The Chemical Reaction

by Fiona Erskine

  ‘I hear you had some trouble getting back.’

  ‘Shipwrecked,’ Jaq said. ‘For all the Good Ship Frankium looked impressive on the outside, it was rotten underneath.’

  Camilla grimaced. ‘Just like its owner.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Should she tell Camilla that Frank Good was demanding payment for the yacht? Ask for her help? Jaq glanced at the older woman, the slight tremor at the corner of one eye belying the pool of stillness and calm.

  No; Camilla had enough to deal with right now. What mattered was her health, her mental health.

  They sat in companionable silence until it got dark.

  Jaq said her goodbyes and left.

  Teesside, England

  Despite the cold Tuesday night, Yarm High Street was heaving with scantily dressed revellers. The polyphony bounced between the high Georgian buildings: the syncopated clatter of high heels on cobbles, discordant chatter, a twittering descant, the bellowing of young bulls in search of mates.

  Frank entered the restaurant with Sophie draped on one arm. She’d certainly made an effort: dressed to kill.

  ‘Good evening.’

  ‘Table for two.’

  ‘What name is the booking, sir?’

  ‘No booking.’

  ‘We’re very busy . . .’

  Frank looked around and sneered. ‘You don’t look full to me.’

  ‘We have several parties arriving soon.’

  ‘Then fit us in in the meantime.’ Frank barged past him and pointed at a table set for four in the window. ‘This table will do fine.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, that table is booked from 8 p.m.’

  ‘Plenty of time.’ He strode over to the table and pulled out a seat for Sophie, careful to position her in full view of the window. He took his own seat opposite the mirror with a great view of the glances from the street as passers-by admired his companion. Leave them to their ‘grab a granny’ night – Frank had a trophy date. Their jealousy and his own reflection made the perfect setting.

  The maître d’ approached.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Good. I’m afraid—’

  ‘Tonic water.’ Frank looked over at Sophie. ‘And you?’

  ‘Glass of Prosecco,’ she said. ‘A big one.’

  The maître d’ spread his hands, palms upwards. ‘I’m afraid there has been a misunderstanding, sir. This table is already booked. We’d be happy to accommodate you for a drink at the bar.’

  ‘No, this is fine.’ Frank turned to the menu.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. The guests who booked this table are due to arrive in half an hour.’

  Frank turned his cold blue eyes on the man. ‘Then you’d better find them another table, hadn’t you?’

  ‘We’re fully booked, sir. Maybe if you come back after nine . . .’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Sophie said, batting her false eyelashes.

  Frank looked around the room. He pointed to a family group, a couple with two children. ‘Isn’t it past their bedtime?’

  ‘Mr Good, please—’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to give us food poisoning again.’

  ‘Food poisoning? Here?’ Sophie pushed away her menu and frowned.

  Maybe not here, exactly. Here, there, anywhere. Kitchen restaurants were all the same. He raised his voice. ‘Did I tell you about the time my guts turned to water . . .?’

  People were turning and staring.

  ‘Sir, please keep your voice down. We don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘Then bring us our drinks,’ Frank said.

  Sophie winked at Frank as the maître d’ retreated.

  ‘You look lovely tonight, Sophie.’

  ‘I haven’t felt much like going out,’ she said. ‘Since the funeral.’

  What would Nicola the HR dragon say in these circumstances?

  ‘It’s important to keep going,’ he tried.

  When the drinks arrived, Frank ordered a thrice-baked soufflé and a pasta dish. Sophie ordered a salad and rare steak.

  ‘How is probate coming along?’ Follow the money.

  Sophie shook her head, fair curls bouncing against apple cheeks. ‘It’s all so complicated.’ She sighed.

  ‘Can I help?’ Speed this along.

  ‘You’ve already helped me so much, Frank.’ She put her hand over his: false nails, blood-red talons. As she talked, he imagined her nails raking his back. The thought was strangely disturbing. What was wrong with him? Here was a beautiful woman, upset and grateful, and yet he felt no desire. He hadn’t been himself for a while.

  An altercation at the bar distracted him, broke his train of thought. A party of four had arrived to find there was no table. Frank turned his attention back to the matter in hand: his money.

  ‘The Chinese joint venture partners were trying to cheat my father.’

  ‘Just as well he took action to protect his interests.’

  A pretty airhead with a clever father. A father who was no longer around to object to the company Sophie was keeping.

  A familiar figure crossed the high street behind him, striding across his field of vision in the mirror, halting suddenly as she spotted Sophie in the window. Her eyes darted sideways to meet his in the polished glass.

  Frank leaned across and took Sophie’s small face in both hands, pressing his lips against hers in a long, slow kiss.

  When he looked back up at the mirror, Jaqueline Silver was gone.

  Stockholm, Sweden

  The scent of sweet gale, Myrica, put Holger in mind of happier times: endless summers spent on the family island, a rocky comma with barely enough room for their summer house. More of a shack than a house, it stood in the middle of the island, between the home-made sauna at one end and the wood store at the other, beside a sheltered deepwater mooring for their little boat.

  It was here he learned to swim. As he gained confidence in the water, he swam from island to island, increasing the distance to outswim his elder brothers, uncle and father. Extending the season, swimming in all weathers. The sea temperature didn’t bother him; so long as the water remained liquid, he would swim. After Mälaren, swimming pools never felt quite right; he detested the heat, the chlorine and the confinement, although it had won him medals and allowed him to make a living for a time.

  The sunlight bounced off a thin crust of ice at the edge of the lake, but the water flowed freely towards Stockholm and the Baltic Sea. Light was both good and bad. It made it easier to see what he was doing, avoiding flashlights which might be investigated by curious soldiers. But it also made him more visible.

  Standing six foot eight, with size forty-eight feet and great paddles for hands, he was more comfortable in the water. He hid his pale body and shock of pure white hair under a hooded wetsuit.

  The Swedish military provided security for the Royal Family at their permanent private residence and he didn’t want to draw their attention.

  The Chinese Pavilion, deep in the grounds of Drottningholm Palace, was only a few kilometres from his flat in Stockholm. He hadn’t swum all the way; that would be stupid. He had to preserve his energy for the mission.

  Entering the water at the Högholmen end of Kärsön, dry bags attached to a floating buoy which trailed behind him just below the surface, he swam round Hundholmen and reached Lovön island at the southern end of the royal estate.

  Way ahead of schedule and in no hurry, he sprinted to the rendezvous point just to warm up. From the broad branches of the fir tree he could see the pavilion. Faux Chinese, it made a colourful birthday present for an eighteenth-century queen, with russet panels, yellow architraves and green-hued copper roof. But he also understood the objections. How would his compatriots feel if China had taken Sweden’s most precious works of art – raped the Vasa for bronze cannon, or taken the Ramsund Sigurd stone to Beijing? He wasn’t stealing. This was an act of restorative justice. And a lucrative one at that.

  The next phase was critical, no room for mistakes. Wait until the decoy gang were in place. Then five minu
tes – six, maximum – to get in and out and back in the water.

  He had memorised the order; images were his forte. That and long-distance, cold-water swimming.

  Of all the objects listed, the dragon was his favourite, spinach green and sinuous, spiky too, with its sharp teeth and ridged spine, scales and talons. The folded wings looked as if they were about to unfurl and carry it away. The rest of the order was less to his taste: elaborately carved pebbles with 3D relief, bowls and cups and plates and jugs. He could appreciate the skill, but it was the dragon that really spoke to him.

  The puhV-RooPuhHoo of a two-stroke engine coming over Drottningholmsbron, the route any normal person would take from Kärsön, prompted him to check his waterproof watch. Bang on time. And still no soldiers in sight.

  Then the swishslapslap outboard motor of a speedboat, racing west from Skärholmen. Two minutes later, and the engine went silent. The call. The response. Holger sprang into action.

  He wasn’t a fast runner, but his height and weight and the fact that he knew exactly where to impact the glass window at the weakest point, carried him through. Now to get the stuff and get out.

  He wielded the jeweller’s hammer like a twenty-first-century Thor. With the shrieking of the alarm, there was no need to keep quiet. It felt good to bellow as he smashed and grabbed, bellowed and smashed and grabbed. He knew exactly where to go, which cases to target, the mental map secure in his mind, the objects ticked off as he opened each bag and tossed them in to activate the chemical foam that formed around them. Keep going, keep moving. The three-minute alarm sounded on his watch. Time to go. One last bellow and smash and grab, and then reverse direction. Noise receding. Good to be out in the open.

  Holger pulled off his gloves, threw the hammer into the bushes and ran for the shore, the dry bags full of protective foam billowing out behind him like balloons.

  He heard the decoy moped start up. Vrooom and away. He hit the water awkwardly, breaking the ice and swimming strongly for a few minutes. He stopped to check that his haul was intact and then dived towards the deep channel. He didn’t make it first time; he couldn’t hold his breath long enough to find the submerged mooring. He surfaced and trod water, keeping his movements minimal to avoid attention from the shore. And realised that he was a hundred metres or so off course. He swam breaststroke, just under the surface until the GPS on his watch told him he was on target. The second dive was easy. He secured the bags on the mooring, surfaced with a sense of elation and swam into the darkness.

  Mission accomplished.

  Teesside, England

  A silver cat lay sunning itself on top of the low brick wall outside Eaglescliffe station. He greeted Jaq with enthusiasm, rubbing against her leg before rolling over and purring, offering up his pure white tummy. Jaq bent down and stroked the soft fur. He meowed in protest as she said goodbye and crossed the footbridge in time for the train that would take her on the first leg of her journey to Shetland.

  At Darlington she transferred to the Aberdeen train and a window seat. Staring out at the countryside rolling by – so very slow after China – she ruminated on last night’s disturbing discovery.

  So, Frank and Sophie were lovers. Had Frank played a part in Jaq’s selection for a trip to China? What had Vikram said – the job could have been tailor-made for her. All that guff about needing someone with a range of skills, when what they wanted was a patsy, a witness to a vanishing factory. Could Frank be behind its disappearance? Unlikely. He wasn’t that smart. Or efficient. No Western company, even directed by someone as ruthless and irresponsible as Frank, with his naked contempt for engineers, could demolish a factory that fast. If anyone could do it – and she still would not have believed it if she hadn’t witnessed it with her own eyes – it would be Chinese engineers.

  And what of Sophie? What was she doing dating a slimeball like Frank? Sophie was not as dumb as she made out. Her brand was pretty and ditzy; she used her little-girl-lost act to charm and wrong-foot her admirers. A loathsome trope. Not only did it give their gender a bad name – the helpless kitten woman, the ball of fluff that needed supporting and protecting – it was fundamentally dishonest. Sophie was a rich and successful businesswoman, even if she owed some of her good luck to her father. What was she doing with a despicable monster like Frank? And what was Frank Good’s connection to Krixo and the vanishing factory?

  As the train thundered over the river Tweed and entered Scotland, Jaq made a decision. Time to move on, put the vanishing factory behind her. The Krixo job was done, finished, over with. She’d never know what happened to the factory in China or why it disappeared, but the fact that Frank was involved with its owner was a compelling reason to steer clear. An unresolved mystery, but she could control her curiosity for once. Curiosity had led to trouble in the past. What she needed now were some straightforward engineering challenges to throw her energy into. Shetland beckoned. Work to do, money to earn, bills to pay.

  She admired the bridges as the train crossed the Firth of Forth and then the river Tay. As the train hugged the coast at Montrose, her phone buzzed. Jaq answered without checking the number.

  ‘Dr Silver?’ A foreign accent.

  ‘Yes, who is this?’

  ‘Mr Gao Ding, from SEITA in Shanghai.’

  For a company that was so inefficient at providing interpreters, they were irritatingly persistent when it came to collecting debts they were not owed.

  ‘I’m trying to clear up a misunderstanding. When you cancelled—’

  ‘I didn’t cancel. You cancelled!’

  ‘That is the misunderstanding. We received a call just before your interpreter was due to leave the office, cancelling the contract.’

  ‘Who called?’

  ‘You did, Dr Silver.’

  ‘I most certainly did not!’ Wait. ‘Someone called from this number?’

  ‘No, a local number. I have it here.’ He rattled off a number.

  Jaq opened her silver card holder to check. Merda. Of course. The unusual interest in Krixo. The cancellation of her independent translator designed to ensure that Jaq had to call for help.

  Lulu.

  Who the hell was she?

  ‘I see.’ Jaq paused. ‘There has indeed been a misunderstanding.’

  ‘There is a cancellation charge.’ He named a sum that made Jaq wince. Perhaps it was time to renegotiate her own daily rate.

  ‘I’ll make sure it is settled.’ Would Vikram agree to pay? He hadn’t even got around to paying her yet, and there was no dispute.

  ‘Oh, and Dr Silver, one more question. Do you happen to know anyone by the name of Oddo Harkins?’

  How very strange. The second time she had heard those names together. The last time was among Dan’s ramblings.

  Oddo and Harkins: Italian chemist Giuseppe Oddo and American William Draper Harkins, father of the cyclotron, nuclear chemists who never met but whose names were linked by a theory on the abundance of elements. The even-numbered elements being roughly twice as common as the odd-numbered ones. More carbon than boron. Could there be a connection to Dan?

  ‘Oddo Harkins. Yes. Why do you ask?’

  ‘We received a message for him. But we have no client by that name.’

  ‘Is the message in English?’

  ‘It’s just a string of numbers.’

  A string of numbers. Like the ones Dan was writing in his flat. On the pad that Lulu took away from him.

  ‘I’d be happy to pass the message on,’ Jaq said.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to settle your bill first?’

  Jaq sighed. She couldn’t afford it, and she might never recover the cost of a cancelled translation service from Vikram. Especially as, through Dan, she was the one who had involved Lulu in the first place.

  ‘Credit card?’

  ‘That will be fine.’

  She moved into the corridor to read out the long number, the expiry date and three-digit security. Was Vikram going to pay her soon? The SEITA bill would eat into th
e credit limit on her last card, and she had no more money coming in until the end of her first month in Shetland.

  ‘That’s gone through.’ The voice sounded more cheerful.

  ‘And the message?’

  ‘Do you have a pen?’

  After the call had finished, Jaq stared out of the window. Raindrops fanned out across the windowpanes, the wind blowing them in all directions. The sky outside was pewter-coloured. Not pollution. The nearest coal-burning power station had converted to biofuels, and most of Scotland’s electricity came from hydroelectric or nuclear power. If anyone lit a fire, they used smokeless coal these days. Not many cars, and all of those were fitted with catalytic converters, that tiny bit of precious metal: platinum, palladium, rhodium enough to turn polluting hydrocarbons into carbon dioxide and water. There wasn’t enough manufacturing left in Britain to cause the kinds of smog now common in China.

  Jaq thought back to the meetings with Dan. His mumblings about leaving Shanghai because of the pollution. Disulphur oxide. What had he been trying to say? S2O?

  She slapped her forehead. Estupida.

  SOS.

  The international distress call. A cry for help.

  What else had he said?

  71-71.

  Porra! Dan wasn’t having a breakdown; he was a prisoner.

  She opened her laptop to find a periodic table. As it came up on the screen, she marvelled at its elegant simplicity.

  Hydrogen, the key to everything, the first element made up of one proton and one electron: atomic number 1, the building block of all other elements. Hydrogen fuses together in the heat of a dying star to form helium, with two protons and two electrons. Atomic number 2. And so on through lithium 3, and beryllium 4, and boron 5, and carbon 6 – six protons, six electrons and six neutrons. The table of elements goes up in whole numbers right up to 118, oganesson, the heaviest element discovered so far. Such a beautiful symmetry in nature. And, with the exception of hydrogen, the elements with an even number of protons are almost twice as abundant as those with a single one: the Oddo–Harkins rule. The elegance of chemistry, the alphabet of life.