Page 44 of Absent Feeling

“Ifany of them fit with the description that you gave us before,” Ms. Dern pointedout, “then we would already have identified them.”

“Doit anyway,” Amber said. “We need to work out who has been in there.”

Dernnodded and went to the computer terminal. “Room 15 is currently occupied byAhir Singh.”

“I’mnot interested in the current patient,” Amber said. “I’m looking for who was inthere before.”

“Beforehim, well, there’s a list of patients over the last few months, but before that… interesting, all I have is a name, with no file attached.”

“Implyingsomeone who was here so long that their file was lost in the computer crash?”

“Yes,but it shouldn’t be that simple. There should have been up to date patientrecords, notes, at the very least a record of his release.”

“What’sthe patient’s name?” Amber asked.

“GideonAdams.”

“Right,look for him in your system and tell me if you find anything,” Amber said. Shewas already heading over to the card index, trying to find anything that shecould on Gideon.

Thefirst job was trying to work out the filing system that had been used in thecard index. It wasn’t purely alphabetical, but it also seemed to be organizedaccording to patient category. It was like a code to which Amber didn’t havethe key, but Amber was good at working out codes.

“Ihave a few partial files,” Ms. Dern said. “Notes of individual patientsessions, a record of his release three months ago. The reason that we couldn’tfind him in the initial searches is that his main patient file is missing. Iwould guess that the doctors felt that updating his ongoing case notes was moreimportant than going back to the start to recreate everything.”

So,he’d slipped through the cracks because someone here in the GuisboroughWellness Institute had been too lazy to start over with their record keeping?If they’d had that file, maybe they would have been able to find Gideon at thestart of all of this.

Asit was, it seemed to take forever for Amber to find his name in the indexcards, and that was just the start because then she had to go looking for thefile to which the card pointed. Amber paused, trying to orient herself, tryingto get a sense of how the file boxes were laid out around the room.

“Hisrelease notes say that Gideon no longer posed a danger to others,” Ms. Dernsaid. “The doctor signing off his case was convinced that he’d been fullyrehabilitated.”

“Whichdoctor?” Amber asked.

“Dr.Werdly.”

Linkinghim to at least one of the doctors who had been killed. Amber hurried over tothe spot where she thought that Gideon’s file lay and pulled it outtriumphantly, setting it down on the table so that she had a chance to read it.

Itwas a thick file, dating back at least twenty years. Amber guessed that thispaper version had only ever been intended to provide a back up to the maincomputer file on him, but now, it was the best link that she had.

“Itsays here that Gideon Adams was brought to the Guisborough Wellness Instituteafter killing his sister with a knife,” Amber said. “He was assessed by Dr.David Banks, who used a Rorschach test to determine that he was suffering from apersonality disorder.”

Accordingto everything Amber had seen and heard, that wasn’t an approach that wasfavored anymore, with the Rorschach test used for a much narrower range ofconditions.

“Thenotes say that during the test, every image made him think about his sister’sblood, and that he spoke at length about the people he believed were out tohurt him and how they had to pay. Dr. Banks seems to have added schizophreniato the diagnosis at a later date.”

Itwas countersigned by Dr. Werdly, as if the two had diagnosed him together.There was another report in the file, about an attack on a nurse, an attack onYsabel Jones. Amber cursed to herself. All the information she and Simon hadneeded to catch a killer had been waiting for them in the Guisborough WellnessInstitute; it had simply been hidden away, half-lost after the place’s computersystem had crashed.

Amberpicked up the file. “I’m going to need to take this with me.”

Ms.Dern looked doubtful about that. “Strictly speaking, that file should reallyremain on hospital grounds.”

“Untilfive minutes ago, you didn’t even know that youhadthis file,” Ambershot back. “I need to show this to my partner, and there’s no time to copy itbecause Gideon could already be out there trying to kill his next victim.”

Ifthey hadn’t gotten the warrant before, Amber was sure it wouldn’t have worked,but as it was, Mr. Dern nodded slowly. “I … all right, but please return itsafely.”

Ambercalled Simon, feeling the sudden urgency of all of this. They’d used so muchtime running after false leads, and now, the killer could be out theresomewhere, already stalking someone else.

“Amber,have you found something?” Simon asked as he picked up.

“Thecard points to a specific patient’s room,” Amber said. “For years, it wasoccupied by Gideon Adams, who stabbed his sister to death.”

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