Authors: Catherine Jinks
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.
‘Not bad, is it?’ Prosper remarked. ‘Can’t say I admire Rex’s taste in rieslings, but it would be oafish to complain.’
Cadel said nothing. As he was hustled out of the room into another passage, he tried to keep himself calm and focused by tackling an important question that had so far been left unanswered: namely, what in the world he might have done to spook Dot and Com in the first place. It didn’t make sense. He hadn’t been searching for either of them, back before the appearance of Prosper’s digital double. In Prosper’s own words, Cadel had been ‘behaving himself’. There had been no attempt to reconvene Genius Squad; no half-hearted monitoring of Vee’s old command-and-control chatrooms. Instead, Cadel had turned his back on the past, stayed off the hacker sites, and concentrated on his studies.
Of course, he’d continued to mix with a few former members of Genius Squad, but never once had he asked Judith about her police work. Never once had expressed the slightest interest in going after Prosper English. Like a model student, Cadel had been keeping his nose clean – except for the modest amount of hacking he’d done to connect Sonja’s wheelchair with a certain
Elevator Management System. And even
that
had been more of a noble undertaking than a piece of industrial sabotage …
All at once Cadel caught his breath.
‘SCATS!’ he exclaimed.
Prosper blinked. ‘Come again?’
‘I was about to start hacking into the Sydney traffic system!’ Cadel was thinking aloud; he couldn’t help himself. ‘I wanted to make sure that Sonja didn’t have to push any buttons at pedestrian crossings!’
But Prosper wasn’t enlightened. ‘You’ve lost me, I’m afraid,’ he said.
‘Com was
already in SCATS!
’
‘Ah.’
‘He must have been scared that I’d find his trail! What a
fool
he is!’
‘Yes. Well. The real world was never exactly his forte, was it?’ Prosper didn’t seem terribly interested. He nudged Cadel forward, adding, ‘There’s a staircase round the next corner. Just watch your step.’
Cadel briefly considered breaking free and heading for the nearest exit, then dismissed the idea. For one thing, he didn’t know where the nearest exit actually was. For another, he had a feeling that Prosper might be armed. And although the psychologist had refrained from shooting him on previous occasions, it had since been established that the two of them weren’t really father and son.
Cadel wasn’t sure exactly how far this news had spread. But he was afraid that, if the truth
had
filtered through to this dim little bolthole, it might have changed Prosper’s outlook on certain things.
‘Not far now,’ said Prosper, as they reached the top of a circular staircase. ‘When you get to the bottom, turn right.’
‘Where are we?’ Cadel asked, before experiencing a sudden flash of insight. ‘Are we inside that big pillar? In the vestibule?’
‘Very good.’ Prosper poked him between the shoulder blades. ‘And it’s a long way down, so don’t try my patience.’
The walls of the stairwell were probably soundproofed. Even if Kale was running up the outside stairs, it seemed unlikely that he would hear raised voices coming from inside the pillar.
Nevertheless, Cadel decided to make a bit of noise.
‘Have you been in here ever since you escaped?’ he said, as loudly as he dared.
‘Not quite,’ was Prosper’s terse response.
‘Where’s Wilfreda?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘So she’s not in the house, then?’
‘My dear boy, surely you’ve worked
that
out?’ Prosper didn’t trouble to hide his exasperation. ‘Wilfreda hasn’t been near this place for a week. All of the footage you saw was recorded. It’s old. I just played it back on some of the external monitors.’
‘The
external
monitors?’ Cadel echoed.
‘You’ll see what I mean in a minute.’
At the bottom of the stairs, another door led into a curving passageway. This passageway (which had a chilly, clammy, subterranean feel to it) opened onto a large, low room divided into several well-defined zones. There was a kitchen zone, with granite benchtops and a full complement of plumbing and appliances; a dining zone, which contained one small table and a single chair; and a zone occupied by an enormous amount of computer technology.
Cadel stared in amazement at the monitor screens, which outnumbered the panic room’s array by two to one. Every screen displayed several views of the house or garden. There was even a shot of the empty panic room itself, taken from above.
‘I see your friends haven’t got in yet,’ said Prosper. ‘That buys us a bit of time. With any luck, they might think you’ve collapsed. Or that you can’t get the door open.’
‘I didn’t see any camera in there.’ Cadel was confused. He couldn’t understand how he had missed something so important. ‘I’m sure there was no camera on the ceiling …’
‘Of course not!’ Prosper snapped. ‘It’s
inside
the ceiling. Aimed at an air-conditioning vent.’ He pointed at another
screen, where five or six agents were gathered outside the panic room. ‘There they are. See? Looks as if they’ve tried shooting a hole in the lock.’ With a snort, he added, ‘Much good it’ll do them. That’s steel plate – it was built to withstand a bomb blast.’
Cadel was putting everything together in his head. He was so impressed by the ingenuity of the set-up that he almost forgot to be frightened.
‘So this here is the
master
system?’ he demanded. ‘This one controls the other one?’
‘Clever, isn’t it?’
‘And there are microphones, as well.’ It wasn’t a question; it was a deduction. Cadel recalled that Prosper had been quoting his own remarks back to him. ‘You can listen to people talking.’
‘Oh, yes. Every room is wired for sound.’ Prosper gave a satisfied nod, evidently pleased that Cadel had inferred this from the available evidence. ‘Speaking of which, I should tell you that I would
never
use Old Spice, no matter
how
desperate I was –’
‘Did Vee design all this?’ Cadel interrupted, gesturing at the bank of screens.
‘Good God, no!’ said Prosper. ‘It was Rex’s doing.’
‘So his architect knows about it.’ Cadel remembered that Kale had been looking for the architect. It was an encouraging thought. But before Cadel could derive any comfort from the prospect of imminent rescue, his hopes were dashed.
‘Believe me,’ Prosper declared, ‘whatever that architect knew, it was buried with her.’ As Cadel glanced up, eyes widening, Prosper raised both hands in an attitude of injured innocence. ‘Not my doing, I assure you. That was all down to Rex.’
‘What – what are you talking about?’ Cadel stammered, though he already knew. He just couldn’t accept what he was hearing.
‘Rex killed the architect.’ Prosper spelled it out matter-offactly. ‘He took a contract out on her because she knew too much about this place. All the other construction workers were from Mexico. Illegal immigrants. God knows what happened to
them.
’
Cadel was appalled. But he reminded himself that he was
listening to a very accomplished liar. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he croaked.
The psychologist shrugged.
‘Believe what you like,’ he rejoined. ‘I’ve watched hours of old security footage, and it’s all there.’ Laying a heavy arm across Cadel’s shoulders, he adopted the light, gentle, soothing accents that he had customarily employed when counselling troubled adolescents, back in his days as a Sydney psychologist. ‘So you see, dear boy, Rex Austin was no great loss to the world. I’ve always said that there’s nothing more dangerous than a rich old plutocrat with rampant paranoia.’
Cadel swallowed. The time had come to ask, so he asked. Through dry lips he muttered, ‘What did you do to him?’
‘Ah. Yes. Now that’s what I want to discuss with you.’ Prosper steered Cadel towards the computer keyboard. ‘It seems that Rex caused a bit of a problem when he tried to escape. But I’ve got a feeling that you might be able to reverse that problem. And if you do, we’ll all be much better off …’
Prosper explained his predicament, calmly and succinctly. It appeared that Rex Austin hadn’t entirely trusted the panic house. Frightened that it wasn’t secure enough, he had also built himself a hidden escape route. According to Prosper, an underground tunnel led directly to the base of a nearby cliff, where a small motorboat was concealed.
‘The door in the cliff is a masterpiece,’ he said. ‘It looks just like a rockfall. I suppose it must have been prefabricated, then installed overnight.’
Prosper had personally gone to examine this door, wearing orange overalls and a baseball cap. Though footage of his excursion was more than two months old, it had still fooled Kale and Larry – and Cadel, too. In fact Prosper hadn’t set foot outside since visiting the cliff face, because he’d decided that it wasn’t safe to do so.