The Anvil (30 page)

‘Maybe they see the rich clients at the clinic and get a taste for the good life. It happens.’

Maria shook her head. ‘Not my friend Carla!’ she insisted. ‘Carla Vasquez and I were best friends. We played together when we were children; we went to school together; we told each other everything. She would never have gone off without telling me first.’

‘And you’ve heard nothing since? asked MacLean.

‘Nothing. Her mother has had two post-cards saying that she is well and happy but I don’t believe it. There’s something wrong, I’m sure of it.’

‘What about post-marks?’

‘Madrid,’ said Maria.

‘And Madrid is a very big place,’ conceded MacLean.

‘Si, and far away.’

MacLean asked about the patients at the clinic. What were they like?’

‘Rich women,’ said Maria. ‘Nearly always from the north of Europe, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, England. Many have titles.’

‘Why do they come here? Do you know?’

‘The Hacienda has a reputation for being the best,’ said Maria. Everything is of the very highest quality. Even the most difficult patients seem pleased.’

‘What sort of treatment do they come for?’

‘Oh, the usual,’ said Maria. She cupped her hands unnecessarily under her own small breasts and made a lifting movement then she gripped her right thigh as if it was much larger than it was and said, ‘The riding breeches.’

MacLean smiled at the terminology. ‘How about faces?’ he asked tentatively.

‘A lot of face lifts,’ said Maria. ‘Noses, chins and eyes. The surgeons are very good; they never leave scars. There is nothing to tell other women that an operation has been carried out.’

MacLean swallowed. ‘No scars? Was it conceivable that they were using Cytogerm for cosmetic surgery and ignoring the risks? He balked at the thought.

‘Why are you so interested in the Hacienda, Señor?’ asked Maria.

‘Like you, I think there is something wrong about the place,’ said MacLean. ‘It’s much too long a story to tell you just now but we three have come here to find out the truth. We may need your help. What do you say?’

Maria did not hesitate. She said, ‘I will do anything that will help me find out what happened Carla.’

MacFarlane came across to the table to ask what they were talking about.

‘I think we have found what we came here to find, Willie,’ said MacLean.

‘So it is here after all?’ said MacFarlane.

‘Looks like it,’ said Leavey. ‘And from what Maria told us we were sitting in the shade of its walls this afternoon.’

The original plan to return to Malaga was scrapped. MacLean asked about the possibility of renting accommodation in Fuengirola. Maria thought that it should not be too much of a problem at that time in the season. Most of the apartment blocks along the sea front had been built for letting purposes. MacLean, anxious to maintain as low a profile as possible, asked if she knew of anything personally. He saw from her eyes that she had taken his point.

Maria said something to her father in rapid Spanish. MacLean managed to abstract the word, ‘Perla’ from the reply. He remembered that he had seen the word on an apartment block in the Paseo Maritimo. He was right. Maria said that her father had a friend who owned property in the building. He would telephone him. Twenty minutes later, after thanking José and Maria and saying that they would see them in the morning, MacLean got into a cab with Leavey and MacFarlane. It would take them to their new apartment in the Paseo Maritimo.

At two in the morning the three men were still sitting on the balcony of the apartment quietly discussing the swinging fortunes of the day. The air was pleasantly warm, although humid, and a moon shone down from a cloudless sky to highlight the waves as they lapped gently on the shore below.

‘Maybe we should have gone back to pick up the car,’ said MacLean.

‘Let’s just leave it,’ said Leavey. ‘It’s just another rented car that got dumped; happens all the time. It wasn’t damaged so no harm done; there’s nothing there to concern the police.’

MacLean felt reassured. He wished that he had Leavey’s capacity for analysing each situation on its merits instead of a Scottish conscience that promised disaster as a consequence of every misdemeanour.

MacFarlane stretched his arms in the air and yawned. ‘I think I’ll turn in,’ he said.

‘Me too,’ said Leavey, getting up and grimacing at the noise his chair made on the balcony tiles.’

‘Ssh! You’ll have the neighbours round!’ chided MacFarlane.

MacLean was left alone. He too was tired but a crocodile of questions was queuing up for his attention. If he took them to bed he wouldn’t sleep. He stood up and leaned on the balcony rail to look at the silhouettes of the fishing boats which had been pulled up on the beach for the night. It wasn’t that any of the questions to be answered were difficult, it was fitting all the answers together that was the problem.

If Von Jonek was using Cytogerm on wealthy, influential women for purely cosmetic reasons it must mean that he had found a way round the problem of tumour induction. But if that were true, why keep it a secret? And why was such a major advance being squandered on such trivial surgery? Von Jonek had to have found a way round the problem, hadn’t he? Surely he couldn’t be using Cytogerm with a ten- percent death rate … could he? Hell no, reasoned MacLean. The aristocracy of Europe hadn’t tolerated a ten percent death rate since the French Revolution.

It was now some time after three in the morning and tiredness was winning. It seemed an awfully long time since he’d been in bed.

It was after eleven before the three men were up and about again. MacLean was pleased that they had managed to sleep well because they had all been in need of a good rest and there was no hurry this morning. They still had quite a lot to ask Maria before they even thought of tackling the
Hacienda Yunque
. They arrived at José’s in time for lunch.

MacLean had just started to ask her some more about the workings of the Hacienda when some customers arrived and sat down at an outside table. Maria smiled and excused herself before going to serve them. MacLean liked the way she had shown no sign of irritation at the interruption. He silently congratulated José on his daughter.

The more MacLean learned of the
Hacienda Yunque
the more puzzled he became. According to Maria, there was very little in the way of security at the clinic and certainly no armed guards.

‘Why should there be?’ Maria asked.

‘Why indeed,’ agreed MacLean ruefully but the notion that X14 would be a top security laboratory facility surrounded by barbed wire and under constant surveillance was hard to get rid of. Why should an upmarket cosmetic clinic need any such precautions?

Leavey asked about local suppliers to the clinic and MacLean saw the way his mind was working. He was considering the best way to gain access to the inside.

‘None,’ replied Maria.

‘None at all?’ exclaimed MacFarlane.

‘Everything is delivered from the north,’ said Maria. ‘Local produce is not good enough for the high-born ladies of the Hacienda.’

MacLean asked about the use of local tradesmen, electricians, plumbers and the like.

‘No,’ said Maria. ‘The clinic has its own maintenance staff.’

‘But the clinic must employ some local people,’ said Leavey.

Maria realised that he was alluding to her own time there and the girls who had ‘disappeared’. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘For cleaning and cooking. A bus takes them up in the morning and brings them back in the afternoon.’

‘All women?’ asked MacLean.

Maria nodded.

MacLean sighed and looked to Leavey who said, ‘Not much scope for slipping in unnoticed.’

‘How about the medical and nursing staff Maria?’ asked MacLean.

‘None of them is Spanish.

‘But the director is Dr Von Jonek?’ said MacLean.

‘No Señor, the director’s name is, LeBlanc.’

MacLean felt the rug pulled from beneath him. Maria had never seen or heard of Von Jonek. Did that mean that the
Hacienda Yunque
was not the site of the X14 project after all? A cloud of depression engulfed him. It was possible that he had jumped to conclusions on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Maria had told him that the patients looked so well after surgery so he had immediately supposed that Cytogerm was being used. If he had stopped to think for a moment he would have realised that an essential part of cosmetic surgery was the disguising and minimising of scarring. It was very different from the surgery he had been used to. The surgeons at the Hacienda Yunque had no damaged tissue to contend with. There was no reason for the patients not to look well after surgery.

Maria sensed that something was wrong and MacLean told her that maybe the Hacienda was not the place they were looking for after all.

‘But what about Carla and the others?

MacLean shrugged apologetically.

The others were reluctant to let go too. Leavey said, ‘It’s stretching coincidence a bit far to find a link with plastic surgery here in Mijas and for it not to be concerned in some way with Lehman Steiner.’

‘But where is Von Jonek?’ argued MacLean.

‘Why is this man so important?’ asked Maria.

MacLean decided to tell her a little more. He told her that they were searching for a chemical that Von Jonek had stolen from him some years before in Geneva.

‘And it’s worth a lot of money?’

‘It’s worth more than money,’ said MacLean without explaining further.

To end the ensuing silence Leavey suddenly asked, ‘What does
Yunque
mean, Maria?

‘It means … ‘ Maria hesitated as she tried to remember the English word. She made hammering motions with her hand.

MacLean beat her to it as it came to him in a sudden rush. ‘Anvil!’ he exclaimed.

‘Yes, anvil.’

Leavey broke into a rare smile and MacFarlane said, Coincidence doesn’t stretch that far.’

MacLean agreed. ‘This has to be the place.’

‘I’ve been thinking about what you asked me yesterday,’ said Maria. ‘There is one local service that the doctors at the clinic use. They use a laboratory service in the town for lab tests on their patients.’

Questions followed thick and fast. MacLean wanted to know all about the lab, how big it was, how many people worked there, and whether the analysts ever went to the clinic themselves.

The service was run by one man working on his own and yes, he did go to the Hacienda, twice a week to cross-match blood for patients before they underwent surgery. There was always a possibility that things might go wrong in surgery and the patient might haemorrhage. A supply of fresh blood matched to the patient’s own had to be kept in readiness.

‘What other services does this man provide?’ asked MacLean.

‘Routine clinical tests for the doctors in the town,’ replied Maria.

‘What happens if he’s ill?’

‘I don’t know, Señor.’

‘A locum will go to the clinic instead,’ said Leavey with plain meaning.

‘Quite so,’ replied MacLean. ‘If only I can remember how to cross-match blood.’

‘And the man falls ill,’ added MacFarlane.

That evening, when it got dark, MacLean and the others went round to the address Maria had given them and found the sign outside the door. The Juan Tormo Laboratorio was located on the first floor of a four storey building in a quiet street that ran parallel to the Paseo Maritimo and some three blocks north of it. MacFarlane went up to have a look at the front door while Leavey and MacLean took a walk. They turned round after a few hundred metres and met MacFarlane coming to meet them. They could tell from his grin that he had been successful.

‘It’s open. I didn’t damage the lock; I can lock up again when you’ve finished.’

MacLean wasn’t sure what he was looking for when he entered the lab and used the torch that Leavey had given him to find his way around. He just needed some kind of feel for the set-up. The lab consisted of two rooms and an office. One room was equipped for bacteriology, the other for blood tests. There was nothing ultra-modern or daunting about the equipment but what there was seemed adequate for routine lab testing in a small town.

MacLean did not waste much time on the labs. He concentrated his attention on the books and papers in the office, starting with the diary and daybook. He was encouraged when he found the initials ‘H.Y.’ pencilled opposite Tuesday and Thursday of the following week, presumably these would be the days for blood tests at the clinic. The question now was, how could he possibly go in Tormo’s place? He continued leafing through the paperwork on the desk and found letters and circulars from various learned societies.

It was becoming apparent that Tormo was a committee man. His society membership certificates were displayed on the wall in glass-fronted frames as was a photograph of the man himself dressed in academic robes. No patient would ever come to these premises so there was no call to display such items for the reassurance of others. MacLean examined the photograph and considered that he had learned quite a lot about the man, most importantly, his Achilles’ heel; he was self-important. This could be used.