Genius Squad Read Free

ashamed of the person he had been, back then. Through the agency of the Piggotts, Prosper English had raised him as a scheming, friendless, emotionally stunted freak. Cadel had left that freak behind, and did not intend to welcome him back by indulging in the sort of nasty intrigues that had once kept him fully occupied.
    Still, it was annoying. More than annoying. It was, in fact, unfair that on such a damp, miserable, overcast morning, the men in the unmarked car wouldn’t give him a lift to the station, at least.
    Was it any wonder that Cadel should have been in such a foul mood?
    Nothing about his surroundings cheered him up, either. The Donkins lived in a flat, dreary suburb on Sydney’s western outskirts. There weren’t many trees or parks or Internet cafes in the area. People either lived in mean little houses on rambling, untidy blocks of land, or in brand-new mansions squeezed so tightly between boundary fences that they barely had any gardens at all. The local library was hard for Cadel to reach. The local walks – along culverts or across sunbaked football fields – were deeply depressing. The buses always arrived late at the nearest bus stop, and sometimes didn’t arrive at all. The bus stop itself was in a bleak and windswept location; Cadel could foresee that it would be a very cold place to stand on winter mornings.
    Fortunately, however, winter was still a few months off. So at least Cadel didn’t have to wait in the freezing cold for twenty minutes while the two policemen sat watching him from their warm car. Still, he was glad when the bus arrived. Not only did it mean that he could sit down, at long last; it also meant that one of his bodyguards was forced to abandon half a cup of takeaway coffee. Cadel was feeling so resentful that it pleased him to see someone deprived of a hot drink.
    The coffee-deprived policeman followed Cadel onto the bus, and took care to sit some distance away. He was short and stocky, with close-cropped hair and a glum expression. Perhaps he was glum because he didn’t like playing nursemaid. Or perhaps he disapproved of the trip itself. Cadel was well aware that the police would have preferred that he didn’t visit Sonja. Such visits, he realised, were a bit risky. Prosper English knew about Sonja. He knew how much Sonja meant to Cadel. Though Cadel’s whereabouts were currently a well-kept secret, it was much harder to hide Sonja. There weren’t many places where a girl with her special needs could safely live.
    If Prosper’s agents wanted to trace Cadel, they only had to find Sonja first.
    So, Cadel had been advised that he ought to consider rationing his visits to Sonja’s house. Such trips required two surveillance teams instead of one, and left him very exposed to a possible assault. Cadel had been reminded that he was chief witness for the prosecution – that Prosper might want to stop him from testifying. Prosper, after all, was a ruthless and intelligent man. Did Cadel really want to risk putting himself in harm’s way?
    ‘Prosper won’t try to kill me,’ Cadel had responded. ‘I know he won’t. He tried before, and he couldn’t. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it.’ Seeing the sceptical looks that had greeted this statement, Cadel had tried even harder to explain. ‘You don’t understand,’ he’d said. ‘I’m scared of Prosper, but not like that. He doesn’t want to kill me. He wants me to be on his side, that’s all.’
    The police disagreed, however. So when Cadel finally reached Sonja’s house, he found two unmarked police cars stationed nearby: one around the back of the house, another near the front.
    After months of being followed, he could spot them quite easily. To begin with, they were sparkling clean. All were recent model sedans. Each was normally occupied by two passengers, both of whom sat in the front. And when Cadel waved at them, or poked out his tongue, or did anything else designed specifically to irritate the people