Ken McClure - The Anvil

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, Senor?’ 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 Jose 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 Jose’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 Jose 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 Senor, 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.’