by Ken McClure
‘They’re not using Cytogerm,’ said MacLean flatly. ‘There’s no point.’
Tormo finished his work at the clinic a bit sooner than MacLean had anticipated and he and Leavey had to invent excuses for delaying their departure in order to give Willie MacFarlane time to get back to the car. They were still stalling as they left the Hacienda and came down the steps to the car park. MacLean turned and looked up at the cliff face, towering above the clinic and at the massive rock overhang that ran like a lip round the top. ‘I wouldn’t like to attempt that climb,’ he said.
‘It would be impossible,’ agreed Tormo.
‘Maybe if you were to make an approach from the left,’ suggested Leavey, ‘It just might be on. You could miss the worst of the overhang but even at that… ‘
MacLean looked at him and saw with a shiver that he was serious. ‘I think I’d rather not have to try,’ he said.
When they had delayed as much as they felt they could. They walked over to the car and MacLean managed to get a look through the back window while Tormo got in. MacFarlane wasn’t there! He looked at Leavey and shook his head slightly to convey the information. Leavey reacted quickly and slapping his hand to his forehead, he exclaimed, ‘What an idiot! I’ve left my lens cap up in the lab.’
‘No problem,’ said Tormo politely. ‘Just you wait here. I’ll get it.’
Tormo ran back up the steps while MacLean looked at his watch and said, ‘He’s five minutes overdue. Something must have happened.’
Leavey nodded and said, ‘If he’s not here by the time Tormo gets back we’ll have to leave without him.’
Tormo returned after nearly five minutes saying that he had looked everywhere but had failed to find Leavey’s lens cap. Leavey shrugged his shoulders and said that he must have dropped it somewhere along the way. MacFarlane’s absence put a strain on conversation on the way back down the mountain as both MacLean and Leavey found themselves preoccupied with thoughts of what might have happened to him.
When they arrived back in Fuengirola they accepted Tormo’s offer of coffee up in his office feeling obliged to out of courtesy but they left as soon as was politely possible.
‘I hope to God he’s all right,’ said MacLean as he and Leavey walked towards Jose’s cafe.
‘He’s probably stumbling down the mountain right now,’ said Leavey. ‘You know Willie.’
MacLean wasn’t convinced.
As they neared the cafe, Leavey suddenly hissed, ‘Walk past!’ MacLean was startled because he had not noticed anything amiss, but he did as he was told. They rounded the corner, out of sight of the cafe and Leavey drew him into to the wall and said, ‘Did you see the man sitting outside the cafe?’
‘Yes,’ replied MacLean.
‘He picked up his newspaper as we approached and started reading.’
‘So what?’ asked a bemused MacLean.
‘It was upside down,’ said Leavey. ‘He was pretending. He’s been waiting for us to arrive.’
‘Oh God,’ whispered MacLean.
‘Something’s gone very wrong,’ said Leavey. ‘Did you see Jose or Maria?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither.’
They circled round to the lane that ran along the back of Jose’s cafe and picked their way carefully and as quietly as they could through the crates of oranges and vegetables that lay there until they could see the back door of the cafe. It seemed quiet enough. They crouched down and got nearer. Leavey indicated to MacLean that he was going to try the window to the left of the door. MacLean watched as the window opened and Leavey looked inside the storeroom. He seemed satisfied and climbed in through the opening.
MacLean was left alone in the lane with only a stray dog for company and the strong smell of vegetables. There was no sound from inside the cafe. MacLean swallowed because his mouth had gone dry. He was contemplating moving up to the window himself when he sensed some movement behind the back door. It moved slightly as if someone were about to open it. He moved swiftly to the wall at the side of the door and bunched his fist in readiness.
The door opened a fraction and MacLean saw Leavey appear in the opening. He held his finger to his lips and beckoned MacLean to join him. MacLean tiptoed into the cafe behind Leavey and froze at the sight that met his eyes. Maria, her eyes full of fear, sat mutely in a high-backed chair with her hands and feet tightly bound and her mouth sealed with a gag that split her face like a crescent moon. There was a man lying on the floor with his neck at an angle that said Leavey had dealt with him.
MacLean peered through a gap between a serving hatch and the wall and saw Jose standing at the bar; he was polishing the same glass over and over again, still in the belief that his daughter was being held in the kitchen at gunpoint. The angle was too acute to see if there was anyone else in the room.
‘How many?’ Leavey whispered to Maria as he undid her gag.
‘Two.’
‘Him and the man sitting outside the cafe?’ said Leavey, pointing to the dead man on the floor.
Maria nodded.
The immediate danger was that they might startle Jose into giving the game away. MacLean edged the kitchen door open a few centimetres. ‘Psst!.. Psst!.. ‘ The finger held to his lips proved enough to prevent Jose’s surprise translating into something louder. Leavey crawled across the floor of the cafe to the front door and stood up to flatten himself against the side of it. He looked to Jose and pointed with his finger to the man outside. ‘Call him!’ he said quietly.
Jose nodded and called out, ‘Senor!’ He sounded nervous and uncertain.
The man looked at Jose but did not move.
‘Senor!’
This time the man got up and made to come indoors. His leading foot had barely crossed the threshold before Leavey hit him behind the ear and he slumped unconscious to the floor. Leavey slipped his arms under the man’s armpits and dragged him through into the kitchen. They all started speaking at the same time.
MacLean held up his hand and said, ‘Jose?’
‘These men say they catch one and now they wait for his friends.’
‘They’ve got Willie,’ said MacLean. ‘Oh God, it was my idea he went up there today…’
Leavey said, ‘Willie wouldn’t have told them anything unless they made him. He must have found what we’re looking for.’
‘That means that what we’re looking for isn’t in the clinic itself; it has something to do with the basement where Willie was looking.’
Leavey agreed. He looked at the man on the floor. ‘He can tell us more when he comes round.’ He prodded the unconscious man with his foot but got no reaction.
‘They must know about the apartment too,’ said MacLean.
Leavey nodded and said, ‘That’s probably where these two were going next.’
Maria said, ‘My father has a boat in the marina.’ They all looked to Jose who said, ‘Si, the Erinia. She is yours.’
‘Perfect,’ said Leavey. ‘I suggest we move the gear into the Erinia then hit the Hacienda when they least expect it.’
Even with his pulse racing and his brain working overtime MacLean had to admire Leavey’s coolness under pressure. He was sometimes more like a machine than a man, cool, calculating, always weighing the odds and usually always right. He had just killed a man and yet he was already thinking ahead like a chess player. At that particular moment it seemed like the most ridiculous thought on earth but MacLean suddenly realised why Leavey had never married. He was invulnerable. He had no weakness, he didn’t need a partner to complement his own being because he was already complete. John Donne had been wrong; Leavey was an island.
MacLean asked what Leavey had in mind when he heard a scuffle behind him and whirled round to see the man who had been unconscious spring up and catch Maria from behind. A knife had appeared in his hand and the point was being held at her throat. MacLean could see a thin trickle of blood start to escape from where the point had broken her skin. Without saying anything, the man, his eyes bur
ning with malice, began to sidle towards the door. He held Maria in front of him while the others could only look on.
There was a moment when he had to move his knife hand away from the girl’s throat in order to open the door but it was over too quickly for Leavey or MacLean to exploit it. The door opened and the man backed out into the lane, using Maria as a shield. At that moment the stray dog in the lane decided to try its luck in Jose’s kitchen. It became entangled in the man’s legs and he overbalanced. Maria broke free and Leavey made to go for him but Jose, being nearer, beat him to it. Maria closed her eyes as she saw her father raise the meat cleaver and bring it down in a scything arc. Now they had two bodies to get rid of.
Jose brought his pick-up truck into the lane. It was agreed that Leavey would accompany him to get rid of the corpses at a quiet spot along the coast while MacLean returned to the apartment to clear it out and take their belongings to the boat in the marina.
At six o’clock, he was aboard the gently bobbing cruiser, waiting for Leavey to return. He remained below in the cabin, lying on one of the bunks and looking out through the porthole at the hypnotic white speck up in the mountains he knew was the Hacienda Yunque. He sat up smartly when he heard a noise up on deck.
‘It’s me,’ said Leavey’s voice. He came below and sat down on the bunk opposite.
‘Everything OK?’ asked MacLean.
‘No problems,’ replied Leavey.
‘What now?’
Leavey propped himself up on one elbow and said, ‘I suggest we wait until it gets dark and then we go back to the Hacienda. They won’t expect us to do that. They’ll think we’re either dead or on the run.’
‘I agree,’ said MacLean. ‘Willie must have found something big or there wouldn’t have been this much fuss.’
‘And that means Cytogerm,’ said Leavey. He swung his legs round and up on to the bunk and said, ‘It’s all or nothing time, Sean. We go in there armed and we come out with Willie and the Cytogerm.’
‘With our shields or on them,’ said MacLean ruefully. They shook hands on it.
At ten that evening they left the boat, wearing dark clothing and carrying guns. Leavey had the Colt Cobra that he had smuggled into the country in his specially designed camera case. MacLean carried the. 38 calibre Smith and Wesson that he had taken from one of the men at the cafe. They had decided to climb up to the Hacienda on foot since there would be no place to leave a car on the winding mountain road without it attracting attention. If they travelled on foot they could avoid the road altogether and scramble up the slopes of the Sierra.
After an hour’s hard going they paused for breath, leaning their backs against a large boulder to look back down on the lights of Fuengirola. Far out to sea they could see a freighter making for the Straits of Gibraltar, its navigation lights winking under a canopy of stars. All seemed serenely peaceful until MacLean felt the suggestion of a cold breeze on his cheek. He touched it and remembered the same feeling on the balcony of their apartment. ‘There’s a storm coming,’ he said.
Leavey got up to move off. ‘We don’t want to catch our death of cold do we?’
They resumed their climb.
Another half-hour and they reached the perimeter wall of the Hacienda, approaching it at the south-west corner where it was furthest from the road. Leavey scaled it first and lay horizontally along the top for a few moments before whispering, ‘All clear.’
MacLean climbed up to join him and they dropped down silently into the orchard.
The lights of the Hacienda blazed out from the cliff face like a beacon in the night as the two men flitted from tree to tree in a zig zag approach to the house. A roll of thunder overhead obscured any noise they might have made and the first large drops of rain began to patter among the trees. A fork of lightning ripped open the night sky and momentarily lit up the entire cliff face.
Leavey signalled that they make for the west corner of the building and MacLean raised his hand in acknowledgement. There were thirty metres of open ground to cover before they reached the safety of the shadows and they were right in the middle of it when lightning lit up the world around them. Both flung themselves to the ground and lay there for a few agonising moments before darkness cloaked them again. The smell of the wet turf under his face evoked for MacLean memories of the night of the fire.
They reached the comparative safety of the lower wall of the house just as the rain began in earnest. Water cascaded off the cliff face. The rock overhang made sure that it missed the Hacienda but it fell like a curtain in front of it. Leavey and MacLean were soaked to the skin by the time they reached a small, wooden door, which they surmised must lead to the cellars. Without any windows for reconnaissance, it was a moment of high tension for both of them when MacLean pulled it open, gun in hand.
They stepped on to a landing at the head of a flight of metal stairs, which led down to a lit area some ten metres below. MacLean found a catwalk to their right and indicated to Leavey that they should investigate. They crawled out along it until they could see down through ceiling pipework and observe the floor below. They were high in the rafters of what appeared to be the Hacienda’s boiler house. Below, they could see four men in overalls tending the machinery. MacLean counted four electrical generators, an oil-fired boiler and three steam sterilizers. They moved further along the catwalk and found one more man; he was sitting at a control desk with banks of dials and switches at his fingertips.
Leavey tapped the back of MacLean’s leg and signalled that they should go back. There was no room to turn round on the narrow catwalk so they had to crawl backwards on their knees and meet up again on the landing just inside the door.
‘What do you think?’ asked Leavey.
‘Looked pretty ordinary to me,’ said MacLean.
‘Me too,’ said Leavey. ‘Willie must have found something else.’
‘Let’s try the other side of the building,’ suggested MacLean.
They slipped out into the night again and moved in a crouching run to the west corner of the building, staying in the shadow of the wall. The wind was howling along the front of the building and they knew that they would meet the full force of it when they turned the corner. Even so, it took them by surprise and forced them to drop down and crawl along on their stomachs, presenting as little surface area to the wind as possible. They were close to exhaustion by the time they’d crawled along the entire front of the Hacienda and reached the shelter of the car park.
‘This is where Willie started out from,’ said MacLean when he had regained his breath. ‘Let’s try to retrace his footsteps.’
The initial choice was easy; there was only one door at that side of the building and it led to a short corridor, dimly lit by one bulkhead lamp. Two further doors led off the corridor; one had a glass panel at eye level, which revealed a flight of stairs leading up. MacLean indicated silently to Leavey that he would investigate. He pulled out his gun and held it at the ready in his right hand as he opened the door and slipped inside.
After a pause to listen for any sounds of activity from above he climbed slowly and silently to the top. There was a familiar look to the area he found himself in. A sign saying, Theatre 2, finally orientated him. He had come up in the medical flat some twenty metres away from the theatre where he had watched the operation that same morning. He returned to Leavey. ‘Willie wouldn’t have gone up there,’ he said.
Leavey opened the other door cautiously and once more they found themselves heading down into the boiler house, this time from the other end of the building. They stayed at ceiling level and moved out on to the catwalk again. ‘Whatever Willie found, it must have been here,’ said MacLean.
‘Let’s just watch,’ said Leavey.
A telephone rang below and was answered by the man who sat at the control desk. The noise of the machinery drowned out anything he said but it was obvious that he had called out something to the other workmen. Two of them stopped what they were doing and ran over to the desk to receive
instructions.
The moment passed and MacLean and Leavey were left to continue a far from comfortable vigil. The metal grating of the catwalk dug into their knees and elbows and they became painfully stiff from remaining in the same position. MacLean felt his neck became agonisingly sore and turned his face to the wall for a few moments respite.
Looking at nothing but dirty brickwork made him even more conscious of the noise of the machinery. Why? he began to think with sudden insight. Why all this noise? Why on earth did they need to run four electrical generators? The Hacienda would be connected to the main supply grid; surely they would only need a generator for emergencies and then only one! This was something that Willie with his electrical knowledge must have realised straight away. He signalled to Leavey that they leave the catwalk to where it would be easier to speak.
When they had backed off the walkway and finished rubbing their knees to restore the circulation, MacLean told Leavey his thoughts.
‘You’re right,’ said Leavey. ‘They must be churning out enough juice to supply a small town!’
‘So where is it?’ asked MacLean.
‘Another basement below this one?’ suggested Leavey.
MacLean looked doubtful. ‘It’s solid rock,’ he said.
Just then they were interrupted by the sound of a lonely wail that seemed to emanate from the rock-face itself.
‘Bloody hell,’ exclaimed Leavey.
‘Maybe that’s what Maria heard,’ said MacLean.
‘What the hell is it?’ said Leavey.
MacLean shrugged his shoulders. ‘It didn’t seem to bother them too much,’ he said, nodding to the workmen below who seemed to be oblivious of the sound.
‘Maybe they’re too close to the machinery,’ said Leavey.
The sound faded. and Leavey and MacLean returned to the problem of the electricity supply. ‘We might be able to trace the route of the cables along the wall,’ suggested Leavey; MacLean agreed it was worth a try. They crawled back out on to the catwalk. It was Leavey who was to make the next discovery. He had failed to make any headway through tracing the line of cables along the wall and had switched his attention to pipework. There was something odd about one of the sterilizers, he decided. It did not appear to have a supply of steam.
