‘When did you find his body?’ Casey asked, expecting the answer to be sometime in the last few days. DaisyMay Smith, the second victim, had been found only this morning and had still been warm to the touch, as his mother had told him on the phone. DaisyMay had clearly been but freshly killed. Casey thought it probable the two deaths were connected, so he was stunned at Foxy's reluctant admission.
‘We found Kris's body two months ago.’ He paused and frowned as he searched his drug-damaged memory. Then he conceded, ‘Well, maybe it was a bit more than two months. I can't exactly recall.’
Clearly Foxy, helped by the light from the torch that Casey still held, had noted the look of shocked dismay on Casey's face, for he added laconically, ‘He'd have stayed in the ground, too, with no need to drag you into it, if it hadn't been for DaisyMay's death. You see that has definitely got to be murder. For, though in Kris's case the cause of his death was unclear, Daisy had obviously been beaten. Viciously beaten. It made us uneasy, man. Made us question who could have killed her. The thought that it might have been one of us unnerved the women. They persuaded Moon to phone you.’
‘It wasn't just the women,’ Dylan Harper insisted as his flashing gypsy dark eyes met Casey's. ‘The “dead woman” as you keep calling her, was my wife — or at least the next best thing to it — we'd talked about getting married once the baby was born.’
Better late than never, was Casey's silent response to this.
‘And even though she'll still end up in a hole in the ground, I wanted my wife to be properly buried, to have an official hole in the ground instead of a hole in the corner such as we dug for Callender. My Daisy's entitled to a proper burial and I insisted she got one. That's the main reason Moon rang you. Even though the women were spooked, they'd have been persuaded to get over it but for my insistence.’
Star butted in. 'Hey man,’ he said, ‘that doesn't vibe with my memory.’
With a degree of contempt evident in his voice, Dylan Harper said, ‘No. But then you rarely ever recall anything as it really was, do you?’ He sighed, and ignoring Star, he stared down at the crushed cannabis plants and added, ‘The rest you know,’ before he turned away.
This situation just got better and better, Casey thought as, from Kris's place of death, they made for the outhouse where DaisyMay's body currently lay. Casey made them all remain outside. Although if the worst happened and Casey's relationship to Moon and Star was discovered by the local police and thence conveyed to his own force, any stray DNA that he left in the house could be explained by his visits over the years, any found in the shed could not be so easily explained away, so he insisted, in spite of the ‘Hey, man’ protests, on donning a set of the protective gear that he had brought from the car before he entered the shed. As he said to himself, any reasonably competent SIO from the local force would be likely to wonder at finding traces of another, unknown set of DNA in one of the commune's outhouses. They would then spread their net wide, which would certainly include him once they found out the connection, even if it was simply for elimination purposes.
He was risking his career enough just by being here. But trying to help his parents and the others was an entirely different matter. There was no point in needlessly increasing the dangers to himself by being as careless as the rest.
But as Foxy Redfern had pointed out, they were as yet uncertain if the dead man had even been murdered. He might well have just died from natural causes or an overdose of the unnatural substances with which he had regularly abused his body.
Foxy Redfern had been right when he had said that DaisyMay Smith had been viciously beaten, as Casey saw when he lifted the sheet that covered her body and shone his torch at her.
She lay on a board propped on a couple of trestles in one of the sheds that had been turned into a makeshift morgue. Someone had surrounded her body with candles. Worn down to half-used stubs by now, their yellow flames gave the dead woman's face a healthy glow that was unnatural and so eerie, Casey felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
And as he played the torch over her and stared down at her poor, marked face that, for all the lifelike colour the candles gave it, was clearly no longer of this world, Casey saw that one of the bones in her right arm looked misshapen. Presumably, it had been broken during the frenzied assault while DaisyMay had tried to defend herself.
His examination of the body by the torch and candlelight revealed it had been moved after death; the dark post-mortem hypostasis made that self-evident, without the need for further corroboration, but Casey decided this was a case that needed all the corroboration it could get, given its location and his involvement.
‘So, where did you find DaisyMay's body? And when was she last seen?’
‘She was last seen by Madonna in the kitchen around ten-ish this morning,’ Moon replied. ‘No one else remembers seeing her after that.’
Casey wasn't surprised at this. Which of them, apart from the young and naive Madonna, would be foolish enough to admit to being the last to see DaisyMay alive?
‘She was found in the apple orchard,’ his mother, Moon, explained. ‘Lord Krishna knows what she was doing there as the apples aren't yet ready for harvesting. It's a good distance from the house and as there are several more outhouses between the orchard and the house the noise of any cries would have been muffled.’
Casey nodded. After he let the sheet fall back over DaisyMay's poor battered face he shone his torch on his watch. It was late. Rachel would certainly have returned home from her theatre trip by now. In his haste, he had forgotten to leave a note to explain his absence. Not wishing to be disturbed while he questioned his parents and the rest, he had switched his mobile off. But now, as he ushered them all ahead of him as he left the shed and followed behind them, leaving DaisyMay Smith and her encircling candle stubs alone again, he switched it on and gave Rachel a quick, reassuring call.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ he said quietly for Rachel's ear alone. ‘Sorry I didn't leave you a note. I got an urgent call-out.’ More loudly, for the benefit of his fellow conspirators as well as Rachel, he added the rider, ‘I'll tell you all about it when I get home.’
As he returned the mobile to his pocket, Casey faced the commune members and said, ‘As you'll tell the local police all about it tonight as soon as I've gone.’
They seemed to be surprised by this instruction and a noisy hubbub of protests broke out.
What had they expected? Casey wondered grimly. That he'd be as keen as most of them had been to sweep two deaths under some convenient soil carpet, solve the murders himself in the space of an hour or so and leave them to go about their business as if the deaths had never happened? But while he marvelled at such an expectation, he thought it probable that was just what they had expected. It would be in keeping with their general laissez faire attitude.
Determinedly, Casey set about destroying any such lingering hopes. It took about ten minutes before their drug-and death-dazed brains managed to take in that he meant what he said. But at least by the time he was finished, he concluded from their silence that they had conceded they had no choice but to contact the police and formally report the two deaths.
Casey decided to leave it up to them to figure out what answer they came up with to explain the fact that Kris ‘Krishna’ Callender had been in his grave for two months or more without benefit of either death certificate or coroner's inquest. He didn't envy them the task.
Before he drove off, Casey raked his lights over the front of the farmhouse, first full beam, then dipped, then full beam again, as a reminder to them that, although he might be going away, their problems certainly wouldn't. He had told them it would look better if they did as he had forcefully suggested and report the two deaths themselves, rather than leaving him to make good their failure to do so, which was something he had promised them he would do if he had to. From their sullen expressions as he had climbed in the car, Casey knew they believed him.
Of course, it was a threat that he was l
oath to carry out. He hadn't spent years making sure that the reality of his parental inheritance didn't damage his career to step voluntarily into the limelight of a murder investigation now and announce to the world that the commune had called him in because he was the policeman son of two of the drug-taking hippie suspects.
Fortunately, he believed they were all even more dazed by the day's events than they usually were by drugs, and therefore incapable of the coherent thought necessary for such a conclusion.
But even if the various commune members failed to grasp this fact, Casey was aware that it was only by staying in the background and organizing an unofficial, behind the scenes, investigation away from the commune that he would both keep his career free from contamination and be able to try to find the killer, thereby helping his parents and the rest out of their predicament. Casey reflected on the damage that would be done to his career should it come out that the commune had called him in the belief that he would help them conceal the deaths. As it was, he had been persuaded not to reveal his relationship to Moon and Star to the police. He hadn't taken much persuading. Besides, as Moon had pointed out when she said, ‘Willow Tree, hon, the only way we'll get a fair hearing is if you look into the deaths. I realize you can't do it officially, but at least when the official pigs turn up and arrest us all you'll be able to find the evidence that we didn't kill our friends.’
As he drove back to King's Langley and its comparative sanity, Casey wished he could be sure on that point. Bemused, he stared through the still lingering mist on the road as he pondered how his mother expected him to come up with the goods, given that what the commune members had so far told him had been little enough and that a mixture of truth and lies, the little made less owing to the hazy memories of the long-term drug user.
He only hoped, with the smallholding about to be overrun by the forces of Lincolnshire's finest, that no member of the commune either deliberately betrayed him for newspaper money or accidentally let slip his identity or his unofficial, unreported actions of the last few hours.
It was after he arrived home but before he had a chance to make his own shamefaced confession about his recent activities that Rachel exclaimed at the state of his new suit.
At her look of horror, Casey looked down and saw she had reason for her exclamation. His new suit was ruined. Between getting caught on rusty wire that had ripped it in several places, coming into contact with deep, noxious puddles in the yard and suffering Craggie's mud-covered and drooling embrace, the suit was surely beyond salvage. Besides, Casey didn't think he would ever want to wear it again as it would never feel clean and uncontaminated.
It was £500 down the drain, because he thought it unlikely he would be up to brazening out the insurance claim form and its inquisitorial demands as to how, where and when the suit had sustained such damage.
As expected, after he had told Rachel about his nocturnal activities, she told him what he already knew — that it hadn't been only his parents and the rest who had behaved foolishly. By taking their problems on to his own shoulders, he had shown himself to be the biggest fool of all. Worse, he knew she was right.
‘You realize you could lose your career over this if it comes out?’ she asked.
Casey nodded miserably, a misery only exacerbated as she added a rider.
‘Or worse.’
Because he knew she was right about that as well. Only, somehow, he'd not been able to leave his parents, Moon and Star, to deal with their own failure of morality and responsibility. He never had been able to. But maybe, if by some miracle he came through this current problem without a stain on his character or career, he might start to think differently in future.
As Rachel said before she stumped off to bed, maybe it was time he did.
Chapter Four
As expected, by the next morning, the story of the two smallholding deaths had surfaced. Casey had gone out early to learn the worst and as he scanned the shelves of the nearest newsagent, he saw that they featured as front page news in all the local newspapers as well as several of the nationals. He bought a selection and carried them home to read them more thoroughly and see if his name had escaped into the public domain.
As he sipped his breakfast coffee and quickly searched the lines of newsprint opposite a silently reproachful Rachel, he just hoped no one who knew both him and his parents decided to inform the papers of their relationship. At least, so far, his secret was holding up.
He had, of course, taken considerable trouble throughout his police career to keep an identity distance from his parents, aware that if the connection came out it would do his career no good at all. So far — apart from in one instance — it had worked well. But that one instance had involved his sergeant, so Casey wasn't altogether surprised when DS Thomas Catt rang his mobile shortly after.
‘Hey, Willow Tree,’ ThomCatt greeted him, chafing him by using Casey's given name instead of the ‘Will’ which he had taken care was the name by which he was commonly known.
It told Casey that Catt, too, had read the morning's papers.
‘Please don't tell me you're the same Casey whose parents are front page news this morning.’
'I wish I didn't have to, ThomCatt,’ Casey admitted. ‘Unfortunately, I am that very same Casey.’
Tom's piercing whistle caused Casey to grimace with pain and hold his mobile away from his ear. When he returned the phone to his ear, it was to hear Tom say, 'I presume you know all about it?’
After Rachel's reaction, Casey was unwilling to make a second admission about his nocturnal activities , unwilling, at first, even to confirm Tom's guess.
But ThomCatt, whose nickname had in part been bestowed because he shared the feline's cussed single-minded curiosity, wasn't to be put off.
‘Come off it, Will. We both know you're the patsy your parents turn to at the first whiff of trouble. It's inconceivable to me that they wouldn't have called you in to sort out this latest bit of bother, especially with you being on holiday and with time on your hands.’
Last night had proved that it had been inconceivable to his parents as well, reflected a more than rueful Casey. Reluctantly, as he accepted that Tom's logical assessment was unassailable, he admitted, ‘OK. Yes, they did call me in. But keep it under your hat.’
Tom whistled again.
‘Will you stop doing that?’ Casey asked irritably. Understandably, his normally calm demeanour had deserted him.
‘Sorry. But I want to help. So what's on the agenda?’
‘For you, work. You've got a job to do, remember? As you pointed out, I'm currently on holiday. Besides, I don't see what you can do all the way down here, especially when you're doing the usual full shift.’
Both men were based in King's Langley, a small market town of medieval origins in Norfolk that was situated midway between Peterborough and Norwich — a good distance from Casey's parents' Fenland smallholding.
'I don't see what you can do, either — officially,’ Tom retorted with his usual respect-for-authority failure, ‘seeing as you can hardly poke your nose into the Lincolnshire investigation. I suppose you've already questioned your parents and the other commune members?’
‘Last night.’
‘And?’
Casey explained what he had learned the previous night. In anticipation of another piercing whistle at the revelation of the months’-old burial of Kris Callender, he began to remove the phone from his ear again. But Tom must have thought better of it.
‘You're going to need help, Will,’ his DS insisted. ‘Checking everyone's motives and opportunities, not to mention finding out the identity of the dead man's supplier while keeping out of the way of the official investigation, is not going to be easy. Certainly, it's not a one-man job. I’ve got one or two contacts up that way, but as I'd guess you keep a low profile when visiting your parents, I very much doubt that you have. Am I right?’
Casey made another reluctant admission. Catt was right, of course, Understandably, he'd always
done his best to keep the low profile ThomCatt had referred to on his infrequent visits to his parents. He had also kept these visits as short as duty permitted, without trips to the pub with the casual and nosy acquaintances such trips tended to strike up.
'So-do you want me to call these contacts and see if they can suss out the ID of Callender's drug supplier?’
Thomas Catt invariably had ‘contacts' all over the place. Many of them were retained from the youth spent in assorted children's homes when he had made some unlikely friend-ships — not all of them either unsavoury or without contacts of their own.
Grateful that ThomCatt had so willingly offered his services, Casey felt unable to do anything but agree, only too aware that he wasn't in a position to refuse such generously offered assistance.
‘But keep as low a profile as if you were me visiting Moon and Star at the commune, Tom,’ he warned. ‘They're my parents, so it's only right that my career should be put in jeopardy for their sakes. There's no reason why the same need apply to yours.’
‘Keep cool, Big Willy,’ Catt advised cockily. ‘And don't worry. Aint I a big boy now?’ Casey imagined him patting the beginnings of a paunch as Catt added, ‘And getting bigger all the time. Besides, I've always preferred my life to be enlivened with a little spice. I can take some of the load and keep a low profile at the same time. Smart as paint, me,’ he boasted with the confidence of a cheeky Cockney sparrow that Casey could, at the moment, only envy.
Casey hoped for Tom's sake, that his boast and his confidence didn't prove misplaced.
From what the newspapers said, it hadn't taken the Lincolnshire police long to charge all the adults at the commune with the less serious crimes of failing to report Kris's death, of burying his body without official sanction and growing cannabis with intent to supply. Further, greater charges were likely to follow unless Casey, with Catt's help, could come up trumps.
A Killing Karma Page 3