The Anvil (7 page)

MacLean froze for a moment, staring at the bedroom door and wondering whether Tansy realised his intention to leave or not. He looked to the front door through the hall then back at the bedroom. He relaxed with a smile of resignation and took off his jacket again. ‘How about milk?’

MacLean brought Tansy her coffee and she sat up in bed.

‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked.

MacLean looked for signs of accusation in her eyes but found none. ‘Like the proverbial log,’ he replied.

‘How are you feeling?’

MacLean saw that the question had a deeper significance. ‘Better,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Tansy. ‘Will you tell me the rest of the story today?’

‘If you like.’

Carrie came into the room. She was trailing a teddy bear by the arm and rubbing her eyes. Their voices had woken her. MacLean felt uncomfortable at being caught in her mother’s bedroom but the child did not see anything amiss and MacLean reminded himself that she was only five years old. Tansy, however, noticed his discomfort. ‘The world stops outside that door Mr MacLean,’ she said. ‘It’s mores and morals have no place in here. We are people who like and care for each other, that’s all

MacLean nodded but still felt uneasy.

Tansy added, ‘And to answer your unspoken question, no, I do not usually sleep with anyone who cares to call. In fact I have not slept with anyone at all since Keith died.’

‘I didn’t …’

‘No, I know you didn’t but I thought I’d say it anyway.’

‘Can I have my cornflakes?’ asked Carrie, breaking the silence.

MacLean and Tansy relaxed. ‘If you show me where they are Carrie,’ said MacLean and followed her through to the kitchen.

It was mid-morning when MacLean resumed his story. Carrie, intrigued with the possibilities that snowbricks offered, had decided to build a wall round Mr Robbins. MacLean was watching her from a corner of the window when Tansy prompted him to tell her more about Cytogerm.

‘At the time,’ said MacLean turning away from the window, ‘I was living with a girl called Jutte Hahn. She was a ski instructor I had met in the mountains. I’ve probably conjured up an image of a blonde-haired bimbo, but that would be doing Jutte the most terrible injustice. She did have blonde hair and she was beautiful but there was so much more to her than that.’ MacLean paused as he remembered. ‘There were lots of beautiful girls around but Jutte was special. She had a serenity about her, which I found completely captivating. It almost bordered on detachment but it wasn’t. I found it intriguing but it was something I could never completely fathom. I think in Scotland we used to call it being fey. She seemed to see things differently from the rest of us, more clearly somehow. She had a wonderful sense of what was really important and what wasn’t. They say that when you know everything there is to know about someone the relationship must die but there was never any possibility of that with Jutte, not if we’d lived for a thousand years.’

‘You were obviously very much in love with her,’ said Tansy.

‘Very much.’

‘But you didn’t marry?’

‘I think we were both scared we’d destroy the magic. We didn’t even dare speak about the future. Happiness can be the most ephemeral thing in the world.’

‘And the most elusive.’

‘When the Cytogerm project collapsed I took it badly. I blamed myself for the death of Elsa Kaufman. I told myself I should have realised what the drug might do to cancer cells.’

‘But you couldn’t possibly have foreseen that,’ said Tansy.

MacLean smiled and said, ‘Everyone could see that but me. Jutte persuaded me we should go up to the mountains for a break. On the morning we were due to leave she went off to the local baker while I took a shower. She took my car.’ MacLean paused. ‘When she turned the key it exploded.’

‘Oh my God,’ whispered Tansy.

‘The police said that it was a terrorist bomb. The intended target had been an Israeli diplomat who lived in the same apartment block and also drove a Mercedes. They had wired the wrong car.’

‘How awful,’ said Tansy.

‘And how wrong,’ said MacLean. ‘It had nothing to do with Israeli diplomats or Palestinian terrorists. I was the real target all along.’

‘How did you come to that conclusion?’ asked Tansy.

‘Lisa Vernay was the next to die,’ said MacLean. ‘She was the immunologist on the Cytogerm project. She was found in her swimming pool with a broken neck, an accident they said. She had dived into shallow water. Then Kurt Immelman had an “accident”.’

‘Your assistant?’

MacLean nodded. ‘He was a good surgeon. He had moved to Paris and was doing well in his new job when one day he got into an elevator on the seventh floor of a hospital building and it plunged to the basement.’

Tansy said gently, ‘I know you don’t think so but couldn’t these deaths have been an unfortunate coincidence?’

‘Four people knew how to formulate Cytogerm,’ said MacLean.

‘You, Lisa Vernay, Kurt Immelman … and one other,’ said Tansy.

‘Max Schaeffer. He was the developmental chemist on the project.’

‘Not him too?’ asked Tansy with trepidation.

‘He crashed his car in the centre of Madrid. He had been drinking, witnesses said.’

‘Too many coincidences,’ conceded Tansy.

‘It was obvious the company was killing anyone who knew about Cytogerm,’ said MacLean. ‘They had removed all the records and now they were killing the people who had worked on it.’

‘But surely you went to the police?’ asked Tansy.

‘Of course, as soon as I realised just what was going on,’ said MacLean. ‘I knew I was the only one left of the research team. They were just biding their time because of the first botched attempt but I would be next. Nothing was more certain. I blurted out everything to the police. If nothing else I thought it would gain me time. The company couldn’t afford to kill me when I had just predicted it.’

‘What happened?’

‘At first the police thought I was some kind of lunatic but after they had checked out my credentials they agreed to investigate. We all went along to the Stagelplatz to confront the directors.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They sat there and smiled; they said they had been worried about my health for some time. I had been working too hard; I hadn’t been able to come to terms with Jutte’s tragic death. I needed a holiday. The more I lost my temper the more plausible they sounded and then I saw a green dragon.’

‘A what?’

‘A green dragon. It flew in through the wall of the building and started fighting with the purple serpent that had been masquerading as a carpet.’

Tansy was at a loss. ‘I’m sorry …’

MacLean smiled wryly and said. ‘In keeping with their air of civilised urbanity the directors asked at one point for coffee to be brought in. Mine must have been laced with LSD. To all intents and purposes I had a nervous breakdown right in front of the police. They were only too happy to accept that I had a “mental” problem.’

‘What happened next?’

‘I was admitted to one of the company’s clinics to recover. Luckily, they still couldn’t afford to kill me so close to home. Several weeks later I was retired on medical grounds. The lease on my flat was revoked and it was made very clear to me that I would find it very difficult to find another job in Switzerland.’

‘It sounds like a nightmare,’ said Tansy.

‘That’s exactly what it felt like,’ agreed MacLean. ‘I was filled with such anger but it was all so useless. It simply turned to frustration. I could do nothing. They’d killed Jutte, destroyed my career, murdered my colleagues and I could do nothing! The simple truth was that the company could do what they liked.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I went to Paris. I had a good friend there who worked at the Pasteur Institute. She put me up for a while till I got my act together.’

‘And what did you decide?’ asked Tansy.

MacLean put his hand to his throat.

‘Dry?’ asked Tansy.

MacLean nodded and Tansy went to the kitchen to return with a glass of chilled lemonade. She paused to look out of the window to check on Carrie before handing it to MacLean.

‘At first I spent all my waking hours thinking how I could make Lehman Steiner pay for what they had done. I wanted justice; it became an obsession. I spoke to a succession of lawyers and private investigators but they advised me to forget the whole thing and concentrate on re-building my career. It only made me more bitter until I realised the truth.’

‘The truth?’ asked Tansy.

‘Ostensibly they were advising against any kind of action because of legal reasons, lack of evidence, witnesses and so on, but that wasn’t the real reason at all.’

‘Then what was?’

‘They simply didn’t believe me,’ said MacLean. ‘They thought I had imagined the whole thing.’

‘It does sound pretty incredible,’ said Tansy.

‘There was worse to come,’ said MacLean. ‘In my innocence, I thought that Lehman Steiner had finished with me. They had wrecked my career and my credibility. What I hadn’t reckoned on was the fact that they still wanted me dead.’

‘They tried again?’ asked Tansy with wide eyes.

‘I was walking home one evening in Paris when a car mounted the pavement and came directly towards me. It would have killed me but for a bollard on the pavement which the driver had overlooked. One of the front wheels struck it and it was forced off course. It missed me by inches.’

‘Were there no witnesses?’ asked Tansy.

‘Lots. They all testified to the fact that a drunk driver had mounted the pavement and nearly killed me.’

‘Drunk?’ asked Tansy.

‘That’s what it looked like to them,’ replied MacLean. ‘They had no reason to think it was a murder attempt.’

‘But the French police? Didn’t you tell them?’

‘Everything,’ said MacLean. ‘They telephoned their colleagues in Geneva and then started humouring me. I was on my own.’

MacLean took a sip of his lemonade. ‘At least I now knew that Lehman Steiner were still after me. My French friend would be in danger so I fled the country. I hitchhiked to the channel ports and crossed on the ferry. I couldn’t contact former friends in this country for fear of putting their lives in danger but luckily I still had some money in a British bank. It enabled me to rent a flat and start looking for a job. Eventually, I got a registrar’s post in an east London Hospital and started to rebuild my life.’

‘No more thoughts of revenge?’ asked Tansy.

MacLean smiled bitterly and said, ‘It’s strange how anger can be eaten away by hopelessness. In time I came to accept that I was no match for the company. The anger was gradually replaced with emptiness, an empty void where once love had been and then anger and finally, nothing.’

‘But you had a job. You were back in medicine,’ said Tansy.

‘It lasted exactly three months. It was a Saturday afternoon when it happened. There was a light drizzle and Ella Fitzgerald was singing Moonglow on the car radio as I drove to the hospital. The traffic got held up because of some kind of political march or rally up ahead. A crowd of youths were waving union jacks and holding clenched fists in the air while the police tried to maintain a barrier between them and another group brandishing anti-fascist slogans.

There was a lot of hatred around but I remember it all leaving me cold. I sat there, watching them hurl abuse at each other while the police, caught in the middle, linked arms and had their helmets knocked askew as they fought to contain the mob. Press photographers were climbing on top of cars to get the best shots of the violence.

A woman, pushing a pram got caught up in the whole thing and was trying to find shelter in a shop doorway. She took the child from the pram and was holding it in a corner to protect it from the stones that were starting to fly but one of them hit her on the back of the head and she fell to the ground. I got out the car and ran to see if I could help but a policewoman got to her before I did. Luckily, she was not seriously hurt and the policewoman said that an ambulance was on its way so I went back to the car. I got in and found two men in the back. They had detached themselves from the union jack brigade and one of them had a gun.’

‘Good God,’ exclaimed Tansy.

MacLean nodded and said, ‘It was the first one I ever saw one close up. I found the small black hole in the end of it quite hypnotic; it was pointed at my chest. I was told to do exactly what I was told.’

‘Then what?’

‘When the trouble up ahead cleared and the traffic started to move again, I followed their directions which took us to a quiet spot by the river where we all got out. They had a brief discussion about my identity and one of them produced a photograph. It was my Lehman Steiner staff photograph.’

‘My God! What possible connection could there be?’