People in Season Read Online Free PDF Page B

arm reaches for the conference room’s doorknob. Opening it and begging them to enter, he is a parody of a gentleman. ‘At least you got a new coat out of it, sweetheart.’
    At once, all looks go to the projection at the far end of the room. A photo of a man’s face dominates the wall. He seems to have been carved and sanded especially for the image. Though the picture is one from a photo booth, for a passport or driver’s licence, he is no less attractive for it. The sanguine expression he wears could be that of a statesman, or better yet, a man who could play one in Hollywood. Both women stop to absorb the beauty, one choosing a guarded expression, the other visibly salivating.
    Not missing a beat, Barry jeers, ‘Don’t fight over him just yet, ladies.’
    ‘Who on earth is he?’ asks Joanne.
    ‘That arresting youth, is Doctor Alistair Evans.’
    ‘He’s gorgeous,’ breathless, she falls into her chair at the head of the table. ‘Such a virtuous smile.’
    ‘Yeah, I wonder who he stole it from. He has, after all, only just dodged charges of malpractice, relating to four women who he sent to intensive care in a north London hospital last year. All a bit mundane until you take his history into account, a colourful CV with a sprinkling of sexual harassment claims and also happens to include a dropped manslaughter charge.’
    ‘My God.’ Hand pressed against chest, Joanne declares, ‘I’m in love.’
    ‘And it’s exclusive to us for now.’
    ‘Barry, I take back everything I said about you. Close the door, let’s hammer this out and get it online.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Ava says, cautious. She’s gotten a sniff of something she likes and, as is her habit, goes to doing what she can to get it without giving a thought to the how or why. ‘This is an English story. Why should we be breaking it?’
    Joanne, exasperated, explains, ‘He’s beautiful and he murders people.’
    Barry sits, arms lazily folded. ‘Besides, he’s Irish.’
    ‘One of us,’ Joanne swoons. ‘Take us through it. Who are these patients he hurt?’
    Tapping a display, Barry brings up information on the doctor’s background to recite. ‘Working with subjects in early stage testing of a potential new medicine for inflammatory diseases, the worst of them reportedly had extreme breathing difficulties within three hours of taking the drug. One ended up in a coma for fifteen days. Loss of blood to her limbs during the ordeal resulted in dry gangrene – that’s mummification of toes, leaving them like stone. Gruesome, but why is it the good doctor’s fault? He didn’t develop the product. Here’s the suss part. In animal studies, delivery of the drug had been carried out over a period of an hour. In the human trial this was reduced to six minutes. Apparently that’s a big deal. On top of that, there’d been concerns that a patient, who’d been prescribed an antibiotic the week previous, would react badly. Two red flags that both needed signatures for them to be overlooked, and our beautiful man,’ Barry gestures to the screen, ‘is the bloke who did the signing.’
    ‘Medical trial gone wrong doesn’t exactly make him Doctor Death,’ Ava tuts.
    The doubt is ignored. Her colleagues put it down to a competitive streak she’s grown with Barry.
    ‘Where’s this manslaughter charge?’
    Barry winces, ‘More a suspicion really.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘Working for the same company, SimperP, an American business in the top ten big pharma, he was based at their Jersey labs overseeing yet another medical trial when a woman died from an aneurism. There was a suspicion that trace amounts of cytokine would be found in her system but it’s not explained why. Hours passed by the time she got to autopsy, which is suss in itself, and that’s not even taking into account that any trace might have left her system by then.’
    ‘That’s it?’ Ava’s voice sinks dubiously. ‘They brought him up on charges for that?’
    ‘Tell me