Up in Flames (27 page)
Chandra’s parents had, in some ways, been rigidly old-fashioned. So, by clinging to their hippie lifestyle long after its glory days had passed, were his parents. Strange he had never realised that before. And to think they accused him of being a stick-in-the-mud reactionary.
Maybe, as well as finding the true Willow Tree Casey, he ought to persevere with changing his parents, dragging them into the 21st century rather than them thinking he should adopt the fading mores of a generation that had never been his in the first place. And as he opened his front door and shouted, ‘I’m home,’ he reflected that, truly, this case had opened his eyes to a lot of things.
Poor Rathi Khan. What a predicament he had found himself in. His daughter and granddaughter murdered, yet he had been unable to give himself over to grieving; this natural emotion had perforce to be put aside in order, for duty’s sake, to protect their murderer, his own mother.
Casey was conscious of a sudden chill along his spine as he realised how easily any individual might find themselves in such a position. With at first, a few barely noticed alterations in behaviour, the subtle chemical changes in the brain could bring who knew what obsessions to stalk the mind of one’s daily companions.
And as his parents packed up around him, preparing to return to their smallholding in the morning - rather than raise his credit card limits he had made the ultimate sacrifice of selling his most treasured share certificates to clear his parents’ debts - Casey thought about how dementia might affect them.
Rathi Khan’s mother had become obsessed with the sati rituals she had witnessed in her youth in Sikar, memories strengthened by witnessing the 1987 sati episode in Deorala in Rajasthan when she was already showing the first signs of developing dementia. Maybe she had also read about the Dalit woman who committed sati in the 90s.
Casey horrified at what effect such dementia could have on a family, uneasily considered his own. What might his family and friends’ individual obsessions push them into doing? His parents, for instance? How many times had he read that drug use, particularly of the variety and extent that his parents had gone in for, induced psychotic episodes? Schizophrenia, for instance, was believed by many medical experts to be a direct consequence of drug-taking.
And as his father picked up the guitar that had been a constant companion for decades, fondled it and started a tuneless strumming prior to packing it away in their assorted baggage, Casey studied him for signs of incipient madness. Although his father looked much the same as he always had - so had Rathi Khan’s mother. Just because a person looked normal - or relatively normal in his father’s case, proved nothing. How dreadfully ironic that such catastrophic changes should be so invisible.
His father, if so affected, might become convinced he was the greatest guitar player the world had never heard — and would probably, if he could summon sufficient energy — merely take up a harmless, if singularly tuneless, busking; demanding money with a menacing tin ear and tambourine accompaniment.
His mother, whom he caught with the corner of his eye hunting through his father’s discarded jeans for his wacky baccy pouch, would, with her innate curiosity about everything, take up serial snooping or stalking.
Catt, of course, would surely develop an unhealthy obsession with other people’s parents, while Rachel might well murder her orchestral conductor. How often had she voiced the desire to kill the maestro currently behaving like a megalomaniac during rehearsals? Perhaps with the bow of the first violin - another daily irritant - specially sharpened for the deed.
As for himself, maybe his dotage would encourage him to take up the irresponsible hippie lifestyle he had spurned as a youth.
That left Superintendent Brown-Smith. But on the whole Casey thought he would really prefer not to dwell on the prospect of the PC-obsessed super going quietly, invisibly demented while still in harness. After so much tragedy such thoughts really were the stuff of nightmares.
bout the Author
Geraldine Evans has had twenty novels published. Her
popular Rafferty & Llewellyn mysteries was her first procedural series. Up in Flames is the first novel in her second, Casey & Catt procedural series.
Her other publications include one historical novel, a contemporary medical thriller, a romance and articles on a variety of subjects, including, Historical Biography, Historical Places, Writing, Astrology, Palmistry and other New Age subjects. She has also written a dramatization of Dead Before Morning, the first book in her Rafferty series and a sitcom,
Jamjars
, set in a vehicle repair workshop, which is awaiting offers. (Cockney rhyming slang: Jamjars= cars).
Geraldine is a Londoner of Irish extraction, but now lives in Norfolk England where she moved, with her late husband, George, in 2000.
You can learn more about Geraldine Evans and her novels at:
You can read her Blog at:
Geraldine Evans' Blog
Llewellyn procedural The Rafferty and series
Dead Before Morning #1
Amazon UK:
http://amzn.to/114K3eh
Amazon US:
http://amzn.to/ToGN88
Detective Inspector Joseph Rafferty is investigating his first murder since his promotion. What a shame the victim is a girl with no name and no face, found in a place she had no business being – a private psychiatric hospital. With everyone denying knowing anything about the victim, Rafferty has his work cut out, so he could do without his Ma setting him another little problem: that of getting his cousin ‘Jailhouse Jack’ out of the cells. Although he has no shortage of suspects, proof is not so plentiful. It is only when he remembers his forgotten promise to get his cousin out of clink that Rafferty gets the first glimmer that leads to the solution to the case.
Down Among the Dead Men #2
Amazon UK:
http://amzn.to/U5LmTs
Amazon US:
http://amzn.to/10C2SmT
When beautiful Barbara Longman is found dead in a meadow, uprooted wild flowers strewn about her and, in her hand, a single marigold, Inspector Joe Rafferty at first believes the murder may be the work of the serial killer over the county border in Suffolk. But then he meets the victim’s family – and, after liaising with the Suffolk CID, he rapidly comes to believe that the killing is the work of a copycat… one much closer to home, someone among the descendants of the long-dead wealthy family patriarch, Maximillian Shore. Everyone, it seems, had a motive: Henry the grieving widower; the victim’s brother-in-law, Charles Shore, the ruthless tycoon; Henry’s first wife, the Bohemian Anne, who has lost the custody of Maxie, her teenage son, to the saintly Barbara. Even the long-dead patriarch, Maximillian Shore, seems, to Rafferty, to have some involvement in the murder, though how, or why, Rafferty doesn’t understand until he finally grasps the truth behind the reasons for the killing. A truth sad and dreadful and which had been evident from the start, if only he had had the eyes to see.
Death Line #3
Amazon UK
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Amazon US:
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Trailer:
http://bit.ly/TXlc31
Jasper Moon, internationally renowned ‘Seer to the Stars’, had signally failed to foresee his own future. He is found dead on his consulting-room floor, his skull crushed with a crystal ball and, all, around him, his office in chaos.
Meanwhile, Ma Rafferty does some star-gazing of her own and is sure she can predict Detective Inspector Joe Rafferty’s future – by the simple expedient of organizing it herself. She is still engaged on her crusade to get Rafferty married off to a good Catholic girl with child-bearing hips. But Rafferty has a cunning plan to sabotage her machinations. Only trouble is, he needs Sergeant Llewellyn’s cooperation and he isn’t sure he’s going to get it.
During their murder investigations, Inspector Rafferty and Sergeant Llewellyn discover a highly incriminating video concealed in Moon’s flat, a video which, if made public, could wreck more than one life. Was the famous astrologer really a nasty sexual predator? Gradually, connections begin to emerge between Moon and others in the small Essex town of Elmhurst. But how is Rafferty to solve the case when all of his suspects have seemingly unbreakable alibis?
The Hanging Tree #4
