Fiona Erskine - The Chemical Detective

High-energy explosives and detonators were kept behind blast-proof walls, but traditional propellants, like today’s delivery, went to locked cages. She unlocked the empty cage with a four-sided key and signalled for Stefan to bring the pallets.

The warehouse sheeting creaked and quivered in the wind. A comforting rattle. The light construction was designed to flex and bend. Strength through adaptation rather than rigid resistance. In the event of an accident the blast would shoot upwards, blowing off the weaker roof panels. Unfortunate for birds, but safer for humans. The downside: it was freezing inside the store. The paperwork was complex, certificates of analysis to check against the batch numbers delivered, samples to take.

Stefan parked the forklift truck and got out, following her, stamping his feet and blowing on his hands, his nose and cheeks unnaturally red against a pale face and rheumy eyes. Poor man; he looked as if he could use a cup of tea.

‘Thanks, Stefan.’ She pointed over the artificial hill, in the direction of the gatehouse. ‘Go and get warm.’

No point in both of them getting frostbite; she preferred to work alone.

Sampling. There was something pleasing about this most mundane of tasks. In her last job, she’d had a team to do this sort of thing, a team of people who needed managing; how refreshing to return to uncomplicated hands-on practical stuff.

The first pallet of explosives was smooth to the touch◦– tightly stretch-wrapped in clear film. Each one-tonne pallet had forty bags stacked in fours, ten high. Each bag contained twenty-five kilograms, the weight of a heavy suitcase. The standard acceptance protocol required sampling from 10 per cent of the individual bags, so four samples were required from each pallet.

Jaq selected the bags at random, marking a neat cross with a permanent marker. Snapping on a pair of disposable gloves, she cut a slit through the stretch-wrap. The sampling cylinder◦– a hollow metal quill with a sharp point◦– slid easily into the bag, freezing her fingers through the thin latex gloves. Swapping hands to turn the quill, she withdrew a sample and closed the perforation with special tape. The sample cascaded from the quill to a small glass bottle. She sealed it with a metal screw cap and added the date, time and the batch number to the label.

After taking four samples, she stretched and yawned. Not much sleep last night. A warm tingle lingered, embers of Karel’s fire on her skin. She ambled over to the vending machine in the corner of the store and dropped a euro into the slot. Nothing happened. She slapped the side and pushed the coffee selection button again, but it remained obstinately silent. Porra!

The second pallet was in worse shape than the first, the stretch-wrap dirty and loose, and the bags had slipped in transit. She cut away the tattered film to inspect the delivery. Odd. The top bags appeared different from those below. The same plain white polyethylene, the same circular blue Zagrovyl symbol, the same label, the same hazard warnings, but the lower bags were misshapen and lumpy. Best to sample every one.

The top four bags were easy: the sample quill slipped in smoothly, the corer turned without resistance and a homogeneous column of white crystalline powder emerged. She poured each sample into a glass bottle and taped the centimetre-long perforation on the bag.

But the lumpy bags were problematic. The punch snagged and stuck and had to be tugged and wrenched out, the corer emerging with several different shades of powder along its length◦– white, cream, yellow, pink◦– in sharply defined layers. She emptied the sample quill carefully, labelling each bottle with the number on the side of the bag.

Despite the physical effort required to force the sample punch through the lumps, her teeth chattered. She stoppered the vial on the last sample and blew on her hands. Nearly done. One more task. Tick off the bag numbers against the delivery notes.

She jogged on the spot as she compared numbers. An icy finger of unease slowed her steps, freezing her with surprise. O que é isto? Jaq threw the clipboard and swore. She should have checked the numbers first. They didn’t bloody match. The consignment note said one thing, and the bags said another. All that work, and she’d just spent hours sampling the wrong batch.

The windows rattled and the inner door flapped open. A gust of icy wind blew in a flurry of snow through the gap. High above the jagged peaks a new storm loomed.

She shouldered her bag, locked the warehouse and marched along the covered walkways to the office block. A row of brand-new snowsuits hung from a rail in the access hall, clear plastic covering flapping in the wind as she opened the inner door. The lockers rattled as she strode past, stuffed to the gunnels with climbing ropes, snowshoes, crampons, skis and poles.

Inside the laboratory, she placed the samples in the blast-proof fridge before dialling Zagrovyl complaints. Customer care, they called it. A misnomer if ever there was one. Closed for the weekend. Customer-don’t-care, more like. She left a message. After locking up, she stowed the keys in the inside pocket of her bag and zipped it up.

Outside the snow was falling fast. She took a shortcut towards the exit gates.

‘All finished?’ Stefan opened the gatehouse hatch as she approached.

‘Some mix-up,’ she said. ‘Consignment notes don’t match the delivery. One of the pallets is quarantined until we sort it out.’ She handed him the consignment notes through the hatch.

Stefan swayed and grabbed the window ledge. ‘I’ll call Zagrovyl.’

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Already done.’

A strangled moan escaped his lips and a shadow passed over his face, descending like a shutter, leaving a sheen of sweat glistening on his brow.

Jaq stopped in her tracks. She’d sent him away earlier because of the cold, but now he looked seriously ill. A man in his sixties in a sedentary job with occasional bursts of physical activity in sub-zero temperatures. A recipe for disaster.

She pushed the handle of the gatehouse door. Locked. Heaving open the hatch, she yelled through the gap, ‘Stefan, are you OK?’

He grabbed a slim tube from his inside pocket, opened his mouth and sprayed a short blast onto the back of his tongue.

A magical transformation took place before her eyes: a pink sunrise blooming over ashen skin.

Nitroglycerine. The liquid that killed one member of the Nobel family and inspired another to invent both dynamite and the Nobel Prize. Not just an explosive; also used to treat angina. A powerful vasodilator that relaxes the smooth muscles and opens the blood vessels to the heart.

Jaq stood rooted to the spot, her muscles suddenly frozen, holding her breath before exhaling in a long gasp. What a perverse symmetry. If she had known then what she knew now, could she have saved them? The men at Seal Sands. If they hadn’t died, would she even be here now?

The hatch fell as she clenched her fists. No point looking back. Lock it down. Lock it in. There was still time to help this man. She reached into her bag and found her phone. ‘I’m calling 112.’

‘No!’ He opened the door.

Jaq took his arm and guided him to a chair. ‘You need a doctor.’ She checked his pulse◦– rapid but steady; his breathing◦– shallow but regular.

‘I’m better now.’ He grabbed her hand. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone else.’

She was taken aback by the fear in his eyes. Did this job mean so much to him? The lowest rung in the organisation, with the longest hours and the lowest pay. Snow Science was a good employer, regular medicals and adaptable work. They’d play fair with him. Stefan must be nearing retirement age anyway. Perhaps he was worried about his pension.