The Chemical Reaction

by Fiona Erskine

  Jaq refused to join the cable car ride. The peak was less than three hundred metres high; she could have bounded to the top of the island in less than the time it would take to buy a ticket. If there weren’t so many people on every step, every path, she would have done just that. The Sloth cleared his throat and spat into the undergrowth.

  ‘Very beautiful view.’

  ‘I don’t want to be with a tourist group. I want to talk to the people who live here.’

  The Sloth scowled. ‘If a stranger approach to you and starts up a small talk with you, then be vigilant.’

  The chances of her striking up a conversation with anyone were vanishingly small. The plan had seemed sensible. Start with the last-known place Dan had been. Said he’d been. He’d sent her a coded message. A cry for help. He was being held prisoner, against his will. She had to find him, find a way to talk to him.

  ‘I want to find an active monastery.’

  ‘Remember, no free lunch.’

  The Sloth was more of an impediment than a help.

  A monk dawdled outside the Buddhism museum, a swarthy man in a shiny orange robe. Jaq nudged The Sloth in the ribs. ‘Let’s ask that monk.’

  ‘Often too good to be true.’ Chang En giggled. ‘Fake monk.’

  ‘So, where are the real monks?’

  ‘Four sacred mountains,’ he intoned. ‘Mount Putuo the smallest. Maybe real monks at Mount Wutai or Mount Jiuhua or Mount Emei.’

  ‘Let’s go back to Shanghai.’

  ‘Later.’ The first sign of emotion. ‘After the party.’

  ‘We’re leaving,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  The only thing that Jaq was sure of was that they were in the wrong place. Dan was not here; she knew it in her bones.

  Gateshead, England

  ‘There now, that’s the bleeding stopped.’ The young first-aider secured the bandage on Sophie’s upper arm. ‘The ambulance is on its way.’

  ‘No need.’ Sophie’s voice was a whisper. ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘You are most certainly not OK,’ Frank snapped. He loathed the sight of blood, and there had been an awful lot of it. Her white dress and her fur stole were covered in the stuff. ‘This is a police matter. My companion was attacked!’

  ‘No police.’ Sophie put up her good hand. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘An accident?’ The first-aider bit his lip. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘There was a Chinese woman . . .’ Frank started.

  ‘Frank, NO!’ The power of Sophie’s protest took him by surprise. ‘No one else was involved. I cut myself. By accident.’

  The first-aider opened his eyes wide. ‘There’s something sharp? In the toilets?’

  Sophie’s eyes darted around, searching for an excuse. ‘My nail scissors . . .’ It sounded impossibly lame to Frank, but it seemed to reassure the first-aider, who was presumably most concerned about liability. ‘They slipped.’

  ‘You must go to hospital. You may need stitches.’

  ‘I’ll go to A&E. We have a car.’ She looked at Frank, he nodded and dialled Chariot Cars. ‘No need for an ambulance,’ she said.

  The first-aider frowned and bit his lip. ‘Well, if you are sure.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  The limo drew up outside and PK rushed to assist Sophie, exclaiming with horror as he helped her inside. She collapsed onto Frank’s lap inside the car.

  ‘Accident and Emergency!’ Frank ordered.

  ‘I just want to go home.’

  ‘Be sensible, Sophie. You lost a lot of blood. That wound,’ he shuddered, ‘needs attention.’

  ‘I can’t.’ She was sobbing now. ‘Frank, I’m scared. She tried to kill me!’

  Frank held her close. His favourite dinner jacket would be ruined, but needs must. ‘A Chinese woman in blue?’

  ‘You saw her too? Wang must have sent her.’

  Wang? The mysterious joint venture partner. The Chinese owner of 51% of Krixo.

  ‘But why?’

  Sophie let out a moan. ‘Please, Frank, take me home.’

  ‘I’ll take you home,’ Frank said. ‘But only if you agree that we call a doctor when we get to your house, OK?’

  ‘Can we go to yours instead?’

  Not the circumstances he’d envisaged, but a bird in the hand . . .

  ‘Of course.’ He barked instructions at PK.

  ‘What happened, Sophie?’ he asked. ‘What’s all this about?’

  But Sophie was already fast asleep.

  Shanghai, China

  The Shanghai traffic roared past the hotel, making the thin walls vibrate. In Jaq’s hotel room, the only window looked out on to a blank wall and the bedroom grew smaller as the night progressed, as if the walls were creeping inward, squeezing, suffocating.

  Unable to sleep, awake at 2 a.m. for the second night running, Jaq got out of bed and dressed. She put on her running shoes and shorts and pulled a sweatshirt over her vest before heading out into the night. The streets were still full of traffic, and the pavement blocks too short to get up to a decent speed. She decided to head back to the river.

  The metro was half-empty at this hour of the morning. A bunch of well-dressed twenty-something party animals held a drunken conversation at shouting pitch, ears still deafened from high-decibel music, pupils dilated with narcotics. A few men and women in drab clothing, on their way to work, gazed on impassively.

  The river didn’t sleep either. Barges shuffled up and down, some with lights, some without. She was drawn to the Bund like a magnet, a place where she could move freely, could think. As she ran past the Spanish tower for the third time, a barge came round the bend in the river and caught her attention.

  Initially professional interest. The barge carried the sort of equipment she was familiar with: long silver absorption columns laid on their side, glass-lined reactors – the cobalt blue of the glass just visible against the rust red of the carbon steel – carbon block heat exchangers, cylindrical tanks. Such a smart way to move heavy equipment. Too wide for rail, transporting on land meant damage to roads, but barges just floated along. And could be any size. Why didn’t they sink?

  Steel is eight times as heavy as water. A tonne of steel, in a solid block, a cube measuring 50 centimetres on each side, will sink like a stone. Flatten it into a sheet, 5 metres long, 5 metres wide and 5 millimetres thick, and it will still tip and plummet to the bottom of the river. But bend the sides of the sheet 2 metres in four directions and close the gaps at the corners, and suddenly it floats. Why?

  Enter Archimedes and his bathtub. When the Greek philosopher immersed himself in a bath that was already full of water, he displaced not his weight, but his own volume in water.

  The volume of our steel cube is 0.5m x 0.5m x 0.5m = 0.125m3. One tonne of steel displaces 0.125m3 of water, which weighs only 125kg. The steel is denser than water, so it sinks. The volume of the flat sheet is 5m x 5m x 0.005m = 0.125m, exactly the same, so it sinks too. But the volume of the crude boat you make by bending up the sides is 2m x 1m x 1m = 2m3, and that could displace 2 tonnes of water, which is more than it weighs. Hey presto! It floats. In fact, the water will come to halfway up the side, and you can carry up to an extra tonne of cargo before it will sink.

  As dawn broke over Shanghai and the barge drew level with the Spanish tower, Jaq saw something that made her gasp. Something in the water. Someone in the water? Diabos me levem.

  Alarmed, Jaq ran back along the pedestrian walkway, past the Spanish tower until she found the steps, stumbling down the worn stone treads, grasping the iron handrail to right herself. She glanced right and left. The river was busy. The barge was moving slowly towards her.

  She was aware of warmth beside her.

  ‘Hello, Jaq Silver.’

  Timur, looking even better in a dinner suit than a priest’s robe. Now was not the time for distractions.

  She acknowledged him with a nod of her head, returning her eyes to the river. ‘I thought
I saw someone in the river.’

  ‘That would be Holger.’

  She saw movement again, a flash of white hair, then a curling arm, elbow high, fingers pointed as they entered the water. She hadn’t imagined it. There really was a man swimming front crawl across the Huangpu river. A madman. She stood transfixed, watching the evenly spaced splashes as he advanced towards them, an exceptionally strong swimmer.

  ‘Who the hell is Holger?’

  ‘The Swedish water baby. He always goes for a dip in the morning.’

  She thought back to the photo on the poster, the baby-faced giant with white hair. Another one of the Masters of Disguise.

  The barge drew level and blocked the swimmer from view. Something about the equipment looked familiar. As Jaq moved to get a better look, a ferry set off from the pier. With the barge in between, it was unlikely the swimmer had seen it.

  ‘Timur, look.’

  Holger had passed through the wake of the barge, swimming strongly. On a collision course with the ferry.

  ‘Shit.’ Timur had seen the danger, too. He jumped down onto the boardwalk, put two fingers to his lips and whistled.

  She covered her eyes as the sharp steel prow approached the path of the unprotected man. When she looked again, Timur, and the man in the water, were gone.

  Teesside, England

  Frank cradled Sophie’s head against his chest in the back of the chauffeur-driven limo as they sped down the A19 from Gateshead to Stockton. Her skin was pale, but her breathing was steady as she slept. He called a consultant he knew from the golf club and persuaded him to make a house call.

  PK helped Frank to get Sophie up the stairs and she was awake by the time the doctor arrived. The old sawbones caused no end of trouble, but after cleaning the wound and checking her blood pressure, he eventually accepted her refusal to go to hospital. Sophie slept in Frank’s bed upstairs and he took the sofa downstairs. Not so much out of propriety, but because of the noises she made as she slept, low groans of pain and little yelps of terror.

  He woke to find her downstairs, barefoot and wearing one of his shirts. She looked younger, smaller, more vulnerable without clothes, heels and make-up, and he felt an unfamiliar surge of affection.

  He sat up and ran his fingers through his hair.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Better,’ she said.

  He slid on his dressing gown and pointed to a stool at the breakfast bar as he filled the kettle.

  ‘Coffee? Tea?’

  She winced as she pulled herself onto the seat.

  ‘Hot chocolate,’ she said.

  Frank spooned the powder into a mug, added milk and put it in the microwave before making his own coffee.

  ‘Who was that woman?’ he asked. ‘The one in the blue dress?’

  ‘I don’t know who you are talking about.’

  He handed her the steaming mug.

  ‘She accused you of stealing something.’

  ‘A case of mistaken identity,’ Sophie said, sipping the hot drink.

  ‘She said you should give it back. What did she mean?’

  ‘I have no idea what she was talking about.’

  She met his eyes. Sophie was a remarkably good liar.

  ‘Last night, you said that Wang must have sent her.’

  ‘I was in shock. Confused.’

  ‘If you want my help, you’re going to have to level with me. Who is Wang?’

  She sipped her drink in obstinate silence.

  ‘Is Wang connected to Krixo? Does this have something to do with the Chinese joint venture?’

  Sophie slammed the mug onto the counter.

  ‘Why would your own company send someone to threaten you? What do they want? To scare you? To kill you?’

  ‘Stop!’ She slid down from the stool and faced him, angry now.

  ‘What have you stolen, Sophie?’

  She turned on her heel, bare feet squealing on the laminate floor. ‘I need to wash.’

  Frank waited for the click of the bathroom lock and the splash of water before opening his laptop. Whatever mess Sophie had got herself into, chances were it would take more than his power shower to wash it away.

  Shanghai, China

  Standing at the edge of the Huangpu river, Jaq doubled over and clutched at her stomach. Had she just watched a man drown?

  With daylight came noise. The rumble of traffic was now a roar. People moving on the Bund, a group of elderly women doing tai chi. Where was Timur? What had Holger been doing in the water? And what did it have to do with a barge full of factory equipment? She stared at the barge as it receded into the mist. She rubbed her eyes. When she looked again, the barge was gone. Was she so tired, so jet-lagged, she had started to hallucinate? Had she imagined the whole episode? She scanned the water. Full of boats, but no sign of a swimmer. She turned away from the river.

  When Timur swam up behind her, she almost lost her balance and joined him in the water.

  ‘Pass me a towel, Jaq Silver.’ He pointed to where she had last seen him crouching down. Tucked away under the pier was his dinner jacket and a sports bag.

  Too startled to do anything other than obey, she found a towel and handed it down. Timur pivoted himself onto the wooden ledge in a smooth movement. His dress shirt clung to his chest as he held out a hand for Holger.

  If Timur was a beautiful man, Holger was extraordinary. The Swedish water baby was a perfectly proportioned giant, tall with broad shoulders, a swimmer’s well-developed chest, lean stomach and narrow hips, skin so white it was almost translucent, hair like a sable shaving brush.

  ‘Hello, Jaq Silver,’ Holger said. ‘I’ve heard lots about you.’ He took the towel from Timur and wrapped it around his hips. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

  ‘I thought you’d drowned.’

  ‘I went underwater. Those ferries have a shallow draught.’

  ‘What were you doing in the river?’

  He looked down at her and frowned, bushy white eyebrows meeting in the middle.

  Timur interrupted. ‘Holger likes to swim.’

  ‘That was stupidly dangerous,’ she said, unable to contain her anger. ‘You both need your stomachs pumped and a tetanus shot.’

  ‘Hot shower, cooked breakfast and warm bed?’ Timur suggested.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ said Holger and winked at her.

  Timur had replaced his wet shirt with a dry dinner jacket. He climbed up from the pontoon back onto the boardwalk and held out a hand for her. She ignored it. Vaulting easily over the fence herself, she walked away, delayed shock making her suddenly furious.

  Timur shouted after her. ‘You’re welcome to join us, Jaq Silver.’

  She didn’t deign to reply, striding away and giving him the finger.

  Teesside, England

  While Sophie showered, Frank made fresh coffee and microwaved a packet of scrambled egg. He laid two places at the kitchen bar and stuck some bread from the deep freeze into the toaster.

  Sophie appeared in the doorway. ‘I need to go.’

  Frank pulled out a stool and pointed at the place setting.

  ‘You need to eat. Restore your strength.’

  She dragged her feet, but she followed his direction. He’d found some clothes left behind by a previous overnight guest. Rather more casual than Sophie’s usual style, but with her pink stilettos and freshly applied make-up, the mask had returned.

  He poured orange juice and coffee for both of them. She shook her head at the scrambled egg and opened a jar of jam, spreading it thickly on her toast. A little colour began to return to her cheeks.

  ‘How can I help you?’ Frank asked.

  She looked up at him with soft violet eyes. ‘You would help?’

  ‘We’re in this together now, Sophie.’ He laid a hand over hers.

  ‘That means a lot.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘Tell me again what the woman said to you.’

  ‘That you should be more careful. That it was wrong to steal, and you should pay f
or it or return what wasn’t yours. What was she talking about?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’ She stood up, but he grasped her shoulders and brought her to face him.

  ‘Sophie, what happened to your father?’

  As she glared at him, he recognised something in her eyes, something feral, something furtive, followed by a veiling that was not grief: far more calculating than that.

  ‘Wang poisoned him.’

  He released her arms but held her gaze.

  ‘Dad was fine when I left China.’ She rubbed her wrists. ‘But then things seemed to change. He would call at odd hours. He seemed worried, distracted, unhappy.’ She put up a hand to smooth her hair. ‘Afraid.’ She sighed. ‘By the time he flew to England, he was already ill. He went to hospital, but they couldn’t find out what was wrong, couldn’t help him.’ Her voice broke and she covered her eyes. ‘He never came out again.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Frank handed her a clean handkerchief. The staccato of her sobs put him in mind of a piece of music. He put an arm around Sophie’s shaking shoulders, holding her close as she wept, silently replaying The Basle Concerto to distract himself.

  By the time he reached the end of Stravinsky’s score, she was calm again.

  ‘Sophie, what did you take that wasn’t yours?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You stole something. What was it?’

  ‘It wasn’t me!’ She stamped her foot, eyes ablaze. ‘It was my father who took the jade lovers’ cup.’ She collapsed back onto the stool. ‘Remember I told you about insurance? The cup was collateral.’

  ‘But you sold it.’

  ‘Dad was dying. It couldn’t wait.’

  ‘Ten million pounds.’ Frank whistled through his teeth. ‘You have the money?’

  ‘Most of it.’

  His eyes narrowed.

  ‘Well, some of it . . .’ She dropped her gaze. ‘I had debts to clear, bills, commitments . . . Oh, God.’ She pushed away her plate and dropped her head into her hands. ‘What am I going to do?’