The Genius Wars Read online

Cadel didn’t bother to reply. He leaned his forehead against a headrest, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. All at once he felt queasy.

  ‘Maybe she can wear that fake nose she gave your friend,’ Egon continued. ‘Or get a nose transplant from some super-model organ donor. Hello – here’s Richard. Come to think of it, this street’s on his route, isn’t it? I bet he’s wishing he never had a bar of this. I always said it was a stupid idea … lucky for him that copper’s responsible …’

  First Sonja, now Hamish. First Sonja, now Hamish. The words kept banging around inside Cadel’s skull, like birds caught in a greenhouse. He was very, very frightened. Coughing up blood was bad. He knew that. It could mean … what? A ruptured lung? A broken rib? Hamish was an only child. His parents would be furious. They would blame Saul, and Richard, and Cadel most of all – exactly the way Judith did. You could understand why, too. Cadel was beginning to feel like a radioactive isotope: his proximity was becoming dangerous to people’s health. Whatever he did, he left a trail of blood in his wake. First Sonja, now Hamish. First Sonja, now Hamish.

  Prosper’s team of sociopathic geeks seemed to be picking off Cadel’s friends one by one.

  ‘… I said I’d be home by five-thirty. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I make dinner,’ Egon was muttering, apparently unconcerned as to whether anybody happened to be listening or not. ‘I wonder if Richard will give me a lift back? I mean, I’m in his class. He has a duty of care. And I don’t even know most of these people – it’s not as if they’re going to mind if I’m here or not …’

  You can say that again, thought Cadel. But he didn’t speak, because he felt so nauseous that he was afraid to open his mouth.

  He was also afraid to open his eyes, in case he saw something that he wouldn’t be able to forget afterwards. Like Sonja’s fractured leg, for instance. Or the blood in Hamish’s cupped palm.

  ‘… Oh, great – and here’s Boyd,’ Egon complained. ‘He’s on crutches and I still can’t get away from him. For God’s sake, you big lummox, can’t you see there’s nothing happening over here? Why don’t you go and pick on someone else …?’

  The howl of a distant siren caused Cadel to raise his head; he saw that Boyd was approaching the Corolla, having apparently extracted himself from the front seat of Richard Buckland’s car. Richard had parked at a safe distance from the scene of the accident, well clear of any emergency-vehicle access routes. He had then set off towards the group of people clustered around Hamish, which by now included Saul, Vijay, and a uniformed police officer. Perhaps Boyd found the police uniform off-putting. Or perhaps he didn’t feel safe, negotiating his way across an obstacle course full of broken glass and pot holes on a pair of crutches.

  Whatever the reason, he had obviously decided to favour Egon with his company, despite Egon’s hostile scowl.

  ‘So what’s up?’ said Boyd, when he was still a good five metres away from the Corolla. ‘Did you see it? What happened?’

  ‘What does it look like?’ Egon snapped. ‘The Rasta collided with the bimbo.’

  ‘Yeah? Wow. That’s no good.’ Boyd peered around. ‘Where’s Thi?’

  Egon didn’t answer. Possibly he had decided that the question was too stupid to merit a reply. Boyd therefore addressed Cadel through an open rear passenger door.

  ‘So did you flush anyone out?’ asked Boyd. ‘Because I didn’t.’

  Cadel nodded. For the first time since reaching the accident site, his thoughts turned to Com – and he couldn’t help wondering (in a fleeting and distracted kind of way) whether anyone had actually caught up with the fugitive.

  ‘You did?’ said Boyd. ‘Really? Cool.’ When Cadel failed to elaborate, Boyd gave him a verbal prod. ‘So did you actually manage to identify a particular house, or …?’

  ‘No.’ Seeing Boyd’s face fall, Cadel added, ‘I saw his car. Not his house.’

  ‘Because it’s not as if this concept actually worked,’ Egon interposed snidely. ‘I mean, it’s not like someone picked up the guy’s signal or anything. It was all an accident. An accidental sighting.’

  ‘It was not an accident.’ Cadel spoke through clenched teeth. ‘Our target was flushed out because of the phone call. When Saul mentioned wardriving, Com got so scared that he bolted. And I happened to spot him doing it.’

  Egon sniffed. ‘Pity you let him get away, then.’

  ‘He hasn’t got away! Not yet.’ Unsure of how much Egon actually knew, Cadel decided to fill him in, reciting Com’s registration number and describing the fugitive’s car. ‘Every policeman in Sydney will be looking out for a yellow Camry with a broken antenna and a “Baby on Board” sticker –’

  ‘Yeah, but he won’t be keeping that car, will he?’ Egon interrupted. ‘Your hacker will have dumped it by now, if he’s got any sense. Which he obviously does.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Boyd. Egon, however, wouldn’t let him finish.

  ‘You should have had roadblocks set up. Or at least a few extra coppers around. I mean, what did you expect? That your guy would sit tight and wait for you to come charging through the door?’

  ‘Hey!’ Boyd repeated. ‘I saw that car.’ As Cadel and Egon both turned to stare at him, he gave a nervous titter. ‘Yellow Camry? I saw it parked down near the river a little while ago.’ He jerked his thumb. ‘It was parked in someone’s driveway.’

  A brief, stunned silence greeted this announcement. Cadel had to lick his dry lips before he could request further details.

  ‘Are – are you sure?’ he squeaked.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Boyd’s tone was sublimely confident. ‘I saw the licence plate and everything. It’s the same one.’

  But Egon wasn’t convinced. ‘Maybe you think that’s what you saw,’ he said. ‘Maybe your memory’s playing tricks on you. I mean, what was so special about this car that you ended up noticing its licence plate?’

  ‘I always notice licence plates,’ was Boyd’s response. ‘I collect them.’ Seeing Egon’s raised eyebrows, Boyd quickly added, ‘In my head, not in real life. I collect them in my head.’ A pause. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve got more important things in my head,’ Egon said with a sneer. Cadel, however, wasn’t quite so dismissive.

  He knew that Sonja nursed a weakness for registration numbers.

  ‘You play games with them? Is that it?’ he asked.

  Boyd nodded.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ he confessed, with a giggle. ‘Especially since I like cars, too –’

  ‘And when did you see the yellow one?’ Cadel cut him off. ‘How long ago? Five minutes? Ten?’

  ‘Oh, no. I saw it when we first started.’ Boyd had to shift his weight from one crutch to the other before he could glance at his watch. ‘Maybe … I dunno … twenty minutes ago? Twenty-five?’

  ‘And you can remember where it was? Which driveway it was parked in?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Then you’d better tell Saul,’ Cadel advised, as he slid out of the Corolla. ‘Because he’ll want to get over there right away.’

  SIXTEEN

  Cadel was sitting in the back of a van. He had been sitting there for nearly three hours.

  With him were Reggie Bristow and Angus McNair. Cadel wasn’t sure exactly where the van was parked, because the only window in sight gave him a restricted view of the driver’s cabin, through a screen of steel mesh. All he knew was that they had stopped somewhere in the vicinity of Com’s house, and that it was already dark outside.

  The van had been Saul’s idea. He had decided that his foster son should disappear while Com’s abandoned residence was being searched, and a van had seemed like the easiest way of shielding Cadel from prying eyes or intrusive cameras. ‘You can’t be seen on the street,’ Saul had declared. ‘It’s too dangerous.’ But even he had admitted that Cadel couldn’t be sent straight home – not before being given the chance to inspect whatever computer equipment Com might have left behind.

  So Cadel had been forced to wait. He had waited wh
ile the police established that Com’s house was unoccupied and unsecured. He had then waited for the bomb squad to determine whether it was booby-trapped. And he had waited for Saul to check the place out himself, ‘just to be sure’.

  After spending so long in such a cramped and dingy box, pissing into an old paint tin and staring at Reggie’s shoes, Cadel was beginning to feel seriously claustrophobic. He was also suffering from a delayed reaction to the traumatic events of the day – or at least, that was his diagnosis. Why else would he keep breaking into a sweat, while his head swam and his heart fluttered? Surely these passing fits couldn’t be the result of a missed meal, or lack of oxygen?

  I can’t stand it, he thought. First Sonja, now Hamish. I just can’t stand it. That’s all.

  ‘You hungry?’ Reggie asked. He checked his watch. ‘Maybe someone should go and get some fish and chips. It must be way past your dinner time.’

  ‘It is,’ Cadel admitted faintly. ‘But I don’t feel like much.’

  ‘You should still eat.’ Reggie turned to Angus. ‘You got anything on you? Like a chocolate bar, or chewing gum?’

  ‘Nup,’ said Angus, whose eyes were glazed with boredom. Both policemen had been instructed not to read or listen to music while they were on duty. They weren’t even allowed to make any phone calls, unless they were faced with an emergency of some kind. So Cadel had been unable to find out how Hamish was faring.

  After being loaded into an ambulance, Hamish had been whisked away to hospital, with Richard Buckland following close behind. Vijay had also gone to hospital; his father had decided to take him to the nearest Emergency Department, even though none of the ambulance officers had considered him to be at risk. Gazo Kovacs had generously offered to drive Boyd and Egon back home, while Snezana had abandoned her car upon being reunited with Thi, who had bundled her off in a taxi.

  By the time a van had arrived for Cadel, the only wardriver left at the scene of the crash had been Duke. Untroubled by the fact that his phone had been confiscated (perhaps because he had been putting off the dreaded moment when he would have to call his father for insurance details), Duke had been hovering helplessly on the sidelines. Cadel was convinced that Duke had probably slipped away within minutes of Cadel’s own departure. It was hard to imagine someone as feckless as Duke sticking around to organise tow trucks, or help the police with their inquiries. It was even harder to picture him visiting Hamish in hospital.

  Cadel wondered if Hamish was still in hospital.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Angus. He raised his head as the sound of an approaching vehicle reached his ears.

  Reggie did the same.

  Then the engine’s purr abruptly stopped. Somewhere outside, a door slammed. Reggie leaned over to address their driver, directing his question through the small window behind the security screen.

  ‘Are we okay?’ he rasped.

  ‘I think so,’ came the reply – followed (after a brief pause) by further clarification. ‘Yeah, we’re good. It’s just the DI back again.’

  Knock-knock-knock! Knock-knock! A sudden rapping on the van’s rear end made everyone start. Reggie automatically thrust his hand inside his jacket, but Cadel had already identified the rhythm of the knock.

  It was the agreed signal: the all-clear. And it was accompanied by Saul’s muffled voice.

  ‘It’s Saul! Open up!’

  Angus obeyed, though not before producing his own weapon. Saul seemed pleased to see it. When he yanked open the double doors and found himself staring down the barrel of Angus’s gun, he signified his approval with a nod.

  Cadel was the only one who flinched. He didn’t like guns – especially when they were aimed at Saul.

  ‘We’re good to go,’ the detective quietly announced. Then he sprang up into the van’s rear compartment, pulling its doors shut behind him.

  He was moving more nimbly, now that he had discarded his Arabic robes.

  ‘Tell Lou we’ll head straight for number ten,’ he instructed. ‘She can park in the garage, tell her.’

  Reggie sighed. But he tapped on the communication window and transmitted this message, while a space was made for Saul. The detective squeezed in beside Cadel, his long legs folding up like the mechanism on a sofa-bed. It had been more than an hour since Cadel’s last glimpse of him.

  ‘There’s a lot to look at, in there,’ Saul remarked. ‘A hell of a lot. That’s why I took so long.’

  Cadel knew instantly that the detective was referring to Com’s house.

  ‘You mean Com left some of his stuff behind?’ This was good news, though Cadel was feeling almost too dazed to absorb it properly. ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘Every kind,’ was Saul’s rather cryptic estimation. Though the light was very poor, he seemed to sense that Cadel was staring at him, because he added, ‘You’ll see what I mean. It’s strange. No one can work it out.’

  Cadel pondered this remark as the van began to move.

  ‘How is it strange?’ he finally asked. But Saul wouldn’t elaborate.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘Just be patient. I can’t describe it – you’ll have to take a look for yourself.’ Then, in an obvious attempt to change the subject, he informed Cadel that he’d checked on Hamish’s condition. ‘He’ll be in hospital overnight, to get some tests done. But it looks like he’s cracked a rib.’

  ‘Is that where the blood came from?’ Cadel wanted to know.

  ‘Could be.’ The detective shrugged. ‘But he bit his tongue, too, so they’re thinking the blood might have come from there. He could have inhaled it.’

  ‘Which hospital is he in?’

  ‘Royal Prince Alfred. It was closer than Prince of Wales.’

  ‘Oh.’ Cadel’s heart sank as he contemplated visiting both hospitals in a single evening. It would be very difficult – especially for someone who was being pursued by a CCTV stalker. But perhaps, by tomorrow, Hamish would be at home.

  And perhaps Com would stay off the CCTV networks for a while.

  ‘I haven’t told Fiona all the details, yet,’ Saul was saying. ‘I told her that we’ve got a result, and that we’re following it up, but I didn’t want to explain everything over the phone. We’re gonna have to do that later.’ The jolting of the van was making his voice shake. ‘It’ll come as a bit of a shock,’ he admitted. ‘She’ll be worried about you.’

  Cadel said nothing. His mind was still on the hacks that he’d witnessed.

  ‘You know,’ he mused, as if the detective hadn’t even spoken, ‘it might have been Com tracking me on closed-circuit TV, but he wasn’t the one messing with SCATS. Someone else was in there, and the way they were throwing their weight around, I reckon we have a good chance of picking up their traces.’

  ‘Well … that’s Sid’s department,’ Saul observed. ‘He’ll be looking into the whole traffic-light business – him and his team.’

  ‘Yeah, but he’s got to do it now. Because if Com left a trail of red lights behind him, then that’s a good place to start.’ Receiving no immediate response, Cadel realised that he would have to spell it out. ‘If we can get into SCATS,’ he explained, ‘and figure out where the controller boxes were hijacked, we might be able to see where Com ended up. It would be like a set of footprints.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Angus said admiringly. And Saul stiffened.

  ‘You mean there’ll be a record?’ His tone was sharp. ‘Some kind of register that we could check?’

  ‘Well … it’s certainly something that I could check.’ Cadel racked his brain, trying to remember details of his youthful forays through the SCATS labyrinth. He didn’t know exactly how much it had changed since then. ‘A lot of traffic lights respond to input from loop detectors,’ he went on. ‘They’re programmed to respond in a certain way to certain conditions. If they don’t, there’s going to be an invalid signal showing up – unless this traffic-light malware also stops data from getting back to the regional computer, somehow.’ He considered the likelihood of such a cunning pl
oy. If Vee were involved, chances were good that the program was as stealthy as a termite. ‘It’s still worth a try,’ he concluded. ‘Sid should already be looking at SCATS anyway, because of its camera network. That whole system should be crawling with fingerprints, by now.’

  The van stopped suddenly, nearly dislodging them all from their seats. Cadel was flung sideways. The back of Reggie’s skull bounced off one wall with an audible thump.

  ‘Ow,’ he said.

  ‘For Chrissake, Lou!’ Angus loudly remonstrated. ‘You been boozing it up, in there?’

  ‘Sorry,’ came the indistinct response. Then the engine died.

  But as Saul rose to his feet, Cadel grabbed his arm – because there was a lot more to be said.

  ‘It’s time I got back online,’ Cadel insisted. ‘You can see that, can’t you? I need to tackle this myself.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Saul replied. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘There’s no point worrying about who might spot me while I’m chasing back trails. Not any more.’ Cadel wouldn’t let go of Saul’s arm. ‘It’s riskier for me on the street than it is in cyberspace. And you need my help. Sid needs my help.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Saul repeated. ‘First things first, okay?’

  ‘Like getting out of this bloody van, for instance,’ Reggie growled. Angus was already leaning towards the rear doors, but Saul stopped him with a peremptory, ‘Wait.’

  When the detective’s hand disappeared inside his jacket, it became evident that there was no point trying to pursue the subject of Internet access – not while he was fully focused on who might be approaching the back of the van. Saul’s tense muscles didn’t relax until he heard a familiar Knock-knock-knock! Knock-knock!

  Lou was giving them the all-clear signal.

  Next thing he knew, Cadel was emerging into what appeared to be a small garage. A dusty, dangling light bulb dimly illuminated a framework of wooden beams; though some kind of cladding had been slapped on the outside of the structure, no one had bothered to line its internal walls. Cadel could see cobwebs festooned across stacks of old junk: flowerpots, paint tins, roof tiles, curtain rods. Only the lawn mower and whipper snipper looked new.