A Killing Karma (6 page)

Appalled at
the news that he had lost such a strong suspect so early in their shadowing
investigation and even though the evidence of the dogs made the scenario of the
drug dealer as the killer unlikely, wishful thinking was hard to eradicate.
Casey could only stare at his sergeant in dismay. ‘Don't tell me that,’ he
pleaded.

‘Sorry, boss.
But even drug dealers can have mothers they love,’ Catt remarked, dryly. ‘And Mrs
Magann is very, very sick. Practically at death's door according to the
hospital. No,’ Catt told him decisively, ‘he can't have done that one, at
least. And as you're convinced the two deaths must be connected in some way, it
doesn't seem likely that he could have had anything to do with the first one,
either.’

‘So, unless we
or the official investigating officers can discover some other
criminally-minded outsider who had dealings with one or more of the commune, someone
who had ready access to the place and was known to the dogs, we're stuffed.’

Catt didn't
need to add — ‘And so are your parents and the rest.’

This news
brought Casey — and his unofficial investigation — squarely and inescapably,
back, for his chief suspects, to the members of the commune. It didn't help
that all of them had criminal records, as Tom didn't fail to remind him.

‘So much for
the “Summer of Love” generation and their adherents,’ ThomCatt quipped. ‘It
seems they're as keen on cheating, lying and stealing as much of the rest of
humanity. More, it seems, in Callender's case. Just as well I've got a friend
on the Lincolnshire force that's dealing with the commune killings and who owes
me a huge favour. It means I have pretty much ready access to their
discoveries.’

That was the
one piece of good news Casey had heard since Moon had first telephoned. He, of
course, already knew most of the commune's more grubby details. As ThomCatt had
said, this loving brother and sisterhood did their fair share of wrong-doing,
whether it was coveting their neighbours' asses or their wives and daughters.
Certainly, a fair bit of the latter had been going on there, as Madonna
Redfern's advanced pregnancy alone could testify.

Of course, all
of them had drug convictions and now Tom told him that Foxy Redfern also had a
very recent conviction for drunken assault and Kali Callender had one charge of
soliciting against her, though it was several years back. At least Tom was
sensitive enough not to mention Casey's parents' convictions.

Casey consoled
himself with the thought that at least none of them had records for Grievous
Bodily Harm, or worse. He disliked being dependent for all his information on
Catt's favour-owing and possibly more than dodgy friend, but he dare not
consult the police national computer himself or allow Catt to do so. Neither of
them had any official involvement in the case, so it would be unwise to leave their
technological fingerprints all over it. You never knew when such prints might
come back and point the finger. He had cautioned Catt similarly. Not that he'd
needed to, as Catt, who had spent nearly all his childhood in Council-run care
homes, had grown wily at an early age in order to survive his upbringing. He
knew better than to leave fingerprint or any other traces of himself behind.

‘Was your
mother able to pin down the whereabouts of the other commune members between
the times DaisyMay Smith was last seen and when her body was found?’

Casey shook
his head. ‘Not really. Bits and pieces, that's all, which means that any one of
them could have killed her.’ Including Moon and Star themselves, he reluctantly
acknowledged. And although Casey had little doubt that Star was too idle to
exert himself to so violently attack anybody, his mother had always been the
more determined and energetic of the two — which wasn't saying a lot, of
course, but even so ...

He took a gulp
of his coffee, wishing now that he had laced it with spirits as he had Catt's
and comforted himself with the thought that as far as he knew, Moon had no
reason to kill either Kris Callender or DaisyMay Smith. Unless she had
discovered that Star, her idle husband, had suddenly developed a new lease of
life in the love-making department and had impregnated DaisyMay?

But that was
another area Casey was reluctant to investigate too closely. He ran his hand
through his neatly cut black hair and said, ‘OK. So what about the other
death?’

‘It's my understanding
that these hippie communes tend to attract transient types who prefer to pick
up their sticks and little spotted handkerchiefs and take off after a while in
one place. Were all the current inhabitants there when Callender's body was
found?’

Casey thought
back over what his mother had told him. Then he nodded. ‘But there was also
another couple staying there around that time. Names of Honey and Ché Farrer. I
remembered them and asked Moon about them.’

‘What reason
did they give for leaving?’

‘According to
Moon, they couldn't get on with Callender.'

'I presume he
was still alive after this Farrer pair left?’

‘Debatable.’
From somewhere, Casey managed to find a wry smile. It felt unnaturally forced.
‘Moon can't remember. She knows the two events were close together, but she's
unclear in which order they occurred. She takes drugs, used to take a lot of
them. Regularly,’ he spelled out to the already clued-up Catt. ‘She's asked the
others, of course. Most of them can't remember, either. And the ones who said
they can, according to Moon, gave off a distinct whiff of wanting to spread the
collective guilt as widely as possible.’

‘You've primed
her to mention this Farrer couple to the investigating coppers?’

'Of course.
And to avoid the distinct possibility that she'll forget all about them by the
time she next sees DCI Boxham, I told her she might consider getting a bit of
exercise and walking the half-mile into the village to telephone him from the
public phone box. No way do I want her contacting DCI Boxham from the secret
mobile. If he gets its number, he might just think to track down her other
calls.’

Casey had felt
he had to tell Catt about this after he'd done so much to help. His warning to
Moon about using this mobile for such a call had been emphatic. If it occurred to
Boxham to trace her call back to their sole means of communication it would put
paid to any hope that Casey had that he would be able to remove his parents'
names from the list of murder suspects.

That this
mobile was the only means of communication between himself and his parents was
another anxiety to Casey. Because, as he confided to Catt, it could surely only
be a matter of time before Moon either forgot where she'd hidden it or, as had
happened to the previous mobiles he'd bought his parents, lost it altogether.

‘She could
always take up smoke signalling,’ Catt joked.

But while
aspects of this case might amuse ThomCatt, Casey couldn't afford such levity.
As he said, ‘With the number of smoke signals her and Star's illicit substances
have sent up over the years, I'd rather my parents stayed away from such
things. With his local knowledge and his familiarity with the commune and their
ways, Boxham would be only too likely to read such signals. And then where
would we be?’

‘Mm. So what
now? Do you want me to put the word out that we'd like to trace this Farrer
couple?’

‘No. Let the
official team do that. You'd have to spread the word way too widely to find
them as they could be anywhere in the country, maybe even abroad by now. Leave
it to the Lincolnshire force.’ Casey hesitated, then, because it was so
important, found himself breathlessly — anxiously — asking, ‘Your contact there
isn't beginning to fight shy of sharing further information, I hope? Because
without his input we're likely to flounder.’

‘No,’ Catt
reassured in his best breezy manner. ‘He's fine. Besides, he used to be a bit
of a hippie himself in his younger days; did the whole bit — the travelling
around India; the meditating; the drugs. Anyway, he loathes DCI Boxham, so
would be only too pleased to help us prove his determination to pin these
deaths on one or other of the commune members is wrongheaded and probably, nowadays,
politically incorrect as well.’

Catt drained
the rest of his vodka-laced coffee, rose, clapped a consoling hand on Casey's
shoulder and said, ‘I've got to get back to work. I'll keep you posted on what
I hear from my various sources. And stop worrying. I can't see either of your
parents murdering anybody.’

Casey nodded
and let Tom out, watching as he made his carefree way down the path and out of
the gate. He just wished DCI Boxham proved equally as magnanimous on the
subject. But, for the life of him and as hard as he tried, he didn't think it
at all likely.

After Catt had
left, Casey made himself some more coffee and settled down to write up his
notes while events were still fresh in his mind until Rachel returned and he had
to pretend to be interested in continuing with their much looked-forward to
holiday. Various days and half-days out had been planned which he felt unable
to get out of.

Even though
they had a habit of periodically going off on trips, he had known all of the
more long-standing members of his parents' commune for a number of years. Now
he set about recalling as much as he could about them all.

Kali
Callender, the tear-free widow of the late Kris, had struck him on the few
occasions he'd encountered her as being almost as unpleasant a character as her
dead husband was reputed to be. Not for nothing had she been nicknamed for the
Hindu goddess
Kali,
known as ‘the Black One’, one of the most fearsome
of the vast array of pleasant and not so pleasant Hindu deities which he had
learned about during his parents' hippie treks around India in his childhood
and youth. As Kali Callender had metaphorically done to her husband, the
goddess
Kali
was most often depicted dancing on the ‘corpse’ of
Shiva
while garlanded with a tasteful array of human heads. Not a goddess the more
pacifically-minded Casey would be willing to bow down and worship, particularly
as her bloodlust for war and carnage had, until it was outlawed in the early
nineteenth century, only been appeased by human sacrifice of the more brutal
kind. Had Kali sacrificed her husband and DaisyMay from some vengeful bloodlust
for which only she knew the reason? He hoped not as he suspected the widow the
most likely of the bunch to be able to keep her own counsel.

Certainly, as
Moon had reluctantly confided, the widow Callender had an unfortunate tendency
to argue. This trait would presumably be exacerbated by having to live so
closely with the others in the commune who all had drug habits of various
extents and expense and who could also be as argumentative and selfish as she
was herself. There was a definite possibility that Mrs Callender herself had
decided to ‘off’ her husband, tiring of waiting for one of the others to lose
their drug-addled heads sufficiently to do it for her.

As for the
rest and their possible motives, Glen 'Foxy' Redfern, he of the belligerent
manner and the fiery frizz of bright red hair, had shown himself as the most
eager for the blame for the murders to be laid on an outsider. Whether he was
hoping to conceal his own guilt by blaming an outsider was unclear, though the
rest, probably just as eager for any blame to be apportioned elsewhere, had
backed him up quickly enough. Then there was Foxy's wife, Lilith, and their son
Jethro; strangely, it had been Jethro, Madonna's older brother, who had seemed
most cut up about her early pregnancy. Not that Casey could hold that against
the youngster, who would perhaps blame his parents for his sister's situation
almost as much as he had blamed Callender himself.

That their
parents had chosen to rear their children in an atmosphere of sleaze and moral
bankruptcy didn't mean their teenage offspring would necessarily find such an
atmosphere appealing. Witness Saffron in
Absolutely Fabulous
, who had
certainly not approved of her maternal parent's lifestyle and who lived her
life in as opposite a manner to it as she could.

Much like me
with my parents, Casey thought as he recalled the necessity of keeping himself
fed whilst in India, after his parents had abandoned him while they sought the
wisdom of yet another guru. He'd been all of ten that first time. And although
feeling frightened and alone, he'd managed, necessity being the mother of
invention.

All three of
the Redferns might well have felt antagonistic towards Callender for
impregnating the teenage Madonna, as well might Madonna Redfern herself.

Certainly
Madonna had looked miserable enough about the situation in which she currently
found herself. And as for Jethro, perhaps for all that he seemed familiar with
the Indian culture that had so absorbed the older generation in their youth and
presumably still did, perhaps, like Casey himself, he had merely absorbed it in
much the same way as one does language or anything else that surrounds one
every day and it meant no more to him than that.

As for Dylan
Harper, the other bereaved commune member, Casey considered the short-of-stature
gipsy-dark man. Like a lot of smaller men, Dylan appeared to hold a lot of
anger in his slim frame. An anger that seemed to Casey all too likely to
explode if he felt he had reason to believe one of the other commune members
had killed his partner. If he suspected he knew the guilty party, he might well
take a violent, gipsy revenge  —  a murder waiting to happen. Casey hoped Moon
and Star weren't on Harper's list of potential suspects. With this thought in
mind, he had warned Moon to stay away from him as much as possible, certainly
not to provoke him in any way.