A Killing Karma (21 page)

Catt was soon
back, clearly having disregarded Casey's instructions on the order of his
priorities. 'Yep,' he said. 'Fallon had a private quack and the bastard’s
discretion itself. Insisted I made an appointment to see him.’

‘Have you done
so?’

Catt nodded.
‘It's for two days' hence.’

‘Check out
Carole Brown too. I want medical confirmation that they were both infected,
rather than just take their word for it, which they could retract at any time.
If Fallon's doctor doesn't confide in us, we might have more luck with Ms Brown's
doctor — I don't suppose she attended the private practice.’

Catt grinned. ‘Psychic,
me. I've beaten you to it. I've already asked and you suppose right. Seems
Fallon wasn't only tight-fisted about the car she drove. She's with an NHS
practice in the town. I checked.’

‘And what did
you find out?’

'I was lucky.
Her doctor's young and hasn't yet learned how to erect a wall against unwanted
questions. And although she didn't actually confirm that Ms Brown had caught a
dose of the clap, her manner more than gave the game away. So it seems likely
she did infect Max Fallon as she claimed.’

‘Interesting
that she should have been so quick to admit it. Makes you wonder why she did
so.’

‘If she knew
about Oliver's death, could be she wanted to place Fallon under suspicion in
payment for the black eye.’

‘Maybe.
Strange, though, if he's the guilty party that he should also be so ready to
admit to having caught the disease.’

Catt shrugged
and made for the door. ‘I’ll get back to studying those tapes.’

Half an hour
later, Catt interrupted Casey's unproductive study of the latest reports from
the house-to-house teams by bursting into the office. ‘Guess what? We've only
had a result on the CCTV footage. Who do you think I spotted in his fancy
silver Porsche not a million miles from where Gus Oliver was found?’

'Fallon.'
Casey smiled. Got him, he thought. But even as he had the thought, the fact
that Fallon had taken his own car niggled him. Surely, if he had set out with
murder in mind, he would have taken the precaution of using a car that was more
pedestrian in appearance? The dimmest criminal knew he would be caught on camera
several times when driving around the town. Why make himself so conspicuous?
Perhaps the man was simply playing with him . . .

But if Casey
had doubts about these latest findings it seemed Catt had none.

 'I reckon the
man's too cocky for his own good. Let him argue with this evidence. This time
it won't just be a case of his word and that of his staff against his
neighbour. Do you want me to have him brought in for questioning?’

'I certainly
do. As you said, ThomCatt, let him lie his way out of this evidence.’ Catt's
reaction to this latest news made Casey question his own response. But, at the
very least, it would rattle the man. Which, if he
was
their murderer,
was all to the good.

Max Fallon
didn't even try to pretend he hadn't lied. He merely shrugged and said, ‘Okay.
I admit it. I popped out for some air. The club was packed and I had a
headache, so I drove around the town for a bit to see if I could clear it.
That's all. The lie was worth a try to get myself off your suspect list. But I
didn't kill Oliver and your CCTV footage can't prove I did. If a man can't
drive around his hometown without having accusations hurled at him—’

'I don't think
I accused you of anything, Mr Fallon,’ Casey said. ‘But the evidence puts you
in the right vicinity at the right time.’ And he had had the means and the
motive to go with the opportunity.

Fallon’s lip
curled. 'A mere coincidence. And why am I supposed to have murdered him? Tell
me that. Because he gave my girlfriend the clap?’ Fallon laughed. ‘Carole's
history anyway and so I told her before I left the apartment. She can pass her
disgusting diseases on to some other poor guy. This one's taken the cure and
will soon be back on the market.’

Casey stared
at him. Fallon was taking this interview a little too casually for his liking.
Was the man really so relaxed about such a social taboo as gonorrhoea? Casey didn't
think it likely. What man — least of all the sure-of-himself, nightclub-owning
Fallon — would take such an infection so in his stride? He'd smashed Carole
Brown in the face for giving him the disease. What was he likely to do to the
man who had him for a fool twice over: firstly in sleeping with his girlfriend
and secondly being the cause of such an infection?

Aware the
interview wasn't progressing smoothly, Casey glanced at Catt, who formed his
back-up and nodded.

‘We've
questioned the witness who saw you in the vicinity of Oliver's house,’ Catt
told Fallon. ‘This witness says he was behind you all the way from the
nightclub to just yards from Oliver's home.’ Catt didn't add that the neighbour
had turned off then and didn't see if Fallon had parked up by Oliver's house.

‘What do you
want me to say?’ Fallon demanded. ‘That I waited for Oliver to come out of his
house and then knifed him? Hell, I don't even know where he lived. Why would I?
And how would I find out his address?’

‘Carole Brown
springs to mind. I presume she'd taken the trouble to get his address before
she went to bed with him. Is that why you smacked her about?’ Catt probed. ‘So
she would tell you Oliver's address?’

‘No. She got
the black eye for the reason you already know about. Besides, she didn't know
Oliver's address. The creep had apparently been too cagey to give it to her.’

‘So you did ask
her for it?’

Fallon scowled
at his
faux pas
but said nothing.

‘Okay. So you
found it out some other way. I'm sure it's not beyond you to have him traced. I
recall you claiming you would have killed him if you'd caught up with him.
Strange if you're not guilty of his murder when you managed to find your way to
within yards of his door.’

‘Coincidence,
Sergeant, as I said. Sheer coincidence.’ Fallon stood up. 'I think my brief
would tell you you'll have to do better than that. to keep me here.’ He shot
his cuffs. There was a glint of gold as he made for the door. ‘That being the
case, I'm out of here.’

Catt looked at
Casey, the question — Shall I stop him? — in his gaze.

Casey shook
his head. And as the door closed on Fallon, he said, ‘We can't hold him, ThomCatt.
You know that. As the man said, his brief would soon have him released. No.'
Casey sat back  ‘I think we should try a more subtle means to get at the truth.
Didn't he say Carole Brown was now his
ex
-girlfriend?'

‘That's
right.’ Catt grinned. 'A woman scorned. She must surely be keen to get back at
him.’

‘That's what I
thought.’ Casey glanced at his watch. ‘I wonder if she's busy packing her stuff
up? We'd best get around there before she leaves and goes we know not where.’

Carole Brown
was in a vengeful mood. She carried on throwing her clothes into a couple of
suitcases while she spilled what beans she knew.

‘You know,’
she said, pausing in her frenetic activity, ‘you should get the Fraud Squad to
check out the finances of Max's nightclubs. They're far from kosher. His
accountant has some scam set up to hide the bulk of the profits from the
taxman. I often heard Max boast about it to show off how clever he'd been.’

Casey, having
enough to contend with in the two murder investigations, wasn't interested in
whatever crooked scams Fallon and his accountant had going. Time enough for
that when he’d got his current investigations squared away. 'I wanted to ask
you about the late Gus Oliver, Ms Brown.’

‘Him again.
What about him?’ The brief hiatus in the packing came to an abrupt end as more
clothes were hurled into the cases and she added, half to herself, ‘Maybe I should
slash his expensive suits? That would hit him where it hurts.’

'I think you
already did that,’ Catt told her. ‘You infected him with gonorrhoea, remember?’

‘So I did.’
She shrugged. 'I don't suppose it's the first time he got a dose. Occupational
hazard I would think, in his line of work.’

'I asked you
about Gus Oliver,’ Casey prompted.

‘Another shit.
The world's full of them.’

‘Did Fallon
ever let slip if he had anything to do with Oliver's death?’

‘No. But then
he wouldn't. Would he be likely to tell me when he must have already been
planning to dump me?’

‘Put like
that, it seems unlikely.’

‘Believe me,
if I knew anything about it, I'd tell you in a heartbeat.’

Casey nodded.
It seemed she could tell them nothing more, so they left her to her packing,
but not before Casey added the rider, ‘You won't forget to let us know where
you're going to be staying, will you, Ms Brown? We don't want to have to come
looking for you should we need to question you again.’

She gazed
sullenly back at him. ‘I’ll be staying with a girlfriend,’ she told him. ‘I'm
off men.’ She rattled off a name and address and Catt's pen raced across the
page as he noted them down.

Questioning
Carole Brown about Oliver's death had been a long-shot. And, like most
long-shots, it hadn't come off. Still, as Casey remarked to Catt once they
reached the pavement, Max Fallon was still in the frame. He'd had the motive
and the opportunity to kill Oliver. Maybe, if they could find the murder
weapon, it might still retain some traces of the murderer.

‘He'll have
got rid of the blade, for sure,’ said Catt.

‘Of course.
Friend Fallon might be a lot of things, but I doubt if he's foolish enough to
hang on to it. I think we should redouble our efforts to find it. That and the
clothes he was wearing that night. If he planned on killing Oliver, he'd have
been prepared with a fresh set of clothes and would have dumped the suit,
shirt, tie — even his shoes and socks along with the knife as they would have
been heavily blood stained.’

‘Maybe some
tramp got lucky and is walking around dressed to kill,’ Catt put in.

Once in the car,
Catt picked up the mike. ‘I’ll get the lads to check out the local hobos.’

‘Get them to
check the local shops that deal in expensive second-hand clothing, too. If a
tramp found a suit of fancy clothes it's more likely he'd sell them to buy the
next bottle or three.’

‘Good
thinking.’ Catt relayed the message and sat back. ‘Now what?’

‘Now we wait.’

Randy Matthews
and Scott ‘Mackenzie’ Johnson still hadn't been traced two days later in spite
of the combined efforts of the Lincolnshire force.

Casey, as he
arrived home from the station, convinced the commune members must have some
idea where the pair had gone even if they had failed to confide the fact of
their going until questioned, decided he'd have to drive to the Fens once more
and delve a bit more deeply. It was a depressing prospect; not only were their
memories drug-impaired, but they were just as likely to come up with something
— anything — in order to get rid of him; they seemed now to be as tired of his
questions as they were of those of the official investigators.

But then,
answering questions from the police had never been their favourite pastime;
most of them had been busted for drug possession too often in the past to
welcome such attentions. But questioned again they must be; maybe one of them
had remembered something relevant to the investigation. He kissed Rachel
goodbye, told her he'd see her later, and went out.

It was with a
mixture of hope and the expectation of disappointment that Casey again drove to
the Fens. By now the commune members had abandoned their brief flurry into
being security conscious and the big gate to the smallholding was wide open.
Craggie, the smelly and over-affectionate mongrel, was out in the yard with the
other two dogs: clearly they'd abandoned attempts to keep the dogs separate
much as they'd abandoned their security measures, because all three dogs came
racing towards him, zigzagging between the car wrecks, as he got out of his
vehicle, Thankfully, this time they recognized him as a welcome visitor and
didn't set up their previous frenzied barking. The only attentions Casey
received were drools over his trouser legs and the attempt by Craggie to hug
him to death while breathing his halitosis fumes in his face. He escaped this
unwelcome embrace and hurried into the farmhouse, shutting the door firmly
behind him.

For once, the
living room was deserted — even hippies had to do some chores if the place was
to remain habitable. Casey shouted, 'Hello?’ and Moon appeared from the depths
of the farmhouse.

‘Hi, Willow
Tree. Didn't expect you.’

Casey, having
thought it might be advisable to come unheralded, ignored this observation and
simply asked, ‘Where are the others?’

‘Oh, they're around
somewhere,’ Moon replied vaguely, waving her hand to encompass the entirety of
the house and yard. ‘What do you want, anyway?’

'I suppose a
cup of tea's out of the question?’ He hadn't stopped for a meal or a drink, but
had left home five minutes after his arrival from work.