Chapter 7: The Dictation

I didn't answer him.

I sat back down at the terminal and said, "I was at Leeds. I can give you the registry number."

Thompson picked up his coffee.

"Don't bother," he said. "I'll look into it myself."

Then he walked out and the door swung shut behind him.

I sat still for a full minute and listened to the corridor.

The man in the cardigan was still asleep in the corner with the journal over his face.

I put my hands back on the keyboard.

The shadow copy was still open behind the blue box, and I photographed the screen six times with my phone.

Then I went looking for the rest.

Theatre dictation was an old system. Consultants dictated their notes after a case and the file went to the medical secretary in the morning.

It was supposed to be deleted after transcription. It almost never was.

I'd written the protocol that was supposed to delete it.

Nobody had ever switched it on.

I opened the dictation drive and filtered by date.

There were four files from that night.

Two were from the general theatre list. One was three seconds long and blank.

The fourth was thirty-one minutes and named MV1402.

I sat and looked at those letters for a while.

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