Page 11 of Dead Fall

‘Hey!’ shouted Cassie, flicking on the light switch. She closed her eyes, blinded by the sudden assault of fluorescent light, and heard a loud scrape-thump.

With her heart tap-dancing in her chest she raced out of the main entrance, pulling the door closed behind her. Sprinted around the mortuary to the side where the windows gave onto a narrow strip of concrete path and a line of trees. Only then did she slow her pace, realising she might be in danger.

But all she found there was a ladder lying haphazardly on the concrete. Earlier that day two guys with chainsaws had been cutting back the dense leylandii that screened the mortuary from the hospital car park: they must have left the ladder here to finish up tomorrow.

Cassie stood there panting, feeling her heart jumping around. There was a soft breeze but the black-green of the leylandii foliage was eerily still and silent for a living thing.

She pulled out her phone and turned on the torch. Scoping the area ahead, she could see no sign of life but beyond the corner of the mortuary building, shaded from any lamplight, the rear wall stood in deep darkness. Was somebody hiding in the shadows?

Taking a deep breath, she killed the torch and stepped quietly closer, buoyed by a sense of outrage. If someone had tried to break into her mortuary, threatening her guests, she was going to catch them. Stupid? Maybe. But she’d always had a settled sense of confidence that she could handle herself.

Less than a metre from the corner, a dark figure sprung out.

She yelped in shock, raising her phone, as if that would be any use as a weapon.

‘Cassie?’ The face swam into focus.

‘Oh Jesus Christ, Barney, you scared the shit out of me.’ Barney was one of the hospital security guards.

‘You and me both! I was having a cig in the car park and I see someone creeping around over here – turns out it was you.’ Nodding down at her phone, which she still had half raised like a weapon, Barney gave a wheezing laugh. ‘What were you going to do with that? Insta me to death?’

Cassie was still breathing hard. ‘Did you see anyone else over here, before me?’

He shook his head ‘No, it was the torch that alerted me.’

‘Someone put a ladder up to one of the windows.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Could you keep an eye out? In case they come back?’

‘I would do, but I’m going off shift. I could ask Davy when I hand over?’

They shared a sceptical look: Davy didn’t stray far from the A & E waiting room with its array of vending machines selling crisps and chocolate.

‘I’ll do a proper look round now,’ he told her. ‘You go back in the mortuary.’

After closing the entrance door behind her she was tempted to call 999 but decided against it. If the cops even bothered to attend, which was unlikely, the prospect of talking to some patronising uniform who would probably doubt her story, filled her with gloom. She’d tell Doug about it in the morning and tell the tree-butchers not to leave ladders lying around.

Going back inside, she went looking for the long-handled hook they used to open and close the high windows: although she could barely recall the last time they’d been opened. Then she remembered that Jason had prepped a decomp the previous day: an old gent who’d died in his sleep and laid in his bed undiscovered for three or four weeks. He must have opened it to clear the smell and then failed to close it properly.

As she clunked it shut, she wondered who the intruder could have been. The obvious candidate was surely one of the true crime sleuths from Insta or TikTok who’d been hanging round since Bronte’s death; maybe, spotting an open window, they’d hoped to sneak an image of the place where ‘Tragic Bronte’ had undergone her post-mortem.

Ghouls.

After pulling on her jacket she went back into the body store to turn the lights off.

The vibe in here was usually tranquil, but now she picked up a kind of jangling in the air, as if the attempted intrusion had left her agitated. Fanciful? Probably. But something drew her to the drawer marked ‘Sophia Angelopoulos aka Bronte’. She went to set her hand flat on the steel – and got an electric shock.

Don’t leave me!

The words clear, in Bronte’s slightly harsh tones, and undercut by a note of desperate appeal.

Chapter Ten

It was 7 a.m. the next morning by the time she climbed aboard Dreamcatcher clutching two takeaway coffees and feeling exhausted. Thank Christ she was rostered off.

Archie stuck his head out of the cabin and she held out his coffee, saying, ‘Peace offering?’ He took it wordlessly, not returning her smile, before heading back down below. In the cabin she found him shaving in the tiny mirror hung over the kitchen sink. On another day she might have told him to use the one in the bathroom but this morning she was on the back foot.

‘Look, I went for a drink after work with Jax and it got messy.’ Trying not to sound rehearsed. ‘I didn’t fancy walking along the towpath pissed .?.?. so I kipped down on her sofa.’

Nada. Archie just splashed his razor in the sink and drew the blade up under his chin.

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