The Anvil (31 page)

MacLean flicked idly through the pages of the journal of the ‘International Society of Medical Analysts’, stopping as he came to a photograph of a man in a white coat looking suitably serious. The article was headed, ‘A Week in the Life of … ‘ The current article was devoted to Dr David Schulz who ran ‘a busy practice in Hamburg’. The reporter had followed him through an average week. This seemed to be a regular feature and it gave MacLean the idea he was looking for. He put everything back the way he had found it and left the premises to rejoin MacFarlane and Leavey.

‘Finished?’ asked MacFarlane.

‘Thanks Willie,’ said MacLean. MacFarlane went back upstairs to lock up.

‘How’d it go?’ asked Leavey.

‘I think I know how to do it,’ replied MacLean.

Next morning MacLean turned up at the Juan Tormo Laboratorio and announced himself as a representative of the International Society of Medical Analysts. He was received warmly by Tormo who turned out to be a lot older than the graduation photograph MacLean had seen on the wall. The years had turned him into a small, dapper man in his middle fifties with a dark pencil-thin moustache, which gave him the air of a silent-film villain. MacLean could not avoid an image of Tormo tying a widow to a railway track while a train thundered (silently) round the bend.

He explained that he had been detailed by the society to find a suitable Spanish candidate for their ‘Week in the Life’ spot in the journal. He had been to Madrid and Barcelona interviewing likely candidates and had come south for a short holiday before returning to the rigours of winter. He had just happened to see Tormo’s sign while passing and it had given him an inspired idea …

Tormo took the bait, modestly protesting the smallness of his operation but beaming with pleasure at the possibility of seeing his own photograph appear in the journal. His practice was small but very interesting and varied, he maintained. He thought that there was plenty here to interest the readership.

‘Interesting,’ said MacLean, pretending to take notes.

‘What exactly would this involve?’ asked Tormo.

MacLean told him that he only had a week left to spend in the south. He would call head office in Paris and if they agreed with his plan he would spend the whole week with Tormo, following his every working move. He presumed that Tormo would be visiting various surgeries etc?

Tormo began selling himself to MacLean as MacLean hoped he would. On Tuesday he would be working at the
Hacienda Yunque
, one of the most prestigious private clinics in the country. Tormo lingered on the exclusive nature of the clientele and MacLean realised that he had met his first Spanish snob. This was good. Snobs were always predictable. He said that he thought Tormo’s role as consultant to the clinic was fascinating and would make excellent copy. Perhaps they could get a photograph of him working at the clinic itself?

Tormo was openly enthusiastic. He obviously saw himself ending up as the chairman of every influential committee in the region. He would have to obtain the director’s permission of course but he did not foresee any difficulty as there was no suggestion of any popular-press involvement. Discretion and good taste were of paramount importance at the Hacienda. He felt sure that the International Society of Medical Analysts would be welcome but what about MacLean’s head office? Did he think they would go for the idea?

‘I don’t see any real problem,’ replied MacLean. ‘Why should people in big cities get all the coverage?’

MacLean returned with the news of his success.

‘Do you think the Hacienda will allow it?’ asked Leavey.

MacLean admitted that this might be the stumbling block but, according to Maria, security did not seem to be a big thing at the clinic. They did not behave as if they had anything to hide. MacFarlane was keen to know how he planned to look for the Cytogerm.

‘Play it by ear,’ replied MacLean, admitting that things would be a whole lot easier if Leavey were permitted to come along as the society’s photographer.

On Monday morning Leavey and MacLean turned up at Tormo’s laboratory, MacLean with his reporter’s notebook and Leavey with his camera equipment slung professionally over his shoulder.

‘Head office agreed,’ announced MacLean. ‘They’ve even assigned me a photographer.’

Tormo was delighted with the news. MacLean could see that he’d had his hair cut, just in case.

They spent the morning cataloguing the work that came in for routine analysis and Leavey took pictures of Tormo posing at the microscope and looking suitably quizzical at test tubes which he held up to the light - ‘I think my left side is better.’

MacLean had decided that he would not mention the
Hacienda Yunque
at this stage, gambling that Tormo would. They got to four in the afternoon without any mention having been made of it and MacLean was beginning to get anxious. Had the clinic refused permission? he began to wonder.

Tormo finished his last blood count and washed his hands. ‘Well, Señors, a typical Monday in our small Spanish town. What do you think?’

‘Absolutely fascinating,’ replied MacLean, summoning up sounds of enthusiasm.

‘And tomorrow we go to the Hacienda.’

‘Oh yes, the hacienda,’ said MacLean feigning casualness ‘The clinic had no objections?’

‘Not when they heard the name of the society.’

‘What about photographs?’ asked MacLean with his heart in his mouth.

‘There is no objection to photographs being taken provided that none of the patients appear in them. The clinic was most insistent.’

‘Quite understandable,’ said MacLean. He made a joke about it being the kind of place where women would spend thousands of dollars to come to and then pretend they’d never been there.’ They all laughed.

Late that night MacLean stood alone on the balcony of their apartment, looking at the sea and thinking of Carrie and Tansy. A breeze touched his cheek and he felt it cold. It made him shiver in the darkness. People had been saying that the weather had been unseasonably warm and that it wouldn’t last. The moon disappeared behind rolling clouds and the air started to move as if a monster had stirred in his sleep and altered his breathing pattern.

At four in the morning the storms which had been lashing the eastern Mediterranean shores of Israel and Lebanon reached the south coast of Spain on their way west. They had lost little of their venom on the journey. The wind drove the rain on shore with a fury that made babies cry and old folks cross themselves. There was no question of sleeping through the din. Leavey got up and made coffee.

‘It might work to our advantage,’ he said, as he handed mugs to the other two. If the rain persisted he wouldn’t be able to get any decent pictures of Tormo entering the Hacienda, so they might all have an excuse to go back again on Thursday, giving them two bites at the cherry.

All three of them had to put down their coffee in order to secure the balcony awnings and fasten the shutters against the night. Water poured through the drainage holes on all the balconies in the apartment block and fell like a waterfall into the courtyard below.

It was still raining when Leavey and MacLean arrived at Tormo’s laboratory and found him, as before, delighted to see them. They were his link with the recognition he so much desired. He had some specimens to attend to before they could leave for the Hacienda. There had been an outbreak of suspected food poisoning among the residents at one of the hotels in town and Salmonella was a possibility. MacLean strengthened his image by making some knowledgeable comment about the bacteriology of Salmonella infections. ‘You’ll be plating on DCA?’ he asked.

‘Si, and Selenite subculture,’ replied Tormo.

Leavey looked out of the window and tried to guess which car was Tormo’s.

It was ten thirty when they got into Tormo’s dark blue Peugeot estate car and set off for the Hacienda. Butterflies were beginning to think it was summer in MacLean’s stomach but Leavey seemed as implacable as ever. He gazed out of the window as if he were a passenger on a bus travelling a route he’d done a thousand times before.

The climb up the mountain road proved to be even more laborious than the last time, as the storm had washed mud and scree off the hillside to litter the road. In all they had to stop four times to clear obstructions from their path before reaching the great wrought-iron gates of the clinic. Tormo got out to ID himself on an entry-phone at the side. As he returned to the car an electric motor hummed into life and the gates swung slowly open.

They drove slowly up the drive and through the orchard to the house. The Hacienda looked even more impressive at close quarters although it had a brooding quality because of a large cliff overhang above it. MacLean had not realised that the house literally backed into the rock face. Leavey who had been thinking the same thing whispered, ‘No back door,’ as they followed Tormo up the fifty or so steps to the entrance. The nearer they got to the building the smaller they began to feel. It towered above them haughtily as if it and everyone in it were looking down on them.

Prompted by Leavey’s elbow, MacLean asked Tormo to pause at the head of the steps so that he could take a photograph of him entering the Hacienda. Tormo adopted a suitable pose but Leavey shook his head, maintaining that he was having difficulty with rain on the lens of the camera. He tried for the other side of the steps, crouching down as he’d once seen Patrick Lichfield do on television, but still looked deliberately doubtful. ‘A pity,’ he said. ‘This might even have made the cover.’

‘Maybe the weather will be better on Thursday,’ suggested Tormo, having taken the bait. MacLean agreed.

The door was opened by a frumpish woman in her forties whom Tormo introduced as Señora Seeler, the housekeeper. She nodded formally to Leavey and MacLean before leaving Tormo to lead the way to the clinic’s laboratory. Leavey and MacLean exchanged admiring glances as they walked through the Hacienda. This was a class act.

They passed quietly and unobtrusively through areas where residents sat, swathed in towels and robes, manicured hands holding glossy magazines, legs crossed languidly, resting on footstools which accompanied their lounger chairs. No one took notice of them; MacLean thought of the ‘invisibility’ of servants in times gone by. They paused in one of the empty rooms to admire the view from a panoramic window. They stood in silence but Chopin accompanied the vista from an unseen and unobtrusive sound system.

‘I think I want to stay here,’ murmured Leavey and MacLean agreed.

Tormo smiled and said, ‘The Hacienda is not for mere mortals Señors.’

‘Story of my life,’ said Leavey.

The small laboratory was superbly equipped but after what they had seen, they had not expected anything else. Tormo said that he was often tempted to bring up his other blood samples and run them through the automatic blood analyser; he couldn’t possibly afford one himself. The lab was the first indication that they were not in a luxury hotel because so far, they had not come across anything to suggest clinical nature of the place. There was no lingering smell of anaesthetics or disinfectant. There were no trolleys parked in the corridors and not even a nurse to be seen.

MacLean remarked on this and Tormo said, ‘All the medical and surgical facilities are downstairs. The patients don’t actually go down there until the day of their operation. The nurses on this floor do not wear uniforms. It keeps the patients relaxed.’

MacLean gradually built up a picture of the clinic and its internal layout through prudent questioning of Tormo. The patients’ suites, the communal lounges and recreation areas were on the main floor. There were two operating theatres, recovery rooms and post-operative care facilities on the floor below. All services from water to anaesthetic gases were furnished from a large basement complex. Offices and staff living quarters were on the top floor with the exception of the maintenance staff who lived in an annexe to the basement.

MacLean now had a clear objective. He had to get downstairs to the surgical and medical area where he felt sure he’d find the clinic’s pharmacy. If Cytogerm were here at all, that’s where it would be. He set himself a target for the day of finding out where the pharmacy was located. Leavey had ensured that they would be coming back on Thursday. That’s when he would try to lay hands on the stuff.

Leavey and MacLean watched Tormo carry out blood tests with Leavey taking the occasional photograph and MacLean asking the odd question as he considered what to do next. Eventually he had an idea. ‘If you are the only analyst employed by the clinic you must look after the theatres too?’ he asked Tormo.

‘I do routine monitoring of the surfaces for bacterial contamination,’ agreed Tormo. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I was just thinking we might get more dramatic pictures of you at work in a theatre. Labs are interesting but operating theatres are more … atmospheric, don’t you think?’

‘I see,’ replied Tormo thoughtfully. ‘I take your point. I’ll have to check the theatre schedules.’

Tormo left the room and MacLean crossed his fingers in a silent gesture to Leavey. They did not have long to wait for Tormo’s return. The little man was smiling. ‘We are in luck,’ he announced. ‘No theatre is in use this morning. We can go down there now, if you like.’