The damage was indeed minimal, the medical examiner had confirmed it. The knock to the head would have been painful but was in no way fatal. Detective Jung didn’t really need the report to tell him that but it was nice to have confirmation. Jung had been a cop for fifteen and a detective for three. His days were spent traversing the depraved depths humanity and every year his hair got a little more grey, as if giving up its pigment was the price of justice.

Jung initially hadn’t even noticed this injury, obviously a few days old from the bruising and retreating swelling. He had been much more concerned about all the blood on the floor and the fact that the young man’s head had been staring glassy-eyed at him from completely the wrong way around. That his neck had been broken was obvious, that he had fallen from the narrow, precipitous staircase was equally obvious. There was a carpet on the tiny upper landing which could easily trip someone up. Or maybe the young man had been drunk, it was the season for holiday parties. If he had stumbled in late the night before or even early that morning, it would have been an easy thing to lose balance and have an accident.

Jung was sure it was an accident. The facts and timetable added up. A young, healthy man falling from the third floor landing, straight down to the unyielding concrete of a basement was surely an accident. The result of an unfortunate set of circumstances. Death by misadventure. There had been no one around and it was dark. The architecture of the old house could charitably be described as ‘quriky’. That the boy’s head had ended at such a bend was disconcerting but nothing that couldn’t be explained by the angle of the fall.

Nonetheless, the scene had chilled the detective. There was some baser instinct screaming from the primitive depths of his brain that something wasn’t quite right. Jung pushed these ideas aside, deciding that he had been too long in contact with the ghoulish capabilities of humans and that it might be colouring his perception of the facts. Most officers had seen things that they would rather forget. Humanity had quite a few of its own natural-born demons without creating more out of shadows.  Or perhaps it was the troublesome words of the neighbour that had unnerved him.

She had been the one to find the body, she had nearly fallen on him on the way to the laundry room. Jung had to step over the up-turned laundry basket to get to the corpse. The old woman had been upset, understandably. She hadn’t know the boy well, just the passing pleasantries between tenants and she’d been out of town for the last week or so. She answered all of the detective’s questions and added her own two cents in a low conspiratorial tone.

“I don’t know why the landlord still rents out that apartment. She won’t ever let anyone be happy, not if she can help it. Not after what happened to her. She was so young you know. Too young, really. Too young to be married and much too young to have a baby. Everyone always wondered at how it happened. She was barely out of childhood herself. But they got pregnant and in those days there wasn’t anything you could do but have the child. They were married after all. We all hoped it would work out in the end.

She had such a difficult pregnancy. People don’t talk about how difficult it can be and she got it real bad. She looked half-dead by the time she delivered. Delivery was awful for her too, weak as she was and it nearly killed her. In earlier days it would have. Things didn’t get better either. They were both overwhelmed. Her man got out of it by staying longer at work. There were rumours about him and his secretary.

He left on a business trip, or at lest that’s what he said it was. He left his poor young wife at home with a sick, colicky, baby and no help. She had practically been chained in the house since the birth, the baby was that fussy. Some of us tried to help here and there but it wasn’t enough and she looked dead behind the eyes, all the time that baby never stopped wailing.

He came home a few days later. The apartment was quiet. He soon found out why. She’d smothered the baby in the crib. She pushed the blanket down so hard she broke the baby’s neck. I guess she couldn’t take the crying anymore, being alone without family or her husband to help. Then she opened up her wrists in the bathtub. Guilt, I guess. He left a while later. Ever since, no one’s been able to stay. There’s been other accidents you know. Not all as bad as this one but things happen. She takes it out on everyone who tries to live there, her guilt, her anger, her desperation. The landlord shouldn’t rent it. She won’t let anyone live in peace.”

Jung had thanked the woman for her time and politely excused himself. He had dismissed the story. He had checked and though it was true, it seemed in poor taste to dredge up the old tragedy and tack it onto this new accident for the sake of community gossip.

Still, it seemed odd about two necks broken. And there were other accidents. Jung shook his head to clear away the macabre thoughts, determined not to let a story give him the creeps about his work. Officially speaking, the young man’s death was the result of an unfortunate accident.

It is also true, unofficially, that when Jung removed the police tape from the apartment door he had been startled by the appearance of a woman’s face in the darkened glass of the big front window.