Cadel blinked. He was already so overwhelmed, this new information didn’t even affect his heart-rate.
‘I – I have?’ he said, in dazed accents.
‘That’s why she couldn’t stay mad at you. She was mad at first, obviously. But then she reckoned, well, she hadn’t exactly been honest with you, either. So she wanted to warn you. That you were under investigation.’ Kay-Lee cocked her head, arms still folded. ‘Personally,’ she drawled, ‘I still don’t think you deserve it. In my opinion, you’re a parasite.’
Cadel accepted this insult without comment. He was beginning to piece things together.
‘You mean – this was all done for my sake? Jorge, and the hidden message? It was to warn me?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Because the police are after me?’
‘At long last.’
‘But how can they be after me, when they’re talking about Tom Carter? I’m not Tom Carter. I’ve never even used that name.’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ Kay-Lee snapped. ‘All I’m worried about is Sonja.’
‘Sonja?’
‘Sonja’s the one you’ve been tricking all this time. That’s why she deserves an apology. In person.’ Kay-Lee grabbed Cadel’s arm and yanked him to his feet. ‘Come on,’ she ordered. ‘I’m taking you to visit Sonja.’
Cadel didn’t protest. He allowed himself to be hustled through another pair of double doors and down another corridor. He hardly noticed where they were going. He was too appalled by this new state of affairs. The police! How had the police ever tracked him down? Why had they? Why bother with a silly little scam like Partner Post when there were international drug cartels to worry about? Was it something to do with his father? Were they trying to get at Dr Darkkon through Cadel?
But no, that couldn’t be right. The police had been talking about someone called Tom Carter. Could they have made a mistake and traced Cadel’s messages back to a hapless nerd of that name? Or were they concealing Cadel’s actual identity from Kay-Lee, for reasons that Cadel simply couldn’t fathom?
It was all so strange. So very, very strange.
‘Here,’ said Kay-Lee, and abruptly stopped. They were standing outside a closed door. Kay-Lee knocked at the door, and raised her voice.
‘It’s Kay-Lee, Sonja! Can I come in?’
There was a long pause. Then a strangled noise, which Cadel couldn’t decipher.
‘Okay,’ said Kay-Lee, and pushed the door open.
She dragged Cadel into a large, sunlit room. A mobile of numeric symbols dangled from the ceiling, each symbol made of blown glass. As it moved in the draught caused by Kay-Lee’s
entrance, coloured shards of light danced around the walls, which were covered in pages of printout, a photo of Stephen Hawking, a poster of a geometric eye-puzzle, a hologram of Albert Einstein, a giant number ‘2’ executed in red paint, and a picture of the Count from ‘Sesame Street’, torn out of a colouring book. Beneath this dazzling array of images stood a bed, equipped with various poles and mounting arms. It was draped in a beautiful patchwork quilt, and Cadel suddenly remembered talking to Kay-Lee – Sonja, that is – about the geometric perfection of patchwork quilts. They had traded various formulae for the ‘log cabin’, ‘monkey wrench’ and ‘courthouse steps’ designs.
There was also a desk near the window, fitted with various adjustable shelves. A computer monitor was perched on one. The only thing Cadel could see which remotely resembled a keyboard was more like a small laptop, propped up on a mounting arm, which in turn was attached to a wheelchair.
In the wheelchair was a girl. She had dark hair, caught up in a barrette. She wore baggy jeans (from which her feet stuck out at a slightly uncomfortable angle) and a crumpled green blouse. The muscles in her neck were taut, as if she was straining to see something. Her arms were very thin, and her fingers almost claw-like. She had enormous, haunting brown eyes in a narrow face.
Her head jerked uncontrollably, and her mouth was open. Cadel could see her tongue writhing behind large, crooked teeth.
The wheelchair moved slightly, with an electronic buzz. He couldn’t tell why.
‘This is Sonja,’ Kay-Lee declared. ‘Sonja has cerebral palsy. Sonja, this – believe it or not – is Eiran Dempster.
‘He’s come to pay you a visit.’
THIRTY-ONE
Cadel was speechless. He simply gaped, like a fish.
Sonja also said nothing, though the muscles in her face worked convulsively.
It was Kay-Lee who finally broke the silence.
‘Like they said, he’s just a kid,’ she went on, closing the door behind her. ‘And he’s not Tom Carter at all. He’s Cadel Something-or-other.’
‘P-Piggott,’ Cadel supplied unsteadily. ‘Cadel Piggott.’ He couldn’t believe his eyes. This, then, was the real Kay-Lee, the mysterious ‘Sonja’. A disabled girl in a wheelchair, whose fingers were twisted into painful shapes, and whose head twitched as she craned to look at him.
‘He must have taken you seriously,’ Kay-Lee remarked, addressing herself entirely to Sonja. ‘This get-up is meant to be a disguise, I reckon. And let’s just hope it’s worked, or we’re going to be in big trouble with the coppers, Son. They still think you’re me, remember. I’m going to cop the flak here if anything goes wrong.’
But Sonja was moving her arm. It lurched across to the device in front of her – a device that had ‘Dynavox’ printed across its base – and began to skitter along the screen. For a moment one rigid finger remained at rest in a particular spot; then it jerked onwards. Eventually, the machine began to speak for her.
‘X-is-the-sum-of-unknown-quantities-y-over-one-x-minus-u-to-the-power-of-twenty-six,’ it said, in a toneless girl’s voice – and Cadel knew, then. He knew that he really was talking to Eiran Demp-ster’s perfect partner.
‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘You owe her,’ Kay-Lee pointed out. ‘Must be – what? Over a hundred dollars?’
‘I’ll pay you back,’ said Cadel, even as Sonja threw her head from side to side, making strained noises.
‘Nyaa,’ she protested, and jabbed at her Dynavox.
‘No,’ it said.
‘I will, though. I – I . . .’ Cadel didn’t know what to say. Not with Kay-Lee there, listening. It was all so terrible. Sonja couldn’t even talk. She couldn’t even talk. Her mouth didn’t move well enough – her face kept stiffening and bunching up. Her hands didn’t always do what they were meant to do. She was fighting against herself all the time.
Cadel’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ he quavered, and he meant that he was sorry for everything. For everything that had ever happened to her. ‘I was stupid. I was so stupid.’
‘Oh, settle down,’ said Kay-Lee crossly, as the Dynavox began to respond to Sonja’s agitated fumbling.
‘Police-came-here-’
‘I told him,’ Kay-Lee interrupted. ‘But they got the name wrong, apparently.’
‘I don’t know any Tom Carter,’ Cadel snuffled. ‘It doesn’t make sense. My name is Cadel. Cadel Piggott.’
‘How-old-are-you?’
‘Fourteen,’ Cadel admitted. ‘Yesterday.’ And Sonja began to laugh a slow, sawing, cawing laugh, her eyes searching for Kay-Lee.
‘Sonja’s only sixteen,’ Kay-Lee informed Cadel. ‘She was worried about the age difference, ha-ha.’
‘Between-me-and-Eiran,’ Sonja added, through the medium of the Dynavox. ‘What-a-joke.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Cadel repeated, in feeble tones.
‘Only a kid would have the gall,’ said Kay-Lee. ‘They said you’d been ripping off hundreds of people.’
‘Oh no.’ Cadel shook his head. ‘Only sixty-eight.’
‘Only sixty-eight?’
‘Interesting-number,’ said Sonja, with her Dynavox.
‘But you were special,’ Cadel assured her. ‘You – I didn’t – I wasn’t friends with anyone
else.’
‘Oh, sure,’ Kay-Lee drawled, and Cadel turned on her.
‘I wasn’t!’ he cried. ‘You don’t understand!’
‘You can say that again.’
‘I wanted to tell you!’ Cadel pleaded, addressing Sonja. ‘I did, truly! But I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me, if you knew the truth.’
‘Got that right,’ Kay-Lee remarked, at which Sonja let out a bark of protest.
‘Shut-up,’ said the Dynavox, and Kay-Lee apologised.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured.
‘Butt-out.’
‘I will. Sorry. None of my business.’
‘Go-away.’
‘Can’t, Son.’ Kay-Lee shook her head. ‘Can’t risk it. We don’t even know who he is, not really.’
Cadel fumbled for his Axis security pass. On it were printed his name and address. ‘I’m Cadel,’ he insisted. ‘Truly. Look – see? “Cadel Piggott”.’
‘Then who’s Tom Carter?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe they’ve made a mistake.’
‘I-bet-they-have,’ said Sonja. ‘Small-one-was-weird.’
‘Oh, God yeah.’ Kay-Lee snorted. ‘With the nose spray. What a creep. Giggled all the time.’
It was as if a gear in Cadel’s brain suddenly ground to a halt, then started up again.
‘He what?’ Cadel gasped. ‘He giggled?’
‘All the time.’
‘What did he look like? Was he fat?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Kay-Lee drawled.
‘Other-one-fatter,’ Sonja added.
‘What colour were his eyes?’ said Cadel. ‘The giggling one?’
Sonja and Kay-Lee exchanged glances. There was a long pause, broken only by Sonja’s noisy breathing. At last the Dynavox slowly ground out: ‘Hard-to-say. All-screwed-up. Small.’
‘He had a sty,’ Kay-Lee remarked, and Cadel sat down on the bed.
‘Oh my God,’ he breathed.
‘What? Do you know him?’
‘What about his hair? What was that like?’
‘Grey.’
‘Disgusting.’
‘Sort of floppy. Lank.’
‘He-smelled-of-eucalyptus.’
The Virus, Cadel thought. It had to be the Virus. The sty. The giggling. The eucalyptus. Had to be.
But why? Why?
‘What’s-wrong?’ said Sonja, through her Dynavox. Cadel, however, needed more information.
‘What about the other guy?’ he wanted to know. ‘You said he was fat?’
‘Huge.’ Kay-Lee was watching Cadel carefully. ‘Enormous. Red in the face.’
‘No-hair.’
No hair? That ruled out Maestro Max. Though Max wasn’t all that fat, anyway. Just a little plump.
‘He did most of the talking,’ Kay-Lee revealed. ‘What else, Son?’
‘Pompous.’
‘Yeah, he was that all right.’
‘Lewis. Detective-Sergeant-Lewis.’
‘Old,’ said Kay-Lee. ‘Late fifties?’
‘Big-mole-sticking-out-of-left-nostril,’ said Sonja, and Cadel blinked. He stared at her, his mind baulking.
The Virus, yes. That wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. He’d believe anything of Axis. But Stuart Piggott?
How could that be?
‘You know them, don’t you?’ Kay-Lee inquired. ‘I can tell from your face.’
‘Did you see any identification?’ Cadel asked her, ignoring the question. ‘Did they show you anything?’
‘Sure did. Bloody everything.’
‘Photo-ID,’ said Sonja.
‘Did they come in a car? Did you see it?’
Sonja’s head rolled back and forth. Kay-Lee replied: ‘I did. Very flash. Silver Commodore.’
Stuart’s car was a silver Commodore. Cadel felt suddenly as if he was going to be sick.
Dr Vee and Stuart Piggott?
‘What’s going on?’ Kay-Lee demanded. ‘Don’t tell me they weren’t real coppers. They had to be.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Cadel whispered.
‘You telling more of your porkies, little man?’
‘Don’t.’ The Dynavox voice was fairly flat, but Sonja was obviously disturbed. Her movements had become more erratic. ‘He’s-scared.’
‘Why? What’s wrong? Who were they, if they weren’t coppers?’
‘I think . . .’ Cadel took a deep breath. ‘I think one was my – was the man who adopted me.’
His two companions stared.
‘Bull,’ Kay-Lee said at last.
‘Are-you-an-orphan?’
‘He’s a liar, Son, remember? How can we believe anything he says?’
‘I-was-fostered,’ Sonja continued, ignoring Kay-Lee. ‘Didn’t-take. Ended-up-here. Mother-insane. What-about-you?’
Cadel looked at Sonja. The grin on her face had nothing to do with what she was feeling, he reminded himself. It was something over which she had no control.
‘My mother’s dead,’ he replied. ‘My father – my father’s in gaol.’
‘Chip off the old block,’ said Kay-Lee. ‘You should be in gaol, mate.’
But Cadel wasn’t listening. He was trying to work out what had happened. If Dr Vee had come with Stuart Piggott, to tell Sonja (alias Kay-Lee) that Eiran Dempster didn’t exist – what did that mean? Surely they weren’t undercover cops? It seemed unlikely, especially if they had given Kay-Lee a false name. Tom Carter. Why would they call Cadel ‘Tom Carter’, if they were real policemen?
Dr Vee and Stuart Piggott. It was a crazy combination. As far as Cadel was aware, they had only met each other once, during the Piggotts’ tour of the Axis Institute. Yet they had been working together closely. Imitating policemen. Using false names. For what reason?
To warn Sonja?
Maybe Dr Vee had tapped into Cadel’s computer, found the Partner Post stuff, and gone to Stuart. Maybe Stuart had decided to put a stop to Partner Post before it did come to the attention of the police. But that didn’t make sense. Stuart could simply have told Cadel to shut up shop – he didn’t have to go to all the trouble of impersonating a policeman. Especially not when it was against the law. Stuart was a lawyer. Why would he want to break the law and risk his career?
Perhaps because he didn’t have a career to risk. Perhaps because he wasn’t a lawyer after all. It occurred to Cadel that Stuart didn’t appear to have approached anyone else on the Partner Post client list. Most of them had been sending emails quite happily for days, as if nothing had happened. They would have reacted like Sonja if they’d been told. They would have taken their business elsewhere. And if Stuart’s main purpose had been to shut down Partner Post, he would certainly have made a clean sweep of all the clients.
So why Kay-Lee – why Sonja, that is – and no one else?
Because Sonja’s important, Cadel decided. Because Sonja is my friend. Because I confided in Sonja. Dr Vee would know that, if he’d hacked into my computer. What’s more, Dr Vee wouldn’t have gone to Mr Piggott with information about Cadel. Dr Vee knew who Cadel’s real father was. If Dr Vee had been concerned, he would have gone to Thaddeus. With a message for Dr Darkkon.
There were really only two possibilities. Either Stuart and Dr Vee were working together as government agents, planted within Dr Darkkon’s organisation to keep an eye on him, or they were both working for Dr Darkkon. Both of them.
Whatever the case, Cadel’s whole upbringing had been one big lie.
‘Cadel. Hey!’ Kay-Lee was shaking his arm. ‘Wake up! You can’t stay here!’
‘You-haven’t-told-us-the-whole-story.’ Sonja had moved her wheelchair around. Her intent brown gaze was fixed on Cadel. ‘Is-Lewis-police-or-not?’
‘No,’ said Cadel, tugging at strands of his own loose hair. ‘I don’t know what he is. He’s been tricking me. All my life. His wife – God!’ Cadel felt like pounding the wall. Could it all have been a front? Absolutely everything? If so, how on earth had he missed it? ‘I don’t even know
who they are! Either of them!’
‘You’re not making any sense,’ Kay-Lee said, dryly.
‘I know. It’s hard to explain. My dad – my real dad . . .’ He trailed off, but Sonja had missed nothing, despite her involuntary jerks and twitches.
‘This-has-something-to-do-with-your-real-dad? The-one-in-gaol? ’ she asked, and Cadel caught his breath.
He had remembered. The sequence of events: bang, bang, bang. On Wednesday, Dr Deal had beaten him up. On Thursday, the two phoney policemen had visited Kay-Lee. On Friday, Sonja, masquerading as Kay-Lee, had given Cadel the old heave-ho.
Right afterwards, Dr Darkkon had started talking about Cadel’s mother. You can’t trust ’em – not the best of ’em, he had said. Really drumming it in. They just drop you and walk away. As if he was trying to undermine Cadel’s faith in his female friend, without mentioning any names.
Was it truly a coincidence?
‘It can’t be,’ Cadel said, aloud. But if Dr Darkkon had decided that Sonja (alias Kay-Lee) was dangerous, what better way to get rid of her than tell her the truth? She was bound to drop Cadel like a hot brick – just as his mother had done. Talking about Cadel’s faithless mother was simply one way of driving the lesson home.
‘God.’ Cadel started slamming his fists against his temples. ‘God how did I miss it? How could I be so stupid?’
‘Don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself,’ Kay-Lee exclaimed, and Sonja said: ‘What? Tell-me-what?’
‘It’s my dad,’ Cadel croaked, in amazement. ‘It’s got to be.’
‘What about your dad?’
‘This is all him.’ Cadel looked from one to the other, from Sonja’s tense face to Kay-Lee’s puzzled scowl, and back again. ‘It’s hard to believe, but this is all his doing. I know it. I can feel it. He doesn’t want me talking to you.’
‘Why-not?’ Sonja questioned. She struggled with her Dynavox, but seemed to have trouble pointing. Kay-Lee, watching her uneasily, said, ‘It’s nothing to do with you, Son. No one knows about you. The police talked to me.’
‘It’s not you, Sonja.’ Cadel was thinking hard. Sonja had been his friend since his days at Crampton College. But on Wednesday, for the first time ever, he had struck out on his own. He had kept something from Thaddeus: Dr Deal’s name.