Genius Squad (28 page)

‘Upstairs,’ Dot said firmly. ‘Go on. All of you.’

‘I just want to talk to Sonja – ’ Cadel began. Dot, however, wouldn’t hear of it.

‘Later,’ she said. ‘You can talk to her later. Right now Cliff wants you up in your room.’

Cadel baulked. He regarded Dot sourly for a moment, wondering what gave her the authority to tell
him
what to do. Certainly he wasn’t in her debt; he had twice approached her for information about her brother, only to come away unsatisfied. Either she distrusted him, or she simply didn’t like talking to people.

Her brother certainly didn’t. He’d been almost incapable of communicating with other human beings. Dot wasn’t nearly as antisocial, but she was still very aloof and taciturn; perhaps it was a family trait.

‘Before I go – when did you last see Com?’ asked Cadel, and Dot sighed. Her manner suggested that she recognised a tradeoff when it was presented to her so bluntly.

‘I saw him the day after the Yarramundi campus blew up,’ she replied. ‘He came to my house, and asked for some money. Then he stayed one night and went out the next day to make some calls from a phone box. I never saw him again after that.’

‘Did he take the money with him?’

‘Yes. Now go up, or do you want me to call Cliff?’ She paused for an instant, as if wearied by the tiresome job of fastening words together to make sentences. ‘It’s the police who want you to do this, Cadel.’

‘I know,’ he acknowledged, and began to climb the stairs. It had occurred to him that he could easily communicate with Sonja on-line; his intention was therefore to fish his laptop out of his underwear drawer, and send her a reassuring message.

But he hadn’t reckoned on the Wieneke twins, and their insatiable curiosity.

‘So what did you say this guy’s name was?’ Lexi inquired, as she followed him up to the top floor. ‘Maze, was it?’

‘Mace. But his real name’s Thomas.’

‘And why exactly does he hate you?’

‘I don’t know.’ Cadel wasn’t about to tackle the endless saga of the sabotaged monitor and the bike magazines. ‘Because he’s stupid, I guess.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Devin’s tone was sarcastic. ‘A person would
have
to be stupid to hate
you
. I mean, what’s to hate?’

‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ Lexi urged Cadel, scowling at her brother, who was in the rear of the procession. ‘He’s just jealous, that’s all.’

‘I am not!’

‘Because you’re so smart and good-looking, with such great skin,’ Lexi continued remorselessly, still addressing Cadel, ‘and he’s such a
loser
.’

‘Says the fat slut with bad breath!’

‘Oh,
don’t
,’ Cadel implored. He had reached the top-floor landing, and couldn’t bear the prospect of even one more carelessly traded insult. ‘Stop fighting, will you? I thought twins were supposed to stick up for each other. You’re lucky you’ve even got any family. I wish I did.’

‘Would you like me to be your sister, Cadel?’ Lexi threw her arm around his neck just as Cadel pushed open his bedroom door. ‘I’d rather have you as my brother than this loser over here.’

While the twins traded more insults, Cadel wriggled out of Lexi’s grip. All he wanted was some peace and quiet, so he could send a message to Sonja. But before he could suggest that the twins return to their own rooms, Hamish suddenly called to them from the floor below.

‘Hey, you guys!’ he exclaimed. ‘Whad are you doig?’

‘None of your business,’ was Devin’s sour response – which didn’t deter Hamish in the least. His heavy boots mounted the stairs at a rapid pace; within seconds he was in plain sight, a dishevelled figure holding a packet of frozen peas over his nose and mouth.

‘Hey,’ he said eagerly, ‘did you see whad Cliff had? Cliff had a gun!’

‘What?’ Devin immediately brightened. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘No. I saw id. When he chegged by lip, I saw id under his jumper. Tugged into his waisd-band.’

Cadel suddenly understood why Cliff had stopped to poke around in a jar of coffee beans. (Or had they been sultanas?)

‘Oh, my God!’ Lexi breathed, wide-eyed. ‘Do you think he would have shot that guy, if the police hadn’t come?’

‘Of course not,’ Cadel said crossly. He felt that there was enough melodrama in his life; it annoyed him that Lexi should feel the need to manufacture even more. ‘He’s not an idiot, you know.’

‘He might have,’ Devin opined, with obvious relish. ‘If that Mace bloke came here to kill you, Cliff might have had to use the gun in self-defence.’

‘Against a penknife?’ Cadel scoffed. And Lexi said, ‘What if the cops see his gun? What if they arrest him? What if they come in and search the place, looking for more?’ She lowered her voice, until it was just an overwrought whisper. ‘
What if they find the War Room?
’

‘Lexi, Cliff’s a private detective.’ Cadel was trying to snuff out her mounting excitement. ‘He’s probably licensed to use a firearm. They can’t arrest him if he has a licence.’

‘Yes, but is he
supposed
to be a private detective?’ Devin asked. ‘I thought he was meant to be a youth worker? I thought that was his cover story?’

Cadel and Hamish exchanged glances. Then Hamish said, ‘He’s subbosed to be a former private detegtive turned youth worger. Id’s all on file. Didden you look?’

Hamish went on to explain that Cliff claimed to have grown disillusioned with apprehending criminals, and was now – according to his faked-up
curriculum vitae –
devoting himself to crime prevention by helping troubled youth. This was obviously news to the twins. It soon became apparent that they hadn’t done much research on the Clearview House staff, either before or after moving in.

Not like Hamish and Cadel.

‘Jesus,’ said Hamish, juggling his packet of frozen peas, ‘you bean you didden run a few chegs, first? Livig dangerously, Devin.’

Devin shrugged. ‘We figured it had to be better here than it was at Gran’s, no matter what was going on,’ he retorted. ‘At least no one here’s got dementia.’

‘Not that there were any red flags,’ Cadel conceded, recalling the searches he’d run through various databases. None of the Clearview House staff appeared to have a criminal record, for instance; all of them had managed to pass themselves off as trained youth workers, either by forging their qualifications or by producing a genuine certificate of some sort. (Zac, for instance, had studied welfare work right after leaving university.) ‘Still, you ought to be more careful,’ Cadel added. ‘You should always do your research – you shouldn’t take
anything
on trust.’

‘Oh, and what makes you such an expert?’ Devin sneered, bristling. ‘How come you’re my boss, all of a sudden?’

‘Because he’s smarter than you,’ said Lexi, at which point Devin hit her. She instantly hit back, triggering a fight that sent them both reeling into poor Hamish, who nearly fell down the stairs. Cadel cried, ‘Stop it!’ Hamish retreated. Then Judith’s voice came echoing up from the hallway.

‘
Oi!
’ she bellowed. ‘
What’s going on up there? Why aren’t you kids in bed?
’

Cadel took the hint. He escaped into his room, shut the door and locked it. Being small and not very strong, he had always found physical violence a very disturbing – and alien – concept. Though his upbringing had been warped, it had never involved slaps or punches. No one had ever raised a hand to him during his early childhood, because Prosper would never have allowed such a thing.

The twins, however, had quite clearly been raised in a far more volatile environment. Devin, in particular, seemed to be quite an angry sort of person. As for Hamish, though he was as sharp as a tack in many ways, he could also be immensely childish in others. And his taste for practical jokes made Cadel uneasy.

Many of the students at the Axis Institute had been fond of vicious practical jokes, often involving concealed razor blades and poisoned fingernails.

Extracting his laptop from his underwear drawer, Cadel decided that Genius Squad wasn’t going to be the answer to all his prayers. It was a pity; he’d never before found a group of people who were close to his own age, and shared many of his interests. At first glance, the squad had looked so promising.

But he didn’t feel comfortable with its younger members. Lexi was overwhelming, Devin was unnerving, and Hamish – well, Hamish was ever so slightly off-balance. It was hard to imagine that any of them would ever become a really good friend.

Not like Sonja.

Cadel sent a message through to her as quickly as possible, knowing that it was her habit to check her emails every night before going to bed. He told her that Mace had scaled the garden wall, not realising that the place was being staked out. He also assured her that Mace had been apprehended, and was now in custody – along with the mysterious gold fob-watch.

I know it didn’t belong to Mace
, he wrote,
because if it had, I would have seen it before. He might have extorted it off some poor kid at school, and can’t bear to part with it, even when he’s conducting home invasions.
Cadel thought for a moment, reviewing all the possibilities.
On the other hand,
he continued,
it might have been stolen from another house around here. Or it might have been payment for what he was about to do. Or he might have found it somewhere. Or his brother might have given it to him. There are any number of explanations that fit the case.

Indeed, there was one explanation that Cadel didn’t even want to air, because it sounded so mad. Rather than come across as completely paranoid, he withheld it from Sonja, going on to ask her how she was.

I hope you aren’t too worried, since it wasn’t Prosper after all. And I know that Mace can’t be working for Prosper, because Prosper never hires people that stupid. He always used to tell me
‘
Choose the correct tools
’
– and Mace must be the bluntest tool in the toolbox.
Conscious of an all-too-familiar banging and yelling somewhere below, Cadel concluded with the words:
I won’t come down just yet – not until I get permission. If Saul shows up, I don’t want him getting mad at Cliff for not making me stay upstairs; it’s bad enough that Mace found out where I was. I just hope Saul doesn’t decide to take me away. That would be a disaster. Anyway, see you soon.

And he signed off using the nickname she’d once given him: Stormer.

Then he waited.

Her answer was a long time coming. The Wienekes had calmed down – and slammed into their separate bedrooms – at least ten minutes before Sonja’s message finally dropped into Cadel’s in-box. He even had time to run a computer check on Mace’s brother. (Sure enough, Scott Logge had been gaoled for several break-and-enter offences.) But when at last Cadel opened up Sonja’s reply, he found only a numerical sequence.

44-9/01-1-126/90-60-232/04-53-32/06.

Decoding this sequence wasn’t too hard. He recognised it instantly as an example of their very own periodic table code, devised while he was still being closely monitored by Prosper English. To break it, one merely needed a thorough knowledge of the various atomic numbers and weights.

And since Cadel knew all those off by heart, he was able to translate Sonja’s response without delay.

The first number in any periodic table sequence was always an atomic number, and 44 was the atomic number of Ruthenium (Ru). Then came a weight: in this case, 9.01, which happened to be the atomic weight of Beryllium (Be). Next came Hydrogen (H), which had an atomic number of one; Iodine (I), which had an atomic weight of 126.90; and Neodymium (Nd), which had an atomic weight of 60.

The final elements were Thorium (Th), Iodine once again, and Sulphur (S). So the complete sequence read:
Ru-Be-H-I-Nd-Th-I-S.

Are you behind this?

Cadel gasped. The question hit him like a punch in the solar plexus; he couldn’t believe that Sonja was even asking it. Automatically, he sent back the atomic number of Nobelium (No), adding several explanation points for emphasis. But he was so shaken by Sonja’s suspicion that he couldn’t think clearly. He couldn’t piece together a single line of code before Sonja’s next message came through.

1-74/92-39-167/26-9-126/90-7-72/6-68-140/91-49-47/88-90-126/90-7-39/1.

Cadel spelled it out to himself:
H-As-Y-Er-F-I-N-Ge-Er-Pr-In-Ti-Th-I-N-K.

In plain English, Sonja was saying that she thought the whole situation had his ‘fingerprint’ on it.

How can you say that?
he typed furiously, abandoning the periodic table code in his eagerness to defend himself.
What are you talking about?

Her coded rejoinder was astonishingly swift. It was another sequence of numbers, which, when translated, read:
I-Fm-Ac-Er-O-B-Be-Dy-Er-La-S-Th-O-U-Se-S-O-He-Cd-P-La-N-Ti-Ti-N-Th-I-S-Ho-U-Se-S-O-Y-O-U-Cd-Be-B-La-Md . . .

If Mace robbed your last house so he could plant it in this house so you could be blamed . . .
Like Cadel, Sonja had envisaged a really crazy scenario. Unlike Cadel, however, she had been brave enough to put it into words.

She was wondering if Mace had been planning a set-up.

How could that be my fault?
Cadel demanded, refusing to use the code.
You think I encouraged him to come here? So he’d be caught doing something illegal? Is that it
?

He didn’t care about security. He didn’t care that someone might read their exchange, and understand it, and accuse him of framing his foster-brother.

He was past caring.

Seeing this, Sonja lapsed back into plain English.
You got someone else to ruin Mace’s magazines,
she reminded him.
And from what you’ve said, he doesn’t seem bright enough to have found your address on his own. I just wondered if maybe you put the idea in his head.

Well, I didn’t
, Cadel countered.

Okay,
was her quick response.

Do you believe me?

Yes.

Feeling slightly better, Cadel was willing to concede a point.
I can see what you mean, though,
he acknowledged.
About Mace. It doesn’t seem like his kind of revenge.

Have you run the probabilities?
Sonja wanted to know. When Cadel confessed that he hadn’t, she continued:
Then you should
.
Because it’s all very peculiar, don’t you think?