Ms. Vivian Eber is a tall attractive African woman in her late twenties and has a business affairs degree from an American university.
Mr. Crick, who comes from Belfast, is similarly aged, of impressive physique and speaks with a slight Northern Irish brogue.
Subsequent inquiries indicate that Mr. Oakey, the London lawyer, is identical with Percy Ranelagh Oakey, QC, of the London firm of Oakey, Oakey and Farmeloe. Mr. Oakey has recently successfully defended several large pharmaceutical companies in class actions for damages and compensation, among them KVH. We were not advised of this at the time.
See Appendix for note on D. J. Crick.
SUMMARY OF MEETING
1. Apologies on behalf of Sir Kenneth K. Curtiss and Ms. Y. Rampuri.
2. Expressions of regret by BBB (Crick) regarding death of Tessa Quayle and concern re fate of Dr. Arnold Bluhm.
BBB (Crick): This damn country gets hairier by the day. The Mrs. Quayle thing, that's just awful. She was a fine lady who'd earned herself a great reputation around town. How can we help you officers? Any way at all. The chief sends his personal greetings and instructs us to afford you every assistance. He has a great regard for the British police.
Officer: We gather Arnold Bluhm and Tessa Quayle made a variety of representations to ThreeBees regarding a new TB cure you're marketing, name of Dypraxa.
BBB (Crick): Did they though? We must look into that. You see, Ms. Eber here is more on the PR side, and I'm sort of on secondment from other duties pending a major restructuring of the company. The chief has a theory that anyone sitting still is wasting money.
Officer: The representations resulted in a meeting between Quayle, Bluhm and members of your staff here and we'd like to ask you for a sight of any records that were kept of this meeting, and any other documents relevant to it.
BBB (Crick): Right, Rob. No problem. We're here to help. Only when you say she made representations to ThreeBees — do you happen to know which branch you have in mind at all? Only there are a hell of a lot of bees in this outfit, believe me!
Officer: Mrs. Quayle addressed letters, e mails and phone calls to Sir Kenneth personally, to his private office, to Ms. Rampuri and to pretty well everyone on your Nairobi board. She faxed some of her letters and sent hard copies by mail. Others she hand delivered.
BBB (Crick): Well, great. That should give us something to go on. And you have copies of that correspondence, presumably?
Officer: Not at present.
BBB (Crick): But you know who attended the meeting on our side, presumably?
Officer: We assumed you'd know that.
BBB (Crick): Oh dear. So what do you have?
Officer: Written and verbal testimony by witnesses that such representations were made. Mrs. Quayle went so far as to visit Sir Kenneth at his farm last time he was in Nairobi.
BBB (Crick): Did she though? Well, that's news to me, I must say. Did she have an appointment?
Officer: No.
BBB (Crick): So who invited her?
Officer: No one. She just showed up.
BBB (Crick): Wow. Brave girl. How far did she get?
Officer: Not far enough, apparently, because she afterward attempted to confront Sir Kenneth here at his offices, but was unsuccessful.
BBB (Crick): Well, I'm damned. Still the chief's a busy bee. A lot of people want a lot of favors from him. Not many of them are lucky.
Officer: This wasn't favors.
BBB (Crick): What was it?
Officer: Answers. Our understanding is, Mrs. Quayle also presented Sir Kenneth with a bunch of case histories describing the side effects of the drug on identified patients.
BBB (Crick): Did she, by Christ? Well, well. I didn't know there were any side effects. Is she a scientist, a doctor? Was, I should say?
Officer: She was a concerned member of the public, a lawyer, and a rights campaigner. And she was deeply involved in aid work.
BBB (Crick): When you say presented, what are we talking here?
Officer: Delivered them by hand to this building, personal for Sir Kenneth.
BBB (Crick): She get a receipt?
Officer: (shows it)
BBB (Crick): Ah. Well. Received one package. Question of what's in the package, isn't it? Still, you've got copies, I'm sure. Bunch of case histories. You must have.
Officer: We expect to have them any day.
BBB (Crick): Is that so? Well, we'd be really interested to have a sight of them, right, Viv? I mean Dypraxa's our lead line right now, what the chief calls our flagship. Lot of happy mums and dads and kids out there, feeling a lot better for Dypraxa. So if Tessa had a grouse about it, that's something we'd really need to know and act on. If the chief was here he'd be the first to say that. Just that he's one of those guys who lives in a Gulfstream. I'm surprised he gave her the brush-off, all the same. That's not like him at all. Still, I suppose if you're as busy as he is —
BBB (Eber): We have a set procedure here for customer complaints regarding our pharmaceutical list, you see, Rob. We're only the distributor here. We import, we distribute. Provided the Kenyan government has green-lighted a drug and the medical centers are comfortable with using it, we are just acting as the intermediary, you see. That's pretty much where our responsibility ends. We take advice about storage, naturally, and make sure we are providing the right temperatures and humidity and so forth. But basically the buck stops with the manufacturer and the Kenyan government.
Officer: What about clinical trials? Aren't you supposed to be conducting trials?
BBB (Crick): No trials. I'm afraid you haven't done your homework on that one, Rob. Not if you're talking your structured, fully fledged type, double blind, put it that way.
Officer: So what are we talking?
BBB (Crick): Not once a drug is out there in a given country like Kenya, being distributed, that wouldn't be policy. A drug, once you're distributing it in a country and you've got the local health boys behind you a hundred percent, is what I call a done thing.
Officer: So what trials, tests, experiments are you conducting, if any?
BBB (Crick): Look. Don't do the words with me, all right? If you're talking about adding to a drug's track record, a real good drug like this one, if you're gearing up for distribution in another very major country — right outside the African market — the U.S. of A. for instance — yes, all right, I grant you, in an indirect way we can call what we are doing here trials. In that sense only. The preparatory sense, for the situation ahead of us, which is the day when ThreeBees and KVH jointly enter the new exciting market I'm alluding to. With me?
Officer: Not yet. I'm waiting for the word "guinea pig."
BBB (Crick): All I'm saying is, that in the very best way for all parties, every patient is in some degree a test case for the benefit of the greater good. Nobody's talking guinea pigs. Back off.
Officer: The greater good being the American market, you mean?
BBB (Crick): For fuck's sake. All I'm saying is, every result, every time we record a thing, a patient is recorded, those results are carefully stored and monitored at all times in Seattle and Vancouver and Basel for future reference. For the future validation of the product when we're looking to register it elsewhere. So that we're totally fail-safe at all times. Plus we've got the Kenyan health boys behind us at all times.
Officer: Doing what? Mopping up the bodies?
P. R. Oakey, QC: You didn't say that, Rob, I'm sure, and we didn't hear it. Doug has been extremely forthright and generous with his information. Perhaps too generous. Yes, Lesley?