Free The Anvil by Ken McClure

all played their part but the feeling of utter helplessness was the worst to bear in the long term. I could get angry, I could get mad, but I couldn’t do anything about it! I’ll never forget the feeling of complete impotence I had on the riverbank while I waited for the National Front yobs to kill me. I just stood there doing nothing, meekly waiting for death.’
    ‘You couldn’t have done much in the circumstances,’ said Tansy.
    MacLean became animated. He said, ‘But don’t you see, Lehman Steiner
    were sending people to kill me and all I could do was run? Run or hide; these were my only two options.’
    ‘What else could you do?’ asked Tansy.
    ‘Fight,’ said MacLean. ‘I could fight back but only if I knew how.’
    ‘And that’s where your friends came in,’ said Tansy.
    ‘Yes,’ nodded MacLean. ‘I hoped that I was free of Lehman Steiner for good but just in case I wasn’t I wanted to know how to do a bit more than just run scared.
    ‘Go on,’ said Tansy.
    ‘I knew that a few of the gang had been in the services. One, Mick Doyle, had served with the SAS and another, Nick Leavey had been a sergeant in the Paras.’ I asked them if they would teach me how to look after myself.’
    ‘And they agreed to teach you the ancient art of knocking nine bells out of somebody else?’ said Tansy.
    ‘More or less,’ agreed MacLean. ‘Not the Wednesday night at the YMCA stuff, but the real thing, every dirty trick in the book. As it turned out, my own knowledge of human anatomy and physiology helped a great deal. Doyle and Leavey knew what to hit and I knew why.’
    ‘When you broke the ice with your feet … ‘ began Tansy.
    ‘La Savate,’ said MacLean. ‘It’s a French martial art, something Nick Leavey taught me.’
    ‘So you became an expert,’ said Tansy.
    ‘You could say,’ replied MacLean. ‘I set out to learn everything there was to learn but something else happened too. As I became more competent I also became more confident. I began to resent the fact that Lehman Steiner had taken away so much of my life.’
    ‘You wanted to get your own back?’ asked Tansy.
    MacLean shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d long given up nurturing notions like that. I simply wanted my life back. I wanted to be back in medicine. I didn’t want to wait any longer. Time had run out for Dan Morrison. Sean MacLean had become restless.’
    ‘Sean,’ said Tansy. ‘I didn’t know your name was Sean. It suits you.’
    MacLean leaned over and kissed her gently. It was a spontaneous gesture of affection that MacLean himself did not really understand. But there was so much about the last two days that he didn’t understand. Tansy didn’t draw back but she didn’t respond. She reached up and touched his cheek gently saying softly, ‘Go on.’
    MacLean continued. ‘It was a spur of the moment decision to leave the rig. We had just flown in to Aberdeen at the end of a two-week stint. We hit the pubs as we always did on the first night back on shore and as usual, the men drifted away one by one to return to their girlfriends and families. By eleven o’ clock there were just three of us left, Doyle, Leavey and myself, the three who had nobody to go home to. It was then that I told them I wasn’t going back. I was returning to medicine even if there was a chance that my enemies might still be trying to track me down. They wished me well and as a parting gift Mick Doyle gave me the gun you found in my pocket. The “equaliser” he called it if the odds should ever become too great. He spent most of his leave teaching me how to use it. When he returned to the rig I practised on my own. I had plenty of time because I had to let my hands recover before I could think of applying for a medical job. Two years of hard labour had not been kind to them.’
    Tansy looked at MacLean’s hands and saw what the canal ice had done. She lifted one and kissed it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
    MacLean shook his head