Past Lives

Fifteen

The police car took them to the Montrouge district of Paris where Simone had an apartment on the second floor of a three-storey building. She was assured that a gendarme would be on duty outside at all times and that, if she wanted to go out, she should inform the man on duty. She thanked the officers but her eyes reflected the unease she felt at being in such a situation. She entered the code for the entry system and the latch clicked open, admitting them to a half-tiled entry hall that smelt vaguely of antiseptic.

There was a central elevator of the open-cage type that spoke of a nineteen thirties origin but Simone headed for the stairs which spiralled round the elevator shaft and Macandrew followed. He noticed on the way up that a dentist had his surgery on the first floor — the source of the antiseptic smell.

Simone’s apartment was light and airy and furnished with elegant simplicity. A Rene Magritte print of “The Black Flag” hung in the middle of a long white wall above a cream leather sofa. The floors were polished wood and the curtains oatmeal with orange tie-backs, which provided the only splash of colour.

‘When did you last eat?’ asked Simone.

Macandrew realised that he hadn’t thought about food in a long time. ‘On the plane this morning, I guess.’

‘I don’t suppose either of us is much interested in food,’ said Simone. ‘But it’s best that we eat something. An omelette?’

‘Great.’

‘Help yourself to a drink.’ Simone pointed to a tray with three or four bottles of spirits and half a dozen glasses sitting on it. ‘Campari and soda for me.’

Macandrew watched Simone disappear into the kitchen. He poured the drinks, whisky for himself, and took Simone’s through to her. ‘Can I do anything?’ he asked.

‘This kitchen is too small for two people,’ said Simone, tensing her shoulders at the voice behind her and keeping her back to him. ‘Please just go and make yourself comfortable.’

Macandrew returned to the other room where he stood at the window looking out at the early evening traffic but his thoughts were of Simone and the fact that she was so much on edge. He was just thinking that her nerves had been strung so tight that something had to give soon when he heard a crash come from the kitchen.

‘Merde!’

‘Are you all right?’ Macandrew found Simone standing with her hands held up to her face. She was looking down at a plate that lay broken on the floor but she wasn’t seeing it. He could see that her fingers were trembling.

‘Hey,’ he said softly. ‘It’s over. You’re safe now.’ He wrapped his arms round her and shushed her gently as the tears came.

‘I keep seeing the man with the knife...’ murmured Simone, her cheek warm and wet against Macandrew’s chest. ‘And yet you were so calm.’

‘I think paralysed with fear might be a better description,’ confessed Macandrew, ‘but I’m glad you thought it was calmness... a man thing, you understand,’ he added tongue in cheek.

Simone managed a smile through her tears. ‘And I suppose you regard bursting into tears as a woman thing,’ she said.

‘Vive la difference,’ said Macandrew.

Simone pulled away and brushed away her tears with both hands. ‘God, I feel so stupid,’ she said. ‘I’m behaving like a silly schoolgirl. I must look a sight.’

‘Obsession with appearance... another woman thing,’ said Macandrew.

Simone smiled and pretended to thump her fists on Macandrew’s chest.

Macandrew caught her wrists gently and said, ‘The main thing is that we’re both still alive... and it’s all over. It really is.’

There was a long pause when Simone looked at him questioningly and he hoped that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking because care and concern were now secondary to another emotion he felt well up inside him. He let go of Simone’s wrists and looked away to seek diversion but she reached up and turned his chin towards her, her eyes asking the question. Her lips parted and Macandrew kissed her, gently at first but then hungrily as he felt her move in close to him. He pulled her even closer and felt her tongue probe his mouth.

He broke away a little to murmur, ‘You’re sure about this?’

‘I need to feel alive, Mac,’ said Simone ‘I have to know it... I don’t need flowers... I don’t need dinner... I don’t need romance... I need fucked.’

The word had an electric effect on Macandrew, who despite now wanting Simone so badly, still had reservations about the situation — mainly the fear that he was taking advantage of it. He felt the last of them wash away as she uttered the word. He pinned her to the wall and freed himself before reaching under her skirt to push her panties to one side and enter her hard and long. He cupped his hands round her backside and pulled her on to him, matching the thrust of his hips and being exhorted to ever greater efforts by Simone’s moans in his ear. ‘Christ, I want you,’ he gasped.

‘Then have me...’

The all too brief outcome of such passion left Macandrew holding Simone to him and resting his forehead on the wall as his breathing subsided.

Simone broke the silence. ‘Tell me how you feel?’ she murmured.

‘After a moment’s thought,’ Macandrew said, ‘Embarrassed. Dare I ask about you?’

‘Fucked,’ replied Simone.

Macandrew smiled, feeling such a surge of relief when he saw that Simone was smiling too. She ran the tips of her fingers softly down his cheek. ‘Let’s go shower,’ she said.

Showering together was as gentle an experience as their love-making had been passionate. They took lingering pleasure in tracing the contours of each other with soap and sponge and found it deliciously sensual. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do now?’ murmured Simone.

‘Tell me,’ said Macandrew drowsily as he closed his eyes and put his head back on the shower wall.

Simone reached up and yanked the regulator over to COLD, causing Macandrew to let out a yelp of surprise. ‘Make an omelette,’ she said.

‘Will you come with me to the lab tomorrow?’ Simone asked from the kitchen.

‘If you like.’

‘I’d like you to see my results with the in vitro cell system. I haven’t been able to show them to anyone and you would be the perfect collaborator. It’s no good having a cure that only works in the lab...’

Macandrew was slow to respond to this and Simone noticed. ‘There’s something wrong with that idea?’ she asked.

‘It might take time to set up,’ said Macandrew. ‘Getting permission to perform any kind of surgical research in the mid west of the USA isn’t easy.’

‘I see,’ said Simone, in a tone that suggested that she didn’t. ‘Is that all that’s worrying you?’

Macandrew had no heart for verbal chess. ‘I’m not operating at the moment. I’m not sure if I ever will again.’

Simone stopped what she was doing and came through to stand in the doorway. Macandrew had his back to her but knew she was there. He told her what had happened while continuing to gaze unseeingly out of the window.

‘But that is absolutely awful!’ Simone came over and joined him. She took his hands gently in hers. ‘When will you know?’

‘The pain has all but gone and I seem to have freedom of movement but whether it’s going to be good enough for surgery... well, that’s something I still have to find out. I’ll spend some time in the autopsy room when I get back and see how I get on with a knife in my hand. Practice on the dead makes perfect on the living, as an old professor at med school used to say.’

‘What an absolutely awful thing to happen,’ said Simone. ‘So this is how you came to be in Scotland in November?’

Macandrew nodded. ‘I had to get away. I needed something to take my mind off things so I thought I’d do what we Americans tend to do and come to Europe to trace my roots.’

Simone said, ‘And you got more than you bargained for.’

‘And then some.’

They ate and spent the rest of the evening getting to know each other, telling each other about their backgrounds and how they came to enter medicine. A second bottle of wine came into play and the conversation moved on from talk of the academic systems in their respective countries to memories of student days and finally to childhood confessions as they became perfectly comfortable with each other.

Macandrew learned how Simone had once stolen her sister’s clothes while she was bathing naked in a pool near the family’s summer home in Provence. He owned up to once emptying large amounts of liquid soap into the fountain in the grounds of his school in Boston on prize-giving day.

As it grew late, the wine and the events of the day started to take its toll on both of them. Macandrew noticed Simone’s eyelids coming together. He said gently, ‘It’s been a long day: you’re tired.’

Simone smiled and said sleepily, ‘Thank you for saving my life today.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ replied Macandrew. ‘It’s a man thing.’

The morning was cold and damp and a fine drizzle settled on Simone’s hair as they waited at the front door for the police car that was to take them up to the Seventh University of Paris. When it finally did arrive, they got in and sat in silence as they made painfully slow progress through the early morning traffic.

‘Not very lovely, I’m afraid,’ said Simone as they pulled up outside a concrete campus which was still scarred by graffiti from student protests of many years before. ‘Nineteen sixty-eight.’ said Simone in answer to Macandrew’s unspoken question.

‘Of course,’ said Macandrew after a moment’s thought. ‘The famous Paris student riots — the folks who were going to change the world. Wonder what became of them,’ he said as he tried to decipher the messages living on in the fading spray-paint.

‘They became doctors and lawyers and accountants like every other generation I suppose,’ smiled Simone.

‘And now, with something to lose,’ said Macandrew, ‘they’re a bit more reticent with their demands for social justice.’

‘Do I detect a certain cynicism there?’ smiled Simone.

‘People are people. Don’t expect too much and you won’t be disappointed. That’s my motto.’

‘Definitely cynical.’

‘I prefer realistic.’

They arrived at a tower block building with the number 43 on it. ‘This is where I work,’ said Simone. The police driver who had walking a few paces behind them took up station at the entrance while Simone and Macandrew went inside. Macandrew carried his travel bag over his shoulder. It was his intention to catch a flight back to Edinburgh in the afternoon.

‘If you do find that your hands are all right for surgery...’ began Simone cautiously.

‘Then I’d like nothing better than to collaborate with you,’ interrupted Macandrew.

Simone relaxed. ‘Good; maybe I should give you some brain sections to examine,’ she said. ‘You can study them along with the topographical sketches I can also give you. You might like to carry out some feasibility studies while you’re down in Pathology? You could pinpoint the relevant area of the brain in cadavers and maybe think about the best surgical approach?’

‘I think I already have an idea how I might approach it but a lot depends on what has to be done to the cells to stimulate them.’

‘I’m hoping that simply bathing them directly in the activator will be enough to trigger them back into production,’ said Simone. ‘That’s what happens in the test tube.’

‘Then that should be possible with a minimum of invasive surgery — perhaps through the introduction of a flexible needle via the nasal route.’

‘I’d like you to see my data,’ said Simone. She brought out a thick file of papers from her desk and thumbed through them before picking out a graph and sliding it over to Macandrew. She came and stood behind him to emphasise various points.

Macandrew was aware of her nearness and her perfume.

‘This is where the protease was applied,’ said Simone. ‘You can see that production of Theta 1 stops almost immediately.’

Macandrew saw the flattening of the curve until it became a plateau. ‘Certainly does.’

‘And here is where I added back the activator.’ Simone pointed with the tip of her pen. ‘Production of the enzyme starts again after a delay of only a few minutes.’

Macandrew followed the line which took a steep rise. ‘No doubt about that and it’s back to normal in... four, five, six... less than seven minutes. That’s really impressive.’

‘Do you think so?’ said Simone, suddenly seeming vulnerable again and looking directly at him. ‘It would be so good to be able to do something for these people.’

‘If this works as well in vivo, then you’ve done it,’ said Macandrew. ‘You’ve found a cure.’

‘It’s still a big if,’ said Simone, turning away. She brought out a flat wooden box from a cupboard behind her desk and flicked open the lid. It contained rows of microscope slides. She ran her finger down the index on the lid and removed three, which she installed in a smaller cardboard box fitted with plastic guides to keep the slides apart. She sealed the box with tape. ‘These are the brain sections I mentioned,’ she said.

Macandrew slipped the box into his bag, checked his watch and got to his feet slowly. ‘Well, I guess I should be going,’ he said.

Simone sensed his awkwardness. ‘Maybe we should shake hands?’ she suggested mischievously.

‘No,’ replied Macandrew.

Simone came towards him. ‘No, I don’t think so either.’

They kissed but were interrupted by the telephone. When Simone had finished taking the call the moment had passed. ‘Maybe I should give you a copy of John’s research notes?’ she said. ‘Just in case anything should happen...’

‘Nothing’s going to happen, Simone,’ said Macandrew, taking her in his arms again. ‘The police will catch these men and the guard will remain with you until they do.’ Macandrew kissed her again and they hugged for a moment. ‘I’ll call you as soon as I get back.’

‘And the secret, Mac?’

‘It’s safe with me.’

Macandrew told the gendarme on the door that Simone was still in her lab but that he would now be leaving. He walked up to the Seine to take a last look, very much aware that his European adventure was coming to an end. He would make arrangements for a flight back to the States as soon as he got back to Scotland. It was time to find out if he still had a career. The thought made him look down at his hands as gripped the top rail near the approach to Pont Neuf. He flexed his fingers in unison as a Bateau Mouche passed underneath with its recorded commentary for the tourists drifting across the water. They felt fine.

There was a queue at the checkin desk for the Edinburgh flight and it didn’t seem to be moving. Macandrew could see that the fault lay with a couple at the front who had a problem with paperwork and were arguing loudly with the girl behind the desk. He adopted his grin and bear it philosophy — which he always brought with him to airports — but occasionally glanced back at the queue starting to stretch out behind him as the minutes ticked by.

He was aware of two men, some four places back in the line where one kept asking the other if he was feeling all right. He didn’t give it much thought — lots of people were nervous at the thought of flying — but, as he was moving off after getting his boarding card, a commotion broke out. He turned to see that one of the men had collapsed on the floor and was being assisted by two members of ground staff. The man was helped to his feet and supported as he was led to a small room behind the checkin desks.

Macandrew hesitated, wondering if he should offer his services, but argued himself out of it. The airport must have its own medical people and the man had probably just fainted. A few seconds later however, the door of the room opened and an agitated young woman made an urgent appeal for a doctor.

‘Can I help?’ said Macandrew, returning to the desk.

An overweight man was lying on the floor holding his chest; His companion was bent anxiously over him. ‘I think he’s had another heart attack.’

The word “another” prompted Macandrew to ask the ground staff to call an ambulance immediately. Heart attacks tended to have a finite number; a bit like cats’ lives though seldom stretching to nine: more a case of three strikes and you’re out. ‘Make sure that they have clear access when they arrive. Every second counts.’

‘Oui, Monsieur.’

Macandrew was left alone with the two men. He knelt down beside the prostrate figure and immediately realised that all was not as it seemed. The patient’s eyes reflected no pain or distress at all. They were cold, alert and calculating.

‘What the...’

Before he could say or do anything more, he felt a sharp needle jab in his thigh and a wave of dizziness sweep over him. He had a vague notion of being made to change places with the man on the floor before passing out.

Macandrew woke with a splitting headache and a burning sensation in his throat. Despite having been unconscious, he knew exactly what had happened. He had been drugged and abducted. The question was, by whom? And why? He tried getting up from the rickety bed he was lying on but found that his hands were tied behind his back. The creaking noises from the bed however, attracted attention from next door. The room door was unlocked and the fat “patient” stood there, saying nothing but perspiring profusely. He had thick, moist lips and wore small round glasses that magnified his eyes out of all proportion to his face. Macandrew felt like a lab specimen being examined by an overweight schoolboy. The eyes blinked slowly and regularly like those of a frog on a rock but he still didn’t say anything when Macandrew asked him where he was. A taller man — the other of the pair at the airport — joined him and Macandrew recognised him immediately as the man with the knife in the cathedral, the man later identified by the police as Vito Parvelli.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ croaked Macandrew. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘I think you know that,’ said Parvelli. ‘The woman has something we want and you are going to help us get it.’

‘You’ve made some mistake,’ said Macandrew, stalling for time. He felt groggy from the effects of the drug and had a splitting headache.

‘No mistake,’ said Parvelli. ‘You got in our way last time. Now you’re going to help us.’

Macandrew felt a shiver run down his spine as he realised that these two were probably the men who had tortured and murdered John Burnett. ‘No way.’

The words sounded brave but only because he was trying the hide the fear he felt inside. He was thinking about the two hoods in Kansas and it was turning his insides to water. These two were even more frightening.

Parvelli dropped the telephone into Macandrew’s lap and said with an air of finality, ‘Phone Dr Robin.’

‘She hardly knows me,’ said Macandrew.

‘Just do it.’

As if driven to pick away at some awful secret, Macandrew asked, ‘And if I refuse?’

The fat man turned and said something to someone who was still in the outer room. A thin, gaunt man with sloping shoulders appeared in the doorway carrying what appeared to be a small toolbox. He looked at Macandrew dispassionately and made a lazy gesture with his right arm. Parvelli and the fat man pulled Macandrew upright and sat him down on a chair. They tied him to it tightly but secured only one of his legs, leaving the other to be stretched out in front of him while his shoe and sock was removed. His bare foot was placed on a small stool.

Sweat broke out on Macandrew’s brow as he watched the man he thought might be Ignatius’s accomplice, Stroud, open the toolbox and bring out a soldering iron. Every muscle in his body tensed as Stroud knelt down beside his foot, untangling the cable and handing the plug to the fat man to plug into a wall socket. The smell of burning dust filled the air as the iron started to heat up.

‘Call Dr Robin,’ said Parvelli.

Macandrew took the phone. Any added threat was entirely unnecessary. He couldn’t be any more afraid. Parvelli told him what to say.

The fat man took a firm hold of his lower leg and pressed his heel down on the stool so that it was impossible to move his foot. Stroud licked his forefinger and held it briefly to the tip of the soldering iron. It hissed.

Macandrew dialled Simone’s number and placed the receiver to his ear.

‘Oui?’

‘Simone? It’s Mac.’

‘Mac, you can’t be back in Scotland already. Where are you?’

‘I was intercepted at the airport. I’m being held somewhere in the city. I don’t know where exactly.’

‘Being held? Oh my God... who?’

Macandrew’s eyes never left the tip of the soldering iron. ‘The men from the cathedral,’ he croaked because his throat was so tight. ‘They want you to hand over Burnett’s lab notes and any of the protease you might have.’

‘Have they hurt you, Mac?’ asked Simone anxiously.

‘No,’ Macandrew croaked. ‘... not yet.’

Parvelli took the receiver and said, ‘Listen carefully, Madame. You will tell your police guard that you have decided to go down to the south for a few days. Get on the eight o’clock TGV from Gare du Norde to Marseilles on Friday morning. Bring the stuff and the notes with you. Tell the police that you won’t need any further protection once you are on the train.’

‘What if they insist on coming with me?’

‘Make a point of going to the bathroom just before the train enters the station in Lyon.’

‘And if I don’t do this?’

Parvelli handed the phone back to Steven and nodded to Stroud who pressed the tip of the soldering iron into the sole of Macandrew’s foot and kept on pressing. Macandrew’s scream of pain tore through the room as the iron sank into his flesh.

Parvelli took the phone from him and clicked it off.

The shock of what had happened, followed by a tsunami of pain, forced Macandrew to spiral down into merciful unconsciousness.

When he came round, he didn’t feel much pain at all but then his head felt fuzzy so he knew that he had been drugged. Gingerly, he used his left foot to feel if his right had been bandaged: it had but it didn’t feel like a proper bandage. He had just started to wonder how bad the damage to his foot was before he found himself drifting back into semi-consciousness again. He was to remain in this drug-induced twilight state for many hours to come, reacting only to major stimuli.

At one point, he was aware of being carried from the apartment and knew that it was night because of the darkness of the sky and the fact the streetlights were on. He realised later that he was travelling through city streets because of the motion of the vehicle and vague traffic sounds. At intervals, Stroud loomed up out of the mists that surrounded him and his curiously expressionless face came close to his as he was given yet more medication to keep him in drug-induced limbo.

Macandrew had absolutely no conception of the passing of time over what was in reality an interval of some thirty-six hours. When he finally did come round, the agonising pain in his foot told him that medication had stopped. On top of this, he was thirsty — very thirsty. His mouth felt like the floor of a sun-scorched desert. He tried sitting up but found that his right wrist was handcuffed to the head of the bed. It felt warm in the room and he could see the sun shining outside. The fact that the window was open suggested that he was no longer in Paris. He remembered the instructions given to Simone and deduced that he must now be somewhere in the south of France.

As full consciousness returned, pain and thirst made him call out. The fat man responded. He came into the room and surveyed Macandrew with his slow-blinking stare for a few moments before leaving again. Stroud appeared and Macandrew asked for water and something for the pain. He was given a plastic cup, half full of tepid water which he steeled himself to sip rather than gulp down. He held out the cup for more and the fat man complied mutely.

As Macandrew worked the water round his gums he became conscious of the fact that he hadn’t had a wash since leaving Simone’s apartment and God knows how long ago that was. The stubble on his face rasped against his shirt collar and he saw the sweat stains on it. Then, as he looked down at his bandaged foot, a vaguely sweet smell in the air registered with him. It was unpleasant and somehow disturbingly familiar. An alarm went off in his head as he realised what it was. It was the smell of a bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus! — a constant bugbear in all surgical units. The wound site must be turning septic! The appearance of the bandage confirmed his fears. It was filthy.

Macandrew started to panic. ‘Christ man, my foot’s infected!’

‘There’s nothing I can do,’ said Stroud.

‘I have to clean the wound.’

‘Later,’ said Stroud.

‘At least, give me something for the pain?’

Stroud left the room and came back a few moments later with two capsules which he tossed on the table. Macandrew threw them into his mouth and washed them down with the last of the water in the cup. He held it out for more and the fat man complied.

The capsules dulled the pain but the nightmare of infection was adding to Macandrew’s anguish. If the wound was left to fester, blood poisoning would almost certainly ensue and he might well die. His head fell back on the pillow as he faced up to another unpleasant fact: he was worrying about a long-term problem when he might not actually have a long-term to worry about. As soon as Simone handed over the notes, both he and she would become expendable. The thought had no sooner entered his head than he heard Simone’s voice next door. Voices were raised and she was demanding, ‘Where is Dr Macandrew?’

Simone’s eyes filled with horror when she saw the state of him. She sank to her knees beside him, putting her arm round his shoulders and pushing his matted hair back from his forehead. ‘Oh Mac,’ she said. ‘What have they done to you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Macandrew hoarsely. ‘I couldn’t refuse to make the phone call.’

Simone put her finger to her lips. ‘You couldn’t do anything else.’ She looked down at his foot. ‘My God, what did they do to you?’

Macandrew told her and Simone gasped. ‘The bastards!’

‘Enough! Have you brought what we told you to bring?’ interrupted Stroud who was standing behind her. Parvelli, who had brought Simone to the apartment, stood threateningly beside him.

When Simone didn’t respond Stroud snapped angrily, ‘Come! You wanted to be sure he was alive and you can see that he is.’

‘Only until you hand the notes over,’ said Macandrew. ‘Then we both become surplus to requirements.’

‘I haven’t got them on me,’ said Simone.

‘What?’ said Parvelli.

‘I’m not entirely stupid. I wasn’t going to take the risk of you just taking them and then killing us.’

Parvelli took a menacing step towards her but Stroud stopped him. ‘Where are they?’ he demanded.

‘I have a proposition,’ said Simone.

Parvelli made to move closer again but Stroud again put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Go on.’

‘You want the notes very badly. You think that, once you have them, you will be able to make as much of the protease as you want. Am I right?’

‘What’s your point?’ asked Stroud.

‘The chances of you being able to synthesise the chemical would be about the same as me flying to the moon on a broomstick.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘No, it was difficult, even for a top-flight biochemist like John Burnett to synthesise it. Amateurs would have no chance. You need us alive. Dr Macandrew and I are both trained scientists. I suspect that you are not.’

Macandrew closed his eyes and wished Simone well with her gamble. He personally had trouble reconstituting TV dinners let alone carrying out complicated biochemical syntheses.

‘What have you done with the notes?’

‘I mailed them along with the protease.’

‘To whom?’

‘To myself... at the Post Office... here in Marseilles.’