He stood and scanned the grounds, as if Ismail might be lurking in the garden outside his window. The cobalt sky shimmered with that peculiar, scintillating light of the high mountains. But there was no sign of a furtive young man crossing the vast lawn between the stone manor and the precipitous slope to the valley below. Though ringed by treacherous peaks, the great bowl of open space and crystalline air seemed to reassure him: All will be well.

A shadow darkened a corner of the box hedge. Gessen blinked and it was gone. He buzzed Ursula, but when no reply came, he hurried off and nearly collided with her in the hall outside his office. Her face was taut with worry, and strands of pale hair hung loose from a metal clip.

‘Ismail’s gone missing.’ Her eyes flicked to the window. ‘He was at breakfast this morning, but now nobody can find him.’

Dread pooled in his gut. Losing a patient was his worst nightmare, but Ismail had to be somewhere on the grounds. If he’d breached the boundary, his wrist monitor would have triggered an alarm. Gessen hurried down the hallway, with Ursula close behind. ‘Have you looked everywhere?’

‘We checked the obvious places,’ she said. ‘But if he’s trying to elude us he could be anywhere.’

True. The clinic’s extensive grounds and gardens offered any number of places to hide. The patients’ wrist monitors, while a useful tool for tracking their movements, weren’t accurate enough to pinpoint their exact coordinates at any given moment. They would have to fan out and look for him. He rubbed his temples. Though nothing about this was funny, he could picture Ismail contriving his vanishing act as a wonderful joke. What fun to lead the staff on a merry goose chase while he hid at the back of a wardrobe like a naughty child. Except he wasn’t a child, even if he acted like one at times. A spoiled and entitled young man, furious at having his freedom curtailed.

As they stood on a hillock behind the manor house, Gessen scrutinised the grounds. ‘Have you informed Security?’

‘Not yet.’ Ursula bit her lip. ‘I suppose I should have, but I wanted to tell you first.’

They hurried along the gravel path that led to the men’s residences, while Gessen peered left and right at the masses of shrubbery and small stands of pine. He should have cleared all that out years ago. With so many places to hide, Ismail could be anywhere.