The Chemical Reaction

by Fiona Erskine

  ‘What do they want? Money?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, they want the lovers’ cup.’

  ‘They want you to tell them who bought it?’

  ‘They already know who bought it. But the buyer has vanished.’

  ‘Sophie, you need to go to the police.’

  ‘Never!’ She slid down from the breakfast bar, wincing as she approached him. ‘If I don’t do exactly what they say, they’ll kill me, just like they killed my father.’

  Shanghai to Shingbo, China

  Back at the hotel, Jaq undressed – shivering as if she had been in the filthy, dangerous water herself – washed and got into bed, but sleep eluded her.

  Where to go next? What to do?

  Coming to China had been unplanned, a knee-jerk reaction, a mistake, but what choice did she have? Dan was in danger. She’d missed his cry for help, ignored it for weeks. Now she understood what he’d tried to tell her, how should she respond? She couldn’t go to the police; Dan had made that crystal clear.

  She had several options. The first, and her original intention, had been to visit the monasteries of China until she found Dan. He wasn’t in Mount Putuo, so next stop Mount Wutai or Mount Jiuhua or Mount Emei? The thought of touring China with The Sloth as translator made her heart sink. It was pointless anyway. Lulu had been lying and Dan dissembling. The whole monastery story had been a ruse to get her to back off and go home.

  Dan had asked for her help. But not for himself. He’d asked her to find Xe Lin. The research director at Krixo. And how was she going to do that?

  Her second option was to find and confront Lulu. Assuming Lulu still used the same phone number, then she should be easier to find. But what then? Lulu was an imposter. A consummate liar. Why should she help? She’d tricked Jaq before. Why would Jaq believe anything she said now?

  The third was the most pointless, and the most dangerous. Go back to Shingbo. Visit the empty factory site. See if she’d missed some clue. Hope to avoid the sinister policeman, Yan Bing, and the fate of the sweet men, Mr Smiles the translator and the sharply dressed driver, who had tried to help her. But how to get there?

  Call SEITA again? Spend another day with Brad the Sloth? Or try a private tourist agency? She was almost out of money. How to find someone willing to take her to an industrial estate? The taxis in Shingbo had refused. But perhaps someone from out of town wouldn’t have the same problem.

  Jaq dressed and returned to the hotel lobby. The receptionist smiled. ‘Can I help you?’

  Out with it.

  ‘I’m looking for transport, with a driver who speaks English. It’s a private day trip.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’ Ridiculous.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Just me.’

  ‘My cousin has a motorbike.’

  ‘He speaks English?’

  ‘Better than me.’

  ‘And he’s available?’

  ‘Wait.’ She dialled a number and spoke rapidly, before covering the mouthpiece and looking up. ‘One thousand renminbi.’

  A fraction of the price of The Sloth.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Wait.’ The receptionist put up a hand and listened. ‘And petrol, and any tolls.’

  ‘Sure. When can he get here?’

  ‘You pay me.’

  ‘Put it on the bill?’

  ‘You pay me.’

  ‘Card?’

  ‘Cash.’

  Jaq opened her bag and extracted her purse. She unrolled ten 100-renminbi notes. The bundle was a lot thinner when she returned it to her bag.

  ‘His name is Peng Ran. Everyone calls him Speedy. He’s outside now.’

  Speedy was as good as his name. A young man of few words and twinkling black eyes, he gave her a full-face helmet, listened to her detailed instructions and roared off the moment she hopped on the back.

  It was a bright, clear day and he manoeuvred expertly through the traffic, taking back roads and shortcuts, weaving through the bottlenecks. As they accelerated onto the freeway, she leaned forward and held onto his waist. Partly for warmth – it was cold without leathers – mainly for safety. She thought about Petr, the last man she had ridden a motorbike with; he kept his body away from hers when he rode pillion. Petr was dead now. Was she leading Speedy to the same fate?

  The site was exactly where she remembered it, close to the Changtai expressway and bordered by the river estuary, with a huge red-and-white-tipped chimney behind. Empty. The Krixo factory had not reappeared as magically as it had vanished.

  The whole industrial estate stretched as far as the eye could see, a hive of activity, a constant stream of barges loading and unloading. New buildings had appeared even in the short time since she’d last been here. What was it that allowed China to move so fast? Streamlined regulation? Hard work? Planning? It wasn’t as if it was fast and shoddy – the new infrastructure looked as good as anything in Britain. Better, in fact.

  Speedy pulled off his helmet. ‘This it?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Nice,’ he said, and offered her a cigarette. She refused and he lit up.

  ‘There was a factory here once.’

  He looked around. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘I need to find out what happened to it.’ And more importantly, what happened to the people inside it. Dan, Xe Lin.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Can we visit all four sites around this one, ask and see if anyone knows anything?’

  ‘Sure.’ He flicked his stub and ground it out with his foot.

  Jaq waited by the bike as Speedy tried one gatehouse after another.

  ‘No joy, I’m afraid. They know something, but they are not saying anything.’

  ‘Would money help?’ Not that she had much left.

  ‘The other foreigner tried that. It didn’t go down well.’

  ‘What other foreigner?’

  ‘Some young guy, speaks fluent Chinese, asking questions. Looking for someone called Wang.’

  Someone else was looking for the joint venture partner of Krixo. A little shiver ran down Jaq’s spine.

  ‘Did he leave a number?’

  Speedy returned to the gatehouse and emerged brandishing a card.

  A card with a purple border.

  She pulled the silver card holder from her bag and compared cards. Same name, same number.

  Timur Zolotoy. A Russian stripper.

  What was he really doing in China?

  Vladivostok, Russia

  The mournful hoot of a ship approaching Golden Horn bay rose up to the palace high above Vladivostok. After losing the Second Opium War with Britain, Qing dynasty China was no longer able to defend itself and ceded Outer Manchuria to Russia in the 1860 Treaty of Beijing. Chinese Hăishēnwăi – ‘sea cucumber cliffs’ – became Russian Vladivostok.

  The snow was falling again, settling on the window ledges, dusting the branches of the swaying trees of the palace where the old man sat in his rocking chair, his mouth twitching as he dreamed.

  She came to him, dressed in her work clothes: high collar, long sleeves, shapeless tunic and trousers, shabby rough cotton that served only to accentuate her grace. It had been so long since he’d seen her, he’d almost forgotten how beautiful she was, still standing where he left her, in their secret place beside the lake, beckoning to him from the other side of the dam, trying to tell him something, something important. How to get to her? He had no boat. He daren’t swim; the underwater currents near the hydroelectric plant were too strong. He stood still, unable to decide, unable to move, trapped in a stasis of longing.

  And guilt.

  ‘Nina, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Good morning, Dmytry.’

  He woke to the stink of incense and mealy-mouthed sanctity, a great black vulture waiting to pounce: the priest again.

  ‘I’m not dead yet.’

  ‘Timur asked me to look in on you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Dmytry waved him away. ‘
You can go now.’

  ‘What’s he doing in China, anyway?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘How about a game of chess?’

  ‘Think you can beat a blind man?’

  ‘Scared of losing? I’ll let you be white.’

  The clatter of resin pieces on a wooden board roused him from his fug. A game he loved and loathed in equal measure. Not a game: a fight, a battle.

  Dmytry nodded. ‘E4.’

  The priest moved the white pawn, and then mirrored it with his black one. ‘E5.’

  ‘Nf3.’

  ‘Nf6.’

  ‘Petrov’s defence?’ Dmytry moved his fingers over the board, tracing remembered patterns. ‘Let’s spice this up. Nxe5.’ He closed his fist around the black pawn.

  ‘Hmm.’ The priest sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Have you told Timur yet?’

  ‘If you lecture me about Timur again, I’ll stop playing. Come on, it’s your move.’

  ‘Nxe4. You were speaking Chinese again, old friend.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘While you were sleeping.’

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  ‘Is there something you need to get off your chest?’

  ‘Confess before I die? You old soul sucker. I’m not going yet.’

  ‘Tell me, what weighs on your conscience? I can provide absolution.’

  ‘You think you can forgive my sins? You think that if there is a God, he is so benevolent that, whatever I have done, I can just confess at the last moment and go straight to heaven?’

  ‘The Almighty has infinite compassion, infinite wisdom.’

  ‘And you talk an infinite amount of crap,’ Dmytry said. ‘Qe2.’

  ‘Nf6.’ The priest clucked his tongue. ‘When were you in China? The Great Leap Forward?’

  Dmytry snorted. ‘Giant Slide Backward, more like.’

  ‘Is that where you met her?’

  ‘Met who?’

  ‘Nina.’

  Dmytry fell silent and closed his eyes and there she was in front of him, as if it was the first time.

  The light was fading, just a band of pink on the horizon as the sun sank level with the fields, the mocking shadows of the stalks lengthening the stunted plants, creating the illusion of a healthy crop. The peasants were out banging pots together, scaring the birds, keeping them away from the fields, leaving the other pests to eat their fill. His throat went dry as he removed his cap with trembling fingers and knocked at the door.

  Nina answered, opening the door with a frown that turned into a broad smile when she saw the basket of food he had brought. It had been a hard year, and the poor harvest was going to make things worse.

  A young man, a long way from home . . . if the locals acknowledged him at all, it was with suspicion and distrust. But Nina and her father were different. Educated. Cultured. Open. Wang Jun spoke some Russian and played a Chinese variant of chess called Xiangqi which he had promised to teach Dmytry.

  She led him to the hearth, where Wang Jun was already setting out the chess pieces. Her scent lingered as she disappeared behind a curtain to make tea.

  To cover his beating heart and blushing neck, he inspected and admired the pieces.

  ‘Are these jade?’

  ‘No.’ Wang Jun shook his head. ‘Are you interested in jade?’

  Something about the boyish enthusiasm from the older man snagged his interest.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m the temporary curator of a very fine collection. Ask Nina to show you sometime.’

  His heart skipped a beat at her shy smile.

  And that’s how it all began.

  Dmytry coughed, gesturing for water to ease his dry throat. He gulped it down and leaned back. ‘I played chess with Nina’s father – he was twice the player you are.’

  ‘How did you like China?’

  Dmytry blew through his lips. ‘It’s a hard life, you know, living off the land.’

  People romanticise farming. They imagine lowing cattle in grass meadows, rolling fields of grain, orchards laden with fruit, forests full of game, rivers stocked with fish. Not in China. It took back-breaking labour to eke out a precarious subsistence from depleted soil and capricious rivers.

  ‘Some people are born to it.’ The priest rubbed a hand over his skull, smoothing what was left of his hair.

  ‘What sentimental bullshit! The best you can wish for is to survive it. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. You are born weak, you die. You become weak, you die. You need extra food to survive the spring, you die. You are reckless and break a leg, you die. You need warmth over winter, you die. It’s not that you are born to be a peasant, it is just that your forefathers, hundreds of generations of peasants – small, stocky, cautious and wiry – survived. Nc6.’

  ‘Damn!’ The priest realised his mistake.

  ‘It was hardest on the intellectuals.’ People like Nina and her father turfed out of the city to toil on the land. The work was hard enough, but the insanity of the central plan made it intolerable. The peasants understood the land; the intellectuals understood the science. Everyone understood that the new policies were suicide. Everyone except those who enforced them. Or perhaps they knew and didn’t care.

  ‘Weren’t the Russians there to help the Chinese modernise?’

  Dmytry sighed. ‘That was the worst of it. Some of us had been through it all ourselves. We knew the dangers.’ People’s communes, the party exhorting the natural world to bend to the will of communist science. Had nothing been learned from the Ukrainian famine decades ago? Did anyone still take Lysenko and his pseudoscientific claptrap seriously? Discredited in Russia, and yet China rushed down the same disastrous path.

  ‘Out-of-date Russian policies, recycled in China?’

  ‘And some uniquely Chinese ones. Do you know how to make steel?’

  ‘No.’

  Dmytry gave a snort of bitter laughter.

  ‘Nor did the peasants.’

  Shanghai, China

  Outside, the sky was dark, but the Bund was a magnificent light show. Shifting artworks displayed on the giant canvas of one skyscraper after another, each with their own rhythm, all bursting with stroboscopic pride. Jaq caught her breath. Pointlessly beautiful, like the fireworks that suddenly crackled and popped over the river, great chrysanthemums of golden sparks.

  Timur had responded to her call with enthusiasm.

  ‘Jaq Silver! I was wondering when you’d be back in touch. You want a ticket to the show?’

  ‘Not really, I was wondering if we could meet.’

  ‘A private dance? Fine by me.’

  ‘Stop it.’ It came out fiercer than she intended. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She could hear the contrition in his voice. All that crude flirting was just a cover; a more complex man was hiding under that bravado, she was sure of it. But what that complexity meant, she wasn’t sure. Bad or good? Was she predisposed to like him, just because he was gorgeous? She’d made that mistake before. This time she would be more careful.

  ‘We’re rehearsing till six. Then I have a couple of hours before the show.’

  He was waiting for her outside the Spanish signal tower on the Bund.

  ‘Hungry?’

  She had barely noticed until now, but she hadn’t eaten all day. ‘Starving.’

  They crossed a busy intersection and he led the way up a flight of narrow stairs into a dimly lit room full of Chinese groups. A queue of people waited to be seated, but he went straight to the waiter, who waved them to a small table beside the window.

  ‘Anything you don’t eat, Jaq Silver?’

  ‘I avoid endangered species, genitals and foetuses,’ she said.

  Timur ordered, exchanging incomprehensible pleasantries in Shanghainese with the man who poured tea into porcelain bowls.

  The food came, a fiery Sichuan stew with floating chilli peppers, and Timur spooned it into their bowls.

  Jaq took a mouthful. Deliciou
s. She let the heat wash over her, the capsaicinoids in the chilli triggering the pain receptors in her mouth, quickly balanced by a flood of endorphins, nature’s painkillers, with a chemical surge of happiness and well-being. She finished her bowl, helping herself to more. Clicking her chopsticks, she extracted a small bone. ‘Chicken?’

  ‘Frog.’

  ‘To help you launch Hop!’ She laughed. ‘How’s it going?’

  He told her about the show, made it sound less sleazy than she had imagined, the pride of a performer shining through.

  ‘Enough about me.’ He flashed white teeth at her. ‘Where have you been, Jaq Silver?’

  ‘Work, you know.’

  ‘All work and no play?’

  ‘I did manage a day trip to Mount Putuo.’ She described her visit with The Sloth in graphic detail.

  Timur laughed, then put his chin in his hands and gazed at her. ‘I like you,’ he said. ‘You’re different.’ He smiled. A good smile. The sort of smile that was part bashful question, part mysterious promise. Hinting at things to come. Good things. The gentle, wavering smile amplified by the desire that shone from his green eyes. Not some unspecific craving – the desire of an athlete for physical release after a race, or a near miss with a river barge. Not just the glow that follows a good meal, the warmth of a full belly lulling inhibition, hushing whispered warnings. Not just the recovery from the spicy assault of Sichuan pepper, the senses reeling from the heat, suddenly alert to new possibilities. His eyes, his lips, his body all spoke of yearning, a powerful need completely focused on her.

  Careful.

  She allowed his desire to wash over her like warm silk. It had been a long time since a man had looked at her like that. Too long. She gazed deep into his green eyes, jade flecked with amber, interrogated his confidence, his constancy, his integrity, waiting for him to look away first.

  Crash!

  Jaq jumped as a clatter of clean cutlery was thrown onto their table. ‘Nǐmen xiànzài zǒule!’ A small man blocked Timur from view as he leaned over to wipe the surface. ‘Ren zai deng chifan.’