Itchcraft (2 page)

Leila spoke again, her voice raised. ‘We used to dive with Shivvi Tan Fook. Now she’s dead and it’s
your
fault.’

There were murmurs of assent from the others, and what sounded like curses spat in the direction of the kneeling men. Both Van Den Hauwe and Revere started to protest, but the diver with braided hair identified as Chika jumped forward, crouching just in front of them. Grit kicked up by her Converse hi-tops settled over their tasselled loafers. She put her finger in front of her lips.

‘You don’t have to say anything. We know you didn’t actually kill her
yourself
– we know that was Flowerdew. But we haven’t got him—’

‘Yet!’ called one of the others, and they all nodded.

Chika smiled, her teeth brilliant white. ‘Right. Not yet. But we have got
you
:
you
abandoned her, so you have to pay.’ She produced a knife from her Converse and both men recoiled, falling back against the radiator grille of the Mercedes.

‘Chika, no!’ called Leila. ‘We agreed, remember?’

‘Not yet, Chika,’ called another voice.

Chika glanced back at Leila, then stared at the ground, carving grooves in the dust. Then she nodded and sheathed her knife again.

‘I say shoot them now.’ Five heads turned to look at the white woman with black hair tied back in a ponytail. ‘Why wait? This is our moment. We owe Shivvi. Just do it.’

‘But, Aisha, we agreed,’ said Leila. ‘We wait. Maybe sell them on. You know we’d get a good price.’

‘I did think that,’ said Aisha. ‘But then I hadn’t looked into their eyes. They’re disgusting – their kind always win, always get away with it.’ There were nods of agreement at that. ‘But not this time . . .’

Leila looked at her friends again; they all returned her look, each one nodding in turn. ‘Very well.’ She stepped forward. ‘Stand up and turn round.’ She raised her gun.

Stumbling to his feet, Revere pleaded, ‘We have money! How much do you need? Please—’

‘
Turn round!
’ shouted Leila. ‘Who’s first? Alphabetical order, maybe?’ She walked round to where Jan Van Den Hauwe was gripping the bonnet of the Mercedes. He squeezed his eyes shut as she touched the gun barrel to his temple. ‘Happy New Year, Jan,’ she said, and pulled the trigger.

‘Happy New Year, Chloe,’ said Itch, and a thunderous explosion tore through the hills. Brother and sister crouched in the dilapidated house and winced as the first clods of earth started raining down on them. A shower of stones followed. Ears ringing and eyes watering from the swirling clouds of dust particles, they peered through the open space that had once been a window.

‘Wow,’ said Itch in hushed tones. A small mushroom cloud had formed twenty metres above the explosion. As they watched, it moved and changed shape; sand and smoke were drawn in and upwards, then seemed to fold and rotate around the rim. After a few seconds it drifted and dissolved, the grit and earth falling like hail.

‘But . . . that . . .’ said Chloe, staring at the brown haze that still hung in the air.

‘. . . wasn’t a nuclear explosion, no,’ finished Itch. ‘Though it was amazing!’

‘But it was a mushroom shape. I thought . . .’

‘Just what happens when you have a large blast. Though I’ve never seen one before. I suggested it once to Colonel Fairnie, but he said no.’

‘Can’t think why,’ said Chloe. ‘Can you imagine the panic if a mushroom cloud like that appeared above our house? Fairnie got that one right.’

Jim Fairnie had led the MI5 team that had tried to protect Itch after his discovery of eight pieces of the fiercely radioactive element 126. He had promised to stay in touch and was available if Itch ever needed him.

If it hadn’t been for the ringing in their ears, Itch and Chloe would have heard the approaching Land Rover sooner.

‘Dad’s here,’ said Chloe. ‘This could be fun.’

Nicholas Lofte arrived in a cloud of dust, a brown haze hanging in the air behind the vehicle. Hurtling past the scene of the explosion, he headed towards the old mining cottage where his younger son and daughter stood. He jumped out of the driver’s seat, the car still lurching from the abrupt stop.

‘What happened? You both OK?’ He ran over and took Itch by the shoulders. ‘That was loud, Itch – explain!’

‘Just stump removal, Dad. You should have seen it! We got a mushroom cloud and everything!’

‘Er,
we
?’ said Chloe.

‘OK, yeah – just me, then. Dad, it was huge—’

‘I know it was huge, son – I heard it down by the mine. I ran out of the office and saw the cloud forming. I was terrified, Itch – my heart is still racing. You’re both OK, then?’

‘Course we are, Dad. It was a bit louder than I expected,’ said Itch, his eyes still wide with excitement, ‘and we had dust and stuff raining down, but it was pretty cool.’

He couldn’t stop grinning, and Nicholas’s face twitched. Caught between anger and admiration, Nicholas Lofte stood looking at his son. At fifteen, Itch was six foot and still growing, his twelve-year-old sister only nine inches behind. Itch’s wavy blond hair was filled with earth and dirt; when he spoke or moved, it showered into his face.

‘At least you kept some eyebrows this time,’ said Nicholas, smiling, and they all started to laugh. Itch had lost his eyebrows twice before – the last time just weeks ago, when the Fitzherbert School had burst into flames. Itch and his cousin Jack had been lucky to escape with their lives.

‘OK, I admit it: it did look pretty impressive . . . which doesn’t make it right,’ Nicholas added quickly. ‘You should have told me what you were doing, Itch. I thought you might have had your fill of danger for a while.’

Itch started walking over towards the explosion site, his father and sister following. ‘I wasn’t planning it really, but the store in town was selling the potassium nitrate and I just thought now would be a good time to try it out. Better than at home, anyway.’

They all stared at the small crater that had been left by the ‘stump removal’.

‘Better than at home is about right,’ said Nicholas, ‘but I promised your mother I’d make sure nothing “bad” happened. I assume she meant nothing explosive.’

There was silence then as the three Loftes kicked around in the dust. Jude Lofte hadn’t been mentioned by their father since they came to South Africa. After discovering Nicholas’s secret life working for an undercover energy research organization, their mother had walked out. She had returned on Christmas Eve, but it had been a tense, unhappy time. When Nicholas offered to take Itch and Chloe on a mine examination in South Africa, she had reluctantly agreed, saying that she’d spend the New Year with their eldest son, Gabriel, and his girlfriend before he went back to university in January.

Itch and Chloe glanced at each other. Itch thought his sister seemed upset and tried to look reassuring. ‘I won’t tell her if you don’t,’ he said.

His father nodded. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘But that’s it, Itch, OK? You plan any more experiments, you tell me beforehand – don’t wait for me to hear a ground-shaking explosion before I know anything. Agreed?’

Itch nodded, and another small cloud of dirt fell out of his hair.

Itch, Chloe and their father had flown to Cape Town three days after Christmas. Their destination was the small town of Vanrhynsdorp in the Western Cape. Picking up a Land Rover at the airport, they had driven all day to the deserted mine. This was the ‘Old Copper Way’, a part of the country with as rich a mining tradition as their native Cornwall. In the semi-desert, they had set up camp in one of the old mine buildings. It had been abandoned in the 1960s when the price of thorium had dropped, but Nicholas and some of his colleagues were convinced that there was more to be found.

‘We are really excited about this, Itch!’ he’d explained as they drove north. ‘The only reason more hasn’t been made of thorium as a nuclear fuel is because you can’t make weapons from it. But there’s loads of the stuff in the ground – almost as much as there is lead. No one wanted this old mine, but Jacob thinks we should have a look at it.’

Dr Jacob Alexander was the director of the West Ridge School of Mining and had been the only one to analyse the rocks of element 126 that Itch had found; he still treasured the printouts proving that he had actually tested the mysterious element. Spectacularly radioactive, it was dangerous beyond measure. He had seen its potential as a new energy source; it was a nuclear start-up kit in a bag. When Itch first hid the eight pieces of rock, Alexander had tried to persuade him to divulge their whereabouts, but to no avail. Now they had been destroyed, and Jacob Alexander had to resume his search for new energy sources without them.

‘I’m looking for some europium, Dad – don’t they have some of those rare earth elements in these mines?’

‘Right, stop,’ said Chloe. ‘Excuse me?
Europium? Rare earth elements?
’

Nicholas laughed. ‘You want to take that, Itch?’

‘This is pretty basic, Chloe – don’t you know anything?’ Itch reached for his rucksack.

‘No!’ said Chloe. ‘Nothing from there! No rocks, no gases, no nothing! Just tell me, Itch. In words.’

Itch sat back in his seat, leaving his rucksack by his feet. It boasted 118 pockets, one for each element on the Periodic Table; Itch used it to house his collection. Many of the pockets were for show – a joke from the MI5 agents who had watched over Itch – as so many of the elements were either unobtainable or too dangerous to keep in a nylon bag.

‘All right, calm down,’ he said. ‘I had to leave most of the stuff at home; didn’t think customs would appreciate it. All I was going to show you was the chart – so you can see where the rare earths are.’

‘Not interested,’ said Chloe. ‘You’ve got two sentences. Then I’m back to Rihanna.’ She waved her headphones at her brother.

‘OK. Mainly, they’re the ones down the bottom of the Periodic Table – the bottom two lines. They’re all very similar to each other and they’re used in laptops, mobile phones—’

‘That’s enough,’ interrupted Chloe, and she pushed the small white ear buds into her ears.

‘And probably your iPod . . .’ Itch trailed off.

‘Nice try,’ said Nicholas, laughing again. Itch sighed. ‘And to answer your question, Itch: yes, there may well be some europium there, along with a host of other rare earths. Why the interest in europium?’

‘It’s what a lot of the 126 would have decayed into when I blasted it at the ISIS labs. I’m glad we destroyed it. And when I get the europium, I want to display it. To show what we managed to do.’

His father nodded. ‘You guys were quite some team. Have you heard from Jack or Lucy? What are they up to?’

‘I think Jack said that Lucy had invited her to a New Year’s do in town,’ said Itch.

‘Wish you were there?’ asked Nicholas.

‘What do you think?!’ Itch grinned. ‘No way! I’m element-hunting! And you’re here. And we’re making Chloe come too; that beats some party which is bound to be a fail.’

Nicholas was checking the fuel gauge. ‘Let’s fill up.’ And he pulled into a petrol station. ‘I’ve also brought you both a present. You need it before we get to the mines.’ Sitting in the warmth of the afternoon sun – a welcome change from the grim winter at home – Nicholas produced two identical packages, handing one to Itch and one to Chloe.

Wiping hamburger grease off his hands onto his jeans, Itch weighed the parcel in his hand. Paperback-book sized, it felt heavier, and he felt movement in the box under the Christmas wrapping. It was strange to be unwrapping presents with Santa Claus decorations in twenty-two-degree heat, with farm trucks thundering along the R301 to Stellenbosch. Itch and Chloe stared at the boxes, then at their father. Itch grinned, while Chloe looked puzzled.

‘They’re radiation detectors,’ said Nicholas. ‘State of the art. And we’ve set them to look for certain X-rays and signatures which you need to be aware of. They’ll click like fury if there’s a big surge in radiation. You both need to be careful – but, Itch, you know the dangers. After your bone-marrow transplant, you might not get a second chance.’

Itch opened the box and took out a black and yellow metal case with a yellow cord attached. At the top was a circular window showing a needle and a colour-coded display going from blue to red.

‘I’ve had them made. Smart, huh? Made from cerium tribromide, the latest hi-spec compound, if you’re serious about detecting radiation. While we’re near the mines, you wear them all the time. There’ll be low-level radiation everywhere, of course – you’ll hear it click when it registers a decaying particle. It measures roentgens per hour—’

‘Dad,’ interrupted Itch, ‘we know this stuff. The 126 sent Geiger counters crazy.’

Nicholas nodded. ‘Of course. I’m just reminding Chloe that if the clicks coming out of the speaker start to get anything close to rapid, it’s time to move. And tell me.’

‘Why are we even going there if there’s a danger?’ asked Chloe quietly, not opening her box; uneasy at this reminder of the dangers of radiation poisoning.

‘There isn’t a danger where we are staying, Chloe,’ said her father. ‘We are some way from the mine itself, which is where the radiation is. It’s just an extra precaution. And they’re waterproof too – Jacob made them, look.’ Nicholas pointed to Itch’s name, etched into the silver reverse of the counter:
Itchingham Lofte. Keep those clicks low! Your friend Jacob
.

‘Wow. The world’s only personalized radiation detectors. Didn’t need the message, but I’ve always wanted one of these things.’ Itch strung the counter round his neck. ‘Whaddya think, Chloe?’

She shrugged. ‘Suits you, I suppose.’ She gathered up her detector and its wrapping, stuffing it all into her bag. ‘Can we go now?’ she said.

They had arrived in Vanrhynsdorp in the early evening, the sun already disappearing over the low, rocky hills. They had driven through the town, all neat hedgerows and bed-and-breakfasts, and Nicholas took the last few kilometres slowly.

‘Glad we’re not staying there!’ said Itch as they left the trim, tidy lawns behind. ‘Looked like the dullest place ever. Come on, Dad, let’s get there before it gets dark.’