A Killing Karma

by Geraldine Evans

  Because as the papers Casey had so feverishly scanned earlier had speculated with their usual careful libel-avoidance while still making their comments perfectly comprehensible, after the commune's unorthodox behaviour, they might well soon face further charges of a much more serious nature.

  Aware, after his telephone conversation with Moon the previous night, that it would be impossible in the near future to again visit the commune, he had made his surreptitious trip to the Fens via a late night store and bought a new pay-as-you-go mobile. He had handed it to his mother with the instruction ‘Please don't lose this one.’

  Anticipating the arrests and the listing of their possessions by the custody sergeant, Casey had also instructed her to conceal the mobile somewhere as secure as she could find on the smallholding in anticipation of their release on police bail. He had also instructed her to make sure the cannabis growing in one of the commune greenhouses was dug up and destroyed. The newspaper reports made clear the latter instruction had been ignored and he had little confidence his instructions about the mobile would have been noted and acted upon either. But he could only do so much. If Moon, Star and the rest chose not to cooperate there was little or nothing he could do about it.

  He made another coffee and sipped it slowly. He just had to hope she had obeyed his first injunction, for he would need to be able to contact her regularly. He had told her that, once they were released on bail, he would ring her every evening around seven o'clock.

  Meanwhile, he had instructed, she was to search her unfortunately drug-raddled memory for any clues as to who might have been responsible for the murder of DaisyMay Smith and the probable murder of Kris Callender. He wanted means, motives and opportunities, he had told her, ‘And you're the only one I can rely on to get them for me.’ And he wasn't too sure about her. He had good reason to doubt after such an interval that she would remember much more about Callender's death than she had already told him. Casey had discounted any chance of getting useful help from his father. Sloth-like, Star ambled his way through life, noticing little or nothing. Besides which, his memory was notoriously poor and he had difficulty stringing half a dozen words together before his brain faltered to a standstill. He would have enough trouble coming up with an alibi for himself even for DaisyMay Smith's very recent murder, or of providing clues as to which of his fellow commune members might be guilty of such violence, never mind demanding answers of his memory about Kris Callender's death which had occurred two months or more ago.

  As for the drug supplier they had mentioned, he would have to leave identifying him to ThomCatt because, although he had questioned each member of the commune about the supplier's identity, they had all denied knowing anything about him. A denial that Casey didn't for a moment believe.

  He assumed they were scared that if this dealer thought they had reported him to the police he might well decide to do to them what, in their insistence on their own innocence, they were determined to believe he had already done to Kris Callender and DaisyMay Smith. Though if this unknown outsider had killed Callender, it didn't explain why DaisyMay was the only one of the two who had been brutally murdered. She rarely left the confines of the commune these days, Moon had told him, and unless this dealer was the more obliging sort who went in for home deliveries, it was unlikely she had had anything to do with him or any other dealers. Besides, since her pregnancy, which was apparently a troublesome one which left her rarely feeling well, DaisyMay had given up drug-taking so was unlikely to require the services of a dealer.

  Fortunately, Casey had been able to obtain, for his parents at least if not the rest, the services of an excellent solicitor and they had both been released on bail this morning pending further inquiries.

  Casey was more wary than ever with the police probably still on site, and even though he had put her new mobile on a non-ringing setting, he was reluctant to call his mother at their appointed time that evening. Instead, he texted her and told her to ring him back but to find somewhere well out of police earshot before she did so.

  Rather to Casey's surprise, she obeyed the instruction and rang five minutes later, clearly rattled by the invading presence of so many ‘pigs' on the commune's smallholding.

  ‘You've got to help us, Willow Tree,’ she told him with a trace of what sounded like hysteria evident in her normally laidback voice. ‘You know how little brotherly love the local pigs have for us.’

  Casey suspected his mother was right about that. The commune's presence on the edge of the village was not liked by the neighbours, who, not unreasonably, thought that, with their irresponsible, druggy lifestyles, they attracted other undesirables. The local police had a down on them for a similar reason.

  Casey thought it unlikely the local Lincolnshire constabulary would be able to pass up the temptation to get the whole lot of them out of their hair completely and permanently, by charging them with murder. And given the commune members' behaviour up to press, it wasn't unreasonable that DCI Boxham, the man in charge of the Fenland investigation, should feel confident of success. After all, they had buried Kris Callender — an indicator of guilt if ever there was one. And if the post-mortem on his remains proved conclusively that he had been murdered, their defence, already questionable and faintly surreal, would quickly become farcical. Not to mention unsustainable.

  God knew that Moon, Star and the rest of their raggle-taggle band of brothers, sisters and kids of as many colours as Joseph's Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, wouldn't have endeared themselves to the investigating officers by firstly burying Kris without making any attempt to report his death and then by leaving it till hours after they had found Daisy May's body to actually contact the police. The fact that she appeared to have been brutally beaten to death would, for Boxham and his team, make this delay even more reprehensible.

  Casey, listening intently as Moon poured out the details of what the local force had so far said and done, recognized that he'd been backed into a corner from which the only escape would be to find a solution to the deaths that would prove his parents' innocence. He suspected it would be a far from easy, maybe an impossible, task.

  ‘So, what did you find out, Thomas?’ Casey asked the following morning, with an unconscious formality as he opened the front door of his home and ushered Catt inside.

  ‘Thomas? Oh, dear. Have I been a naughty boy, then, to get my full moniker?’

  ‘What?’ For a moment, Casey had no idea what his DS was talking about. Then he realized and apologized for his distant manner. Casey supposed that it was only by adopting a formal air — even unconsciously — that he felt he had any control left at all.

  ‘That's all right. Stress takes us all in different ways. Rachel in?’ Catt cautiously enquired before he ventured any deeper into the house.

  Casey shook his head. ‘She's gone shopping with a girl-friend to take her mind off my predicament,’ he told Catt. He wished the retail therapy of replacing his ruined suit could take his mind from his current seemingly insurmountable problems. But as there was no hope of that, he made coffee and they retreated to the living room to work on their unofficial murder inquiry.

  Once settled in the living room — a large, tidy room with many books and neat piles of musical scores, which, unlike his parents' home, boasted no clutter — Casey began to question him again.

  ‘One of my contacts has been in touch,’ Catt told him. ‘He's talked to various people, some druggy and keen to remain friends with their supplier and some non-druggy and with no need to keep on the guy's right side. By the way, Callender's crack dealer is a bloke called Tony Magann. The usual nasty piece of work, so my sources tell me.’

  Catt paused, took a sip of vodka-laced coffee. ‘There's no way of knowing exactly when that guy, Kris Callender, died, you said?’

  ‘No. All the commune could tell me was that it was around two months ago.’ Casey didn't add that nothing the commune members had told him could be taken as gospel. Besides, Catt was smart as a whip apart from being as fa
miliar with the effects of long-term drug use as he was himself, so would be able to come to the inevitable conclusion.

  'Okay,' he said, 'I get the drift.’ Proving to Casey that his own conclusion about Catt’s understanding had been tellingly accurate. ‘For the dead bloke, two months is the — very rough — timescale. Understood. But for the girl, we've got a reasonably accurate time of death, you said?’

  Casey confirmed it. ‘The timescale's about three to four hours. DaisyMay Smith was last seen around ten a.m. in the kitchen of the smallholding. Apparently, she and Madonna Redfern were comparing notes on their pregnancies and arguing as to who was having the worst time. She was found dead in the apple orchard behind the farmhouse around two o'clock that same afternoon.’

  ‘Then this drug dealer bloke Magann can't have killed her,’ Catt told him. ‘He was, according to all sources I spoke to, including the hospital, visiting his sick mother from ten in the morning till after four that day.’

  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.

  Chapter Five

  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.