Past Lives

Thirteen

The small aircraft operated by Air France on the Edinburgh to Paris service landed with an uncomfortable bump at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport but Macandrew didn’t notice; he was preoccupied with other things. It had been a while since he’d last been in Paris but it was one of his favourite cities and one which he always associated with fun and laughter — an enduring legacy of his first visit when he had been a nineteen year old college kid, travelling on a shoestring budget.

This time it was different: the city seemed austere, less welcoming, suspicious of him, as if it knew it had a role to play as a link in a chain of intrigue and death. Macandrew took in the sights on the journey in from the airport without any stirring of emotion. The overcast sky didn’t help the uneasy feeling he had in his stomach.

As the bus drew into the Air France terminal at Porte Maillot, he checked his watch and saw that he had plenty of time. The arrangement with Simone Robin had included a two-hour margin for possible delays but the flight had landed ten minutes early.

He walked up to the head of the Boul’Mich and bought a copy of International Herald Tribune from a street vendor before finding a café where he could sit and read it over coffee. Choosing to sit outside — it was dull but not cold — he thumbed through the pages and caught up on the news from home until, bored with that, he watched the world go by until it was time to make a move. With the slightest suggestion of drizzle in the air, he started to make his way to Notre Dame, crossing the Seine at Pont Royal and pausing briefly to watch a barge glide under the bridge. The huge twin towers of the Cathedral loomed up in front of him, reminding him of the timelessness of stone when compared with human life.

Even this late in the year, the forecourt in front of the great west doors of the cathedral was crowded with tourists, many of them in formal groups being lectured to in a variety of languages by their guides. There was no likely woman standing on her own near the doors so he walked down the narrow street on the north side of the building and looked in the windows of the souvenir shops until it was time to check again.

He found a place where he could command a good view of the comings and goings at the west doors and had only been there a few minutes when he caught sight of a slim, dark-haired woman hurrying across the forecourt, carrying a briefcase under her arm. Feeling reasonably confident that this might be Simone Robin, he started out on a path to intercept her but stopped suddenly in his tracks when something about the body language of three people off to his right, caught his attention. Two men, one tall and well-built, the other short and fat and wearing dark glasses appeared to be holding on to a young woman between them. Although there wasn’t much movement, Macandrew got the distinct impression that the girl was being held against her will. As he watched, one of the men shook the girl by the shoulder and she responded by pointing at the woman he was walking towards. The tall man detached himself and started walking towards her too while the fat man remained, holding firmly on to the girl.

Macandrew, sensing danger, ran towards the woman. He took her firmly by the arm and steered her in through the doors of the cathedral before she had any real time to protest.

‘Doctor Robin?’

‘What on Earth do you think you’re doing?’ asked the woman, struggling to free herself from his grip.

‘You were followed.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

Macandrew pulled her behind one of the pillars in a corner to the left of the door. ‘Please, just watch the doors.’

Macandrew was conscious of the sound of his own breathing as the seconds ticked by without sign of the man.

‘This is ridiculous!’ hissed the French woman angrily.

Macandrew was beginning to have doubts himself. ‘There were two men,’ he said. ‘They had a young woman with them. She pointed you out.’

Simone Robin’s response was stifled when three people came in through the doors. It was the two men, holding a girl between them. Macandrew heard her gasp, ‘Aline!’

‘Your assistant?’

Simone Robin nodded mutely.

‘You told her you were coming here?’

‘I saw no reason not to.’

‘It’s you they’re after. They must have gone to your lab and forced her to tell them where you were and then forced her to come here and point you out.’

‘This is...’

‘Sssh!’ whispered Macandrew as he saw the tall man look about him and then leave the other two. He seemed to be heading almost straight towards the corner where they were hiding. There was a screened alcove behind them. Macandrew manoeuvred Simone behind the curtain and put his finger to his lips. He took up stance behind an adjacent pillar and listened for approaching footsteps.

There was no sound at all save for the muted chatter of tourists in the main aisles and an occasional echoing cough. This unnerved him. If he couldn’t hear footsteps the man must be deliberately moving quietly. Did he know they were there?

Macandrew’s nerves were being stretched to breaking point. His blood ran cold at the sound of a single metallic click. He knew instinctively that it was a switchblade knife being opened and had a flashback to Burnett’s body and his bloodstained robe.

He couldn’t hear the man and he couldn’t smell him but he knew he was there; he could feel his presence. A mistake now could be fatal. He stopped breathing and listened. The slightest scuff of a shoe told him the man was on the other side of the pillar and slightly to his left. He riveted his eyes on the ground and tensed himself to act at the first sign of movement. The toe of a black shoe appeared and Macandrew edged round the pillar in the opposite direction. He was trying to keep directly opposite his opponent.

Fear had heightened Macandrew’s senses. He found the smell of the cathedral — a cocktail of dust, old books and wood polish — almost overpowering. Although tourists were only a matter of twenty yards or so away from them, the sheer size of the dark, cavernous building absorbed the noise to such an extent that he heard Simone Robin make a tiny sound from behind the curtain. In that instant, he knew that the game of cat and mouse was over. He heard her gasp as the man snatched back the curtain to expose her hiding place.

Macandrew moved swiftly round the pillar and saw the knife being held at her throat. Simone let out a scream that echoed to the roof just as Macandrew, bunching his fist and using it like a hammer to avoid testing the suspect bones in his hand, brought it down on the back off the man’s neck. The man fell to the floor and lay perfectly still.

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed an American voice somewhere off to their right, ‘What in tarnation was that?’ The level of general hubbub rose appreciably. Macandrew held Simone close to him behind the pillar. He could feel her whole body tremble. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘You’re safe now.’

‘He had a knife...’

‘Ssh. It’s all right.’

‘It came from over there!’ said a voice.

Macandrew knew that they must move quickly but suddenly, there was another loud scream and attention was mercifully diverted from their corner. This scream was followed by several more and general pandemonium broke out. It gave Macandrew and Simone the opportunity to slip away from the alcove without attracting attention to themselves.

‘He was going to kill me,’ said Simone.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Macandrew. ‘You have something they want.’

In the gloom they could see that a crowd had gathered on the other side of the cathedral; officials were trying to get through. Among the many foreign voices, Macandrew picked up an occasional English one. ‘She’s dead, Frances. I’m telling you; the woman’s dead.’

‘Nonsense. She’s probably just fainted.’

Simone Robin’s hands flew to her face and Macandrew heard her gasp, ‘It’s Aline. I know it is.’

Macandrew told Simone to wait while he drifted off to mingle with the crowd. A young woman was being lifted up from the floor where she had fallen between rows of seats. Her arms hung limply as she was laid out gently along three chairs which had been pushed together. He looked down at the pale face of the young French girl the two men had been holding. The flickering candles, the musty smell and a faint hint of incense all contrived to make the scene seem surreal. As if ordained by some unseen film director, a thin trickle of blood escaped from the girl’s mouth and rolled down her jaw to drip on to the floor.

‘She’s dead!’ whispered a voice.

Macandrew was about to agree when, to his enormous relief, the unconscious girl groaned and put her hand to her jaw, feeling for injury. She started asking questions of those around her. Macandrew backed away to rejoin Simone.

‘It was her, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘It was Aline?’

‘One of them must have hit her and knocked her out but she’s coming round: she’ll be okay.’

‘Thank God! I must go to her. This is all my fault.’

Macandrew put a restraining hand on Simone’s shoulder. ‘I heard someone say an ambulance was on its way. She’ll be in good hands but there’s still a chance that they’re waiting for you outside.’

Simone looked to the doors. ‘Oh God,’ she said slowly. She put her hands to her face and stared ahead unseeingly for a few moments.

Macandrew could see that Simone was approaching the end of her tether. He didn’t feel so well himself. He watched her take a deep breath, as if to steady herself, then ask with an air of resignation, ‘So, what do we do now?’

‘Let’s attach ourselves to one of the tourist groups when they leave,’ said Macandrew. It was a hastily improvised plan but he wanted to get outside before the cathedral attendants got round to thinking it would be a good idea to stop people leaving before the police arrived. He took Simone by the hand and they walked towards the doors. ‘There!’ he said as he saw a party of Germans start to leave; their guide had just completed a head count. ‘Let’s mingle.’

As they emerged into the light Macandrew put his arm round Simone’s shoulder and they sidled up to a young German couple as if they were old friends. ‘Das war Wunderbar!’ he said in his best schoolboy German.

The German woman looked puzzled. Had they missed all the excitement? She wanted to know. A woman had been assaulted in the cathedral in the middle of the day. It could have been any of them. This city wasn’t safe.

Macandrew, picking up the sense if not the meaning of every word, adopted what he hoped were suitable changes of expression. ‘Gott im Himmel,’ he exclaimed, hoping it might be the right thing to say but knowing it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that, if anyone was watching, they would see four people engaged in animated conversation. He didn’t think either of the two men had got a good look at either Simone or himself because it had been so dark inside. Nevertheless, he was still apprehensive as they turned into the lane that led to the coach park.

He became aware that the German woman had asked him something and both she and her husband were looking expectantly at him. He saw the first seeds of suspicion grow in the Germans’ eyes. ‘Himmel!’ he exclaimed, stopping in his tracks and putting his hand to his mouth as if he had just remembered something important. He turned to Simone and said, ‘Helga! Komm!’ With that, he took Simone’s hand and pulled her across the road into one of the tourist shops. There was sweat on his brow as he half turned to see the Germans moving on. The woman kept glancing back and saying something to her husband but the immediate crisis was over.

They spent the next ten minutes pretending to browse through tourist trash before Macandrew risked a look outside the shop and thought it safe to move on. They hurried across the Archeveche to the left bank of the Seine and half walked, half ran along the footpath to the head of the Boulevard San Michel.

‘The University is just over there,’ said Simone, pointing to the other side of the street.

‘We can’t risk going there,’ said Macandrew, looking across to the sprawling concrete campus of the Seventh University of Paris, its tower blocks rising like urban weeds. ‘They know where you work. That’s how they got to your assistant.’

Simone put her hand to her head and said, ‘Sorry, I’m just not thinking straight.’

Macandrew put an arm round her. ‘Let’s find a cafe,’ he said, ‘somewhere to sit down. I don’t know about you but I could use a drink.’

They turned away from the university and continued walking until they found a small cafe where they took a table as far back from the door as they could. Simone sat staring at the table surface, unaware that a waiter had joined them and was hovering at her elbow. Macandrew ordered coffee and brandy for both of them.

‘I shouldn’t be sitting here,’ said Simone. ‘I should go to the police... I’ll have to inform the director... I need to find out how Aline is.’

‘If you were to tell me what all this is all about, then maybe we could both go to the police,’ said Macandrew. ‘It’s got something to do with the research that you and Burnett were working on, hasn’t it?’

Simone looked down at the table for fully thirty seconds before finally saying, ‘Maybe.’ She paused while the waiter put down their order and then took a sip of brandy before beginning, ‘John Burnett did not start researching Hartman’s tumours by accident. His wife lost her mind after the surgery to have one removed: she had to be committed to an institution. John took it very badly. He spent hours with her, trying to make sense of her condition. Over a period of time he became convinced that she was not raving incoherently as everyone seemed to imagine, but that she had assumed the personality of someone else — several other people in fact — but they were all mixed up inside her head.’

Macandrew nodded. ‘I guess that’s pretty much what I’ve seen in my patient.’

‘The medical staff at the hospital listened to what John had to say and between them, they tried out a series of techniques involving stimulation and sedation to see if they could stabilise Anne — John’s wife — to a single personality. To some extent they were successful. She would become one person for as long as a few hours under controlled conditions but she was never herself: she was never John’s wife: she was always someone else. John was heartbroken but he never gave up hope. He decided to work full time on Hartman’s tumours and their after effects.’

‘Could he just do that?’ asked Macandrew.

‘Luckily he could,’ said Simone. ‘He had already established an international reputation as a biochemist so his department at the university agreed to a change of research direction. They knew that if they turned down his request he would have left and gone elsewhere and they didn’t want to lose him.’

‘Makes sense,’ agreed Macandrew.

‘He made good progress, not least because he worked night and day on his new project. The thought of being able to do something to help Anne was such a strong driving force.’

Macandrew found himself regretting having lectured Burnett about the duty of a researcher.

‘John discovered that Hartman’s tumours secrete a protease that affects an area of the brain immediately behind the pineal gland. He managed to identify the specific brain cells involved and then obtained post mortem samples of them from a number of people who had died of natural causes. He wanted to find out just what the normal function of these cells was — it’s amazing how little we know about the human brain. He found that these cells produced a previously unidentified enzyme, which he called Theta 1.’

‘So, it’s the lack of this enzyme that causes the personality change?’

‘That’s right,’ said Simone. ‘John managed to get a grant from one of the cancer charities to expand the work and he employed a post-doctoral assistant to help with the research. He took on Ashok Mukherjee, an Indian biochemist with first class credentials and Mukherjee succeeded in purifying the enzyme. It was a very exciting time for them and this was where I came in. I’m a molecular biologist. John took me on to clone Theta 1 so that we could produce unlimited supplies of it.’

‘And you could start replacing it in brain damaged patients?’

‘That was the idea. We carried out some animal tests to see if there were any ill-effects associated with the enzyme but there didn’t appear to be so...’

‘John Burnett treated his wife with it?’

‘It was highly unethical I know, but... yes, he did.’

‘And?’ asked Macandrew expectantly.

‘Anne developed total memory loss. Her mind became a complete blank. She started each day without knowing anything at all She didn’t recognise anything or anybody.’

Macandrew grimaced.

‘John still didn’t give up hope. The fact that Theta 1 had affected memory suggested that he was on the right track. He started working on the protease that the tumours produced. He hoped he could synthesise a chemical equivalent in the lab that would mimic the effects of a tumour.’

‘Why?’

‘He suspected that the problem with Theta 1 treatment might be something to do with dosage or potency. He thought the purified stuff we made in the lab might be too strong so his idea was to counteract it with a bit of synthetic protease. That way, he might be able to strike the right balance.’

‘Clever,’ said Macandrew.

‘It was much easier to say than to do,’ said Simone. ‘Synthesising such a protease proved to be very difficult.’

‘But he succeeded?’

‘After six months hard work.’

‘What about his wife?’ asked Macandrew. ‘Did she ever get her memory back?’

‘In a way,’ said Simone uncomfortably.

‘What way?’

‘After more treatment, she stabilised as a fourteen-year-old girl living in London. John’s wife had in fact, been born and brought up in London.’

‘Are you saying that she had regressed to being a child?’ asked Macandrew.

‘Not exactly...’ said Simone, pausing as if uneasy about what she was going to say next. ‘She told us that her home had been destroyed in a fire that had swept through the city and that her mother had died of a great illness the year before. She was terrified of everything around her and recognised nothing.’

‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying...?’ said Macandrew.

‘The great fire of London was in sixteen sixty-six,’ said Simone. ‘A year after Black Death had ravaged the city. Anne could tell us about both these events in great detail.’

‘My God.’

‘Anne remained in character. John was left married to a fourteen year old child from the seventeenth century.’

Macandrew was left speechless.

‘There was worse to come,’ said Simone. ‘Anne took her own life. She threw herself from a window at the institution.’