‘Under the bridge, and then it should only be a couple of kilometres further on.’
Lulu shivered, although whether it was from the cold or nerves, Jaq wasn’t sure.
The road was closed – at least Vinegar Face and the taxi drivers had been telling the truth about that – but Jaq manoeuvred the little truck around the barricades and cones. The darkness thickened. No street lights on this section of road, or no working ones. Where was the factory? They should be able to see it by now. She drove carefully on the uneven road surface, jolting over potholes and ruts. She didn’t remember it being this bad in the car. When she reached the bend in the river, she knew she’d gone too far.
‘Sorry, Lulu. I overshot.’ She turned round and headed back, halting at each intersection. No sign of a gate. No turquoise fountain or pink buildings; no blue warehouses or yellow cranes. Strange.
Jaq got out of the three-wheeler. She walked away from the road towards the river. Sure enough, the road ran right beside the estuary. On the seaward side it dipped away sharply, and she could hear the black water lapping noisily, a brackish smell rising from it. The factory should be on the other side. She crossed the road and walked towards where the gate should be. But there was nothing, only darkness. An empty plot of land. No fountain or chimney, no rows of storage tanks, no extraction columns or cranes. She scratched her head. How was it possible?
‘The Krixo factory was here. I’m sure of it.’
‘That’s not possible.’ Lulu sounded irritated. ‘We must be on the wrong road.’
‘I was so sure, but . . .’ Jaq was beginning to doubt herself.
‘It might be easier to navigate if we could see a few landmarks.’
A tall chimney with red and white bands, for one.
Lulu’s teeth were chattering now. ‘We can come back when it’s light.’
Jaq took a step forward and winced. Something sharp under her left slipper. She bent down and extracted a nail that had pierced the thin sole and slipped between her toes. An ordinary, rusty, iron nail. Nothing special. The kind you find everywhere in the world. The kind that causes serious injuries in the wrong footwear. It was bad enough being out here in the dark, but in these flimsy shoes, it was madness.
‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’
As Jaq drove back, she became more certain, and more confused. More certain that she’d taken the right road. More confused that she couldn’t find the factory.
How was it possible for the factory to exist one minute and disappear the next?
How was it possible for a factory to vanish?
Beijing, China
They met in Jiangshan Park, in a pavilion on the top of a hill, an artificial hill built from earth excavated from the moat below.
Yun opened her arms and Mico rushed towards her. To a casual onlooker the embrace might be the fond reunion of sisters or cousins. There was no one close enough to see the kiss, hear the sighs or feel the heat as their bodies connected.
After a while they separated.
‘Come away with me,’ Mico whispered.
‘You know I can’t.’
‘Why not? Because of Mimi? She can come too.’
‘And where will we live?’
‘With me!’
Yun stroked the younger woman’s cheek. ‘Mico, you live with your father. If he knew the truth about . . . us, what would he do?’
‘I can find us a place.’
‘In Hong Kong? On the salary the studio pays you? Really?’
‘We could go to London, Vancouver, Melbourne – where do you want to live?’
‘I want to live in China. This is my country. For better or for worse. I can’t leave it, can’t tear the soul from my body.’
‘Even if that means exile to Chongqing?’
Yun went silent.
‘You won’t be allowed to travel.’
‘So, let’s finish what we started.’
Mico grinned. ‘You saw the newspaper reports?’
Yun nodded. ‘I’m so proud of you.’
‘Let’s get to work.’
Yun extracted the dossier from a cerise handbag. ‘This won’t be easy.’
‘Easy is boring.’ Mico took the folder and flicked through the photos of the jade collection: a white jade water pitcher with matching cups, a bowl embossed with carved fish, a horse, an elephant, a dragon. She paused to admire the simple, clean curves of a spinach-green water buffalo. ‘Beautiful.’
‘How will you do it?’
‘I have people. They know other people. It can be done. We’ve made a good start.’
‘But at what cost?’
‘Leave that to me.’
Yun stood and paced. ‘I’m doing this for Mimi.’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you? You don’t have a child of your own.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like my father.’
Yun stopped and frowned. ‘Is he still matchmaking?’
‘He’s unstoppable.’
Yun took her hand. ‘Will he ever understand?’
Mico gazed down at the Forbidden City and sighed. ‘It’s beyond his comprehension.’
Shingbo, China
Lulu appeared to think that it would be natural to share Jaq’s room. After all, the bed was stupidly wide.
Not an option.
Jaq paid for an additional room. They ate a hasty dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was about to close as they arrived, Lulu loud and irritable, Jaq quiet with fatigue and worry.
Despite her anxiety, Jaq slept soundly, waking before dawn full of energy, convinced that she’d taken a wrong turn in the dark, and that today everything would become clear. She dressed quickly in the ill-fitting trouser suit from yesterday, but with socks and safety boots instead of cloth slippers.
Too early for breakfast, Jaq slipped a note under Lulu’s door and made her way to the basement. The three-wheeler was in the same bay where they’d parked it last night, the keys still under the bench. The owner would have to wait a bit longer to retrieve his truck. It took her twenty minutes in daylight to do a journey that had taken twice as long last night. This time she took a different route, hoping to approach the factory from a back road, driving towards a distinctive chimney with red and white bands. But there were several such chimneys, and none of them the right one. Once again, she found herself on the rutted road beside the river. Once again, she drove to the spot where the Krixo factory should have been, only to find an empty plot of land.
Jaq walked through the gap where the gate had been. The ground was broken and uneven. Where the production buildings should have been, she saw a glint under the soil. Scraping away the earth with her steel-capped toe, she uncovered a metallic object and bent down to pick up the stub end of a welding rod.
Welding rods look a bit like sparklers: thin cylinders of metal coated in a protective layer of sintered metal sponge. The thin end is inserted into the jaws of a metal clamp. A voltage is applied from a portable generator. When the other end of the rod approaches the workpiece, an electric arc connects them, the heat melting both the tip of the rod and the metal to be joined, allowing molten metal to fuse exactly where it is needed.
She examined the stub carefully. The code was written in English characters, truncated where it had been used, but there was enough to identify the material. She put it in the pocket of her jacket. She used her toe to move the earth and found several more stubs and some wire.
Taking her time, she got out her notebook and divided the site into squares. She started in one corner and began to assemble little piles, scraps and other debris. Shards of glass, fragments of brick, strands of reinforcing bar, lumps of concrete, tile chippings, shiny washers. It was surprising how much there was when you really looked closely. What appeared to be barren earth was a treasure trove of clues.
Once she had assembled a significant pile, she wrote the grid location, tore the page from her notebook and photographed the objects with the grid reference using her phone. B
roken terracotta tiles where the production buildings had been, a torn piece of blue sheeting near the perimeter warehouses.
She stuffed the pockets of her jacket with the more intriguing finds. An FEP-encapsulated Viton O-ring, the translucent alabaster fitting for a PVDF pipe, a curl of celluloid cut from a radiography film, multicore instrument cable – purple, green, yellow, red and grey strands. A bolt that, judging by its weight, was neither carbon nor stainless steel. A chip from a turquoise tile. A torn business card with a purple border, some scraps of paper with Chinese writing. These were the crumbs that might lead her to the truth.
And then she found it. To anyone else it would have been rubbish. A torn plastic bag about fifteen centimetres square with a sixteen-digit number and barcode on the label. Along with the supplier’s logo. A design she recognised. The swirling Celtic pattern representing a selkie, the mythical creature that changes from a seal in water to human on dry land. A logo belonging to an engineering company with a factory not far from Teesside.
Her heart raced. Was this the proof she needed?
Intent on scavenging, she didn’t hear the police car until it pulled up opposite her. She put on her dark glasses and turned away.
Merda. Too late. A man was approaching in a dark suit. The tall policeman who had pinched her brochure. The one who spoke English.
‘Good morning, Dr Silver.’
‘Ni hao.’ The only Chinese phrase she’d learned. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t been introduced.’ She extended a hand.
He did not take her hand or give his name. ‘You know that this is private property and you are trespassing?’
‘I’m leaving.’
‘Indeed you are. I’m taking you to the station.’
Bolas. ‘You’re arresting me?’
‘The train station. You are no longer welcome in Shingbo. I’m not sure why you came, or what cock and bull story you concocted for my gullible friends at the development agency, but now it is time for you to leave. I trust I won’t see you again.’
‘I need to return this vehicle. Collect my things.’
‘That will be arranged.’ He pointed to the car. ‘Unless you want to become intimately acquainted with a police cell, I suggest you come with me.’
‘What happened to the Krixo factory?’
‘There is no factory here.’
He was right. There was no doubt about it. All that was left was rubble and rubbish.
‘What happened to my translator? And his driver?’
‘A tragic accident.’
‘Will they be OK?’
‘You don’t know?’ He stared at her, face impassive. ‘They are both dead.’
Jaq froze. A chill rose through her body, starting in the soles of her safety boots, working its way up through legs that were suddenly jelly, a stomach full of concrete, arms trembling, the hairs standing on end under her cloth cap.
Lang Lai, the smiling young translator and Pang Mo, the sharp-suited driver. Dead. Because of her? What hope was there for Dan?
She stumbled and the tall policeman put out an arm to steady her. She jumped away as if he’d tasered her, the momentary weakness replaced by cold, hard anger.
Lulu was waiting for her outside the train station, hunched in the back of a police car, ashen-faced. A uniform handed Jaq her luggage. She opened her case to find that someone had folded everything with considerable care. Her laptop was in the padded compartment of her bag along with cables and adaptors. Toothpaste and unscented roll-on deodorant in a sealed plastic bag. Passport and wallet in a secure pocket. Nothing missing.
The tall policeman opened the door for Lulu, barking at her in sharp, clipped phrases. Was he as furious as he sounded? Lulu said almost nothing in reply to the verbal machine-gun fire.
They were escorted to a platform and directed to board the train that pulled in a few minutes later.
As the train slid out of the station, Jaq leaned over to Lulu. ‘Are you OK?’
Lulu raised downcast eyes to look at her through long lashes. ‘I’ll be glad to get out of here.’ She shuddered. ‘There is something . . . unwelcoming about this town.’
An understatement if ever there was one. This was not the first time Jaq had been run out of a town. Not a great feeling. But at least in the past she’d had a pretty good idea why. Right now, she was mystified. The train gathered speed, the speedometer hitting 300 km/hr as they rushed north. Back to Shanghai. Back to civilisation. A metro system. Independence. Jaq pulled the scratchy collar of the borrowed clothing away from her neck with filthy fingers, the idea of a thorough wash in the luxury suite of a boutique hotel suddenly appealing.
‘Did you find it? The Krixo factory?’ Lulu asked.
‘It’s gone.’
‘How is that possible? Are you sure you went to the right place?’
‘I’m sure.’ GPS coordinates do not lie, even if everyone else does.
Lulu sighed. ‘Dr Silver, all this would be so much easier if you would tell me the truth.’
Should she be more open? Did she owe it to this worried woman to confess that, although she was officially contracted to innocent Vikram and the anodyne CCS, the real client was Sophie Clark, foreign partner in the Krixo joint venture? And that Sophie was suspicious of the activities of her Chinese partner? Rightly so, as it transpired. And how would revealing this to Lulu help them in any way? In truth, the only thing that mattered now was Dan.
‘I told you.’ Jaq sighed. ‘CCS are looking at projects in Shingbo for Teesside companies wanting to build in China.’ Deserting the North-East economy in droves, rats leaving a sinking British ship for the bright lights of a billion Chinese consumers. ‘Krixo was held up as an example of a successful joint venture. My boss wanted me to see if it was all as good as the brochure made out.’
Lulu wrinkled her nose. ‘But it turned out that Krixo was just a fake?’
Could that be the explanation? Had Jaq been fooled by a phoney factory? A stage set? Cardboard cut-outs? It was daylight when she had first stopped at the gates of Krixo. Yes, there had been fog, visibility wasn’t perfect. OK, there had been no people around, but then it was lunchtime. Had she heard anything? Smelt anything from the factory? No – and that was odd, but the wind had been blowing in from the sea. Had the chimney really been producing steam, or were they simply tendrils of mist from the river? Had Jaq seen what she believed should be there, rather than what was actually there? Had her brain turned a two-dimensional fake into a three-dimensional image? It was the only possible explanation. No one could demolish a working factory of that size in a few days. And even if they could, it would be impossible to remove all traces. Almost all the traces. She put her hands in her pockets and her fingers closed on the empty, torn plastic bag. The tall policeman had been in too much of a hurry to search her pockets or delete the pictures from her phone. She had solid evidence. The factory had been there, and now it was gone.
‘It wasn’t a fake,’ Jaq said.
‘How do you know?’ Lulu’s voice was peevish, irritated. ‘What did you find?’
What indeed? An empty plot of land. A few scraps of rubbish. Why not show Lulu? Jaq’s confidence in the significance of her discoveries was reinforced by the determination of the police to kick her out of town. Why not share this with Lulu? Because it didn’t bode well for her brother. Pang Mo, the driver who had made a detour past the Krixo factory on her request, and Lai Lang, the smiling young translator who had taken Dan’s picture to make enquiries – the very people who had tried to help her – both of them were dead. If that was the fate of those who innocently brushed up against the peculiar activities of shape-shifting Krixo, then what hope was there for an engineer who turned up at the factory gate asking more pointed questions? It didn’t look good for Dan.
Jaq gestured around the busy train carriage and then shook her head. Not here, not on the train, not in public.
‘Nothing?’ Lulu asked.
‘Nothing,’ Jaq replied, for the benefit of any eavesdropper
s.
Lulu leaned back and closed her eyes.
Gridlocked traffic outside Shanghai Hongqiao train station made underground public transport a more appealing option. Modern, clean, fast and efficient, with signs in English as well as Chinese, there was a metro station right next to Jaq’s hotel. But Lulu had booked a car and insisted they shared it. Perhaps just as well. They needed to talk in private. Did Lulu already know the fate of the driver and translator? Had she already figured out the sinister implications for her brother? For herself?
A black car pulled up. The uniformed driver jumped out and opened the passenger door. A short, muscled man with a stern, square face under his chauffeur’s cap, he looked as if he spent more time lifting weights than sitting in Shanghai traffic. Lulu rattled off directions. The driver stared into his rear-view mirror and grunted something in reply. An argument ensued. Jaq had no idea what was being said, but Lulu appeared to prevail. The driver cleared his throat and spat out of the window before manoeuvring into the traffic.
Jaq waited until they could no longer see the station. ‘Who was the man who made us leave Shingbo?’
‘Police.’ Lulu’s shoulders slumped. ‘Of sorts.’
‘Explain?’
‘He works for the Chinese Ministry of Public Security,’ she said. ‘His name is Yan Bing, acting chief of the Art Police.’
‘What do the Art Police do?’
‘They look after China’s national treasures. Make sure that our ancient cultural heritage isn’t being smuggled out of the country and sold abroad.’
Pity the Art Police weren’t involved in the crimes against taste in hotels and restaurants. All those chandeliers, all that gilt and fur and velvet, all those acid colours. High time restrained elegance and understatement made a comeback. ‘Where are the Art Police based?’
The Chemical Reaction Page 15