Dead On Arrival Read online

  H. Latham

  Dead on Arrival

  Copyright © 2022 by H. Latham

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  H. Latham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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  First edition

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by H. Latham

  Chapter 1

  As the soggy mop hit the floor once more Harper felt herself falling into the groove. With Avenged Sevenfold blasting in her earphones she set about finishing up for the day. The smell of bleach and other harsh chemicals hung thick in the air, but by now they were a comfort that she was doing her job right. She swished and swept the mop in time with the music, feeling her booty find a life of its own as it swayed along. Today had been another uneventful, normal day… just like every other day. She hadn’t exactly taken the job for the excitement, far from it, but she had at least expected to have learned some new skills by now.

  A tap on her shoulder almost made her jump out of her skin. She swung around, mop held out defensively as if it were a dangerous weapon. The dripping tassels dropped and swayed limply, not exactly helping her cause. Thankfully, it was just Frankie, one of the porters. She smiled at him, lowering her mop and tugging out one of her earphones.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he gave a half-hearted smile back to her. Oh no, that meant he had bad news, and just a quick glance behind him told her exactly what she needed to know. The occupied gurney, covered by a thin white cloth.

  “I’ve brought down the sheet the nurse gave me,” he felt in his back pocket, pulling out a badly folded, crumpled piece of paper.

  “Thanks, Frankie,” she beamed at him, giving him his cue that it was time to leave. Frankie never minded, he didn’t much like being down in the morgue. No one did really, there was a heavy aura that hung over the area. A place filled with dead bodies wasn’t exactly the first choice for a relaxing chat. Harper didn’t see it that way, however. She was quite at home in the morgue. Yes, it may make her appear a little strange, but the idea of assisting a family get the final answers for their lost loved one, or even simply being there to help move the body with the respect it deserved. She treat everyone who passed through as if they were her own family.

  “Miss StClair!” then there was Richard. Richard was the resident medical examiner. He was loud, opinionated and at times outright lazy. All bark and no bite, as it were, but that didn’t mean the bark wasn’t bad enough to give you a splitting headache. If finding a way to do as little as possible in a day was a sport, Richard would always win gold. Although damn good at his job, he just didn’t seem like he wanted to do it all that often. He much preferred to be away from the morgue as much as he could. Usually, you’d find him up in the staff cafeteria schmoozing with the surgeons or flirting with the nurses. Basically, anything that he could be doing that wasn’t the post mortems, paperwork or any other number of things that he really should have been doing.

  “Yes?” Harper called back, as she wheeled the gurney over to the sink table.

  “Miss Fernandez has handed in her resignation effective immediately,” Richard bellowed from his office down the hall. Why he was incapable of just getting up and coming in to talk to her she’d never know, but this is how most of their conversations were had, “I need you to work until the out of hours porter comes down.”

  No please. No thank you. Not so much as even a check that she could do that. The conversation had officially ended as he slammed his office door shut, giving her no room for argument. Harper let out a long sigh. This wasn’t the first time and certainly wouldn’t be the last time this would happen. It seemed that none of her co-workers lasted very long at all, although she was unsure if it was working for Richard or if it was the work itself that put them off. Either way, the longest-serving co-worker she’d had was four months. No one made it out of their six-month probationary period. The work wasn’t hard per se, it was physically demanding at times but not always. With her co-worker gone, and still work to do she didn’t have much of a choice. The work needed doing, and it wasn’t something the porters would be willing to take over. No matter how she looked at it, this was yet another unplanned late evening finish for her. Shaking it off, she turned her attention to the deceased patient. She did her best to uncrumple the paper and set about checking the tags.

  “Wendy,” Harper said softly as she removed the cover. She was a very old lady, very much at the end of a long and well-lived life. The tags on her were blue, meaning that it had been a natural death confirmed by a physician at the time. Unfortunately, it seemed that the form hadn’t been properly completed. There wasn’t even a signature on the bottom to confirm it was signed off by an authorized person. This wasn’t going to go down well.

  “Sorry about this Wendy,” Harper apologized, “I will be right back.” Again, it may have appeared strange but she preferred to speak to them as if they were still alive, just in case a wayward spirit was still hanging around, waiting to find their peace. She hoped it would give them some comfort that they were still cared about, even after they had passed. After carefully placing the sheet back over Wendy, Harper marched her way down to Richard’s office and knocked hard on the door three times.

  “What do you want?”

  “I have an incorrect form that needs chasing up,” she called back through the closed door, knowing Richard would only go off on her if she tried to open it and have a face to face conversation like normal people.

  “You have a phone on your desk.”

  “That’s not my job,” she reminded him for the millionth time, trying to keep her voice as sweet as possible. Richard was her boss after all, but she couldn’t help that little bit of venom that slipped in. She did far more than her job description, therefore, more than she was paid to do. She didn’t do it for Richard, she did it for the patients and their families, but still, his laziness wa
s getting tiresome.

  “I have some very important paperwork to do, Harper,” he snapped, “Leave it with the deceased and I’ll see to it when I get time.” Harper took a deep breath, and just nodded to herself. It wasn’t worth the fight with him. It really wasn’t. It would only end with both of them getting nothing done, rather than just one of them. Re-joining Wendy, Harper set to work cleaning her down. She was careful and respectful, carefully wiping over the older lady’s frail skin. Taking the time to wash and brush out her hair. It seemed once upon a time Wendy had been a fan of perms, but with a long illness, it had grown out and lost its curl resembling just a ghost of its previous lustre. Once she was clean, Harper used her hoist to move Wendy back over to a clean gurney. With extreme care, she redressed her in a new gown and covered her with a fresh white sheet. The final step was to put Wendy into what she liked to call ‘The Cool Cupboard.’ That would be her temporary home until either her family or her funeral directors came to collect her. It would keep her from decomposing while her family had time to grieve and make their preparations. Sometimes extra time was needed just to make everything perfect and that was understandable. At least they could rest easy knowing she was in safe hands.

  Not soon enough the night porter showed up to take the keys from her. It seemed Richard had long vacated the premises as his office was locked tight with the lights off. With an exhausted sigh, Harper finally clocked out. She felt more than a little frazzled as she made her way to her car.

  Chapter 2

  The first thing off was her shoes, followed very closely by her bra. It was almost orgasmic as the wired fabric snapped away from her chest. She tossed it onto the back of her living room chair as she made her way through to the kitchen. Her stomach growled and grumbled loudly in protest at her. She had skipped lunch today to finish off some extra paperwork, so was absolutely ravenous. Although, if she’d known she was taking over the late shift would not have bothered.

  A quick inspection of the fridge only brought misery. The dim light flickered over the sparse contents, the faint orange hue only making the few things that were in there look a little less appetizing. A punnet of grapes that had seen better days, a pack of four rhubarb yoghurts that were only just clinging to life. One little whiff from the milk said it had already begun to turn and the usual pink of the ham was now an all too familiar grey colour that she didn’t really want to think about.

  When was the last time she went shopping again? She couldn’t even remember. For the last few weeks, she had been surviving just by picking up bits from the newsagents at work before she had come home. It had easily been a month since she had seen a supermarket, let alone been to one.

  “Take away it is,” she mumbled to herself, slamming the door on the sad scene and pulling out her phone. Her phone; another thing that was direly neglected on a daily basis. Thirteen text messages, two missed calls and probably way over fifty social media notifications. It was funny, she never really used the damn thing but somehow it always had some sort of notification to flag up at her. Most of it was her brother posting, which as much as she loved seeing what he was up to and how his day was going, she didn’t need a notification for every single picture he posted. One day she’d figure a way to turn it off, but today was not that day.

  Swiping away the notifications without a second thought, she opened up the food app on her phone and began to browse. Just the sight of all the delicious looking plates of food in the advertisements was enough to get her stomach growling yet again. Settling on a cute Chinese place she placed her typical order of duck and paid.

  Forty-five-minute wait for delivery. Harper glanced at the time, only to see that it was already well past nine.

  Great.

  She was exhausted but food just was out of reach. May as well make the most out of her wait and get herself cosy. After a hot steamy shower and changing into her comfy teddy PJs she huddled down on the couch, switching on her television. Normal TV was boring, and none of the shows interested her. Refusing to be defeated she switched onto her subscription streaming and began to trawl through the never-ending supply of entertainment it held. In the end, she settled on a horror film.

  The CGI was terrible, the monster wasn’t scary and the storyline was like something straight out of a bad porno, but Harper always had a lot of love for the cheesy B-movies. They may be terrible, but they were iconically terrible, whether for good reason or (more than likely) bad.

  A knock at the door signalled the arrival of her meal and Harper almost leapt at the door like a ravenous lioness. She pretty much snatched the bag off of the poor unsuspecting delivery driver but made it up to him with a decent tip before slamming the door. She hopped back onto the couch, careful not to upset the contents of her bag. There was already a plate and fork on the coffee table, but she ended up just opting for the fork. Tipping it out onto the plate just seemed like too much time wasted when she could be shovelling the food into her mouth.

  Sitting back with a foil container and fork in hand, she got back into the film. The gruesome bog monster (that definitely wasn’t the director in a net of leaves and some mud) had just grabbed the female protagonist and just happened to rip the front of her shirt off in the struggle. There were points that Harper felt she did need to check that this wasn’t a bad porno.

  Once her belly was full and the trash was out, she finally allowed herself to get into bed and relax. Well, try to relax. She had mostly unwound from the stresses of the day with her meal, but as the time for sleep approached her brain started to throw up the scenarios she had to deal with tomorrow. A lovely little trait it had. There was still so much work to do. Then there was poor Wendy. She had passed away on Ward-Twenty after her long fight with cancer. Her paperwork still wasn’t fully complete and was missing the all-important signature. There was also a lack of a death certificate with it, which for a case like Wendy’s shouldn’t have been an issue. She just simply hated having unfinished business, and if Richard hadn’t chased it up by lunch tomorrow then she’d do it herself. It took a while but Harper eventually fell into an unsettled sleep.

  Sirens blared on the ground far below as the benevolent wind whistled past the open terraced door as if beckoning her forward.

  Oh no.

  Not here.

  The apartment was dark, the only light around was the moonlight pouring onto the balcony and seeping in through the open door. Even in the low light, it was easy to see that the apartment had been trashed. The couch was upturned, ornaments left astray, tv lying broken on the carpet below its wall mounting. A dark viscous liquid stained parts of the cream carpet and Harper kept reassuring herself that it was red wine. Mother was just drunk again. She’d had a bad day, she’d spilt her wine, that was all.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Harper didn’t even flinch at the knocking she’d heard time and time again.

  “Police,” an officer yelled from the other side of the door. She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer. This would play out like it always did. With bated breath, her legs began to work as she slowly walked her way towards the open door. The wails of the sirens below were just growing louder, almost deafening. A blue flashing light now coupled with the moonlight outside the building.

  No.

  She didn’t want to look.

  She knew what was there.

  But her legs wouldn’t stop moving. She wasn’t in control anymore, this was going to happen as it always did.

  The first step onto the balcony was always the worst. The icy crack of the winter wind whipped around her and chilled her to the core. There were shouts below but the crescendo of ringing in her ears was blocking out any chance she had of hearing them. Her heart hammered in her chest, whooshing the blood through her ears and increasing her internal volume so much that it made her head spin. The railing was solid, cold and unforgiving as she grabbed it for balance. The atmosphere on the balcony was so heavy that she felt the air itself was crushing her where she stood.

  I
don’t want to look.

  I don’t want to look.

  I don’t want to look.

  But she knew she would. It’s how it had to happen. It’s how it did happen. Just one lean over was all it took to bring the whole grisly scene into view. Everything seemed to go in slow motion as she saw the army of ambulances, police cars and first responders in the car park below. Emergency service workers were swarming around one central point.

  Then there it was. The pool of red spread out like a flower in bloom.

  In the middle of it, was a twisted body that wore that all too familiar pink nightgown.

  Harper didn’t even hear the officers break the door down behind her as the mournful cry left her lungs. She didn’t even hear herself scream. Her eyes just burned with hot tears as her body started to crumple in on itself. All of the air was knocked out of her as she tried to draw another breath and failed.

  Strong arms went around her waist as she was hoisted back away from the balcony. She tried to struggle but more hands grabbed a hold of her. Sympathetic and comforting voices were all around her but she didn’t care what they had to say.

  She wanted her mother.

  The air was not entering her lungs at all, and she felt herself begin to wobble as her vision began to blur. She choked and heaved heavy sobs, all of her insides feeling like they were crumbling to dust. Her heart was shattered into a million little pieces. The voices around her were shouting now, but for some reason, they were fading off into the background. The tinnitus returned with a vengeance and drowned out everything around her. Her broken heart pounded, throwing sharp pieces all across her chest.

  Then she closed her eyes.

  “She’s going into shock.”

  “Get a paramedic!”

  Chapter 3

  Harper awoke to the sound of her alarm clock blaring. It was her fifth and final alarm. Somehow she’d managed to sleep through the first four. Not that it mattered much now, with only half an hour to get ready and set off time really was of the essence. She’d never leapt out of bed so fast in her life. She brushed her teeth, dressed, grabbed her bag and was out of the door in record time. She’d just pulled the key out of the door and turned around when her feet flew out from under her. She let out a yelp as her butt hit the cold, unforgiving ground.