And suddenly it all became clear.
Motive – the fear of losing an inheritance.
Means – a chemistry lab.
FINALE
Kowloon, Hong Kong
The club took up most of the top floor. Glass walls afforded spectacular views over Victoria Harbour. The stage, a raised circular dais with four catwalks, extended out into the room like the spokes of a wheel or the rays of the sun. Four bar stools had been placed around the circumference, along with a man-sized Perspex cylinder and other props. A curtained crown concealed the gangways, lighting rigs and hoists suspended from the ceiling. Around the stage, smaller-diameter tables nestled between larger ones, tessellated to leave a corridor for the waitresses to serve drinks, and later, for the performers to interact with the audience.
Crystal glasses clinked. The air was heavy, the aroma of ginger and star anise lingering as the banquet was cleared away, along with the fragrance from the elaborate flower displays on each table, but most of all with the scent of the audience: so many individual perfumes, so much anticipation.
The music changed in tempo, from the tinkling of a yangqin to the thump of a disco bass. As it rose in volume, the lights dimmed and the compère ran onto the stage, illuminated by a single spotlight.
‘Good evening!’
Dressed in a tuxedo, dark trousers, white shirt, waistcoat and bow tie, he greeted and bowed to each section of the audience in turn: north, south, east and west – the four winds. A slight man, Han Chinese, his deep voice carried over the chatter.
‘Welcome, ladies!’
From a lighting box, on a platform high above the stage, Jaq scanned the room. The audience really was all female. Some of the women had dressed to kill: strapless, backless, glittering dresses, high-heeled shoes, false nails and eyelashes. Those who had come straight from work or after-work studies wore smart suits and carried briefcases. The noise rose and fell – there was no shortage of testosterone in the room.
Curious, how many times in her professional life had Jaq found herself the only woman in an all-male gathering. More times than she cared to remember. Was this the first time the situation had been reversed? Almost certainly. Women clustered in small groups, but they didn’t often flock en masse like this.
Jaq moved aside to let the female technician work the spotlight. No sign of the star guests, not yet. Just two empty seats either side of Mico. The film stuntwoman who rescued Jaq from the attack at the Shaolin Temple, and again at the Banqiao Dam was in her element here. An elegant woman with a cerise handbag leaned across the table, relaying something to Mico which caused both women to throw back their heads in laughter.
‘And now, to business!’
The compère held up four golden tickets; he had the undivided attention of the audience now. Nothing much to look at, yet he was skilled at this sort of foreplay. The auction for the prime seats was hotly contested, and by the time the lights went down, the whole place was pulsating.
‘Wish me luck!’ Ernest emerged from the access galley and climbed onto his swing.
‘Break a leg!’ Jaq whispered.
One technician worked the spotlight as another lowered him from the ceiling to rapturous applause. Dressed in a shimmering leotard, he used the bar of the swing to perform a series of spectacular acrobatics mid-air, swinging over the audience in all directions, to gasps and cheers. Once his gymnastic routine was over, he jumped onto the stage to take a bow, releasing his long red curls from the band that held them back. Ernest was the smallest of the Masters of Disguise, but he stood a good head taller than the compère. Followed by the spotlight, Ernest ran onto each of the catwalks in turn, progressing with backflips and aerial somersaults right to the end of each one, finally landing in the lap of the woman who had won the first golden ticket. To squeals of excitement, he led her to a chrome stool on stage and danced just for her.
Jaq pressed the first detonator and a firework show exploded on the stage.
Holger joined Ernest on stage in a fake fireman’s uniform, descending from the rig by shimmying down a red hose. A platinum-haired giant of a man, he had the audience relaxing into chuckles as he chased the compère around the stage. When he turned the hose on the audience, mirth turned to alarm. The front rows shrieked and ducked under tables as he sprayed them with what looked like water but turned out to be fluidised glitter. After kneeling in front of her, asking and receiving permission, he slung the second winner over his shoulder and brought her onto the stage. He ended his routine by climbing into a Perspex cylinder and inviting her to drench him in real water as he danced. The seams of his uniform jacket dissolved and fell away, the shirt sticking to his impressive chest, swimming muscles rippling for the entertainment of the crowd. His trousers turned out to be painted on, washing away to reveal the briefest of crotch-hugging swimming trunks.
Lost in the show, Jaq missed the arrival of the special guests. She’d never doubted that Frank would accept the invitation; the one thing Frank always protected was his own self-interest. She’d been less sure that Sophie would take the bait. Frank must have made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. The empty chairs at Mico’s table were now occupied. Sophie wore a tight black cocktail dress and a pink satin jacket, her fair curls piled on top of her head under a fascinator that matched her glossy lipstick and pink stiletto shoes. Frank looked uncomfortable in a short-sleeved white shirt and tan chinos. It was interesting to follow his dawning reactions. The smile of the cat with the cream on surveying the table to find several beautiful women staring at him, the mounting confusion as he noticed that all the other tables in the room were occupied by women only, the disquiet as he understood the nature of the floor show and the horror when he realised that he was the only man in the room with clothes on.
Jaq pressed the second detonator, and a river of silver sparks cascaded down the Perspex tube, a pyrotechnic waterfall. The light and noise concealed what was going on inside Frank’s chair, the liquid C5H5NO2 seeping out through the seat, the arms and the legs of the chair. The hidden camera pointed at Sophie began to whir and click. Mico bent over and whispered something. Sophie looked around, furtive, anxious, but all eyes were on the stage. Sophie couldn’t see Jaq watching her from the gods.
People stood up to clap when Timur appeared in karate robes, performing a scintillating display of strength as he set up and then smashed through boards with the sides of his hands, kicked down walls with leaping feet. He collected the winner of golden ticket number three, carrying her on his shoulders to the seat on the stage. The audience clapped to the music as he began his whirling dervish routine, his karate tunic flying off with the centrifugal motion, leaving him bare-chested. The boy could dance, she had to give him that.
Jaq looked back at Sophie. With the audience distracted, Mico retrieved the package from under her chair. It was wrapped in coloured paper and decorated with ribbons, just as it had been when Sophie presented her father’s girlfriend with the gift: a box of marzipan fruits laced with thallium. Xe Lin had been too nauseous with early pregnancy to eat any, but Charles had eaten three or four, enough to kill him. Slowly. Painfully. The rest were still in the box.
The chance to recover the incriminating evidence had persuaded Sophie to come to Hong Kong. That, and a generous offer for the real Qianlong lovers’ cup. Sophie nodded at Frank, and he slid a wooden box over the table. Mico passed it on to the elegant woman sitting opposite her, to check the contents. At a nod of confirmation, Mico handed a red envelope to Sophie. She opened it, checked the figure on the bank draft and smiled. The exchange was swift, all over before Timur had finished his dance.
Frank whispered something to Sophie. It was only when he tried to stand up to leave that he realised he was glued to his seat. Methyl cyanoacrylate, C5H5NO2, more commonly known as superglue, is useful stuff. Frank wasn’t going anywhere unless he left his trousers and shirt behind.
Sophie jumped to her feet, ready to abandon him, but Ting Bo ran towards her in police uniform waving a
truncheon and blowing a whistle. Mico feigned alarm – the consummate actor – and Sophie slumped back down, her pretty face distorted in terror. For a moment, the rest of the audience also fell silent, wondering if this was a genuine police raid. As Ting Bo passed each table, the laughter of relief was almost hysterical. The police uniform was perfect apart from the bare bottom he wiggled as he ran. He stopped at Sophie’s chair and whipped out a pair of manacles. Kneeling at her side, he swiftly attached her slim left ankle to the table leg. The audience roared with approval as he placed the key in his crotch. He ran onto the stage and then disappeared.
Jaq smiled. Ting Bo had played his part to perfection, the women screaming for him to return and take off the rest of his clothes. Sophie sat frozen, staring around wildly, a rabbit in headlights. Mico smiled and patted her hand, pouring her a drink and encouraging her to relax.
Finally, it was Eusébio’s turn, stripping off his faux African robes and performing astonishing feats of weightlifting, culminating in connecting the four hot seats by a crossbar and lifting them, and their squealing occupants, into the air and twirling them round.
Mico vacated her seat and Jaq took her place. Sophie’s expression of confusion turned to one of complete horror, Frank’s to one of anger.
Jaq handed them the legal documents that she had had Emma prepare. Sophie’s confession set out in detail the bungled attempt to murder Xe Lin which had led to her father’s death.
Frank’s document was simpler: it released Jaq from any responsibility for the loss of the yacht, the Good Ship Frankium.
Intent on savouring Frank’s fury, Jaq missed Sophie’s final, desperate act. Before anyone could stop her, Sophie had opened the box of sweets and stuffed half a dozen of them into her mouth. Preferring to poison herself rather than go to jail? Perhaps she hadn’t observed her father’s last days closely enough; perhaps she had forgotten how bad thallium poisoning could be – the slow advance of fever, excruciating pain in the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, like tiny creatures with burning-hot needles raking the skin from the inside; a racing heart, ulceration of the lips and tongue, constant stomach pains, diarrhoea and vomiting, confusion, loss of balance, loss of memory, and then the awful side effects of a slow shutdown of the organs, one by one.
Sophie started to sweat, her lipstick smearing as she gulped more champagne to wash down the sweets, the tears running down her face smudging her mascara, forming rivulets in her thick foundation. Jaq felt not a single gram of pity. The sweets she was eating were perfectly normal; the thallium-contaminated ones had been sent to a forensics lab in England. Sophie would be serving her time back home. But let her suffer for a while.
The final number before the interval was an intricate dance that used the whole room, the men moving in perfect synchronicity on stage before leaping into the audience to work the floor. And work it they did. Jaq suppressed a grin as she watched how they teased, focusing on one woman at a time, flirting as if she were the most irresistible object of desire, changing the tempo if the group began to thump the table or bray in savage arousal, controlling the temperature with artistry and charm. Steady work, getting the crowd on their side, the climax was still to come.
The number finished with a synchronised stage strip. Each performer left the stage still wearing a thong. Saving the best to last.
Except who really wants to see a penis in public? When all is said and done, is it really an object of beauty? The Greeks rendered it inoffensive; in sculptures copied by the Romans and perfected by Michelangelo and Rodin, the male member nestles in a forest of curling hair. An anatomical fact, but not the main attraction. So why is the promise of full-frontal male nudity in a strip show such a big deal? Curiosity? Every man is different. Taboo? Not normally sanctioned, the very scarcity making it appealing. Or power? Paying another human to do something that most would find excruciatingly humiliating? Pushing the boundaries of natural reticence, privacy and modesty, giving in to the worst kind of bullying mob power?
After rapturous applause, prolonged by feet drumming the floor and appreciative whistles, the audience fell to laughing and chatting as the house lights went up and the waitresses moved around the tables serving drinks.
It was time. Jaq gave the signal to the lighting box to activate the third detonator and clouds of gold exploded above the tables, showering the audience in glittering confetti. The envelope with the bank draft began to sizzle before bursting into flames.
The beauty of the alkali metals is their high reactivity. The first chemical warfare Jaq ever waged, substituting potassium for sodium in the chemistry lab, got her chemistry teacher fired.
Jaq doused the fire with a glass of champagne and left the table.
Timur and Ru were waiting in a private room. Timur in a silk robe and Ru in her usual simple tunic and loose trousers.
Ru opened the wooden box to reveal the real Qianlong lovers’ cup. She handled it with reverence. This tiny Chinese woman with a polio-withered leg was a survivor. She had outlasted the banishment of her father, the death of her mother, recovered from the effects of polio, endured starvation and been swept away on a tidal wave from the worst man-made disaster in the world. This was a woman who had worked the mines of Baotou, speculated on the stock exchange, made and lost many fortunes and allowed wicked things to happen in order to survive. A woman who had found the strength to change and embrace all that was new and good about China.
She opened her silk purse and removed the pendant that Timur had brought from Russia.
‘Tell me again who sent this?’ she whispered.
‘Dmytry Zolotoy. Your father,’ he said.
They embraced.
For the first time, Jaq could see the family resemblance between them. Those green eyes.
‘You brought me something far more precious than a piece of jade,’ Ru said. ‘Proof that my father loved me. Something I never knew.’ She wiped a tear from her eye. ‘My father didn’t abandon my mother. He loved her to the end. My mother didn’t abandon me – she sacrificed herself so I would live. And now I have a brother.’
There was silence in the room as Ru replaced the lids on the lovers’ cup: a circle of fire and a circle of flowers, the perfect fit.
More beautiful than in any picture, lifelike and intricate, unlike the fake, the true wedding cup sat on a base of honey-coloured crystal. Carved from a single piece of milk-white nephrite, a rare jade with just a tinge of sea green, two slender cups were joined by phoenix wings. The male cup encircled by a dragon, its jagged spine coiling around the cylinder in a graceful helix, head raised, mouth open, breathing out a lid of fire. The female cup laced with strings of carved pearls, a trellis of flowers curling round to a lid of petals. The Qianlong wedding cup was finally complete.
Ru held it up.
‘The age of greed is over. No more rapacious development without thought for the land, the water, the air, the people. The dynasty of money is ending as the dynasty of love and generosity, truth and beauty finally dawns.
‘I promised my grandfather that I would take care of this. The Qianlong cup belongs with the rest of the collection, along with the story of how it was lost and found. This is the story of a new China.’
The cup was going back to the place it had come from, to a public museum where it could be admired by everyone, not just the beer and metal barons, but the ordinary people of the most populous province in China.
‘Brother, I need your help to smuggle this into the new Henan museum.’ Ru looked him up and down. ‘But first, I am curious to see the rest of your show.’
Jaq remained seated, allowing herself a momentary flush of triumph.
Mystery solved.
Factory located.
Dan safe.
Yan Bing and Lulu dead.
Sophie about to be convicted for murder.
Timur and Ru, half-brother and half-sister, united in the knowledge that they were always loved, never abandoned.
There were still many loose ends
to tie up. Vikram had finally paid Jaq for her first trip to China, enough money to cover Angie’s care for the next few months. Frank had released her from the punitive contract. Time enough to figure out how to discharge her ongoing financial responsibilities once she left China. For tonight at least, she was going to celebrate the things that had gone right.
A roar erupted from the crowd, followed by rapturous applause, signalled the end of the show. Jaq waited for Timur outside his dressing room.
‘Put some clothes on,’ she said. ‘And then let’s go and celebrate.’
Ten minutes later, Jaq opened the door into the vibrant Hong Kong night and led the way.
Zhengzhou, China
There was a moment of silence after Mimi raised her bow from the strings. The final chord of Ligeti’s Cello Concerto reverberated around the atrium of the Zhengzhou museum before the audience burst into rapturous applause.
In the balcony Yun reached across to take Mico’s hand.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
Mico smiled. ‘Don’t mention it.’
Yun stood to applaud her daughter, the rest of the audience rising to their feet with a whoomph.
The gifted young cellist, recently accepted at the Beijing conservatoire, stood to take a bow. Behind her, the Qianlong jade collection, each piece newly cleaned, gleamed inside individual glass cases. The prize exhibit, the wedding cup, had pride of place in the centre. The two lids – a spiral of dragon fire and a coil of flowers and pearls – had been connected to the cups with tiny gold hinges. The damage to the base, where some vandal had hacked off a chip of xenotime, had been buffed and polished away.
Yun straightened her new police uniform. After the Spring Festival, the Women’s Federation would have to look elsewhere for a Sunny Women Program Director.
Shanghai, China
Frank took the rock and held it up to the light. There they were, dotted throughout the grey lump: honey-coloured crystals that glowed, as if lit from the inside. None as large as the xenotime crystal that formed the base of the lovers’ cup, but even to his inexpert eyes, clearly the same family. The source.
The Chemical Reaction Page 34