'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 a.s.sured her. 'You a I didn't a 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. 'b.u.t.t-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 pa.s.s. On it were printed his name and address. 'I'm Cadel,' he insisted. 'Truly. Look a 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, G.o.d 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 G.o.d,' 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, how ever, 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. b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a 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'ttake. 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 a 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 a 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 Inst.i.tute. 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 a 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 a why Sonja, that is a 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 a G.o.d!' 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 a 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 a 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 a just as his mother had done. Talking about Cadel's faithless mother was simply one way of driving the lesson home.

'G.o.d.' Cadel started slamming his fists against his temples. 'G.o.d 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.

And that had set off someone's inner alarm.

'It's me,' he abruptly declared. 'They think we're too close a I bet that's it. They think I'm getting too independent, so they want to separate us, because they think you're a bad influence. They don't want me to have friends of my own. They're frightened.'

'Who are?' asked Kay-Lee.

'My dad.' Cadel was aware of a burning sensation inside his chest. He was almost gasping with rage. But such rage, he knew, was counterproductive. If you were too angry, you stopped thinking straight. You made mistakes. You were foolish.

Don't get mad, he told himself. Calm down. Calm down.

'Listen,' he said, turning to Sonja, 'if I sent you a couple of photos, could you tell me if you recognised the people in them?'

Sonja uttered a forced noise that was almost certainly a yes. As Cadel waited, she made one a two a three stabs at the Dynavox before finally connecting.

'By-email?' she slowly inquired.

'No.' Cadel shook his head. 'No more email. We can't use email, they're plugged in somehow. I'll have to snail-mail the photos. I'll do it tomorrow. And then you can...you can...' What? They couldn't use their old code; someone had broken it. The Virus, probably.

'More-Jorge?'

'No. At least a no. I don't think so.'

'I sent that last message,' Kay-Lee pointed out. It was her first contribution for some time. 'I went to an Internet cafe. Sonja was scared that they had her computer tapped, somehow. She didn't want the police to know she was warning you.'

'That's good,' said Cadel, absently. 'That's really good. But we can't be too careful. Swear to G.o.d, I know what I'm talking about. That guy with the giggles? He's a computer genius. I bet you he's been monitoring us the whole time.'

'Why?' Sonja queried.

'Because my dad probably put him up to it.' Cadel couldn't imagine where to start, and gnawed frantically at his fingernails. 'It's so hard to explain. My dad isn't normal. He's got plans for me. Everything has to be the way he wants it. He's got a whole network of people helping him on the outside.'

'But a '

'I should never have come here.' Now Cadel was beginning to panic. 'I might have been followed. The disguise might not have worked. Where am I going to say I've been? Suppose he broke the Jorge code? It wasn't too hard a '

'Hey. Calm down.' Kay-Lee urged, with a degree of sympathy in her voice that Cadel found suspicious. 'Just don't get upset, okay? There's nothing to worry about.'

Cadel looked at her sharply. 'I'm not a loony,' he snapped. 'I'm not paranoid.'

'No, of course not.'

'I'm not!'

'Show-me-the-photos,' Sonja interjected. 'Then-I'll-know-for-sure.'

'Yes, but how can we talk?' said Cadel. 'You can't send me mail a the Piggotts might spot it before I do. You can't call me at home a '

'Why not?'

'Because it's dangerous.' Cadel was getting annoyed with Kay-Lee. 'He doesn't want me talking to Sonja a ' 'Your dad, you mean?' 'Yes!' How many more times did he need to say it? 'Who-is-your-dad?' Sonja asked. Cadel hesitated. The secret of Dr Darkkon's ident.i.ty was worth killing for. He didn't want to spread the risk around.

'I'd better not tell you,' he said, reluctantly. 'The less you know, the better.' Seeing the sceptical look on Kay-Lee's face, he struggled to control his temper. 'Look,' he added, 'you're ent.i.tled to think I'm off my head. I know what this looks like. But if you recognise the people in the photos I send you then you'll have to agree I'm not the only one who's acting crazy.' An idea struck him. 'Did they tell you where they were from? What station they were attached to? Because if they did, you should call up. I bet no one will have heard of them, there.'

Kay-Lee shot a sidelong glance at Sonja. 'Well, maybe we will,' she said.

'Meanwhile, how can we talk?' said Cadel. 'Maybe I can call you. On a public phone.'

'You're sure our line won't be tapped?' Kay-Lee asked, with delicate sarcasm.

'I hope not.' Cadel, in contrast, was quite serious. 'G.o.d, you might be right. What if the phone's tapped? It might be. They might be afraid I'll try and contact you.'

'Cadel a '

'And I'm probably being followed, too, so we can't meet. Unless I disguise myself. But I don't know if that'll work. I don't know if it has worked. G.o.d a ' He was beginning to panic again. 'What if they've bugged this place? What if they're listening now?'

'For Chrissake!' Kay-Lee exploded. 'What are they, the CIA? You're crazy. Just listen to yourself. You'll be saying you get messages over the TV, next.'

'No-bugs,' Sonja interrupted. 'Not-here.' She paused, one arm bent back at a painful angle; she was beginning to sweat with the effort of communication. Helplessly, Cadel turned to Kay-Lee.

'They didn't come in here,' Kay-Lee confirmed, with obvious reluctance. 'We were in the dining-room when they came. But a '

'Wednesday-morning,' Sonja went on. 'Post-photos-tomorrow-andI'll-have-them-Wednesday. Library. Phone.'

Again, Cadel was lost. Again, he relied on Kay-Lee for an explanation.

'The local library,' she sighed. 'Sonja goes there every Wednesday morning, from nine to eleven.'

'Call-there. They-know-me.'

'Right. Okay.' Cadel nodded. 'And which library are we talking about?'

Sonja told him.

'Can I phone the desk?'

'Straight-through.'

'Should I ask for anyone?'

'Beatrice.'

Cadel committed all this to memory. He could easily find the number in the book. His only challenge now was to locate a public phone that he could use without arousing suspicion. Between nine and eleven on Wednesday morning.

He certainly couldn't use his mobile. Or any of the Axis lines.

He realised that Kay-Lee and Sonja were both staring at him. Waiting.

'Okay a well a I'll call you,' he faltered. 'At the library. I'd probably better go now.'

'I'll show you out,' said Kay-Lee, and held the door open for him. But Cadel hesitated. He had to say something more. He had to make a connection a a real one. Gazing down at Sonja, who was writhing in her chair, he blurted out: 'You're my best friend. The best I ever had.'

Sonja didn't respond. She may have tried to; it was hard to say. Perhaps she was only lifting her hand in a gesture of farewell.

Kay-Lee said gruffly: 'You're tiring her out,' and hustled him from the room. She then marched him down a series of corridors, gripping his arm tightly. 'Has she always been like that?' Cadel asked, almost tripping over the hem of his cotton skirt.

'Since she was born,' Kay-Lee replied. 'There's no cure.'

'It must be terrible.'

'You've no idea.'

'So a so she'll never be able to leave? Get her own flat, or anything?'

'They'll be shutting down this place soon,' Kay-Lee replied, stopping to shove open a heavy gla.s.s door. 'The trend is for smaller houses, with fewer people in them.' She hesitated, looking down at Cadel with weary, bloodshot eyes. 'I never knew about this Partner Post thing,' she added. 'It wasn't my idea. By the time I found out, you were her b.l.o.o.d.y life-line. She's too young. Too vulnerable.'

'I'm sorry,' Cadel whispered.

'The Internet's been a G.o.dsend for disabled people,' Kay-Lee continued, starting off again. They hurried past a series of closed doors. 'It's opened up the world for them. But it's exposed them to a lot of risks. And Sonja a well, she's too b.l.o.o.d.y smart for her own good.'

Suddenly, they were in the main entrance hall. Cadel recognised the black and white linoleum; the stained-gla.s.s fanlight; the keyboard brochure. Kay-Lee propelled him towards the 'Exit' sign.