A Killing Karma

by Geraldine Evans

  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.

  ‘Kris “Krishna” Callender was a total tosser. Misnamed too; although he might have followed the womanizing aspect of Krishna's character, he sure as hell wasn't put on this earth to fight for good and combat evil like Lord Krishna. The man was evil.’

  The youth directed a look of defiance at Casey, a defiance he proceeded to share around the room full of adults who tried to shush him.

  But the youth wasn't to be silenced. 'I don't see why all of you seem so determined to pretend Kris was a great bloke and destined for sainthood. Because he was neither — ask my sister if you don't believe me,’ he told Casey as he nodded to a very pregnant girl huddled in the far corner, who might, just — have scraped over the legal age of consent when she
had conceived what, to judge from the youth's words, had to be the not-so-saintly Callender's baby.

  ‘What's your name?’ he asked the boy, having forgotten it.

  ‘I'm Jethro Redfern and my sister's called Madonna.’

  Casey nodded. Apt, he thought. For hadn't the original Madonna been impregnated by someone other than her husband? It was ironic that a group of people who chose to follow the Sixties’ ethos of rebellion against the conventions of the previous austere decade and who had enthusiastically embraced such concepts as free love and taking drug-fuelled trips, should, in turn, themselves suffer from rebellious youth. But, as Casey noted from the set faces of the adults, the irony seemed to have escaped most of them.

  Casey turned back to his mother. ‘Is this true? Was Kris Callender such an unpleasant man?’

  She didn't answer. Neither did anyone else.

  Casey looked pointedly at Moon. 'Mum,' he said, ‘you were the one who called me in. You were the one who asked me to pick up this poisoned chalice in order to help you all. How do you think I can do that if you won't tell me the truth?’

  Casey's reasonable question brought only more silence. ‘Fine,’ he said as he stood up. ‘Have it your own way. I'm out of here.’ He turned towards the door, hoping to convince them that he was about to leave them to sort out their own mess. He hoped the shock of the two deaths and their current predicament had made his mother, at least, temporarily forget what a dutiful, responsible, totally unsuitable son he had turned into. But, in his heart, Casey knew he couldn't abandon them and as his mother let him know that she would cooperate he gave a brief sigh as he waved goodbye to that tiny window of opportunity when he might just have made his escape ...

  Instead, he sat down again to become yet another part of this guilty conspiracy of concealment.

  'Jethro's right,’ Moon now admitted. ‘Kris wasn't a nice man. He was trouble almost from the day he arrived.’

  ‘So why didn't you just kick him out?’

  This reasonable question brought just a shrug of Moon's shoulders.

  His father put in his second contribution of the evening. ‘Kris had bad karma, man.’

  After that, it didn't take Casey long to add to what he had already learned about Callender from young Jethro. Kris's ‘bad karma' had basically consisted of most of the human vices of thieving, bullying, cheating and womanizing.

  Jethro's sister wasn't the only young girl he had impregnated, Casey now discovered. Several girls in the neighbouring villages had also fallen victim to Callender's suspect charm; no wonder the commune members didn't get on with the locals. ‘Free love’, they called it. Yet, from where Casey was seated, the desolate look in young Madonna's eyes said that, for her at least, the 'love' she had shared with Callender had been far from cost free.

  Now that he had forced them to tell him the truth about the first victim, he asked them about the second. ‘This DaisyMay Smith — was she also disliked?’

  ‘No, of course she wasn't,’ Dylan Harper, her newly-bereaved partner, said sharply from the corner of his settee.

  Dylan was a slim-hipped, gypsyish-looking man with springy dark curls and an array of golden earrings. At the moment, he looked as tautly-sprung as his tight black curls. ‘My Daisy was the most generous of women. She was also carrying our first child.’ His voice broke on a sob as he added, ‘And now I've lost her and the baby.’

  ‘I'm sorry for your loss,’ Casey told him gently.

  Dylan Harper's emotional outburst contrasted strongly with the behaviour of Kris Callender's widow. Kali Callender's face looked the opposite of tear-stained even though her husband was dead and already in his makeshift grave. Though given what the others had to say about him, Mrs Callender's calm acceptance of her husband's death wasn't altogether surprising. Still, it was strange that she seemed to accept the very pregnant presence of her dead husband's much younger paramour. Most women would surely have found Madonna's continued presence intolerable.

  Casey asked her, ‘Did you know about your husband's secret burial? Did you agree to it?’

  Kali Callender raised her chin a notch. Her gaze met his fearlessly — shamelessly, even.

  'Yes,' she said. ‘Of course I knew about it. I agreed to it. Kris was the worthless shit the others told you he was. The only honest day's work he's ever done was on our stall at the local market, and since we discovered that even that work wasn't honest at all, but just a means to cheat us all, I had no illusions about my husband.’ She broke off, and in an echo of Jethro's youthful defiance, added, ‘Hey, pig man, I was glad someone had killed him. I just wish whoever did it had done so sooner and saved me grief.’

  Casey let her words die away before he again stood up. An uneasy communal sigh passed around the room. He assumed they feared that after Kali's insulting 'pig' reference, he was about to threaten to abandon them for a second time. Reluctantly, only too aware of how deep in the mire he was already, he put them out of their misery. ‘I'd like to see where you found Kris's body and where you buried him,’ he told them. 'I also want to see the body of Ms Smith.’

  The group all stood up, their expressions a mixture of relief, resignation and unease that even the cannabis-induced calm couldn't entirely eradicate. Led by Moon and Casey, they all trooped outside and made for Kris Callender's lonely grave. Casey was glad to get out into the fresh air, because the farmhouse smelled of a combination of unwashed dog, candle grease and the sweet, sickly odour of the cannabis that permeated the place. Partway there, and after tripping over he knew not what in the dark, Casey stopped them and suggested they would need a torch.

  But as it seemed to be the general consensus that the commune didn't actually possess such a useful tool, they waited, huddled together against the chill night air while Casey walked back to his car, stepping carefully so as to avoid whatever other ready-to-trip-the-unwary rubbish the gloom might conceal, to retrieve his own torch from the boot.

  The brief interruption in the grim night walk and the first solitary moments he'd had since his arrival gave Casey time to think. But as he considered the current situation and his part in it, he rather wished he hadn't. Because time to think tended only to increase his mental anguish, caused, not least, because if he hadn't suspected before he knew now that he wouldn't be able to trust even his parents to tell him the entire truth. Hadn't they already tried to mislead him about Callender's character?

  Given this conclusion, for a few brief seconds, Casey was again tempted to abandon them and leave them to their fate. But just by making this one visit he had allowed himself to become too compromised to walk away. And although he liked to think that his parents wouldn't betray him unless it was when they were in a drugged-up, love-their-fellow-man, stupor, he had no illusions at all about the other members of the commune.

  If one of them had murdered Kris Callender and DaisyMay Smith, which, given the presence of the barking dogs, seemed likely, and they thought he was getting close to the truth, they would surely shop him without question or hesitation in order to spread the burden of guilt.

  Not for the first time, as he walked reluctantly back to the waiting group, Willow Tree Casey found himself envying the orphaned state of his DS, Thomas Catt.

  Chapter Three

  As they stood around the tumbled earth of the inexpertly dug grave, Casey questioned them all further and learned that — apart from his other assorted vices — Kris Callender had been a crack cocaine addict who had been found to be regularly exchanging a proportion of the commune's produce that he was supposed to sell at the local market to help support the community, for supplies of the drug to feed what had become an increasingly voracious habit.

  It explained why Callender had been such a keen and dedicated stallholder, a realisation which only amplified the indignation of the others.

  But while Callender's addiction added one more complication, to the commune members it meant only one thing — a let-off for them, for reasons they weren't slow to point out to Casey.


  ‘We all thought it probable that Kris got on the wrong side of his dealer and was killed for his pains.’ Foxy Redfern's enthusiasm for this explanation was such that he repeated it twice and then a third time with the slightest of alterations. ‘If Kris was murdered, which none of us know for sure — for all we know he could have died from an overdose — he must have been killed by an outsider rather than by a member of the commune.’

  As they'd already been over this ground, Casey made no comment. In the gloom beyond the range of the torch, he could see little more than the circle of white faces bobbing up and down as they again showed a ready willingness to support Foxy's theory. They seemed to have forgotten the ‘barking dogs in the night time’ at his own arrival. Surely even their minimally-retentive memories wouldn't allow them to have it both ways and forget the dogs' barking at strangers?

  As they set off again, away from Kris Callender's hastily-dug grave, they walked towards an array of outbuildings at the back of the house. Seeking enlightenment, Casey asked, ‘So why was it you decided to bury him rather than report his death? You still haven't told me.’

  This time he got the answer that was, he judged, a deal closer to the truth than their earlier responses had been.

  ‘We found his body in one of the greenhouses amongst our cannabis plants,’ Foxy Redfern told him, stopping so abruptly that Star cannoned into him.

  It confirmed what Casey had suspected.

  Foxy pointed through the open greenhouse door.

  Casey, in the limited light provided by the torch, hadn't recognized the plants.

  ‘No way we wanted the cops here, poking their noses into our business. They'd have done us for sure. They're just looking for an opportunity. That crop brings us in bread, man. We didn't see why that shit, Kris, should bring us more grief when he was dead. He brought enough when he was alive.’

  Some of the cannabis plants lay flattened on the soil, presumably where Callender's body had crushed them. Even these cash crops were surrounded by weeds, though here at least some attempt had been made to keep them in check.