, he gave the distinct impression that he was savouring a private joke. Then the glint in his eye was abruptly extinguished. ‘I don’t know what part Vee might have played in all this,’ he concluded, with an evenness that chilled Cadel, ‘but I intend to find out. Because I really don’t approve of employees who take matters into their own hands. For that reason, I also intend to locate Dot and Com and … well, have a quiet word, shall we say?’

  Cadel shivered. He had broken into a sweat, and his knees felt like cotton wool. It was shock, he decided: shock and jetlag. Now that the immediate effects of his adrenaline boost had worn off, he was beginning to experience his usual reaction to Prosper’s physical presence – an insidious, deeply rooted, clutching sense of dread that always left him numb and disoriented.

  Nevertheless, he found the strength to utter a feeble retort.

  ‘Good luck,’ he bleated. ‘You’ll have a hard time getting out of this house, let alone the country.’

  ‘Oh, I think not,’ Prosper replied. His swift changes of mood were startling, and more pronounced than they had ever been before. All at once the hissing snake had turned back into the suave and genial professor. ‘Not if you can help me, dear boy – and I’m sure you can. So let’s just step this way, shall we? And I’ll show you something that you’ll really enjoy.’

  Cadel didn’t protest. He allowed himself to be pushed into a narrow passage, which followed a circuitous path – up a step, down a step, under a pipe, around a corner – until it reached the bedroom that Prosper had been talking about. Though cramped and windowless, this space had been nicely decked out with a plush fitted carpet, muted wallpaper, and nests of silk cushions. There was a TV and a bar fridge. Elegant lamps cast tranquil pools of light onto polished cabinetry, illuminating a clutch of dirty dishes here, a stack of empty boxes there.

  The single bed hadn’t been made. Cadel noticed that at once. He also noticed the enormous number of unwashed wine glasses scattered around.