Ken McClure - The Anvil

‘All right, I’ll see what I can do. Anything else you want to know while I’m at it?’

‘I’d like to know if Lehman Steiner have a project code-named, Der Amboss.

Der Amboss,’ repeated Eva. ‘The anvil.’

‘So I believe,’ said MacLean. Again, don’t ask any direct questions. Just see what you can pick up.’

Eva nodded. ‘Anything else?’

‘Any current gossip or scandal,’ said MacLean.

‘From the nurses’ locker room?’ asked Eva with a smile.

‘Where else?’ agreed MacLean.

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I know you will,’ said MacLean with affection.

‘Come to dinner tomorrow night?’ suggested Eva. ‘You can meet Jean-Paul and I can tell you what I’ve managed to find out.’

MacLean agreed readily and made a note of her address.

As he lay in bed, MacLean reflected on his first day in Geneva; he was well pleased with the way things had gone. The only sour note had been struck by Peter Stahl and he considered briefly that he might bear some responsibility for that situation. On the other hand, it was only a vague recollection but he thought he could remember not liking Stahl the first time they had met. Perhaps he and Eva would have broken up anyway. Apart from that there was no room left in his head for any more guilt. Space was at a premium and Stahl didn’t even make the queue. He started to think about tomorrow and hoped Eva would remember where she had seen Von Jonek and under what circumstances. With what he could recall of Von Jonek’s features swimming before his eyes, he fell asleep.

A few miles from MacLean’s hotel, Eva Stahl was also thinking about Von Jonek. She was lying awake; annoyed at herself for not being able to remember where she’d seen him last and the harder she tried the more difficult it became to concentrate. She sighed and turned for the third time in as many minutes, this time eliciting a grunt of protest from a sleeping Jean-Paul. Eva steeled herself to lie still and concentrate. It was a full half-hour before it came back to her but when it did, she smiled in the darkness and turned over to cuddle into Jean-Paul’s back.

MacLean was relieved to find that Jean-Paul Rives was in his early forties. He had considered the possibility, albeit unlikely, that Eva’s looks might have attracted the attentions of much younger men and that the new man in her life might turn out to be a twenty year old pop star in leopard-skin trousers. Instead he was tall, balding, bespectacled and charming. He made MacLean feel immediately at ease and fixed him a drink while they waited for Eva to emerge from the kitchen.

Eva entered, licking her fingers and requesting that Jean-Paul make her one too. She came over to MacLean and kissed him on the cheek, saying, ‘How are you two getting on?’

Rives handed her drink to her.

‘Jean-Paul works for Lehman Steiner too,’ said Eva.

The smile struggled to stay on MacLean’s face. Eva saw and she put her hand on his arm. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Your secret is safe with both of us.’

‘Mother is the word,’ said Rives, putting a finger to his lips.

MacLean smiled. ‘Are you a doctor or a scientist Jean-Paul?’ he asked.

‘Neither,’ replied Rives. ‘I’m an accountant.’

‘But he’s no better with the housekeeping money than I am,’ said Eva.

‘We manage,’ smiled Rives and Eva linked arms with him to agree. MacLean could see that they were good for each other.

Over an excellent meal, Rives told MacLean how he had come to meet Eva when she was in the throes of her divorce from Peter Stahl. ‘I was in charge of financing a new clinic, which the company was setting up to work on infertility problems. Eva was seconded to recruit nursing staff.’

‘You stopped being a theatre sister Eva?’ asked MacLean.

Eva nodded. ‘When Cytogerm failed, the company started to wind down surgical research to concentrate on other things,’ she said. ‘I saw which way the wind was blowing and applied for the job of head nurse at the new infertility clinic. It was a good move; I enjoy the work.’

‘What sort of service does the clinic offer?’ asked MacLean.

‘The whole range,’ replied Eva. ‘From initial counselling sessions to in-vitro fertilisation and implant procedures.’

‘Here we go again!’ exclaimed Rives in mock horror. ‘We never have a meal in this house without discussing other peoples’ insides.’

MacLean smiled and apologised but Eva interrupted him saying, ‘Don’t apologise, Jean-Paul likes to pretend that he’s an outsider but he knows well enough what implants are.’

‘Oui,’ said Jean-Paul with a Gallic wave of the hands. ‘Mother and father make love in a test tube and you people put baby back in mummy. No?’

‘Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said MacLean.

‘Ugh, whatever happened to romance?’ said Rives.

‘All he really cares about are numbers,’ said Eva.

‘Ah, numbers,’ agreed Rives. ‘In the right hands figures can make such beautiful music. A balance sheet in harmony is like a waltz by Strauss, a sonnet by Shakespeare, a painting by Cezanne.’

MacLean smiled. He liked Rives.

MacLean waited until the coffee before broaching the subject of Eva’s inquiries.

‘I was wrong about Von Jonek,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t seen him again.’

MacLean could scarcely conceal his disappointment.

‘But I had heard from him,’ added Eva. ‘That’s what made the name seem familiar.’

‘Go on,’ said MacLean.

‘First, you were right. Von Jonek is not an archivist; he’s some sort of scientist. Two years ago, just after the clinic opened, we received a request from him.’

‘What did he want?’

‘Sperm.’

‘Good Lord.’

Eva smiled and said, ‘The staff thought it was quite odd too. Preliminary screening of husbands at the clinic involves testing their sperm. Von Jonek wanted the samples when our lab was finished with them.’

‘Did he say what for?’

Eva shook her head. ‘No. As I remember there was something of a staff competition to provide suggestions.’

‘You probably won!’ exclaimed Rives.

‘No I didn’t,’ said Eva, giving Rives a playful slap.

‘You couldn’t trace the request letter could you?’ asked MacLean.

‘I already did,’ replied Eva, ‘but it wasn’t much help. It was written on Lehman Steiner paper but there was no unit address, just the reference, X14 for internal mail purposes.’

‘X14,’ repeated MacLean.

‘I think I can help with that,’ said Rives. ‘When a new research project is initiated it is allocated an “X” number. The “X” stands for experimental, of course, and the number fourteen simply means that it was the fourteenth project to be funded in that particular financial year.’

‘You see how he removes the drama from everything?’ said Eva.

MacLean asked Rives if there was any way he could find out what the X14 project had been concerned with.

‘I’m afraid not,’ replied Rives. ‘The best I could do would be to find out if the project was successful enough to warrant further funding as a fully fledged research unit.’

‘And if it was,’ said Eva enthusiastically, ‘We would be able to find Von Jonek’s address from the company list.’

‘That would be marvellous,’ said MacLean.

‘Very well,’ said Rives. ‘I’ll try.’

Later that evening, MacLean telephoned Tansy to let her know that things were going well. She, in turn, told him that Carrie had been allowed out of bed at the weekend and that she had walked with her in the grounds of the hospital. They had stood together under the cherry trees where she and MacLean had talked and she said that, for a moment, it had seemed that he had been there with them.