Evil Genius

by Catherine Jinks

  Fortunately, the homework he gave to Cadel was an incomplete money-laundering chart: something that Cadel could finish without much effort. He took it back to Hardware Heaven and tackled it there. For the rest of the day he kept his eye on the Axis network. (Terry, he noticed, had been promoted to double-red status. There was no indication that Art had infiltrated Brendan’s computer again. The reports on Cadel remained terse and uninteresting.) He also researched Yarramundi’s complicated security system, which protected dangerous areas like the armoury, the magazine and the ‘fission lab’. Access to these ‘code one’ areas was restricted.

  Fortunately, security in the rest of the complex was far less strict.

  Cadel couldn’t afford to store all this information on his hard drive – or even on a disk. He had to commit it to memory and hope that it would stay there. Sometimes he wished that his mind was more like a computer. It was so easy to access a computer’s memory.

  At five o’clock he packed up and departed, leaving Com in charge of Hardware Heaven. On his way out, he chanced upon a strange figure in blue leotards, who appeared to be glued to the ceiling. As Cadel stopped and stared, the figure slowly extended one arm, clamped his hand against a light fitting, and dragged himself forward. It was like watching a fly on a wall.

  Cadel wondered if he should risk passing underneath.

  ‘Go on!’ the figure snapped irritably. Cadel obeyed. He had just reached the front entrance when he heard an exclamation, and an almighty thud.

  Turning, he saw that the human fly had come a cropper.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Piss off,’ came the reply.

  ‘But –’

  ‘Piss off.’

  Cadel shrugged and withdrew. It did no good at all, offering to help people at the Axis Institute. Everyone thought you were simply pulling a scam.

  He caught a train back home, where he ate a whole packet of corn chips in front of his computer. There was nothing much he could do just yet, except wait. Outside, the Grunts were probably circling his house, their eyes peeled. Inside, the refrigerator hummed and the clocks ticked. Cadel skimmed through his Partner Post files. He did some research into Mrs Brezeck’s background, just to be convincing. He looked for Abraham’s name, dipping into a coronial database, but found nothing.

  At seven o’clock, he heard the doorbell ring.

  The Piggotts weren’t around. No doubt they were with their real families. Cautiously, Cadel shuffled to the front door and peered through the peephole. In the glow of the porch light, he could see a young woman waiting on the doorstep. There was a badge pinned to her jacket lapel, but Cadel couldn’t read it.

  No one else appeared to be with her. In fact she looked a little scared.

  Cadel fastened the security chain and opened the door a fraction. He saw the young woman start, then relax visibly when she caught sight of Cadel’s face. She had frizzy brown hair and freckles.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m collecting for the Spastic Centre.’ She jangled her tin, which had a printed label pasted onto it. ‘Would you like to contribute? Donations over two dollars are tax deductible.’

  Cadel hesitated. Beyond the figure on the doorstep, somewhere in the thickening darkness, the surveillance team was lurking. He couldn’t see it, of course. He couldn’t see anything except the faint shine of glossy camellia leaves, and the pool of light cast by a nearby garden lamp, and –

  Hang on, he thought.

  The Spastic Centre?

  ‘The Spastic Centre supports people with cerebral palsy and their families in the community,’ the young woman continued, with a pleading smile. There was something strained about the way she kept her eyes fixed on Cadel. The name on her badge was ‘Emma’. ‘I can give you a receipt. We always give receipts. I have my receipt book.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Cadel. He fished around for his wallet, which was well supplied with cash. As he did so, he saw a wash of colour mount across Emma’s freckled cheeks.

  His own heartbeat began to speed up.

  ‘Here,’ he said, thrusting a fifty-dollar bill at her. ‘And give me a receipt,’ he added.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘It’s for my parents. You can put their names down – Lanna and Stuart Piggott.’ While the young woman fumbled with a large and unwieldy receipt book, Cadel was trying to think up an explanation that would satisfy Thaddeus. The Piggotts never donated anything to charities. They even turned the Salvation Army away from their door during the Red Shield Appeal. So Cadel intended to ‘wave the receipt under their noses’, just to ‘irritate them’. That, at least, was what he proposed to tell Thaddeus. ‘Fifty dollars!’ he would say. ‘It practically gave them a heart attack! And I made ’em pay me back, too.’

  Emma suddenly extended her hand. ‘Your receipt,’ she said, with a fixed smile. ‘Thank you very much. We really appreciate it.’

  Cadel took the receipt, crumpling it in his palm. He knew that he couldn’t linger. So he stepped back inside, closing the door firmly behind him. He dared not even check the peephole again, because such curiosity would look suspicious to anyone who might be monitoring his movements. His only option was to stuff the receipt in his pocket, and appear to forget its very existence.

  Even though he was desperate – desperate – to look at it.

  Returning to his computer, he made a pretence of surfing the Net to satisfy any cameras that might be trained on him. His fingers moved automatically, while his mind was elsewhere. What on earth did Sonja think she was doing? The Spastic Centre? Couldn’t she see how risky that was? Suppose news of this little incident got back to Thaddeus somehow? It would certainly get back to the Fuhrer. He had probably told his Grunts to keep a close eye on innocent-looking door-to-door pollsters and charity collectors, who could so easily be assassins in disguise. And what about that girl – Emma? Was she a nurse? A friend? Had Sonja told her the whole story? He certainly hoped not. The fewer people who knew about him the better.

  And how had Sonja tracked him down, anyway? The Pig-gotts’ telephone number was unlisted. Had she used the Internet? It seemed unlikely. Her expertise was with numbers, not computers.

  Cadel realised that he was sweating like someone who had run a marathon. Then it occurred to him that a shower might be useful. It might be exactly the cover he needed.

  Needless to say, he choreographed the whole activity very carefully in his head before he even left his seat. The secret was to make it all look natural: dropping his jeans, checking the pockets, finding a few sweet-wrappers and the Spastic Centre receipt, casting a puzzled glance over the same receipt (front and back) . . . It had to be done swiftly, casually, efficiently. Just in case.

  And he had to keep moving. If he didn’t, any cameras focused in his direction might get a firm lock on the receipt itself. Cadel didn’t want anyone reading it. Not if it happened to be what he thought it was. And he couldn’t disable the security system because it might look odd, right after Emma’s visit. Someone was bound to wonder about that.

  Taking a deep breath, he rose from his chair. He plucked a pair of underpants and a pair of clean socks from his chest of drawers. He went into his bathroom, turned on the shower, and began to undress.

  When the moment came, he found out everything he needed to know. There, on the back of the receipt, was scrawled a long and complicated series of algorithms. There was no accompanying explanation – there didn’t have to be. Cadel knew what he was looking at. Or rather, he knew where it came from. He didn’t know exactly what it was, because he didn’t have time to untangle the knots of numbers.

  He had to lay aside the precious document in case he was being watched. He had to tuck it into his wallet, with an obvious lack of interest, and leave it there for the rest of the evening. Perhaps tomorrow, on the train . . .

  Cadel had never been forced to exert such self-control. It actually gave him a headache. Unable to think about anything else, he slumped in front of t
he widescreen TV until the Piggotts arrived home, together, at about eleven o’clock. They appeared to be slightly drunk. Stuart was noisier than usual, and Lanna was tripping over in her stiletto heels. Upon catching sight of Cadel, they immediately packed him off to bed. Then they kept him awake for another hour by knocking over wineglasses and laughing loudly.

  Cadel was almost tempted to tell them that they should go back to their real families. But he didn’t. He simply lay in bed, wondering what he should do about Abraham’s post-office box. Now that he had Sonja’s brain-teaser, there would be no risk of exposing her if he went to Strathfield post office. And he wanted to confirm, once and for all, what Terry’s dirty little secret was. Abraham had already told Cadel that Terry possessed the vial – could that be his secret? Surely not. Luther and Adolf both knew about the vial. Cadel reviewed all Terry’s cryptic little email messages in his head, turning them this way and that way. What did ‘perp’ mean? And what about that puzzling term, ‘poetic justice’? Why were Terry and Luther using it?

  Cadel’s eyes widened as an explanation popped into his head. It occurred to him that if Terry and Luther were experimenting with the vial’s contents, then they must be experimenting on something. Or somebody. Poetic justice . . . poetic justice . . .

  Could they be experimenting on Doris Deauville?

  It would make sense. Doris had disappeared around the same time as the vial had. Everyone assumed that Luther had ‘taken care’ of her. But what if he hadn’t done it through the usual channels? What if he had hidden her away in Terry’s lab, to use as a subject?

  Cadel swallowed. It was a dreadful thought. Not only that, it wasn’t something that Thaddeus would approve of. Experimenting on stray dogs was one thing; experimenting on people was dangerous. There were rules governing the disposal of troublesome students. Cadel had seen them on the Axis network. The important thing was always to get the bodies off campus. The institute must never, ever be implicated.

  No, Thaddeus wouldn’t like this at all. As Abraham would have known.

  Cadel wondered if Abraham might have stumbled on Doris in the labs. It was likely. In fact the odds were pretty high. But he needed proof. He needed to check Abraham’s post-office box.

  The only thing that worried him was Thaddeus. Thaddeus would find out that Cadel had visited the post office, and what then? Thaddeus didn’t like it when Cadel ran around doing things for Abraham – who was dead now, in any case. What kind of excuse would it be if Cadel told Thaddeus that he had been collecting Abraham’s precious ‘work’?

  No, he wouldn’t mention Abraham. He would say . . . he would say . . .

  Ah!

  If asked, he would say that the post-office box belonged to Mrs Brezeck.

  It was a far-fetched explanation, which could be disproved quite easily. But that didn’t matter.

  According to Cadel’s calculations, there was an 82.3 per cent chance that he would be gone before anyone thought to check it out.

  FORTY

  The next morning, Cadel set his alarm for six-thirty. He had to get up early because he wanted to be in Strathfield by nine. After taking great delight in banging around the kitchen (until, from the Piggotts’ bedroom, a shrill wail begged him to please be quiet) he headed for the station and wriggled into the crush of a commuter train. It was packed so tightly that Cadel doubted very much if the surveillance team could have got on too. Still, he wasn’t concerned if it had. He’d prepared an excuse. He wasn’t trying to be furtive. When the crowds piled out at Central station, he didn’t try to lose himself in them. On the contrary, he hung back. Already half-suffocated from a trip spent wedged under somebody’s armpit, he needed a little air.

  It was no joke, braving the rush-hour when you were smaller than everyone else.

  The train from Central to Strathfield was almost empty. For that reason, Cadel was able to spread out a bit and even glance at Sonja’s brain-teaser. Of course, he had to be careful. It wouldn’t do to study the crumpled document with too much interest. But he pretended to go through his pockets, examining every sweet-wrapper, expired train ticket and used handkerchief before checking his wallet. The train tickets and sweet-wrappers were tossed on the floor. The used handkerchief was returned to his pocket. The Spastic Centre receipt was smoothed out and placed between the pages of his Embezzlement homework, which he reviewed with unseeing eyes as the train clattered along. Revising his homework was a natural thing to do. And leaving a loose piece of paper tucked into it was natural as well, if you looked absent-minded enough.

  Cadel didn’t know if the little Asian lady sharing his carriage was employed by Adolf. He thought perhaps not. The only other occupant, a fat, elderly man who was snoozing away in a corner seat, didn’t look like a Grunt either.

  But Cadel wasn’t taking any chances.

  At Strathfield, he found the post office without difficulty. A quick scan of the premises told Cadel that there were no awkwardly placed security cameras scattered around. He was able to open box number 23, extract two sheets of paper from inside it, and read through them without running the slightest risk of sharing his discovery with someone else. After all, any nearby Grunts could hardly sidle up and peer over his shoulder.

  Abraham’s secret did concern Doris. In a signed statement, Abraham declared that he had overheard Terry and Luther whispering together about how Doris’s corpse might be disposed of when they had ‘completed their experiment’. On another occasion, Abraham had seen Terry slipping into a supply cupboard and locking it behind him. Terry had not emerged again for another forty minutes.

  When he did so, Abraham wrote, I heard a woman groaning.

  Cadel shut his eyes for a moment. I heard a woman groaning. He felt sick just thinking about it. He didn’t want to think about it. But he had to. He had to keep reading. Having also seen Terry filch Carla’s vial, he read, I am convinced that he is using its contents to infect Doris Deauville. This is a dangerous and foolhardy act.

  By now, Cadel thought, she might be dead. And he rammed the statement into his pocket, wondering what to do. Should the document be kept or destroyed?

  He pondered this question all the way to the institute, where he was just in time for Dr Deal’s class. He decided, as he walked into Lecture Room One, that he would destroy the statement. Flush it down a toilet, perhaps. A public toilet.

  ‘Ah. Mr Darkkon,’ Dr Deal remarked. ‘So you’ve decided to join us? Excellent. Two’s company, as they say, but I prefer a crowd.’

  Cadel knew better than to sit beside Gazo. It would have looked too friendly. Instead, he found himself a spot down the front, where he spent the next hour fielding every question that Dr Deal threw at them both. Cadel even answered the questions specifically directed at Gazo, who would not, he knew, be able to answer them.

  ‘There’s no need to show off, Mr Darkkon,’ Dr Deal finally said. ‘We all realise that you’re a genius, you don’t have to rub our noses in it.’

  Cadel was pleased. He preferred it that Dr Deal should have thought him vain rather than kind. Kindness was regarded with suspicion and hostility at the Axis Institute.

  Gazo, however, didn’t make the same mistake as Dr Deal. Though dim-witted in some ways, he was always on the alert for compassionate gestures.

  ‘You’re a mate, Cadel,’ he said, after they had been dismissed. ‘You really saved me arse, today.’

  Cadel said nothing. They were skirting the car park, but they still weren’t safe. Cadel knew of only one place where they could talk frankly.

  ‘Abraham’s car’s still here,’ he observed, stopping in his tracks. Gazo did the same.

  They both stared at Abraham’s beat-up old Ford Cortina.

  ‘I wonder who’ll get it now?’ said Gazo. It was exactly what Cadel had hoped he would say.

  ‘Maybe it’ll be finders keepers,’ Cadel replied, and gazed up at his friend. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Do you think you can get in?’

  Gazo’s eyes widened behind his plasti
c face-screen. He glanced at the car, then back at Cadel.

  ‘I bet you could drive it away and no one would notice,’ Cadel continued. ‘Could you? Drive it away?’

  ‘Well, yeah, but –’

  ‘No one’s going to give a stuff. You realise that, don’t you? Who’s going to care?’ As Gazo hesitated, Cadel added: ‘Except Abraham’s family.’

  ‘Abraham’s family,’ Gazo mumbled. ‘He really hated ’em.’

  ‘Yeah. He did.’

  Gazo looked around. There was no one in sight, though that didn’t mean much. Several banks of seminary windows overlooked the car park.

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ said Cadel, scanning the windows for signs of life. ‘What’s to stop you? The owner’s dead, isn’t he?’

  Gazo didn’t need any more encouragement. He waddled over to Abraham’s car, removed a long steel implement from his bag, and had the driver’s door-lock disabled in a matter of seconds.

  Despite himself, Cadel was impressed.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You really can do that!’

  ‘Hop in,’ Gazo urged, his nervous gaze skipping from car to car, from window to window. ‘No point hanging about.’

  Thanks to his suit, Gazo was barely able to fold himself into the front seat of Abraham’s little car. But he managed it somehow and unlocked the passenger door for Cadel. Then he began to fiddle around with the steering column.

  But Cadel stopped him.

  ‘Wait,’ said Cadel, placing a hand on Gazo’s wrist. ‘Wait. Just listen.’