A Killing Karma (12 page)

‘You said
nothing to him?’ Casey asked after obtaining the name of the private
investigator. He was incredulous that any woman could keep such knowledge to
herself. Perhaps his incredulity was evident in his voice because Alice Oliver
shrugged and said, 'I saw no reason to give him time to provide himself with
some spurious excuses before I instigated divorce proceedings. I wanted to get
my own case ready first and make sure I knew as much about his investments as I
could for the financial settlement in the divorce.’

It sounded
remarkably cold-blooded to Casey. But perhaps, with the increasing years of
marriage and similarly increasing infidelities, she had become as inured to her
husband's behaviour as any woman could be and was, as he had suggested to Catt
earlier, determined simply to make sure she was nicely set up for a comfortable
future.

But the way
her fingers knotted together in her lap indicated how hurt and diminished she
really felt, as did her next words. 'I was never enough for him. I suppose I
suspected it from the beginning. But I loved him, so up till now I've put up
with his straying.’ She gazed down at her hands, unknotted the fingers and
looked up. 'I suppose you think me a foolish woman for cleaving to him through
all his infidelities?’ Her voice faltered as she added, ‘And now I've lost him
anyway.’

Casey tried to
offer some words of comfort. ‘We all, I suppose, do what we feel we need to do,
in relationships as in life.’ His thoughts briefly strayed to his own
relationship with his parents. As with Alice Oliver and her husband, Casey knew
he had never been enough for his parents. A fact of which he had been conscious
for most of his life. But now was not the time to dwell on that. As the
victim's widow, Mrs Oliver was entitled to his full attention.

But Mrs Oliver
had little more to say. She had laid her pain bare for them. Casey thought that
all three of them were relieved when they left shortly after, Mrs Oliver's list
of her husband's paramours in Casey's pocket and Detective Constable Shazia
Khan left behind to fend off the press and to render Mrs Oliver some womanly
comfort.

The next
morning Casey had a number of appointments strung out over the day. He had been
able to fix up interviews with all four of Oliver's business rivals with whom
he was in legal or other disputes. It would be interesting to meet the men
involved in these slanging matches with the late Gus Oliver. It would be good
if he were able to exonerate most of them. At the moment, between Oliver's now
reduced harem, their partners, his unhappy daughter and his business rivals,
Casey still had far too large a load of suspects for comfort.

The first on
his list was a Mr Patterson of Kincaid and Co. Like Oliver, he, too, had his
offices on the industrial estate. Kincaid's was a smaller concern than Gus
Oliver's to judge from the size of the building, but like the others on the
list, according to Caroline Everett, they and the other firms dealt in the same
line and were forever trying to undercut one another with their suppliers or
nobble each other in some other way.

Mr Patterson
turned out to be a tall man and muscular, too, if his handshake was anything to
go by. He didn't seem worried about the reason for Casey's visit, which Casey
had explained to him over the phone. In fact he was quite welcoming and jovial
in his manner.

‘Come in,
Chief Inspector, come in. Sit down,’ he invited. 'I gather from my secretary
that you're here about Gus Oliver's murder?’

‘That's right,
sir. I'm currently checking into his movements and those of any acquaintances.’

Patterson
nodded. 'I supposed that's why you wanted to see me. Given my various court
battles with Oliver, I imagine I must be a prime suspect?’

Casey kept a
discreet silence.

'I gather from
the newspapers that he was found in an alleyway here in King's Langley early on
Monday morning?’

Casey nodded,
but said nothing more.

‘Well now, let
me see.’ He stared off into space in recollection, then he nodded as if in
remembrance of the day, turned back to Casey and said, 'I had a late start that
day and was still at home with my wife till gone nine. Check with her if you
like.’ He rattled off his address and phone number.

‘And what
about Friday evening around nine and into the early hours of Saturday morning,
which is the time we believe Mr Oliver to have been killed? Perhaps you could
tell me where you were between those hours.’

‘Certainly. I
was again at home with my wife. There were again just the two of us, I'm
afraid.’ He shrugged and stood up, adding a little joke: ‘Hope she's good for
the alibi.’

And suddenly
he became very business-like, all joviality vanishing. It was as if he wanted
to make clear what a busy man he was and even murders of business rivals
mustn't hold him up.

‘Now, if
that's all, I have a very full day ahead of me. I don't see why I should allow
the dead Oliver to disrupt my day any more than I did the live Oliver.’

Casey nodded
and allowed himself to be ushered out. He would take a harder line if Mrs
Patterson failed to corroborate her husband's story.

The other
three rival businessmen with whom Oliver had been embroiled in court battles
all turned out to have firm alibis, being at the same conference in the
Midlands. The information they supplied was soon checked out. It felt good to
be able to cross some more names off their now diminishing list of suspects.

After another
day of full-on checking and eliminating, Casey called the team to the incident
room for a well-deserved pat on the back.

‘You'll be
glad to know that, of the suspects known to the victim and who might have
reason to want to kill him, because of your hard work we've eliminated many and
these suspects are now reduced to nine in number.’

‘Unless some
more ladies come out of the woodwork,’ Catt pointed out from where he was
propped against the wall combing his hair. ‘And always supposing it wasn't a
stranger murder — a mugging gone wrong.’ Catt always liked to look his best,
but his fiddling with his comb was a bone of contention between him and Casey.
However, for now, Casey ignored it.

‘Yes, we're
still not able to discount that possibility, though given that the pathologist
has confirmed the victim was moved after death, that seems increasingly
unlikely. Anyway, to get back to what I was saying, Mrs Alice Oliver, the
victim's wife, who readily admitted she knew of his serial infidelities, is one
of our suspects. As are Amanda and Roger Meredith, Sarah and Carl Garrett and
Max Fallon and his live-in partner, Carole Brown, all of whom are numbered amongst
his lovers and their partners. Like Mrs Oliver, Fallon and Carole Brown only
live around the corner from the alleyway where Oliver was found. Max Fallon,
Carole Brown's partner, is obsessively jealous according to what Catt found out
from the neighbours. He had supposedly learned about his girlfriend's affair
only a few days before Oliver's death. He's had a few run-ins with us but
little has come to anything.’

‘Another
indicator of possible guilt is the fact that Ms Brown claims she and the dead
man were going to leave their respective partners and set up home together,’
Catt put in. ‘She rang up earlier with this titbit,’ he told Casey. ‘Wonder if
she thought it a good excuse to take her out of the running? If this Max Fallon
found that out also—'

‘Quite,’ Casey
broke in. ‘Always supposing it's true. It doesn't sound likely, given that Mrs
Oliver claims her husband was commitment-phobic.’

‘Perhaps, as Sergeant
Catt said, it's just a crude attempt on Carole Brown's part to make us believe
she had no reason to kill him?’ Constable Jonathon Keane put in from the back
of the room.

‘Maybe,’ Casey
said. ‘Certainly, we found nothing at either Mr Oliver's home or his business
premises to indicate he had plans for a new life with Carole Brown or anyone
else.

‘Max Fallon is
something of a ne'er-do-well. He has criminal associates and is known for being
violent. There are rumours from Sergeant Catt's sources that a knife is his
weapon of preference. Carole Brown is much younger than Fallon and reputedly
flirtatious. We've yet to question any of these men as to their whereabouts
when Gus Oliver was killed, though Mr Meredith was, according to his wife, at
home at the time and working in his office at the top of the house.

‘Then there's
Mr Patterson of Kincaid's. The only person he was able to produce to confirm
his whereabouts was his wife, though we've yet to question his neighbours. One
of them might have noticed him going out. Lastly, we have Caitlin Osborne, the
victim's illegitimate daughter. When we questioned Mrs Oliver about the
identity of anyone else with a possible grudge against her husband, she
mentioned the girl and that Oliver had refused all attempts by his daughter to
have a relationship. The daughter sounds a troubled girl. She's apparently left
her adoptive parents' home in Liverpool during the last few weeks and is now
alone in the world and probably nursed a grudge against her father. She's a
known drug user and has been in and out of prison for the last few years owing
to thefts she used to support her drug-taking. She has also been sectioned in
psychiatric hospitals several times as she suffered some psychotic episodes.
We've still trying to trace her, but it's possible she travelled to King's
Langley to make one last ditch attempt to persuade her father to let her into
his life.’

‘Or to remove
him from it permanently,’ Catt put in. ‘Maybe the method of murder was
symbolic,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe, if Cally the Scally was the one who cut off
her father's tackle, she was ensuring, in some way that appealed to her crazed
mental state, that he couldn't father any more unwanted children. It could be
the kind of violent action that would appeal to the psychotic mind.’

‘And not just
the psychotic mind,’ Casey quietly pointed out. ‘This was a man, remember, who
went in for sexual betrayal on the grand opera scale. Any one of his lovers who
have failed to provide sustainable alibis might have been tempted to emasculate
him, once they discovered they were merely one in a long line of convenient
females. So might their various partners.’

He paused and
glanced at Catt. ‘As to the other possibility — that he was killed by a mugger —
since the post-mortem results, as I said, that's looking less likely, as the
victim didn't die in that alley as was originally thought possible. His body
was clearly moved after death, as Dr Merriman makes clear in his report on the
hypostasis — the blood that sinks to the lowest extremities after death,’ he
explained for the benefit of the younger members of the team whose experience
of death was limited.

‘Muggers tend
to have more interest in fleeing the scene of their crime than in concealing
the body of their victim, so I suggest we concentrate our efforts on digging
deeper into those known to the victim and who lack an alibi: his wife; his
three unalibied lovers; their partners; Mr Patterson; and the victim's
daughter, Caitlin Osborne.'

‘There's still
the fact that his wallet was missing,’ Catt pointed out, like a dog after a
particularly juicy bone. As so often, he had chosen to play the role of devil's
advocate.

Casey nodded. 'I
hadn't forgotten. But as I said, his killer could have taken it simply in an
attempt to delay any identification. The mutilation could have been done to
muddy the waters. We really can't afford to discount anything at this stage,
but for now I'd like to concentrate our efforts. Time enough to cast our net
wider if the more likely suspects prove innocent of this crime.

‘Right,’ he
said, ‘let's get moving. I want our suspects' friends, neighbours and family
questioned again. The suspects themselves will be firmly questioned, too, of
course. Sergeant Catt and I will take on that role. The rest of you, closely
question everyone else — you can sort out the details between you. I want to
know any gossip you can extract, indications of temperament and, given the
level of violence perpetrated against the victim, anyone else, apart from
Fallon, with an inclination to violence.

‘Although only
one of our suspects has a criminal record — Fallon, the nightclub proprietor —
ask around to discover if any of them has a reputation amongst their
neigh-bours for aggression. Most people, in my experience, unless they have
mental health issues, tend to build up to the kind of violence that was used
here. They don't just start at this kind of level, not even nowadays with the
rising levels of gratuitous violence in modern society. Okay. Off you go.’

As the team
filed out, Casey glanced at his watch. It was approaching the time for him to
ring his mother to find out if there had been any developments at the commune
that ThomCatt's Lincolnshire police friend hadn't already confided.

He nodded at
Catt and tapped his mobile. Catt immediately grasped the significance of the
gesture, as his grin confirmed. ‘I'll wait in the car,’ he said. ‘Remember me
to your parents.’

As soon as Catt
had left, scared of prying ears, Casey removed himself from the confines of the
police station to the street around the corner to make his call. He found an
empty doorway and rang Moon, praying that the murders in her midst would have
encouraged a degree more responsibility than she had ever previously displayed.
It was important to find out what interactions and revelations had gone on
between the commune members when they were on their own. They could yet prove
revealing.