A Killing Karma (17 page)

‘Sounds good,
especially the bit about you paying.’

‘Let's just
say it's my thank you for services rendered on the commune case.’

The Lamb was
but a short drive away. Casey pulled up and parked in the car park. Practically
full, the number of cars shouted that summer had arrived. After all the chilly,
grey days, July had finally recalled it was meant to be warm and had come out
in a blaze of sunny glory.

The pub was
their usual haunt when the canteen fare at the station palled. An old coaching
inn, it was situated on the banks of the river and had pleasant gardens, just
perfect to sit out on such a fine day.

‘Just a salad
for me, please,’ Casey told the barmaid. ‘Chicken, I think.’ He turned to Catt.
‘Made your mind up, ThomCatt?'

Catt nodded.
‘I’ll have the chicken casserole, please, my darling.’

Casey sighed
at this evidence that he hadn't managed to break his sergeant of being
over-familiar, took their food tickets and went and got the drinks while Catt
found an unoccupied table outside.

‘This is the
life,’ Catt remarked as Casey arrived with the drinks.

'Mmm,' Casey
agreed as he sat down. ‘Enjoy it while you can. We can't stay long. Duty will
call all too soon.’

‘Don't go and
spoil it. With two investigations on the go, I reckon we've earned a bit of R
and R.'

‘Some might
say we've earned nothing until the cases are wrapped up and the murderers in
the cells.’

Catt just
shrugged at this and took a long drink from his lager. 'Fallon and his
girlfriend seem a rum pair,’ he observed. ‘I’ll be interested to get your take
on them. Wonder why she stays with him if he beats her up.’

‘Unfathomable
are the ways of women.’

Catt nodded.
'I suppose the money's a draw. Doubtless it helps to ease the pain. And with a
string of nightclubs, he can't be short of a few bob. Maybe enough to pay a hit
man to do his dirty work for him.’

'Mmm. As you
say, he sounds something of a fly-boy, our Mr Fallon. His record marks him out
as a nasty piece of work.’

‘So you reckon
him for our killer?’ Catt asked just as their food arrived.

Casey waited
until the girl had served them and returned inside before he replied. ‘Given
his reputation and record, it seems a strong possibility.’

Catt pondered
this for a second or two as he picked up his cutlery. ‘Maybe it would be too
easy.’

Casey smiled
and started on his salad. ‘Thought you were looking for the easy life,
ThomCatt, taking your leisure in the sunshine?’

‘Who? Me? No.
I want to catch our killers, both here and up in Lincolnshire. Even if we'll
never get the credit for solving those killings.’

‘We've got to
catch the murderers yet, before we can talk of taking credit,’ Casey reminded
him again. ‘So eat up and let us at least make a stab — excuse the pun — at
catching the killer
here
.’

They were lucky
that evening and managed to interview Carole Brown alone as her partner had
been delayed; Casey hoped she might be more forthcoming without Fallon's
intimidating presence.

The pair, like
the other couples they had already interviewed, lived in some style. Theirs was
an apartment like the Garretts', but all similarity ended at the name. Part of
an old warehouse block, the interior was very spacious. But the space had been
filled with upmarket tat of high expense and dubious taste. No scheme of colour
or style had been selected to provide harmony; the place was a mishmash of
whatever had taken their fancy and they seemed to fancy the garish above all.

Casey didn't
wait for an invitation, but sank into a bright orange plastic chair. Catt
selected another in deep purple while Casey began the questioning.

‘I understand
you were at home alone all evening last Friday?’

Carole Brown
threw herself down on a lime green settee without a response. She seemed sullen
and inclined to be tetchy when the questioning began, constantly fingering her
ripe black eye and scowling. As Casey had said, she was yet another one who had
claimed to be home all evening, with no one to back up her tale, on the night
Oliver was murdered.

‘And what
about your boyfriend, Mr Fallon? Was he home all evening?’ Casey questioned.

‘Max? Not
likely. He was out, wheeling and dealing, as usual. I already told
him
that.’ She jerked her head in Catt's direction.

‘Bit of a Del
Boy, is he, your partner?’ Catt asked, referring to the lead character in the
popular sitcom,
Only Fools and Horses
, as he raised his head from his
notebook.

‘Thinks he is,
more like.’

Carole Brown
certainly seemed to be nursing a grievance against her partner; easy to
understand given the shiner. ‘Mr Fallon has a conviction for assault and seems
to mix with questionable acquaintances,’ Casey remarked. ‘Did he give you that
black eye?’

‘Certainly
not. The wind blew the front door back in my face.’ She stared at them as if
expecting them not to believe her. ‘He's a lamb is my Maxie. He'd never hit a
woman.’ Even her words held a certain cynicism as if she found amusement in
saying them. Perhaps she even believed them, though given her streetwise
appearance, it seemed unlikely. Maybe it was her pride talking.

‘While Mr
Fallon's not here, perhaps you could tell us something about your relationship
with the late Mr Oliver?’

Carole Brown
sneered. ‘What's this? Discretion Is Us? And to call it a relationship is
stretching it a bit far. We met for sex, that's about as far as any
relationship went. He bought me a few trinkets which I had to sell in case Max
found them and started asking questions.’ Her thin lips tightened. ‘It's just
as well the bastard's dead or I'd have killed him myself.’

‘Why's that?’
Casey asked.

‘Bastard gave
me the clap, that's why. He never used condoms. Complained they were
uncomfortable and took away from the sensations. It wouldn't have mattered too
much, only before I knew I had it, I'd passed it on to Max.’ Involuntarily, she
touched her black eye, giving the lie to her tale of the wind-blown front door.
At Catt's grin, she pulled a face and admitted the truth.

‘All right. I
lied. I got this when Max started getting symptoms and had them checked out. He
slapped me around till he learned the name of the culprit who'd given me the
disease.’

Casey's gaze
met Catt's as the significance of this sank in: Fallon, prone to violence and
with a conviction for assault, would be unlikely to take kindly to a man who
had not only persuaded his girlfriend to be unfaithful, but who had also
infected them both with gonorrhoea. Had they found Oliver's killer so soon?

The front door
slammed and a sour-faced Max Fallon entered the room. He was tall with hair
that was styled to within an inch of its life; he had that much in common with
Catt, but that was where the similarity ended. He wore a flashy suit of a light
mauve with a white stripe. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar as he
came towards them. He selected a chair and sat back, seemingly at his ease,
before he directed a grey-eyed and challenging stare at the two policemen. It
seemed he had no difficulty in recognizing their profession, for he said
sharply, ‘Cops? What are you doing here? My club licenses are already renewed.’

‘We're not
here about your licenses, Mr Fallon,' Casey said. He began to introduce himself
and Catt, but Fallon waved away his words.

‘No need for
introductions, gentlemen. It's my belief that when you've met one cop you've
met 'em all.’ He sat forward and demanded, ‘So, what's she told you? Did the
dirty bitch tell you she gave me the clap?’ It was clear from his manner than
Fallon had been drinking a little too unwisely. If he hadn't been he would
surely had kept that gem of a motive to himself.

‘Indeed she
did, Mr Fallon,’ Casey replied. ‘She also told us who gave it to her. A man who
has since died very violently. Did you perhaps decide to take revenge on Mr
Oliver?’

'I might have
done if I'd managed to catch up with him,’ was the candid reply. He removed his
tie, by the simple expedient of pulling the loosened garment over his head
before he flung it in the corner. ‘But this is one thing you can't pin on me. I
was at my club till the early hours on Friday night. Ask any of my staff
there.’

‘Oh, I will,
Mr Fallon,’ said Casey, though he thought asking Fallon's staff such a question
was likely to prove singularly unproductive. Given Fallon's tendency to
violence it was unlikely any of his staff would be so foolhardy as to
contradict him. Fallon could easily have slipped out and laid in wait near
Oliver's house for him to emerge. A knife would be an excellent incentive to
get him to the dark edge of the rubbish-strewn alley. It would have been the
work of moments to stab Oliver in the groin. Cutting off the victim's penis and
stuffing it in his mouth, would — if the knife was sharp and Casey doubted that
Max Fallon would carry anything but a slick and sharpened blade — have taken
little longer.

It certainly
seemed the sort of crime that had Fallon's name all over it: most criminals
progressed up the ladder of villainy and violence over time, so, given the
provocation of a sexually transmitted disease and having been thoroughly
cuckolded, such a leap up the ranks of the criminal fraternity didn't seem
unlikely.

The only
difficulty with this was Dr Merriman's emphatic insistence that Oliver's body
had been moved after death. If Fallon had lain in wait for Oliver outside the
latter's home, he could, of course, have bundled him into a car, but the
argument against this was that unless it was a stolen vehicle, which he thought
unlikely in Fallon's case, he wouldn't want Oliver's blood on his seat covers.
And if he had walked his victim to the alleyway at knifepoint and killed him
there, the body wouldn't provide evidence of its transport from somewhere else.
It was a conundrum, the answer to which evaded Casey. But one thing he could do
was to get Catt to look again through the CCTC footage. They'd need to check
what car Fallon drove — this was something he preferred not to ask Fallon
directly. CCTV was more likely to tell them the truth than either Fallon or his
hired help.

‘I’d like the
names of the staff you claim can provide you with an alibi, Mr Fallon,’ Casey
told him, in spite of the belief that getting these names would be a waste of
time.

Fallon didn't
demure. With an expression that tended to the smug, he reeled them off. Catt
noted them down.

‘We'll be
paying a visit to your local club, sir,’ he told Fallon. ‘It was the one in
King's Langley rather than one of your other establishments where you claim to
have been?’

 ‘That's
right.’ Fallon nodded. ‘King's in the High Street. And not “claimed”, but
was.
My staff will, I'm sure, be glad to assist you.’ His still smug expression
foretold the opposite.

‘We'll be in touch,
sir,’ Casey murmured as they headed for the door.

‘Please do,
Chief Inspector. I always aim to help the police.’

‘He's
certainly done that a few times,’ was Catt's comment once they were on the
other side of the front door. ‘Let's hope he's not guilty of this crime because
alibied up as he is, we're unlikely to prove it. He'll have primed his staff
with the answers he wants.’

‘Don't I know
it. Still, the CCTV might, with luck, contradict him and them. We'll question
his staff this evening, anyway. And maybe one of the regular customers will
spill any beans to be had.’

‘Only the more
idiotic of them would do so, given Fallon's reputation.’

‘We must hope
we hit on an idiot, then, as it seems the only way we're likely to get some
straight answers. Unless
Fallon
proves to be the idiot and we find his
car captured by the CCTV cameras, heading towards Oliver's home. I want you to
check it out as soon as possible.’

Catt nodded.
And with thoughts of idiots to comfort them, they headed back to the station.

Max Fallon's
nightclub was the usual combination of loud strobe lighting and even louder
music — if such it could be called. Its garish colours and furniture bore a
marked similarity to those of his apartment. Perhaps he had bought a job lot at
a knock-down price.

But, as Fallon
claimed in his advertisements, his club attracted celebrities; according to the
barman they had two weather girls as regulars. He had seemed quite proud of the
fact that the club could boast such Z-listers amongst their clientele. It was
comforting to Casey to discover that Fallon wasn't as high up the totem pole as
he would have liked them to believe. People of influence were one of the banes
of a copper's life, so it was good to learn that the nightclub owner's was only
likely to be as high as that of his ‘celebrity’ clients.

The barman and
the rest of the staff were quick to confirm what Fallon had told them — that he
hadn't left the club till around four on Saturday morning, at which time Gus
Oliver's body must already have begun to cool. Presumably, as Casey had
anticipated, Fallon had rung his staff after he and Catt had left the apartment
and primed them with what they were to say. But at least, during their earlier
scout around the car park, they had spotted what had seemed likely to be
Fallon's car and had rung in for confirmation of ownership.