A Killing Karma (2 page)

Much like the
inhabitants, he thought, as he looked around the circle of expectant, sheepish,
drugged and out of it faces in their habitual well-holed jeans and shabby
kaftans. He took the chair with the fewest stains and burn holes — the new
settees having been appropriated by Star and Foxy Redfern, both sprawled out in
such determined ownership that one would think they had never believed that
property was theft.

While he
gathered his thoughts, he examined the faces again; there were his mother and
father, of course, Moon and Star Casey respectively, names which they had
adopted long ago in their first hippie flush. They were by far the oldest of
the commune members. Both were now pensioners, though one wouldn't have thought
so from their irresponsible and ‘opt out’ lifestyle.

Sitting
upright and tight-faced on one of the older settees was Dylan Harper, the
bereaved thirty-something partner of the second victim, DaisyMay Smith; and
across from him was Scott ‘Mackenzie’ Johnson, another, older,
thirty-something; and beside him, sitting close, was his nineteen-year-old gay
lover, Randy Matthews. Then there was Kali Callender, in her early forties, the
widow of Kris ‘Krishna’ Callender, the first supposed victim; and Glen 'Foxy'
Redfern, next oldest to Moon and Star, with the wild frizz of bright red hair
that had earned him his nickname; and Lilith whom he called his wife, though as
they had been married in a beachside ceremony of much spiritual significance,
but probably spurious legality, Casey doubted their marital status. There were
also still up, although the hour was late, several teenage children of the
commune, whose names Casey had forgotten.

The missing
faces — apart from the younger children who, amazingly, had tonight clearly
been sent to bed at a reasonable hour — were those of the dead pair: Kris
‘Krishna’ Callender, Kali's husband, and DaisyMay Smith, Dylan Harper's
girlfriend.

Casey cleared
his throat and looked directly at Moon, his mother. ‘You were somewhat
incoherent on the phone, Mum, so let me, first of all, make sure I've got this
clear. You say one of you found Kris dead in one of the greenhouses and have
yet to report his death?’

Moon nodded.
Unsurprisingly, her normal, calm aura wasn't much in evidence this evening.
Even under the flickering candlelight that lit the room but dimly, he could see
her fingers moving restlessly at her throat as she fiddled with the little
charm of
Ganesh
, the Hindu elephant-headed god of good fortune. This
time, his failure to work his claimed magic had taken on epic proportions.

Moon's eyes,
too, seemed restless; the gaze from the still vivid green eyes that were so
like his own, kept sliding away from Casey's. He prayed this reluctance to hold
his gaze wasn't an indication that Moon was guilty of rather more than just the
concealment of two sudden deaths.

Casey
continued. ‘And then, as if that wasn't enough to be going on with, for reasons
that escape me, having failed to call for the police or an ambulance, you decided
to move Callender's body to an outhouse before burying him in the garden. Have
I got it right so far?’

His mother
gave another reluctant nod.

But although
Casey had claimed that the reasons for their actions had escaped him, he
suspected that he understood the reasons only too well.

‘Were there
any marks of violence on Kris Callender's body?’

‘None that I
noticed, though I didn't look that closely,’ Moon admitted. ‘Besides, it was
getting dark when I found his body.’

Casey felt a
shiver of dread crawl down his spine. For that was the first time his mother
had admitted that
she
had been the one to find Callender's corpse.
Uneasily, he wondered what other unwelcome admissions would follow.

He already
suspected that Kris's body had been found lying amongst the cannabis crop which
he knew they grew behind the house, concealed by a hedge, in one of the larger
greenhouses, which location, for Casey, went some way to explaining their
bizarre decision to bury him quietly without notifying anyone in authority of his
death.

‘Tell me,’ he
went on, although he doubted they would tell him the truth, ‘how did you all
get on with the dead man? Was he well liked?’

A jangle of
voices broke out at this point, all seeking to reassure him that Kris ‘Krishna’
Callender had been variously 'a great guy’, 'a hard worker, who always insisted
on manning the market stall where we sell our produce, rather than following
the rota as we used to’, 'a gentle, benevolent, deeply spiritual man’ and one
who was ‘in touch with the earth’.

Whatever else
he might have been, Kris Callender was certainly the latter now, Casey thought.
But, having met Callender a number of times whilst visiting the smallholding,
he suspected the man's right to join the queue for sainthood.

‘If he was
murdered, it must have been an outsider that did it,’ Foxy Redfern insisted.

'I don't
think, at this stage, that we can rely on that theory,’ Casey warned. ‘Though I
agree that someone could have come in from outside.’ Their previously lax
security made that a distinct possibility. It was the only aspect of this
worrying situation that gave him hope. But even as he voiced the words he
recalled the barking dogs: how likely was it that someone could approach the
smallholding without the animals making a similar racket to the one that had
heralded his arrival? Unless the mongrels had arrived after Callender's death.
They were certainly new additions. He questioned them on this point;
reluctantly, they admitted the dogs had arrived before Callender's death.

His mother's
next words echoed his own thoughts and removed the last trace of hope that a
stranger was responsible for the deaths.

‘You're right,
hon, the dogs would have barked. Especially Craggie, our latest arrival.’

Just then, as
if he had heard his name and knew he was being talked about, the latest
addition to the menagerie pushed the door open and entered the room.

Moon smiled,
revealing stained, yellow teeth that, with the long, greying hair worn in its
usual plait, marred what was, surprisingly, given the druggy life she led,
otherwise still a pretty face. ‘He just sort of appeared in the yard one day
and decided to stay. Our other dogs keep wanting to fight him so we're keeping
him indoors till they get better acquainted.

‘Hey, Crags,
honey,’ she called to the dog, ‘come and make my Willow Tree's acquaintance.’

Aghast, Casey
could only sit and stare in horror as the biggest, ugliest, dirtiest mongrel he
had ever seen loped with a rangy stride over various outstretched bodies.
Before Casey could do anything to stop him, the animal launched himself towards
him, landed like a dead weight in his lap and proceeded to rasp at his face
with a huge and enthusiastic tongue.

Casey tried to
hold him off as his nostrils were engulfed by the worst case of halitosis
they'd ever encountered. Between rasps from a very rough tongue, Casey shouted
furiously ‘Get him off me!’

'Aw, don't be
like that, Willow Tree,’ Moon reproved. ‘He's taken to you. I can tell.’

Thankfully,
Moon called the dog over to her and to make up for Casey's unkind rejection,
she made a big fuss of the Hound from Hell. The beast was more than big enough
to make one believe that the dog who had ‘appeared from nowhere’, was a
descendant of Black Shuck. He'd certainly brought death in his wake.

Now that the
beast was no longer literally ‘in his face’, Casey could see the mutt's
long-haired coat was heavily clogged with mud — and probably other things that
Casey didn't want to think about. To his dismay, he saw that some of this
mysterious muck had transferred itself to his previously immaculate suit and
shirt.

Casey sighed.
He shut his eyes. When he opened them again, it was to find Craggie gazing
adoringly at him from huge, golden, crust-rimmed eyes. In case this latest
member of the commune should take the eye contact as an invitation to launch
another love-in, Casey hastily averted his gaze, though he had to admit that
whilst undoubtedly smelly, Craggie was not even the most unhygienic commune
member or the most averse to water; Star, Casey's father, won the ribbon on both
counts.

‘The dogs
always bark at strangers,’ his mother went on. ‘Strangers on their own. We
haven't been able to train them out of it.’

Only his
parents would try to curb such a useful trait, he thought. Though, given the
length of time any of their enthusiasms lasted, he doubted this ‘training’ had
amounted to anything remotely likely to change the dogs' behaviour.

‘But suppose
it was a stranger who wasn't a stranger to the dogs? You said yourself that
Craggie, for instance, just turned up one day and decided to stay.’ Thinking of
the commune's usual habits, he added, ‘He looks, to me, the sort of ugly mutt
that a drug dealer might favour for protection.’

Craggie whined
at this and put one massive paw over his eyes.

‘Now you've
hurt his feelings,’ Moon reproved again. ‘Besides, you don't know him.
Craggie's just an old softie, aren't you, boy?’

From beneath
the filthy paw a deep ‘woof’ reverberated around the room.

‘And do you
really think we'd allow some drug dealer to roam around at will? We've kids here,
Willow Tree, in case you hadn't noticed.’ Striving for authentic indignation
and failing, she added, ‘We're not that irresponsible, you know.’ This from a
woman who had helped conceal one death and had doubtless considered concealing
the second also.

If only her
claim was true. But Casey knew that it wasn't. Neither Moon nor Star had
hesitated when he was a kid to make their drug deals when he was around. They
had dragged him halfway around India for months on the hippie trail of drugs
and gurus, several times leaving him to fend for himself for days at a time
while their attention was engaged by their latest wise man find. And, in his
experience, their increasing years had made them no more responsible than they
had ever been, as their current plight proved. In fact, sometimes, he thought
they were getting worse — which he felt sure was something Rachel would tell
him was an excellent reason to leave them to sort out their own problems this
time.

Foxy Redfern
used the pause in their exchange to enter the commune's case for the defence.
‘Whatever conclusions you two come to about Craggie and his fondness or
other-wise for strangers, he and the other two dogs must have let someone in,
man, without barking, as none of us had any reason to wish Kris ill.’

This brought
another jangled chorus of agreement. It didn't convince Casey any more now than
it had the last time and he made no attempt to conceal his scepticism. He had
met the dead man briefly several times during his infrequent visits to his
parents, and, though brief, the meetings had been enough to convince him that
Kris Callender wasn't a man he could ever have liked. He also recalled hearing
some muttered comments about Kris Callender, none of them complimentary.

‘If all that
you say about him is true, it strikes me as odd that you should decide to deny
this divine being a decent burial and instead just unceremoniously dump him in
an unhallowed hole in the ground.’

‘It was less
hassle, man,’ Star, Casey's father, put in from where he was stretched out on
the sofa. ‘Besides—' he broke off and a puzzled look entered his eyes.

Casey guessed
that, as was a frequent occurrence nowadays, his father had forgotten what else
he had been going to say. Not for the first time in his relationship with his
father, he forced himself to count to ten; at the end of this time, he managed,
along with the look of reproof, to simply nod wearily.

Star subsided
to his usual sloth after making his exhausting observation.

‘Besides,’ his
mother broke in, ‘we didn't bury him without any ceremony. We had candles and
chanting and everything. Kris got a fabulous send-off.’

‘And that's
supposed to make it all right, is it?’ Casey asked in a quiet voice.

One of the
teenagers sprawled on the stained Indian rugs littering the new carpet
sniggered.

From beneath
black eyebrows, Casey fixed the youth with a stern green gaze. ‘You think
something about this is funny?’ he asked the boy, a black-haired mid-teen who
already sported heavy dark stubble. This growth was a recent addition; it
certainly hadn't been evident on Casey's last visit and was so much the twin to
Star's dark unshaven growth that Casey's eyes narrowed, the better to judge the
boy's possible paternity. But then he decided he really didn't want to go there…

‘Must I remind
you that a man is dead?’ He didn't add that a woman had also died. He had yet
to question them about that. But he wanted to get the circumstances of the
first death clear in his head before he started to question them about the
second.

The youth — if
he had sprung from Star's mostly indolent loins as Casey suspected — was
certainly not a chip off Star's block and hadn't inherited his outlook, which
was so slothfully laidback it was practically as horizontal as the man himself,
for the boy defended himself with a vigour unknown to Casey's father.