Pain by Adam Southward

Author:Adam Southward [Southward, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542092302
Published: 2019-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Alex separated the entries by date and laid them on the desk. Laurie had commandeered a conference room and they locked themselves in with the patient records recovered from Dr Willis’s office. Placing six of them to one side, Alex spread out the contents of the folder with Mia’s name on the front. It was disappointingly thin – ten loose sheets of paper in total, far short of what Alex would expect in a full patient record.

‘Still nothing on Dr Tau?’ he asked, lining up the papers with the edge of the desk. He plucked a few clumps of dust from them and flicked them on to the floor.

‘Nothing,’ said Laurie, ‘and nothing from his office. If he had any records, he took them with him.’

Alex remembered their interview. Dr Tau had clearly been agitated. He didn’t push Laurie on how hard they were looking for him. The doctor was merely ‘out of town’ and wasn’t a suspect in any crime. That was the official line Laurie was sticking to. Alex got the impression she was under pressure from above. The screw-up with her previous case was inviting additional scrutiny. Alex felt for her, glancing up. Their eyes met for a moment too long. Alex tore his away and placed his hands on the edge of the desk.

‘So here she is,’ he said. ‘Mia Anastos. Demographics: she’s recorded as twenty years old, but if she’s illegal then this may all be wrong. She may be younger.’ He huffed. ‘Address?’

‘Doesn’t check out,’ said Laurie. ‘The property has been empty for the last three years, according to the development company that owns it.’

‘So we can assume most of this is false.’

‘No photo,’ said Laurie.

Alex shook his head. ‘Hospital records don’t, as a rule. Images from tests will be in here – if she had an X-ray, MRI or CAT scan.’ He sifted through the notes. ‘But there aren’t any. Perhaps he had them in his home office. But whatever was there . . .’ Alex left it hanging, not needing to say it.

‘What’s that?’ Laurie pointed at one of the sheets – faded green paper. The header had Nova AG Pharmaceuticals stamped at the top.

‘It’s a prescription.’ He examined it in more detail. ‘No, it’s not, but it is a list of drugs. Never heard of them,’ he said, touching the logo. ‘There are only a few big pharmaceutical companies in the world, but thousands of small specialists. This must be the sponsor.’

‘I’ll look them up,’ said Laurie, tapping away at her laptop. Alex scanned the list of drugs, not recognising them. Proprietary brands, he assumed.

‘Funny,’ she said, clicking through the first few pages of search results. ‘No results for Nova AG.’

Alex shrugged. ‘They may not be public. It might be a subsidiary business. I’m more concerned about what they were up to.’

Laurie pushed her laptop to one side.

The demographic sheet was probably useless, so Alex moved on to the reasons for current visit – that is, why Mia had been at City Hospital in the first place.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.