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Back Bad Apples
Chapters (65)
  1. 1
  2. 2
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  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
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  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
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  60. 60
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  64. 64
  65. Acknowledgements

She just looks at the coat covering the top half of the body, at the reflective patches now red with fresh blood, and she chews on her lip and shakes her head from side to side. I’m losing her to these mists. She’s two metres from me and she’s now just a ghost of a person.

The dead man’s wearing black jeans. Rubber boots. His coat is open to reveal his blood-soaked beige sweater. No wedding ring. His palms face up. A single fallen pine needle rests along one of his lifelines, nestled in the crease of his motionless hand.

I kneel down.

Next to my knee is the crisp curve of a copper beech leaf and sitting within its cupped form is a pool of human blood. No animal is troubling it. There is no ant or fly arriving to fulfil a basic destiny. It’s perfect. Obscene.

I reach out to lift the corner of the coat covering him, and the woman lets out a ghoulish bark.

A warning.

‘I need to check for a pulse,’ I say, although looking at the wound on this man’s chest, the amount of blood loss, I know it’s a preposterous notion. He is lifeless. But I must. Even here in this hillside forest, we must hope.

‘No,’ she says.

The fog drifts past her and I see the dread in her eyes, the blood on her face now that she drags her fingers across her damp cheeks.

I turn back to her coat, careful not to disturb the bloody beech leaf.

I hold the coat by the zip toggle and lift it a fraction.

My fingers automatically connect with his skin so I can take a pulse.

I move the coat higher and throw it to one side.

No pulse.

And no head.

2

I scrabble away from the body and come to rest with my back against a rotting birch trunk.

I pant for air. Desperate for fresh air, my chest convulsing.

The woman is sobbing somewhere behind me.

What happened to this headless man? A bear attack out here in Visberg forest? A wolf attack?

I swallow repeatedly to stop myself from throwing up but there is acid in my mouth. I lock my jaw and look away from the scene.

The woman’s shaking her head and rocking back and forth on her heels.

I step over to her.

‘What happened?’ I ask.

She just shakes her head more vigorously.

I reach out to comfort her but she pulls back and her head lifts. The woman’s eyes are wide, her focus darting this way and that.

‘The police are on their way,’ I say. ‘I’m Tuva Moodyson.’

She nods and I urge her to step further away from the headless corpse. I don’t touch her or get too close, I just smile and signal with my head that we could move away.

The woman takes a few strides with me.