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  Getting up from his table he went up to her, ‘Morning, Polly! Good to see you.’

  ‘Oh, hi, Matt, how are things? Nick tells me you’re starting a new venture?’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s why I’m here, well we should both be here but Brett’s not arrived yet,’ and he rolled his eyes, indicating his frustration.

  Polly smiled. ‘So how’s the consultancy going, er, sorry I’ve forgotten the name of your company.’

  ‘PerzSolve, yes, well it’s early days but we’ve been invited back by Professor Plumpton and the Innovation Department to discuss our contract. We’re trying to get a start-up cancer company off the ground here. It looks really promising.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard about that, I know Hilary in Innovation. It could be so good for the university, really put us on the map,’ and she smiled encouragingly at Matt.

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ he indicated.

  They were momentarily interrupted as Polly ordered her coffee.

  ‘So how’s your work going? Sorry about all that business you had recently,’ he whispered. He was worried he’d said the wrong thing as Polly seemed to stiffen at that point, perhaps Nick shouldn’t have told him about the harassment she’d suffered. He should have realised that Nick tended to get carried away and reveal some details which others would rather have kept secret. He just hoped he wouldn’t be the cause of a marital argument this evening when Polly returned home.

  ‘I’m fine thanks, really enjoying my new role, we’ve drawn up a really good, well we think it’s good, whistle-blower policy here, it should make things much better and avoid some of the mess I had to sort out when I was in finance.’

  ‘And how’s Nick doing? Is he fully recovered?’

  ‘Yes, he’s much better thanks, he only gets headaches occasionally now, which is a big relief. I’ve been very worried about him recently. Physically he’s OK, but...’ and she trailed off.

  Matt raised his eyebrows, willing her to continue. She indicated that they should go and sit down.

  ‘It’s just that he’s been a bit undecided what to do as far as his career goes. I’m glad he’s taken a break, he needed to take stock and with me having this job we’re OK financially, well for a while anyway,’ and she paused to take a few sips of her drink. ‘It’s just that he seems to have these mood swings. He’s always been used to being really busy and occupied and now he’s considering a move into teaching, which is good, don’t get me wrong, but he’s missed the intake this year so needs to find something to tide him over and occupy him.’

  ‘It can’t be easy, I know I found it a bit hard when I left BioQex. I’m sorry to hear that he gets a bit down but I’m sure he’ll make an excellent teacher.’

  ‘Me too. The trouble is we’ve got a rather annoying neighbour at the moment and poor Nick is there at the house more than me and is getting a bit focused on him. I feel it’s eating away at him, sometimes he gets so depressed about it. Anyway, they’re only renting so we are hoping they will be off soon.’

  ‘Oh that’s a pain, we had an annoying neighbour a while ago, always coming round talking about her boys when we weren’t interested, it’s difficult, you don’t want to be blatantly rude to people like that. Sometimes we just didn’t answer the door, almost had to hide behind the sofa!’ and they both chuckled.

  Polly looked at her watch, ‘It’s been good to catch up. Perhaps next time you are here we could meet up for lunch? Have a proper chat, I could even get Nick to come along and meet us here?’

  ‘Sounds great. Oh, look who’s decided to turn up,’ he said jokingly looking over to see Brett striding in confidently, as usual, furling his umbrella and shaking the rain off his coat.

  ‘Right, well good luck, Matt,’ and she waved goodbye nodding at Brett who by now had reached their table.

  ‘Polly, hi, not leaving on my account, is it my aftershave you don’t like?’ asked Brett.

  ‘Ha! No, don’t worry. Good luck, Brett, must go now,’ said Polly smiling as she hurried away.

  ‘Hi, sorry I’m a bit late,’ said Brett, still gazing over at Polly’s receding figure. ‘She’s an attractive lady isn’t she? Lucky old Nick.’

  ‘Look, you’re almost a married man,’ said Matt.

  ‘Spoilsport,’ replied Brett, ‘no harm in looking.’

  ‘Look, we need to concentrate on this morning, there are all the fine details we have to iron out.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ replied Brett, ‘come on then, don’t dawdle.’

  Brett could be insufferable at times but as they walked away Matt had an idea he wanted to discuss with him before they reached the professor’s office. It had been a very timely encounter with Polly.

  **

  Ron Radford was having a busy morning. He’d just had an update from one of his men who was undertaking some preparatory work. Things were looking promising, he’d used one of his most reliable employees. His unofficial business mobile rang once more, ‘Cole,’ he answered.

  ‘It’s Lee,’ said the caller.

  ‘Hello, my boy, I hope you’ve got some interesting news for me, I don’t like to be bothered unnecessarily.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve just heard that things seem to be moving at the university, so to speak. There’s another big meeting today where some consultants are going along to sort out this new spin-off company.’

  ‘Oh, well that is interesting,’ replied Cole.

  ‘Well according to that tart, Erin, it means that they should have a plan and be able to move ahead. She’s overheard that Prof speaking and he reckons if they get some more manpower sorted out and they can organise things better then, well, it will get a boost.’

  ‘Any idea of a time frame?’

  ‘Not at the moment but she’s going to have access to the minutes of the meeting today, she’s sitting in on the meeting. They’ve got lots of documents, she’s going to take some copies.’

  ‘Excellent. How bright do you think this Erin is?’

  ‘No idea, she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but not a complete moron. She managed to get those details from personnel that you wanted didn’t she?’

  ‘She did indeed and we’ve been able to set up a bit of surveillance on a certain student and his pretty girlfriend.’

  ‘Yes, I did hear about that from chatting to the boys. Was there anything else you needed me to do? I’m more than happy to help with anything.’

  ‘Not at the moment. You’ve given me some things to think about, thanks, Lee. I’ll be in touch. And remember, I want to know what’s going on all the time. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, sure, I’ll be in touch,’ and he ended the call.

  Lee’s heart had been racing. He always felt nervous when talking to Cole, he was easily upset and it wasn’t a good idea to annoy him. He needed this job though, otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to manage. Refusal to cooperate wasn’t an option otherwise he would be shopped to the police and he didn’t want another stretch inside, no way. This could be a good opportunity with Cole though, it might enable him to progress through the ranks of his team. Perhaps in the future, he wouldn’t be at the very bottom of the rung doing all the dirty work, maybe he would have a more supervisory role in charge of one of his business outlets. He needed to keep in close contact with his mate Scott and make sure he got all the information from his girlfriend Erin, he was certain he could be made to comply. After all, he wouldn’t want to look at Erin if she got knocked about a bit would he? It was lucky that Erin hadn’t been exactly whiter than white in her time at the university. Silly Scott for telling him about it he thought. He looked at his watch, he would go to the gym for a while then get some sleep before he started his evening shift at the club. Later today he would hopefully get another update on what was happening at the university.

  Chapter 8

  Matt and Brett were seated around the table in a meeting room along with three senior figures from their last meeting, namely Derek Plumpton, Hilary Worksop from the innovation section and Ian French, Head o
f Faculty. Dr Phil Sweetman, Derek’s deputy was also attending today as he had been supervising the chemistry effort in the professor’s absence. They were waiting for Rebecca Levinson who had just messaged that she would be slightly late. Steve Carter rushed in and apologised for cutting it fine. A secretary whom they introduced as Erin had just brought in some refreshments and was currently trying to get the projector working. Brett was having trouble concentrating as she was having to lean over the desk so he was currently gazing at her ample cleavage which was threatening to burst out of her low cut top at any moment. Her trousers looked like they would need to be surgically removed when she went to bed. He wondered how she managed to remove them to go to the loo, perhaps she had an extremely capacious bladder he thought. Matt noticed where Brett’s eyes were focussed and gave him a surreptitious disdainful look which had absolutely no effect on his colleague who continued to examine every detail of Erin’s anatomy.

  ‘Ah, that’s it,’ said Erin triumphantly, as she wiggled back round to her seat at the back of the room.

  ‘Right, well we can make a start,’ said Derek. ‘Sorry about that, we’ve got a new one on order, this is a rather old projector we’ve had to borrow from another department, one of ours went, how shall we say, missing, a few weeks ago. Who’s going to start then?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Matt. ‘Following our last meeting we’ve drawn up some more detailed plans which we can go through now.’ He woke up his laptop and the first slide was projected onto the screen. It showed a logo and a company name. ‘As you can see we think PersCure is an appropriate name for this fledgling company. It’s good to advertise the origins as being from Persford University. We’re being bullish about this being a cure for certain cancers as that’s what we believe has been discovered here.’ He paused and looked around at his audience who were nodding encouragingly.

  ‘That’s great, Matt,’ agreed Professor Plumpton. ‘The logo looks great as well.’

  The professor did sound genuinely upbeat and impressed but his appearance suggested that he was really struggling against his illness. His pallor was ashen and he looked to have a fine sheen of sweat on his brow despite the room being pleasantly cool due to the air-conditioning. He took a sip of water and the glass shook noticeably. Somewhat embarrassed he quickly replaced it on the table and asked Matt to continue.

  ‘My next slide shows a summary of the financial details of the funding we hope to secure. We feel that this will give a cushion of at least twelve months for PersCure to operate comfortably and allow it to expand manning, buy any additional equipment needed and to pay fees to ensure the invention is patented. We think it appropriate that we act as consultants for the next six months with an option to extend for a further six if we have been shown to have added value.’

  ‘We are extremely excited by this chance to assist you in your venture,’ added Brett, smiling broadly at Hilary who coloured slightly as their eyes met. ‘We feel we can offer advice on the design of suitable medical entities and to assist in any difficult problems with the chemical synthesis.’ This again received a positive response.

  The door opened and the oncologist Rebecca slipped quietly into the room, mouthing “sorry” and quietly pulled out a chair. The group smiled at her and the presentation continued.

  ‘The front-runner compound has already undergone some preliminary toxicology studies and looks to have quite a clean profile. Obviously we need to repeat those in several species and over a longer time frame. However we would expect that a Phase One study might be possible in twelve months and after that there should be sufficient impetus for it to be fast tracked into patients under the Early Access to Medicines scheme.’

  ‘If I can just add something?’ said Rebecca. ‘We can also apply to the Cancer Drugs Fund to support a Phase Two trial in cancer sufferers. There’s a big push for patients to have earlier access to promising new treatments.’

  ‘This brings me nicely to the manning aspect of the company,’ said Matt, bringing up his next slide. ‘The additional financing should provide for at least one additional postdoctoral position and adverts need to be sent out as soon as possible. This would be a fully funded position by the university. Hopefully, we can recruit someone in the UK or someone who is coming to the end of their tenure here.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t agree more that we need more manning but since you raised it last week I’ve been looking into it and I’m not sure how easy it will be,’ sighed Derek.

  ‘Well, this is one option and it goes without saying that we need to recruit someone with a broad chemical knowledge in many aspects of chemical synthesis and also with expertise in problem solving and larger-scale synthesis. For those attributes we would be ideally looking for someone who has spent many years in a research environment who would need little training and able to slot into the work here.’

  ‘Well, obviously that would be great, but it would take time surely to recruit someone like that. People with the attributes you describe can be hard to find,’ cautioned Derek.

  ‘We can’t say definitely at this moment but we have someone in mind. Someone whom we can vouch for. We’ve both worked with him in the past and he has proved to be a very able chemist. He recently completed an M.Sc. here. When we leave this meeting we are going to contact him,’ replied Matt.

  ‘That’s great, but the university is very rigorous on how it appoints people. We would need to advertise the post and make sure that we went through a process of due diligence. There would have to be an open and fair interview and selection process. Hilary, do you want to add anything?’

  ‘Derek’s right. Any failure to do so might leave us open to criticism, bad publicity, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I see,’ said Matt. ‘Well, there is an alternative. The person we have in mind could be a sort of technical consultant employed by us, PerzSolve. The salary would of course be funded from our total fees for the whole package we are offering. That way you won’t have to be involved with the selection process in any way.’

  Derek and Hilary thought in silence for a few moments. They exchanged glances and Derek nodded at Hilary whilst he drank some water and wiped his brow with his cotton handkerchief.

  ‘Well, that sounds like a good compromise,’ said Hilary. ‘What sort of salary would you be offering him?’

  ‘Well, that is for discussion but for a six-month contract we think that twenty thousand pounds would be appropriate,’ said Brett.

  There was a perceptible intake of breath at that moment, but no rebuttal of the suggestion.

  ‘We think it will be money well spent,’ continued Brett. ‘You need manning and you need it quickly. We want to present an attractive package to our ex-colleague. After six months if you aren’t happy with his contribution then there is, of course, no obligation to extend it.’

  ‘Let’s go for it,’ added Derek, ‘Hilary?’

  ‘Yes, sounds good, if he’s got your backing then I don’t see what can go wrong. I think you should ask him to send in his CV, just so we can hold it on record.’

  ‘Great,’ said Matt and Brett simultaneously.

  ‘Perhaps now we can go through some of the fine details?’ and he handed out a folder of information to the group. Once they were through with the discussions and their fees had been approved Matt would try to contact Nick. He hoped he could be persuaded. His talents could be put to good use here.

  **

  That same morning Nick had arranged a meeting at a local school to observe a science lesson and to speak to the teaching staff and headmaster. The school was about a fifteen minute drive away and he’d been told to arrive around 9.30 a.m. so as to avoid arriving during registration and when the head might be occupied dealing with any crises at the beginning of the school day. Nick was also pleased that by that time the rush hour would be largely over and he shouldn’t get stuck in traffic. It wasn’t an interview as such but he wanted to create a good impression so he had opted for some smart formal trousers, a fine checked shir
t and smart black shoes. Polly had advised him not to wear a tie but that he should wear a suit style jacket to give him confidence.

  He was just putting some things in his bag, a notebook, pen, a bottle of water and some fruit in case he got delayed when Polly phoned.

  ‘Hi, Nick, just wanted to check you are OK and all ready for your morning at the school?’

  ‘Yes, just getting all my things together,’ and he checked his watch, ‘I’ll be leaving in about ten minutes, shouldn’t be much traffic. Everything OK? Did you get wet walking to the bus this morning?’

  ‘Oh, no it wasn’t so heavy when I left, and it’s only five minutes from the stop to the university. It’s chilly though, I felt I needed a hot drink as soon as I arrived so I stopped at the coffee bar and guess who I bumped into?’

  ‘Sorry, no idea, I’m a bit stressed for thinking who it was,’ added Nick rather curtly.

  ‘Matt,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh, of course, how’s he doing?’

  ‘Very well it seems. They’d asked him and Brett back to discuss their business proposal and he seemed confident it would be accepted. This spin-off company seems to be going places. Could be really good for Persford.’

  ‘That’s great, anyway, I’ll have to speak to you later, I need to be getting going.’

  ‘Of course, just one thing, and I hope I didn’t speak out of turn but I told Matt that you are thinking of teaching and consequently at a loose end at the moment.’

  ‘Well I hope you didn’t make out I was just sitting around watching daytime TV, and sleeping,’ replied Nick defensively.

  ‘No, of course not, but I just thought I’d let you know that I told him about you going into teaching, that’s all.’