The Chemical Reaction

by Fiona Erskine

  Praise for The Chemical Detective

  ‘Action, intrigue and a stonkingly modern heroine. It’s a blast’

  Sunday Times Crime Club

  ‘Imagine the love child of Jack Reacher and Nancy Drew . . . a delicious cocktail of dating and detonations. Call it Mills and Boom’ Evening Standard

  ‘Intricate, seductive and thrilling. Erskine’s writing glows with wit and danger. And can’t help reminding you, with every page turned, of how close we all are to detonation’

  Ross Armstrong, author of The Watcher

  ‘Fiona Erskine is an engineer, and in Jaq Silver, who shares her profession, she has created a wonderful antidote to all the resentful, floppy victims of much domestic noir’

  Literary Review

  ‘A stunning, cinematic debut that’s going to land on the 2019 thriller scene like a half-kilo of silver fulminate*

  *stuff that goes bang’

  Andrew Reid, author of The Hunter

  ‘An audacious, female-led thriller which took the disposable women of the James Bond franchise and flipped the concept entirely on its head’

  Chemistry World

  ‘Erskine weaves her tale of suspense into a first-class thriller, the drama escalates with terrifying authenticity. A must-read for engineers’

  Nick Smith, Engineering & Technology

  ‘A complex and increasingly addictive story that soon becomes a page turner’

  The Chemical Engineer

  ‘Bring it on! The entire mystery, the chase across so many locations towards Chernobyl was exciting and felt dangerously thrilling’

  The Booktrail

  ‘Explosive to the very last page’

  Press Association

  THE CHEMICAL

  REACTION

  Fiona Erskine

  To Jonathan – Happy Thirtieth Wedding Anniversary

  Science tells you love

  is just a chemical reaction in the brain

  Let me be your Bunsen burner baby

  let me be your naked flame!

  John Otway, ‘Bunsen Burner’

  from the album The Year of the Hit, 2002

  PROLOGUE

  AUGUST

  Fine art auction, London, England

  A hush fell over the auction room as the final lot was brought to the table. A dark-suited man carried the case with exaggerated care. He placed it on a plinth, donned cotton gloves and carefully unpacked Lot 66. With a flourish, he swept aside the green velvet cloth to reveal a jade statue on a honey-coloured base.

  A murmur of excitement rippled round the room.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Lot 66.’ The auctioneer mounted the rostrum and adjusted his microphone. Despite his youth, eccentric taste in bow ties and foppish blond hair, there was no doubt who controlled the room. Cool blue eyes appraised the audience, a mix of art lovers, private investors, journalists and the odd incongruous pensioner perhaps seeking warmth or the company of strangers. He waited for complete silence before continuing. ‘A Qing dynasty wedding cup. Approximately three hundred years old, this is the very finest Chinese jade mounted on a base of xenotime, and the only one of its kind.’

  The jade statue glowed under the spotlights: milk-white nephrite, almost translucent, with the faintest tinge of sea green. The wedding cup consisted of two slender cylinders, each one the diameter of three fingers. A dragon encircled the male chalice, its jagged spine winding around the outer edge in a graceful helix, head raised, mouth open to reveal sharp teeth. The female vessel was laced with flowers and strings of tiny, perfectly carved pearls. A phoenix, wings spread to embrace the male and female sides, drew them together. So much intricate detail, and yet the wedding cup stood only two hands high and two fists wide on its polished crystal base.

  The auctioneer flicked a lock of hair from his forehead. ‘The Qianlong Emperor ruled China from 1735 to 1796. A man of great taste – poet, musician, sculptor, collector – a warrior and a consummate politician, he was exquisitely sensitive when it came to objects of art, inventively barbaric regarding the murder of his enemies. A man of his time? Or a demonstration that for great men,’ he paused and smiled at a woman in the middle row, ‘and great women, the appreciation of beauty goes hand in hand with success.’

  Video cameras relayed an image of the object onto giant screens as the white-gloved assistant rotated the plinth. He turned it slowly to allow everyone in the room, and the more serious bidders connecting remotely from homes and offices far away, a chance to admire the magnificent workmanship.

  ‘Do I have an opening offer? Ladies and gentlemen, who will start the bidding for this splendid object?’

  The auctioneer tossed back his blond locks and stared directly into the camera.

  In Vladivostok, Russia, a ship’s horn boomed out of the darkness. The long mournful chord echoed between the cliffs of the Ussuriysky Gulf.

  Dmytry Zolotoy gripped the arms of his chair, light-headed with excitement as he watched the London auction on the screen. One arthritic hand strayed to his shirt, open at the neck, following the links of a chain to a jade pendant. He had waited half a century for this: the chance to square the circle, the moment to put things right, to make himself whole again.

  He twisted his silver propelling pencil and wrote a number on the pad in front of him before pushing it across the desk towards his secretary.

  She raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow, so thin and smooth it might have been painted on. ‘Sterlingov?’

  He gave a sharp nod. ‘Da.’

  She spoke into the phone, glossy crimson lips pursing and stretching in elaborate enunciation. ‘One million pounds sterling,’ she said.

  Dmytry surveyed his private office, chest tightening with each tick of the mantelpiece clock, an invisible vice squeezing his ribs against his spine. What if the line of communication broke? Why hadn’t he sent someone to London in person? Someone like Timur, the only one he really trusted. Why? Because Timur was with his swim team, winning medals for Russia. Timur wasn’t ready for this, for all the baggage that went with it: not yet.

  His secretary was talking into the phone, replying to some question.

  ‘Prinyato?’ His jaw began to ache.

  She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and nodded. ‘Horosho.’

  The auctioneer held up a hand. ‘I have a bid of one million pounds.’ If he was surprised by the opening bid on his screen, almost double the reserve price, he betrayed not a flicker of emotion. ‘Any advance on one million pounds?’

  A nod from the audience, a heavyset man with one hand clamped to an earpiece.

  ‘Two million.’

  A young Chinese woman raised her auction brochure.

  ‘Three million.’

  The male bidder nodded again.

  ‘Four million pounds. Am I bid five million?’

  Sun Chang paused to admire the lights of Hong Kong twinkling over the dark water of Kowloon Bay. A faint rhythmic splashing from the deck told him that his daughter had already arrived. He drew up a lounger and waited for Mico at the shallow end of his rooftop swimming pool.

  ‘Dad!’ She raised herself from the water.

  He held out a towel. ‘How was the shoot?’

  ‘Cancelled,’ she said.

  ‘Again?’

  Mico climbed the tiled steps and swapped the towel for a bathrobe, so large and fluffy that her slim body disappeared into its folds.

  ‘Five.’ Sun Chang said into his phone.

  ‘Work?’ she mouthed.

  ‘Pleasure.’ He gave her the auction brochure open at Lot 66. ‘What do you think?’

  She studied the picture of the Qianlong wedding cup. ‘Incomplete.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The lids are missing.�
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  He peered more closely. ‘How come you know so much about Qianlong jade?’

  She blushed and looked away.

  Sun Chang frowned and opened his laptop, clicking onto the Art Police website. There it was, an old photo from the Kaifeng Museum. The same exquisite cup, but with a tiny flower covering the female vessel and a circle of dragon fire atop the male one. He zoomed in on the image, inspecting the object rotating slowly under LED lights in London. Sure enough, he could make out two tiny holes, eyelets where hinges of silver thread would once have secured a little cover for each cup.

  ‘Damn, you’re right.’ He sighed.

  Mico inspected the photo. ‘It is beautiful, though.’

  ‘The buyer will be held to ransom by whoever has the missing lids.’

  Mico peered over his shoulder. ‘Last photographed in the 1930s. Before the Japanese invasion, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution. Two lost discs of white jade, each the size of a coin. They’ll never be found.’

  ‘So, should I keep bidding?’

  In China, Ru turned up the volume on her new smartphone and listened.

  ‘Six million.’

  The tiny screen was only a few centimetres wide. There was no need for better resolution. The jade statue on the xenotime base was as familiar to her as her own hands.

  ‘Seven million.’

  She stroked the jade brooch pinned to her collar; the carved flower was all she had left.

  ‘Eight million.’

  Several of the bidders had dropped out, but two remained, each one determined to win. And two was all it needed.

  ‘Nine million.’

  In Vladivostok, Dmytry’s hand began to shake as he wrote a new number. He tried to lift his left arm to steady his right, but it remained obstinately at his side, as if made of lead.

  The silver pencil clattered to the floor. He grasped the pendant that hung from a chain around his neck, clutching the carved circle of dragon fire as if it might save him.

  He shuddered and exhaled a rasping breath, his skin ashen and damp.

  ‘Gospodin!’ His assistant dropped the phone and ran to his side. ‘Chto ne tak, nezdorovy?’

  ‘Doktor . . .’ Dmytry gasped.

  ‘Do I have eleven million pounds?’

  ‘Ten million, five hundred thousand?’

  ‘Ten million, two hundred and fifty thousand?’

  ‘Ten million, one hundred thousand pounds?’

  ‘Any advance on ten million pounds? Ten million pounds it is, ladies and gentlemen.’ The auctioneer raised his gavel and looked around the room. ‘Lot 66 sold for ten million pounds. Going, going . . .’ He struck the lectern with the gavel. ‘Gone!’

  In the London auction house, the journalists crowded the lectern, trying to see the screen.

  ‘Can you give us the buyer’s name?’

  ‘Do you have a name, sir?’

  ‘Who’s the buyer?’

  The auctioneer threw his head back, the untidy mane of blond hair bouncing up and down. He tapped his nose. ‘The buyer wishes to remain anonymous.’

  ‘The seller, then?’

  ‘The seller’s name, sir!’

  ‘Provenance, please?’

  A retired metallurgist was the last to leave the London auction house by the front entrance, lingering to get a closer look once the crowds had cleared. Although far from immune to the beauty of the jade carving, his principal interest was the xenotime base. Quite extraordinary close up, the photographs didn’t do it justice. He’d never seen such large and flawless crystals of the rare metal phosphate. He wished he’d brought his Geiger counter, to gauge the radioactive content. Rare earth ores from China, monazite and xenotime, had always arrived in his lab as greyish-brown powders or dull lumps of partially crushed rock. Pure translucent crystals were unbelievably rare.

  He chuckled to himself as he collected his hat and umbrella. If the prices of rare earths continued to rise at the same crazy rate as they had these past few months, the xenotime base might soon be worth as much as the jade statue.

  He pulled up his collar and stepped out into the rain.

  The woman from the middle row slipped out sometime later, by the back door, unseen.

  PART I

  SEPTEMBER

  Twenty nautical miles from the Crimean coast, Black Sea

  Dark clouds raced in from the east, the yacht creaking and sighing as it sped towards land in a desperate attempt to outrun the approaching storm.

  Jaq grasped the wheel, the varnished wood smooth and warm under her hands, staying the course, filling the sails, running for shelter. The yacht was a living thing beneath her bare feet, bucking and twisting, stretching and straining, rolling and slewing.

  A crimson glow lingered above the hills as the sun dipped below the wine-dark sea. Calm water lay ahead. Chaos and darkness, behind.

  The rendezvous had gone smoothly, the ‘cargo’ picked up in the Crimea, delivered at the appointed time and place, twelve nautical miles from shore.

  Mission accomplished.

  A flash of silver lightning split the sky, illuminating the deck. One . . . and . . . two . . . and . . .

  Giovanni worked around her, trimming the spinnaker sheet, keeping the huge sail filled as the boat rolled, wrenching every ounce of speed from the Frankium.

  Five . . . and . . . six . . . and . . .

  She looked up at the sails, perfectly set like the wings of a massive bird, propelling them over the ocean.

  Ten . . . and . . . eleven . . . and . . .

  They worked well together, just the two of them. Jaq setting the course, both hands on the wheel, keeping the wind behind them, optimising their speed. Maximising tension, minimising resistance. Constant small adjustments. Watching and listening, sensing, anticipating.

  In contrast to Jaq’s pool of stillness at the helm, Giovanni darted from side to side, a lithe dynamo in constant motion. Synchronised motion. Perfectly attuned to each other’s needs. In and out of bed.

  His dark curls blew about his face in the wind, eyes glinting in the gleam of the running lights, brown irises merging with dilated black pupils as he adjusted his vision to the gathering darkness. His skin was tanned by sunshine, weather-darkened by a life lived in the open air. He wore a striped T-shirt, the fabric plastered to his broad chest, damp with sweat and sea spray, the long sleeves rolled back to reveal muscled forearms. His blue chinos ended above bare ankles. Rubber soles squeaked as his white plimsolls scooted across the teak planking of the foredeck, his compact, wiry frame twisting and turning, bending and stretching.

  They couldn’t carry this much sail if the gusts increased. At her signal, Giovanni clipped his harness to the jackstay and started forward to drop the spinnaker. The symbol on the billowing white nylon – a black box containing the letters Fr, the chemical symbol for the eighty-seventh element in the periodic table – wrinkled and folded as the nylon sail spooled onto the deck. Giovanni bagged the sail and dropped it down the forehatch.

  Fifteen . . . and . . . sixteen . . . and . . .

  A massive wave lifted the stern and the boat rolled. The wind snuck behind the mainsail and forced it hard against the preventer. It rattled, straining to break free.

  Jaq spun the wheel, trying to stop the boat from broaching, but it wasn’t responding.

  ‘Gybe!’ Jaq bellowed.

  Giovanni ducked as the preventer snapped and the boom scythed across the deck, the mainsail rattling like machine gun fire before billowing out on the other side. The boat righted and steadied itself as she brought it back on course. Giovanni waved a fist in mock anger.

  That was close. Too close. The boat was answering the helm again but it felt sluggish, no longer smoothly responsive and finely tuned. What had changed?

  Giovanni must have sensed something too. ‘Troppo scuro!’ he hollered. ‘Troppo agitato!’ Too dark. Too risky. She mimed her reluctant agreement to reduce sail. He put a reef in the main and rolled in some of the staysail.

&n
bsp; Twenty-five . . . and . . . twenty-six . . . and . . .

  The yacht pitched and yawed, the waves rolling past the hull as it barrelled downwind. A shudder ran through the craft from prow to stern.

  Twenty-eight . . . and . . . twenty-nine . . . and . . .

  Thunder cracked and boomed, the roar of an angry sky dragon, threatening from on high.

  Twenty-nine and a half seconds. Jaq did the mental calculation. Thunder and lightning happen at the same time, both caused by an electrical discharge from heaven to earth. Or cloud to sea, in this case. The delay in perception is only due to the different speeds at which light and sound travel. Speed of light 299,792,458 metres per second: instantaneous to all intents and purposes. Speed of sound 343 metres per second. Twenty-nine and a half seconds between the light and sound reaching them meant the storm was ten kilometres away and closing. It would hit the boat long before they made land. And hit them hard. With winds approaching 100 km/hr, 50 knots, they had less than six minutes. All around was darkness; only the rasp of sea spray on her skin, the shrieking wind howling across the Black Sea.

  Had she been wrong to release the crew? Essential to the rendition, but after capturing The Spider – the criminal mastermind behind a chemical weapons factory – and rescuing his prisoner, double agent Camilla Hatton, Interpol had taken over. Sending the crew away with Interpol had seemed the obvious thing to do. More than obvious – necessary. The crew were mercenaries, soldiers not sailors, the right men for a dirty job. Task complete, Jaq wanted nothing more than to forget the mission, forget the bloodshed and forget her own part in it all.

  After the lightning, then the thunder, came the scent, borne on gusts of wind, the familiar metallic smell of ozone, the telltale chemistry of the sky.

  And another scent. Testosterone and sandalwood. Giovanni appeared beside her. ‘It’s getting wild.’

  Jaq cocked her head and appraised him. ‘Shall I tie you to the mast?’

  A shadow passed over his face as he handed her a life jacket. ‘Put this on.’

  She pulled it over her head and tightened the buckle. ‘When this storm is over, let’s find a quiet bay somewhere and—’