The Anvil

FOUR

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?’

MacLean shook his head and said, ‘I’ve no idea. But with no further doubt remaining about my identity they told me to face the river. I stood there waiting for a bullet to crash into my spine. I remember the smell of the grass and the sound of a seagull crying overhead. I could see every ripple on the water and hear every gurgle by the bank. It was as if all my senses had been heightened. These were the last things I was to see and hear on earth.’

‘But they obviously weren’t.’

‘For some reason, maybe the noise factor, they didn’t shoot me. Instead, they hit me over the head with the gun barrel and pushed me into the water. By rights I should have drowned but I survived. An angler fishing a few hundred yards downstream pulled out my unconscious body and called an ambulance.’

‘You were lucky,’ said Tansy.

MacLean looked at her as if what she had said was debatable. ‘I didn’t come round for four days; I had a fractured skull but I was alive. I was also a nervous wreck. I had cheated death three times, there probably wasn’t going to be a fourth.’

Tansy nodded and touched the backs of MacLean’s hands.

‘When I was well enough to leave hospital I decided to disappear. I changed my name, my address and my job. I became Dan Morrison, itinerant labourer.’

‘A labourer?’

‘There aren’t too many jobs you can get without papers and identity checks but working on a building site is one of them.’

‘That must have been quite a change.’

‘It was,’ agreed MacLean, smiling slightly at the recollection. ‘For the first few weeks I had to go straight to bed when I got in at night; I was so exhausted. When I got up in the morning it seemed as if every muscle in my body was screaming at me. But gradually it got better. I became fitter, leaner, harder. I regained confidence in myself because the intense physical effort was giving me relief from mental anguish. I was always too tired to dwell on the past for very long. I even started to make plans for the future. I would be Dan Morrison for two years. After that time I reckoned that Lehman Steiner would have given up on me and it would be safe for me to go back to medicine as long as I maintained a low profile.’

‘So you stayed on the building site,’ said Tansy.

‘For a while,’ said MacLean. ‘But the talk among the men was of the big money to be made on the North Sea oil platforms. It sounded like something a single man with no ties like Dan Morrison would go for. Apart from that, who would think of looking for a plastic surgeon on an oilrig in the North Sea?’

‘Good point,’ said Tansy.

‘I left the building site one Friday and headed north to Aberdeen. By the following Thursday I was a roustabout on the Celtic Angel rig, two hundred miles north-east of Stonehaven.’

‘Good Lord,’ said Tansy.

‘It was cold, hard and lonely. I didn’t know a soul on the rig and I didn’t have anyone on shore to come home to. The work was heavy and the weather was appalling. The North Sea has a malevolence in winter that words just cannot do justice to. The wind howls down from the Arctic with nothing to get in its way and the sea can look like a mountain range on the move. It got so cold at times that if you touched anything metal on deck without gloves on, your skin stayed there.’

‘It sound awful,’ said Tansy.

‘These chaps earn their money,’ said MacLean. ‘Don’t ever let anyone ever tell you otherwise.’

‘How long did you stick it?’

‘Eighteen months,’ said MacLean.

Tansy was surprised. ‘A long time,’ she said.

‘I know it must sound strange after what I’ve just said but in some ways it was one of the best times of my life. As time went by I made friends, good friends among men I wouldn’t have normally met. There was something very satisfying about living a life completely free from all petty social veneers and pretensions. There’s no room for airs and graces on the drilling platform in a force eight gale. Equally there’s no room for slackers or incompetents. Mutual respect and honest endeavour were the rules of the game.’

‘So you worked hard,’ said Tansy with a question mark in her voice.

‘All right,’ agreed MacLean, ‘We played hard too if that’s what you mean. But it wasn’t the meaningless waste I’d always assumed that to mean. Drink helped us to relax and we deserved that. In fact it was essential to unwind. The alternative might have meant a real nervous breakdown.’

‘And you were free of Lehman Steiner?’

‘Yes, I was finally free of Lehman Steiner. I reckoned on spending six more months in the North Sea and then returning to medicine. Then came the accident.

We were working on the drilling platform in atrocious conditions. The wind carried away any words almost before they left our lips so we had to communicate by hand signals. There was a misunderstanding and chains started to fly everywhere. Two of the gang were hit and seriously injured. There was no possibility of a helicopter landing on the rig in that weather so I had to do what I could for them. We had a well-equipped sickbay on board but the men needed more than first aid. I took over from the attendant and performed a tracheotomy on one of them to help him breathe.’

‘That must have raised a few eyebrows,’ said Tansy.

‘There was more to come I’m afraid,’ said MacLean. ‘The other man went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing. Mouth to mouth and cardiac massage failed to re-start his heart. Even the paddles had no effect.’

‘Paddles?’ asked Tansy.

‘For electric shock,’ replied MacLean. In the end I cut open his chest and started his heart with my hand,’ said MacLean.

‘My God,’ said Tansy. ‘What a risk.’

‘Luckily it paid off. Both men recovered when they were eventually flown off but I had blown my cover. The gang worked out that I had something more than a first-aid badge from the boy-scouts. I had to come clean and admit that I was a doctor. I asked them to keep my secret.’

‘And?’

‘They were great. They said that they understood perfectly. To be working on the rig I must have been struck off for taking advantage of my female patients while under the anaesthetic. They would do the same given half a chance.’

Tansy smiled.

MacLean said, ‘I managed to convince them that I hadn’t been struck off but that my life might be in danger if stories of a doctor working as a roustabout on the rigs were to get around. They promised that my secret would be safe with them and I believed them. There were no men on earth I would have trusted more. They also offered their help in solving my “problem”. I declined of course, but then I thought of a way in which a couple of them could help me.’

‘How so?’ asked Tansy.

‘Throughout the whole Lehman Steiner affair I had been plagued by feelings of helplessness. Fear, anger, frustration had all played their part but the feeling of utter helplessness was the worst to bear in the long term. I could get angry, I could get mad, but I couldn’t do anything about it! I’ll never forget the feeling of complete impotence I had on the riverbank while I waited for the National Front yobs to kill me. I just stood there doing nothing, meekly waiting for death.’

‘You couldn’t have done much in the circumstances,’ said Tansy.

MacLean became animated. He said, ‘But don’t you see, Lehman Steiner were sending people to kill me and all I could do was run? Run or hide; these were my only two options.’

‘What else could you do?’ asked Tansy.

‘Fight,’ said MacLean. ‘I could fight back but only if I knew how.’

‘And that’s where your friends came in,’ said Tansy.

‘Yes,’ nodded MacLean. ‘I hoped that I was free of Lehman Steiner for good but just in case I wasn’t I wanted to know how to do a bit more than just run scared.

‘Go on,’ said Tansy.

‘I knew that a few of the gang had been in the services. One, Mick Doyle, had served with the SAS and another, Nick Leavey had been a sergeant in the Paras.’ I asked them if they would teach me how to look after myself.’

‘And they agreed to teach you the ancient art of knocking nine bells out of somebody else?’ said Tansy.

‘More or less,’ agreed MacLean. ‘Not the Wednesday night at the YMCA stuff, but the real thing, every dirty trick in the book. As it turned out, my own knowledge of human anatomy and physiology helped a great deal. Doyle and Leavey knew what to hit and I knew why.’

‘When you broke the ice with your feet… ‘ began Tansy.

‘La Savate,’ said MacLean. ‘It’s a French martial art, something Nick Leavey taught me.’

‘So you became an expert,’ said Tansy.

‘You could say,’ replied MacLean. ‘I set out to learn everything there was to learn but something else happened too. As I became more competent I also became more confident. I began to resent the fact that Lehman Steiner had taken away so much of my life.’

‘You wanted to get your own back?’ asked Tansy.

MacLean shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d long given up nurturing notions like that. I simply wanted my life back. I wanted to be back in medicine. I didn’t want to wait any longer. Time had run out for Dan Morrison. Sean MacLean had become restless.’

‘Sean,’ said Tansy. ‘I didn’t know your name was Sean. It suits you.’

MacLean leaned over and kissed her gently. It was a spontaneous gesture of affection that MacLean himself did not really understand. But there was so much about the last two days that he didn’t understand. Tansy didn’t draw back but she didn’t respond. She reached up and touched his cheek gently saying softly, ‘Go on.’

MacLean continued. ‘It was a spur of the moment decision to leave the rig. We had just flown in to Aberdeen at the end of a two-week stint. We hit the pubs as we always did on the first night back on shore and as usual, the men drifted away one by one to return to their girlfriends and families. By eleven o’ clock there were just three of us left, Doyle, Leavey and myself, the three who had nobody to go home to. It was then that I told them I wasn’t going back. I was returning to medicine even if there was a chance that my enemies might still be trying to track me down. They wished me well and as a parting gift Mick Doyle gave me the gun you found in my pocket. The “equaliser” he called it if the odds should ever become too great. He spent most of his leave teaching me how to use it. When he returned to the rig I practised on my own. I had plenty of time because I had to let my hands recover before I could think of applying for a medical job. Two years of hard labour had not been kind to them.’

Tansy looked at MacLean’s hands and saw what the canal ice had done. She lifted one and kissed it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

MacLean shook his head almost imperceptibly.

‘Would you like to break for a while?’

MacLean nodded.

‘I’ll have to do some shopping. I’ll take Carrie with me. You will be here when we get back won’t you?’

MacLean nodded but Tansy needed more.

‘Promise?’ she said.

‘Promise,’ said MacLean. He watched the Mini pull away from the drive and smiled at Carrie who was kneeling on the back seat waving to him.

MacLean could almost touch the silence that descended on the house. It had been a living, breathing place when Tansy and Carrie had been there but now it was just a house, an inanimate pile of bricks and mortar. He found that he could think clearly again. His stay there had been, as he had really known all along, a temporary diversion from what he had to do. He started to look for his overcoat. It wasn’t on any of the pegs in the hall where his jacket hung. Tansy had put it away somewhere.

As a last resort, MacLean tried the large wardrobe in Tansy’s room. He found his coat hanging in the left side; it was the only thing there. Was this where Keith had kept his clothes? he wondered. He removed it and replaced the metal hanger, which jangled against the others like Tibetan prayer bells for a very long time. He stared at the emptiness he’d left then closed the door. He put the coat on and turned up the collar.

MacLean paused at the gate and looked back at Carrie’s snowman and the igloo. ‘Good-bye Mr Robbins,’ he whispered and started towards the canal towpath. He would walk back to town the way he had come.

With every step of the way the colours of the last two days faded into the cold grey of reality. The canal was still frozen; the towpath hard as iron and the sky was becoming more leaden by the minute. MacLean was sure it was going to snow again but when it did come it was hail. Icy rivets were driven into his face as he hurried to the shelter of a stone bridge. He waited under the arch, looking down at his feet and listening to his breath coming in uneven pants. He plunged his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat and came across something that he could not remember being there. It felt like an envelope.

MacLean brought it out and found it was a plain, white envelope, sealed but with no writing on it. He tore it open untidily because of the numbness in his fingers and withdrew a single sheet of paper. On it were the words, ‘You promised!’

Just when he thought he had broken the spell and escaped, Tansy had reached out and touched him. MacLean rested his forehead against the cold stone of the bridge and tried to find his resolve. No good could come of any further delay he told himself. He would only bring hurt to innocent people and yet… he started back along the towpath towards the bungalow. The wind was now behind him. He was uneasy about his decision but he had made it.

When he reached the house MacLean could see that Tansy and Carrie had returned. Carrie was standing in the garden looking lost. She looked up when she heard MacLean reach the head of the path. ‘You’re back!’ she cried and then to her mother, ‘He’s back! He’s back!’

Tansy came out into the garden and looked at MacLean standing there. Her eyes told him that she knew what he’d intended.

‘I thought I would get some fresh air,’ he lied.

Tansy nodded without taking her eyes from his. ‘Come inside. I’ll make coffee.’