Ken McClure - The Anvil

MacLean admitted that this might be the stumbling block but, according to Maria, security did not seem to be a big thing at the clinic. They did not behave as if they had anything to hide. MacFarlane was keen to know how he planned to look for the Cytogerm.

‘Play it by ear,’ replied MacLean, admitting that things would be a whole lot easier if Leavey were permitted to come along as the society’s photographer.

On Monday morning Leavey and MacLean turned up at Tormo’s laboratory, MacLean with his reporter’s notebook and Leavey with his camera equipment slung professionally over his shoulder.

‘Head office agreed,’ announced MacLean. ‘They’ve even assigned me a photographer.’

Tormo was delighted with the news. MacLean could see that he’d had his hair cut, just in case.

They spent the morning cataloguing the work that came in for routine analysis and Leavey took pictures of Tormo posing at the microscope and looking suitably quizzical at test tubes which he held up to the light — ‘I think my left side is better.’

MacLean had decided that he would not mention the Hacienda Yunque at this stage, gambling that Tormo would. They got to four in the afternoon without any mention having been made of it and MacLean was beginning to get anxious. Had the clinic refused permission? he began to wonder.

Tormo finished his last blood count and washed his hands. ‘Well, Senors, a typical Monday in our small Spanish town. What do you think?’

‘Absolutely fascinating,’ replied MacLean, summoning up sounds of enthusiasm.

‘And tomorrow we go to the Hacienda.’

‘Oh yes, the hacienda,’ said MacLean feigning casualness ‘The clinic had no objections?’

‘Not when they heard the name of the society.’

‘What about photographs?’ asked MacLean with his heart in his mouth.

‘There is no objection to photographs being taken provided that none of the patients appear in them. The clinic was most insistent.’

‘Quite understandable,’ said MacLean. He made a joke about it being the kind of place where women would spend thousands of dollars to come to and then pretend they’d never been there.’ They all laughed.

Late that night MacLean stood alone on the balcony of their apartment, looking at the sea and thinking of Carrie and Tansy. A breeze touched his cheek and he felt it cold. It made him shiver in the darkness. People had been saying that the weather had been unseasonably warm and that it wouldn’t last. The moon disappeared behind rolling clouds and the air started to move as if a monster had stirred in his sleep and altered his breathing pattern.

At four in the morning the storms which had been lashing the eastern Mediterranean shores of Israel and Lebanon reached the south coast of Spain on their way west. They had lost little of their venom on the journey. The wind drove the rain on shore with a fury that made babies cry and old folks cross themselves. There was no question of sleeping through the din. Leavey got up and made coffee.

‘It might work to our advantage,’ he said, as he handed mugs to the other two. If the rain persisted he wouldn’t be able to get any decent pictures of Tormo entering the Hacienda, so they might all have an excuse to go back again on Thursday, giving them two bites at the cherry.

All three of them had to put down their coffee in order to secure the balcony awnings and fasten the shutters against the night. Water poured through the drainage holes on all the balconies in the apartment block and fell like a waterfall into the courtyard below.

It was still raining when Leavey and MacLean arrived at Tormo’s laboratory and found him, as before, delighted to see them. They were his link with the recognition he so much desired. He had some specimens to attend to before they could leave for the Hacienda. There had been an outbreak of suspected food poisoning among the residents at one of the hotels in town and Salmonella was a possibility. MacLean strengthened his image by making some knowledgeable comment about the bacteriology of Salmonella infections. ‘You’ll be plating on DCA?’ he asked.

‘Si, and Selenite subculture,’ replied Tormo.

Leavey looked out of the window and tried to guess which car was Tormo’s.

It was ten thirty when they got into Tormo’s dark blue Peugeot estate car and set off for the Hacienda. Butterflies were beginning to think it was summer in MacLean’s stomach but Leavey seemed as implacable as ever. He gazed out of the window as if he were a passenger on a bus travelling a route he’d done a thousand times before.

The climb up the mountain road proved to be even more laborious than the last time, as the storm had washed mud and scree off the hillside to litter the road. In all they had to stop four times to clear obstructions from their path before reaching the great wrought-iron gates of the clinic. Tormo got out to ID himself on an entry-phone at the side. As he returned to the car an electric motor hummed into life and the gates swung slowly open.

They drove slowly up the drive and through the orchard to the house. The Hacienda looked even more impressive at close quarters although it had a brooding quality because of a large cliff overhang above it. MacLean had not realised that the house literally backed into the rock face. Leavey who had been thinking the same thing whispered, ‘No back door,’ as they followed Tormo up the fifty or so steps to the entrance. The nearer they got to the building the smaller they began to feel. It towered above them haughtily as if it and everyone in it were looking down on them.

Prompted by Leavey’s elbow, MacLean asked Tormo to pause at the head of the steps so that he could take a photograph of him entering the Hacienda. Tormo adopted a suitable pose but Leavey shook his head, maintaining that he was having difficulty with rain on the lens of the camera. He tried for the other side of the steps, crouching down as he’d once seen Patrick Lichfield do on television, but still looked deliberately doubtful. ‘A pity,’ he said. ‘This might even have made the cover.’

‘Maybe the weather will be better on Thursday,’ suggested Tormo, having taken the bait. MacLean agreed.

The door was opened by a frumpish woman in her forties whom Tormo introduced as Senora Seeler, the housekeeper. She nodded formally to Leavey and MacLean before leaving Tormo to lead the way to the clinic’s laboratory. Leavey and MacLean exchanged admiring glances as they walked through the Hacienda. This was a class act.

They passed quietly and unobtrusively through areas where residents sat, swathed in towels and robes, manicured hands holding glossy magazines, legs crossed languidly, resting on footstools which accompanied their lounger chairs. No one took notice of them; MacLean thought of the ‘invisibility’ of servants in times gone by. They paused in one of the empty rooms to admire the view from a panoramic window. They stood in silence but Chopin accompanied the vista from an unseen and unobtrusive sound system.

‘I think I want to stay here,’ murmured Leavey and MacLean agreed.

Tormo smiled and said, ‘The Hacienda is not for mere mortals Senors.’

‘Story of my life,’ said Leavey.

The small laboratory was superbly equipped but after what they had seen, they had not expected anything else. Tormo said that he was often tempted to bring up his other blood samples and run them through the automatic blood analyser; he couldn’t possibly afford one himself. The lab was the first indication that they were not in a luxury hotel because so far, they had not come across anything to suggest clinical nature of the place. There was no lingering smell of anaesthetics or disinfectant. There were no trolleys parked in the corridors and not even a nurse to be seen.