Chapter Eleven

Like an onion, King's Langley was made up of a number of layers, with the medieval centre, then the odd Tudor merchant's house and Georgian rows beyond them and then the Victorian terraces. The Merediths' house was situated on the more leafy outskirts of the town, where space was at less of a premium.

They lived in some splendour. Theirs was a detached Edwardian house, set in spacious grounds which contained a garage that looked large enough to accommodate four cars, as well as other assorted outbuildings. One of these was a stable; the head of an inquisitive chestnut horse stared disdainfully at them over the door.

‘Snooty looking bugger. Wonder what he thinks he's got that makes him look down his nose at us,’ Catt complained.

‘Centuries of breeding, probably.’

'I was bred. We were all bred,’ Catt pointed out. ‘Though I suppose his mum stayed around long enough to bring him up, unlike mine. Probably just as well mine buggered off if that's what having a mum around does to your expression.’

‘Forget the horse, ThomCatt, and concentrate your mind on the interviews.’

According to what Catt had learned when he had questioned Mrs Meredith, her husband worked as a self-employed consultant in the financial services industry. To judge from the house, it was a profitable line.

‘Nice work if you can get it, hey?' said Catt. ‘This pair have a lot to lose if one or both of them turn out to be Oliver's murderer. Reckon we can expect a few porkies here.’

Mrs Meredith, who answered the door, turned out to be small, blonde, dainty and very feminine. Casey, for whom this was the first meeting with any of Oliver's lovers, wondered if she was the type Gus Oliver normally went for. Oliver's wife was a far cry from Amanda Meredith, being tall and edging into plumpness. She was also rather plain, but she was transformed when she smiled. Perhaps, in their early days together, Oliver had made her smile a lot.

Mrs Meredith led them into a drawing room that ran the whole length of the house. It was furnished in an ultra-feminine style, with lots of flounces on the chintz armchairs and settees. Altogether, it was a bit overpowering. Casey found himself wondering how her husband stood it. Perhaps, to compensate, he kept his study at the top of the house austerely masculine.

‘Please sit down, gentlemen. I've called my husband down from his office and he'll be with us presently. Can I get you some tea? Or coffee?’

They both refused the tea. This seemed to put her out a little as if she had wanted to play hostess to policemen as an antidote to the frills that surrounded her every day. However, put out or not at their refusal of her offer, she remained polite.

Amanda Meredith's voice had a breathless, little girl, quality as her words tumbled out, which Casey found irritating. He thought grown women should behave and speak like adults, not pseudo-adolescents; but perhaps his own parents' refusal to leave their Sixties’ youth behind went a long way to explaining his irritation. Like Moon, Amanda Meredith retained the hairstyle of her girlhood and a blue Alice band held back the curly, naturally blonde locks which looked as if they and their owner spent every spare minute at the hairdresser's — when, that was, she wasn't riding the disdainful stallion. She was altogether a pampered-looking piece, the Alice band giving her a childish look that would hold an appeal for some men.

As with the Olivers, in the Merediths' case, too, opposites had attracted, Casey noted as Roger Meredith entered the room to his wife's twitter of welcome. Meredith was tall and rugged with a business-like air. From the look of his nose and damaged ears, he had been a rugby player in his youth.

‘Chief Inspector,’ Roger Meredith, far from coy and gushing like his wife, now asked, 'I understand from your sergeant that you wanted to question my wife and myself about the death of Gus Oliver. Tragic business,’ he put in en passant, though from his manner as he sat and sank into the depths of one of the frilly armchairs, he didn't seem terribly cut up about Oliver's death. 'I knew him, of course — we both did, though it was a casual acquaintance only. We belong to the same rugby club and we'd occasionally see him there.’

Casey wondered if Roger Meredith was aware that his wife's acquaintance with Gus Oliver was rather more than casual. That was, if their supposition had been correct. She had been cagey both when she had telephoned the incident room to identify Oliver and when Catt had called to question her, so was clearly capable of acting the adult when she chose. If so, Meredith was hiding any suspicion well. But Casey sensed a tension in him that he felt wasn't simply to do with receiving a visit from the police. It would be interesting to learn if he was able to produce an alibi that was an improvement on the one already supplied.

‘Has my wife offered you a drink?’

Casey confirmed that she had and again declined any refreshments.

‘I’m sure we'll be able to clear this matter up,’ Meredith announced firmly.

Casey was sitting on one of the flouncy settees and Catt had chosen an armchair further back from the intimate circle, all the better to view the expressions of their interviewees while keeping a discreet distance.

‘My wife tells me you're asking all Gus Oliver's friends and acquaintances if they're able to supply any information. I will, of course, be glad to help in any way I can. I understand the times you're interested in are from around nine to midnight on the Friday and from six-ish to around seven thirty on Monday?’

Casey nodded.

‘Well now, let me see .. .' Meredith frowned in thought. 'I left home at half past six on the Friday for a rugby committee meeting.’

‘And what time did this meeting end?’

‘Eight thirty or thereabouts.’

‘And did you come straight home afterwards?’

‘No. I stayed on for a couple of drinks. Normally I'd still be there at eleven o'clock, but there were things I wanted to do in my office here at the house, so I didn't linger long. I was at home in my office upstairs from just before nine, wasn't I darling?’ he asked his wife.

Amanda Meredith nodded, quick to back up what her husband said.

Did these ‘things' that Meredith said he had been doing include catching his wife in flagrante delicto? Casey wondered. Was Roger Meredith aware that his wife had been having an affair with Oliver? Or was he the innocent caught in the middle? And if he had come home unexpectedly early and caught his wife and her lover in bed together, what would he do? Had a red mist descended, resulting in Oliver's death? It was certainly a believable scenario. He could have recognized Oliver's car and, if he already had reasons for suspicion, could have armed himself with a sharp knife before ascending to the bedroom. But if that had happened, Oliver's blood would be everywhere and he doubted that Meredith would be so foolish as to commit such a messy murder. Certainly not in a place from where the mess couldn't be easily cleaned up.

But, he remonstrated silently with himself, he was rushing ahead of the facts. ‘And you, Mrs Meredith?’ he asked. 'I understand from my sergeant that you were at home between the relevant times on both occasions?’

‘Yes, that's so,’ she replied in her breathy voice. She curled one of her blonde locks around her fingers as she continued. ‘Occasionally, I accompany my husband to the rugby club, for lunches, dinners and so on. Committee meetings aren't my style, but I sometimes attend and stay in the bar till the meeting's finished.’

Flirting with any available male, Casey surmised as he caught her giving him the once-over. She was flirting with him under her husband's nose in spite of being a murder suspect. Her shapely legs were crossed provocatively and her white dress had ridden up to give a glimpse of thigh.

Catt, at least, seemed to enjoy the view, but Casey found this deliberate attempt to distract them less than appealing. Was it something she did automatically when males were present? Or was it a display she had put on especially for them in order to deflect them from their purpose?

‘And what about Monday?’ he asked Meredith. The early morning on Monday?’ This was when Cedric Abernethy's evidence indicated that Oliver’ body had been dumped in the alley.

‘We were both in bed, Chief Inspector,’ Meredith responded firmly. He glanced at his wife as he added, ‘Sleeping the sleep of the self-righteous.’

At the moment, Casey wasn't in a position to contradict either of their statements. But he obtained the name and location of the rugby club and the names and addresses of the other committee members before he and Catt took their leave.

Catt had arranged for them to see Sarah and Carl Garrett next. They lived clear across town. It seemed that Oliver had liked the members of his harem to live as far apart as discretion demanded but still convenient to visit.

The Garretts lived in a spacious loft apartment overlooking the river. In its way, it must be as pricey as the detached home of the Merediths, providing, as several prominent signs in the entrance hall proclaimed, a gym and swimming pool in the basement as well as a resident porter. The porter would have to be questioned.

The Garretts’ second-floor apartment was starkly modern, with sleek, black leather settees and satiny pale blond wood flooring. They had a selection of expensive electrical gadgets, including a huge plasma television.

Sarah Garrett was another dainty, natural blonde. It seemed that Oliver didn't believe in ringing the changes in his lovers, though at least Mrs Garrett wasn't a gushing woman and spoke in normal, adult tones. In fact, she seemed rather distant and reluctant to say much at all.

‘My wife tells me you're investigating the death of a certain Gus Oliver, Chief Inspector,’ Carl Garrett said once they were all seated. He, like Roger Meredith, was another athletic looking specimen. ‘But for the life of me, I can't see what you think we can tell you. We didn't know the man.’

‘You may not, sir,’ Casey replied, ‘but I believe your wife was acquainted with him.’

‘Sarah?’ Garrett turned interrogative grey eyes on his wife. ‘Is it true? Did you know this man?’

‘Only casually.’ A defensive note had entered her voice, which, to judge from Garrett's narrowed eyes, he had spotted. ‘He belonged to the same tennis club that I joined earlier in the year. I only knew him socially and even so I barely knew him. We'd only exchanged civilities, no more.’

Turning his interrogative gaze from his wife, Garrett directed it back to Casey and said, ‘That being the case, Chief Inspector, I can't imagine why you should think we know anything about his death.’

Casey parried. ‘Of course I don't think that. Not at the moment, anyway. But if you do, doubtless we'll discover that in due course.’ It was clear that Garrett wanted to get rid of them and to question his wife more closely. Well, that could wait; Casey was sure Sarah Garrett would be glad of the delay to give her time to come up with some believable answers.

Sarah Garrett was staring at him with pleading eyes, her distant air quite gone. Casey had no intention of betraying the secret of her affair with Oliver; if either one of the pair had murdered him and they succeeded in proving it, the truth of her relationship with the dead man would come out soon enough. Again, they had only another telephone call to the incident room to indicate that Sarah Garrett was one of Oliver's lovers, but Mrs Garrett didn't know that. No wonder she looked apprehensive. He might, he realized, get more cooperation if she had doubts about him holding his tongue on her illicit union.

He expected Carl Garrett to make difficulties about providing an alibi given his claim that he hadn't known the victim, and so it proved.

‘This is ridiculous,’ he protested. 'I told you I didn't know the man. Why on earth should I want to kill him?’ Then his eyes narrowed and he again gazed speculatively at his wife. ‘Unless — unless his relationship with my wife was rather more than casual. Is that what you're trying to imply, Chief Inspector?’

Garrett was a cool customer all right. Was he pretending not to have known of his wife's infidelity and playing guessing games with them?

Sarah broke into nervous laughter. ‘Don't be ridiculous, darling. I told you, I hardly knew the man.’ She turned to Casey, ‘But I suppose you need an alibi from me?’ Casey nodded. ‘That would be helpful.’

‘As I told your sergeant, I was at home all Friday evening.’ She gave another laugh. ‘Not much of an alibi, I'm afraid. My husband was working late in his office in town here. I imagine some other member of staff can vouch for him.’ She looked enquiringly at her husband.

Finally, Carl Garrett decided to be more helpful. ‘Unfortunately not. I was alone in the building. It's my own business,’ he explained to Casey, ‘so naturally I have my own key to get in and catch up on the work when it warrants it. I was there up till about eleven o'clock Friday night. I had some work I wanted to have cleared for a meeting on Monday so I could leave the weekend free.’

Interesting, thought Casey, as he met Catt's eyes under their slightly raised eyebrows. ‘Do you often work late, Mr Garrett?’

‘At least three evenings a week,’ Mrs Garrett told him in the disgruntled voice of the neglected wife. Was that her excuse for her affair with Oliver?

‘When it's your own business you have to put the hours in,’ Garrett defended himself. ‘I've worked hard to build the business up since I inherited from my father.’

It was clearly an on-going bone of contention between them.

Casey also found himself wondering whether Carl Garrett used one or more of those evenings playing away rather than working. He questioned them about the early hours of Monday morning and, like the Merediths, they claimed to have been innocently tucked up in bed.

Having learned what he had come for, Casey eased himself from his seat. ‘Thank you for your cooperation.’ He glanced in turn from Sarah to her husband. ‘We'll see ourselves out.’

‘But look here, Chief Inspector,’ Carl Garrett protested, ‘you can't just leave it like that. What happens now?’

‘What happens now?’ Casey repeated. Good question. He wished he knew. But he said, ‘Now I hope to find sufficient evidence to catch a murderer. Good day to you both.’

His blunt words seemed to deflate Garrett, for he sank back in his chair with an air of defeat, his argumentative streak punctured.

After they left the Garretts' apartment, they walked down the stairs and sought out the porter. Red-faced, portly, as befitted his portering role, and clearly over retirement age, the porter had been stealing forty winks in his little cubbyhole of an office behind the desk. They wakened him with difficulty. It seemed likely he told them the truth when he said he had seen neither of the Garretts on either the Friday night or the Monday morning when his duty shift had changed to earlies.

‘Snoring his head off, probably,’ said Catt caustically. ‘He's a fat lot of use as a witness, anyway.’

Casey nodded. It meant that neither of the Garretts could be exonerated. It also meant that one or both of them would have known there was a good chance they could slip out unnoticed if they needed to. And slip back again.

‘Reckon Garrett knew his wife was carrying on with Oliver?’ Catt asked when they were back in the car.

‘As to that, I don't know. He certainly seemed adamant that he didn't know the dead man.’ Casey turned the key in the ignition, depressed the clutch and selected first gear before heading for the end of the short drive. ‘But one thing's for sure, we've placed a nasty suspicion in his mind about his wife's possible conduct with Oliver. I wonder if he prefers to leave it alone and remain in ignorance or if he'll keep questioning her till he gets the truth.’

‘The latter, I suspect, judging from his expression. Unless,’ said Catt, ‘he already knows the truth and was doing his best to pretend that it was only our visit that had put the idea that she was cheating on him into his head.’

'Mmm, there's always that. Let's hope if he suspects his wife's been having an affair that there's not another murder committed.’

‘Amen to that.’

 

 

Chapter Twelve

It was after nine; too late to call on Max Fallon and Carole Brown as he had hoped. Catt had been unable to speak to either of the couple to make an appointment. Given that Fallon's violent history made him meaty stuff as a suspect, Casey had thought of turning up unexpectedly, hoping to surprise some revelations from one or both of them, but a visit so late in the evening would be more likely to put them on their guard. They would have to wait till tomorrow night. Casey headed back to the station so they could write up the evening's two interviews. Fallon and Ms Brown would wait another day; maybe the wait would rattle them.

 

The money from their lottery win must have gone to their heads, Casey surmised, for he could see any number of lights blazing from the commune's farmhouse as he approached down the rutted lane. Even with the lights, an air of wretchedness still hung over the place. It was certainly squalid enough for any number of black deeds to have occurred there. Casey wondered if — with the endemic drug-taking — paranoia didn't haunt the place. Had one of the inmates of Paradise Regained, which was what they had named their small plot, gone quietly mad, without the rest noticing?

The possibility wasn't as unlikely as it sounded. When you spent your life in a drug-soaked daze, alertness and being observant were not strong traits. They might not notice madness in their midst until the paranoid person grabbed a carelessly discarded mallet and let fly with it. And maybe not even then.

 

The dogs set up their usual cacophony as he stopped at the gate and beeped the horn. As before, Moon came out to unlock the gate and as he slipped through, Casey asked, ‘How are things?’

‘Much as you'd expect,’ she replied with a strange grimness in her tone which more than hinted that Paradise Regained had metamorphosed into purgatory. ‘We're all at one another's throats, as I told you last time we spoke,’ Moon continued as they walked towards the house. ‘Dylan Harper is still keeping to his room. Oh and Billy has got mumps. The doctor confirmed it. He's keeping to his room as well. The men insist on it.’

Casey nodded. Understandable if Harper was keeping his distance from the rest, especially if he really was grief-stricken: the bedlam created by numerous children, teenagers and dogs that crowded into the commune would hardly be conducive to a person trying to come to terms with the sudden and violent death of a loved one.

Moon glanced at him. ‘Reckon he thinks one of us murdered DaisyMay and he's avoiding us as much as he can?’

Did she really expect him to answer that? he wondered. Because, clearly, the answer would have to be 'yes'. Dylan Harper had struck him as a suspicious-minded man, not a natural commune resident at all. On his previous visits he hadn't seemed to mix much with the other members, nor had he appeared to share much in their rough and ready friendships.

But it seemed Moon didn't expect a reply, because she didn't push for one. Instead, she took his arm and led him towards the open farmhouse door.

He stopped her before she entered the house. ‘Would you say his grief is genuine, Moon, or put on to allay any thought  that he might have killed his wife?’

‘What a suspicious mind you have, Willow Tree. His grief seems genuine to me. Not that I've seen much of him since the last time you came here. Besides, why would he kill her? He doted on her. I told you.’

‘What about recently? Had his behaviour towards her changed at all?’

‘No. In fact, if anything, he became even more attentive since her pregnancy and was so right up to her death. Couldn't do enough for her once she became pregnant. Hardly let her stir out of her chair. They'd been trying for a baby for over a year with no luck. DaisyMay wanted both of them to go for tests, but Dylan wouldn't go.’ Moon laughed. ‘Just like a man. But, as I said, it ended happily when DaisyMay fell pregnant shortly after. At first he was a bit quiet, but then, once he'd come to terms with the idea that they really were going to have a baby, Dylan was like a cockerel with the loudest crow in the coop. I never saw a man more pleased about being a father.

‘It's weird ‘cos I'd never had thought Dylan would take so well to the idea in reality. But you never can tell. Funnily enough, it was DaisyMay who seemed to go off the idea almost as soon as she knew she was pregnant. Scared of the birth, I expect, like most women.

‘Anyway, as DaisyMay's pregnancy advanced he treated her more and more with kid gloves. It was sweet to see.’

Moon sounded wistful, as well she might; Casey couldn't imagine that his father had treated a Moon pregnant with him with such tender care.

Moon's answer didn't please Casey. But, for now, he had no choice but to accept it.

‘We're all up before the beak again this week,’ she broke the news without preamble. ‘Further charges.’ She gave a careless shrug. 'I forget what.’

Casey just stopped himself from nodding: this had been one of the things Catt had found out. ‘What are you going to plead?’

‘Me and Star? Not guilty, of course.’

‘Is that sensible? You were all caught red-handed. What does your solicitor say?’

‘Oh, him.’ With a wave of her be-ringed and henna-decorated hand, Moon dismissed the very expensive solicitor whose services Casey had obtained for his parents. ‘He wants us to plead guilty but with diminished responsibility.’

‘Sounds sensible.’ Certainly in Star's case, though for Moon, Casey doubted even the expensive brief he had hired for the pair would be able to pull it off. She could be sharp when it suited her and she might just show it in the witness box.

‘What? You want us to act gaga?'

Casey reflected that, again in Star's case, that wouldn't prove too far a stretch. ‘Not gaga, no,’ he temporised, ‘just easily led, perhaps.’

Moon gave a ‘Humph’ to that, which might have meant anything. Casey followed her into the farmhouse living room.

The reaction to his reappearance was distinctly hostile from various members of the commune and Casey heard unwelcoming groans from several throats; maybe the Lincolnshire police hadn't treated them with gentle consideration and their behaviour had, in their minds, rubbed off on him, though only Foxy Redfern was belligerent enough to voice their hostility. What had he and the rest expected after trying to conceal two murders?

‘Well, look who it aint,’ Redfern drawled as soon as Casey stepped through the door and entered the large and untidy living room. ‘The great detective returns. Still not managed to figure out which ne'er-do-well outsider killed DaisyMay and Kris? Surely by now you've found out his dealer's identity?’

‘Not yet, Mr Redfern,’ Casey replied calmly with an untruth which wasn't a complete lie; he suspected that Callender might have had another supplier other than Tony Magann. Besides, he was determined not to let the man anger him into letting something slip; better to keep him and the rest in the dark and worrying. ‘But we're making progress.’

‘Progress? Is having our place turned over by the cops what you call “progress”? It's like a nurse describing a patient as “comfortable” when they're anything but.’

‘Ruined the entire ambiance of the place,’ Moon commented from behind him.

Casey ignored her and addressed Redfern's complaint. ‘I'm sorry you feel like that, Mr Redfern, but I hope you can appreciate that I'm doing my best under difficult circumstances.’

 

‘Yes. Leave my Willow Tree alone, Foxy,’ Moon broke in, in direct juxtaposition to her previous comment. It was, as ever, all right for Moon to find fault with her son, but she soon flared up when someone else dared to do the same. It was mother-love of a sort, Casey supposed. ‘You should be grateful he's taken the case on instead of sniping at him.’

‘Let's face it, he's not taken it on for my sake,’ Foxy snapped back. ‘It's only because of you and Star that he's here at all. Maybe he thinks one of you killed them both and is looking to pin the blame on the rest of us. It wouldn't be the first time the filth has fitted someone up. And why else would he bother trying to find the answer as to who killed DaisyMay and Callender?'

‘Now you're being stupid,’ Moon told him before Casey could say anything. ‘Why should he? If he's anything, my Willow Tree is an honest copper.’ She even managed to make it sound as if it was something she admired, which was a first to Casey's recollection.

‘Perhaps we should get down to some facts,’ Casey broke in before the argument could develop further. He turned to Moon. ‘Have you been questioned again by the Lincolnshire force since I spoke to you earlier?’

Moon replied, ‘No. I think they want to keep us on tenterhooks by letting us know as little as possible before the court case, though one of the men at a neighbouring farm took great pleasure in telling me the police had questioned him and his wife about us. I told you they're going to take DNA samples from all the men in the commune?’

Casey nodded.

‘Well, all the men bar Dylan. He simply refused.’

‘Rather foolish of him, seeing as it makes him more interesting to the police.’

That's what I told him, but he wouldn't listen. Men seldom listen to good sense. God knows why he's being so difficult.’

In contrast to Foxy Redfern, Kali Callender, Kris Callender's widow, had no complaints. She looked pleased with life. Someone, maybe even Kali herself, had removed her unwanted husband, which was, apparently, all right with her. She even attacked Foxy Redfern on Casey's behalf.

‘Leave the man alone, Foxy,’ she said. ‘Surely even you can understand how difficult it is to try to conduct an unofficial investigation? I'm sure he's doing his best for all of us.’

‘That's right,’ Moon put in. ‘My Willow Tree always does his best. It's the way he's made. He can't do anything else. And I think the rest of you could be a bit more grateful for his efforts. He's trying to help us.’

Redfern snorted at this assertion, but chose to make no further derisory comments.

‘So, tell me what the Lincolnshire force has been doing,’ Casey invited Moon. ‘Have they any person they're particularly interested in?’

‘Dylan Harper, for one, seeing as he's being as unhelpful as he can be. They were certainly long enough questioning him.’

‘Bloody cops!’ Foxy was back to his previous belligerent form, clearly unable to contain his prejudices even when it was in his best interests to do so. ‘They only confiscated all our cannabis plants, not just the ones outside, but the ones in the loft as well. What are we supposed to do for bread now? Try to help yourself and be self-supporting and the cops are down on you like a ton of bricks.’

That there were other cannabis plants growing on the smallholding was news to Casey.

‘You had cannabis growing in the loft?' How very enter-prising, he thought, wondering which of the raggle-taggle band had thought of it and found the energy to get it underway.

‘Yeah. It was Kris's idea,’ Foxy told him, surprisingly not trying to take the credit for this unsuspected entrepreneurial spirit. ‘It cost, mind, but we bypassed the electricity to light the plants to lessen the outlay. We grew them in a hydroponic solution — a nutrient solution for the roots which accelerates growth,’ Foxy explained before he scowled. ‘When I think of all the work and debt to get it up and running, I could kill someone.’

‘Indeed,’ was Casey's comment. ‘And did you?’

‘No, I didn't. Maybe you ought to look closer to home for your killer, instead of levelling accusations at me.’

‘It wasn't an accusation, Mr Redfern, merely a question.’ Casey, who considered cannabis a dangerous gateway drug to worse drugs — look what a scrambled mess it had made of his father's mind and memory — had little sympathy for their losses. Though he was more than surprised that the commune had got a hydroponic system up, running and producing a profit. He was surprised also that Catt hadn't mentioned it, but perhaps with two murders his police contact hadn't thought the drugs growing in the loft worth telling him about. But growing cannabis under such conditions indicated a certain professionalism at work; the plants required a lot of care and attention, particularly given the attendant fire risk and the fact that the plants required darkness as well as light to grow. It was a level of care that Casey couldn't envisage any of the commune members capable of. Yet one of them, at least, must have found previously unsuspected inner resources after Callender's death to keep the production up and running. Especially judging by the commune's new and expensive possessions, which he now took for granted hadn't been purchased with money from a lottery win at all.

‘Is there any indication that they're soon to make an arrest for the two murders?’ he asked Moon. ThomCatt hadn't seemed to think this was likely in the near future, but it didn't hurt to ask one of those in the centre of the whirlwind.

‘Who's to say? They play their cards close to their chest, as I told you, and have kept us in the dark as to what they're thinking.’

Casey wasn't surprised. It was the police way to keep suspects guessing. Anxiety often made people reveal more than was wise. 'I suppose, as well as all being charged with growing cannabis with intent to supply, you're also being charged with bypassing the electric meter and stealing electricity?’ Catt had confided this titbit, but Casey thought he might as well get it from the horses' mouths. He and Catt had both assumed this electricity bypass was simply their normal behaviour rather than done in order to lessen the massive use of electricity that hydroponic growth of cannabis required.

‘Such a shame they found the plants in the loft,' Moon said wistfully. ‘They were doing well, really lush. Our second crop was nearly ready for harvesting, too. We'll miss the money it'd have brought in.’

If this was a subtle hint to Casey, he chose to ignore it. He'd bailed his parents out often enough in the past, but this was one occasion when they'd have to fund their own irresponsible lifestyle. It was enough that he was attempting to investigate who was responsible for the killings. Moon really was incorrigible, he thought. Why couldn't she and the rest of the commune members get jobs like normal human beings? There were plenty of women of Moon's age still working and contributing to society. But instead of getting jobs, the whole pack of them were on assorted benefits. It made him cross. They certainly hadn't registered the smallholding as a business with all the tax implications that would bring. Even though they were all able-bodied enough to work, they much preferred the government to pay them rather than the other way about. A bit of decent, honest labour might do them the world of good.

Casey left soon after without seeing the elusive Dylan Harper. He felt dispirited in mind and body. But then this feeling was the inevitable result of a visit to the commune. It was the reason he had always chosen to visit but rarely.

As Moon locked the gate behind him, Casey told her to keep her eyes and ears open, said goodnight and climbed back into his car. He decided to return to the office and put in an hour on the paperwork on the Gus Oliver killing before he went home.

He was reflective as he drove away, disturbed by his thoughts on the efficient cannabis factory in the commune's loft. His parents would never have got that up and running on their own, that was for sure. So far, his parents had never, whatever other culpable acts they might have gone in for, done anything of such a seriously criminal nature that the police had needed to check deeply into their lives or backgrounds. Petty offences, mostly drug-related, were the sum total of their criminality. Plus a bit of thieving in his father's misspent youth.

But now, with two dead bodies found on their smallholding, Casey couldn't believe he would be able to remain anonymous for much longer. Surely someone would soon sniff out his existence? Worriedly, he drove on into the dark Fens night.

 

Once back in his office, Casey pulled a pile of statements on their official investigation towards him and began to read. His concentration on this task was so great that he didn't hear Catt enter.

‘Got some news,’ Catt told Casey's bent head.

Casey dragged his gaze from the latest statement and stared at Catt, surprised to find him in the station so late rather than out with the latest girlfriend. ‘Who from? This from your policeman pal or from one of your old friends?’

‘My friend in the Lincolnshire force was unavailable when I rang. In a pow-wow in the incident room probably. No, this info was from another of my contacts who lives close to the commune. I hadn't been able to get hold of him before as he's been out of the country for a few days. Seems the late DaisyMay had been seen in one of the local pubs several times with Kris Callender. They chose a pub that wasn't the commune members' usual haunt, but one a bit out of the way. Perfect for a clandestine assignation.’

‘Might mean something or nothing. You said they were seen together more than once?’

Catt nodded. ‘And by someone who knew them both by sight and has no axe to grind as far as I could discover.’

‘Could just be a coincidence. Did your contact happen to notice how they behaved towards one another?’

‘He said they seemed very touchy-feely. But that also might mean something or nothing, seeing as they're all so into love and peace, man, at the commune, they're probably all touchy-feely. Maybe they were having an affair and maybe they weren't. But if the former is the case, it gives our grieving widower an excellent motive for murdering DaisyMay. An excellent motive, too, for offing Callender. The only difficulty there is why he killed them two months apart. Unless he discovered some way along that the child she was carrying was Callender’s rather than his. If she was up the duff by the dear departed...’

'Mmm. If Harper's blood was up for that reason, I'd have thought, if he found out they were having an affair, he'd kill them both at the same time. Still. Well done, ThomCatt. It gives us another possibility to look into.’ He paused. ‘I've got some news as well.’ He told Catt about the commune growing cannabis in the loft.

Catt whistled. ‘Enterprising. Wouldn't have thought they were up to it.’

‘My sentiments exactly. From what Foxy Redfern said, it would seem the late Mr Callender was the driving force behind it.’

‘He seems to have been the driving force behind a lot of things. I'm surprised one of them killed him in that case. Why kill the laying goose?’

‘For reasons other than their profitable drug business if it was one of the commune who killed him. Or, if it was an outsider, which I still think unlikely, it seems he could have been killed because he unwisely tried to cheat the wrong people. But as we don't know anything for sure, that's just another question to add to the growing pile. I hope we're able to begin answering some of them soon.’ Casey stood up. ‘That's it for tonight. I'm taking in little or nothing. And tomorrow's another day.’

‘Probably bringing more questions with it, too.’

 

The next morning dawned bright and clear. Casey woke before the alarm and he turned it off so as not to wake Rachel. The orchestra in which she was a violinist had been rehearsing late the previous night and she had been dog-tired when she returned home. Rachel's unsocial hours were something he was grateful for — they mirrored his own. The hours were often the main reason for police couples splitting up. But given her own hours, Rachel would never be able to throw his in his face as so many other police wives and partners did.

He quickly showered and pulled underwear from the drawer, a clean shirt from the wardrobe and a fresh suit. He'd get dressed downstairs so as not to disturb her.

Later, dressed and sipping coffee at the kitchen table, he ruminated on the two cases, reflecting that the unofficial one seemed to be making more progress — mostly no thanks to him — than his official investigation. Not for the first time, he thanked God for Thomas Catt's ill-assorted contacts; but for them, he would never have known about the touchy-feely meetings between DaisyMay and Callender.

And this evening they were to interview Carole Brown, the third unalibied member of Gus Oliver's harem. Maybe, if she or Max Fallon, her partner, were guilty of murder, they'd give themselves away, thereby providing answers on their official investigation.

On this optimistic note, Casey finished the last of his coffee, shrugged into his jacket and let himself out of the house.

More statements awaited his attention when Casey arrived at his office. He was ploughing his way through them when Catt popped his head around the door several hours later.

‘Anything of interest?’ He gestured at the pile of statements as he entered.

‘Not so you'd notice,’ Casey replied. He dropped the statement he had been reading back on the pile and straightened up. ‘Things are moving very slowly on this case,’ he complained. ‘Let's hope this evening's interview shakes something loose. Remind me what we know about this Ms Brown and her live-in partner.’

Catt pulled the chair from in front of Casey's desk, turned it so the back was towards Casey and dropped in to it, crossing his arms on the top bar. ‘Her partner, Max Fallon, is a bit of a wide boy. Owns several nightclubs in the area, including the one here in town. On the criminal fringe with ambitions. He's done time for assault. As for Carole Brown, she seemed a bit of a slut to me. Surprisingly, she's nothing like Oliver's other lady loves, all of whom are very feminine and rather less obvious. Guess Ms Brown must have been Oliver's bit of rough.’

‘Interesting that her partner brings a criminal element, a violent element to the case, especially given the bloody mode of Oliver's death. Cutting off his penis might be just Fallon's mode of operation. It would certainly act as a deterrent to anyone else hoping to step into Oliver's shoes.’

‘Or his trousers.’

‘Or his trousers. It's got more than a touch of the gangster's revenge about it.’

'Mmm,' Catt murmured. That's what I thought. And from what I've learned of Fallon, he's not the type to turn a blind eye if his partner's been playing away. I don't know whether he found out about his girlfriend's fling with Gus Oliver, but I forgot to tell you that she was sporting a spectacular black eye when I questioned her.’

‘Should make for an intriguing interview. I wonder how she'll say she came by it.’

‘The usual walked into a door scenario, probably.’

Casey glanced at his watch, surprised to see that it was already one o'clock. ‘Fancy lunch at The Lamb?’ he asked Catt. ‘My treat.’

‘Sounds good, especially the bit about you paying.’

‘Let's just say it's my thank you for services rendered on the commune case.’

The Lamb was but a short drive away. Casey pulled up and parked in the car park. Practically full, the number of cars shouted that summer had arrived. After all the chilly, grey days, July had finally recalled it was meant to be warm and had come out in a blaze of sunny glory.

The pub was their usual haunt when the canteen fare at the station palled. An old coaching inn, it was situated on the banks of the river and had pleasant gardens, just perfect to sit out on such a fine day.

‘Just a salad for me, please,’ Casey told the barmaid. ‘Chicken, I think.’ He turned to Catt. ‘Made your mind up, ThomCatt?'

Catt nodded. ‘I’ll have the chicken casserole, please, my darling.’

Casey sighed at this evidence that he hadn't managed to break his sergeant of being over-familiar, took their food tickets and went and got the drinks while Catt found an unoccupied table outside.

‘This is the life,’ Catt remarked as Casey arrived with the drinks.

'Mmm,' Casey agreed as he sat down. ‘Enjoy it while you can. We can't stay long. Duty will call all too soon.’

‘Don't go and spoil it. With two investigations on the go, I reckon we've earned a bit of R and R.'

‘Some might say we've earned nothing until the cases are wrapped up and the murderers in the cells.’

Catt just shrugged at this and took a long drink from his lager. 'Fallon and his girlfriend seem a rum pair,’ he observed. ‘I’ll be interested to get your take on them. Wonder why she stays with him if he beats her up.’

‘Unfathomable are the ways of women.’

Catt nodded. 'I suppose the money's a draw. Doubtless it helps to ease the pain. And with a string of nightclubs, he can't be short of a few bob. Maybe enough to pay a hit man to do his dirty work for him.’

'Mmm. As you say, he sounds something of a fly-boy, our Mr Fallon. His record marks him out as a nasty piece of work.’

‘So you reckon him for our killer?’ Catt asked just as their food arrived.

Casey waited until the girl had served them and returned inside before he replied. ‘Given his reputation and record, it seems a strong possibility.’

Catt pondered this for a second or two as he picked up his cutlery. ‘Maybe it would be too easy.’

Casey smiled and started on his salad. ‘Thought you were looking for the easy life, ThomCatt, taking your leisure in the sunshine?’

‘Who? Me? No. I want to catch our killers, both here and up in Lincolnshire. Even if we'll never get the credit for solving those killings.’

‘We've got to catch the murderers yet, before we can talk of taking credit,’ Casey reminded him again. ‘So eat up and let us at least make a stab — excuse the pun — at catching the killer here.’

 

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

They were lucky that evening and managed to interview Carole Brown alone as her partner had been delayed; Casey hoped she might be more forthcoming without Fallon's intimidating presence.

The pair, like the other couples they had already interviewed, lived in some style. Theirs was an apartment like the Garretts', but all similarity ended at the name. Part of an old warehouse block, the interior was very spacious. But the space had been filled with upmarket tat of high expense and dubious taste. No scheme of colour or style had been selected to provide harmony; the place was a mishmash of whatever had taken their fancy and they seemed to fancy the garish above all.

Casey didn't wait for an invitation, but sank into a bright orange plastic chair. Catt selected another in deep purple while Casey began the questioning.

‘I understand you were at home alone all evening last Friday?’

Carole Brown threw herself down on a lime green settee without a response. She seemed sullen and inclined to be tetchy when the questioning began, constantly fingering her ripe black eye and scowling. As Casey had said, she was yet another one who had claimed to be home all evening, with no one to back up her tale, on the night Oliver was murdered.

‘And what about your boyfriend, Mr Fallon? Was he home all evening?’ Casey questioned.

‘Max? Not likely. He was out, wheeling and dealing, as usual. I already told him that.’ She jerked her head in Catt's direction.

‘Bit of a Del Boy, is he, your partner?’ Catt asked, referring to the lead character in the popular sitcom, Only Fools and Horses, as he raised his head from his notebook.

‘Thinks he is, more like.’

Carole Brown certainly seemed to be nursing a grievance against her partner; easy to understand given the shiner. ‘Mr Fallon has a conviction for assault and seems to mix with questionable acquaintances,’ Casey remarked. ‘Did he give you that black eye?’

‘Certainly not. The wind blew the front door back in my face.’ She stared at them as if expecting them not to believe her. ‘He's a lamb is my Maxie. He'd never hit a woman.’ Even her words held a certain cynicism as if she found amusement in saying them. Perhaps she even believed them, though given her streetwise appearance, it seemed unlikely. Maybe it was her pride talking.

‘While Mr Fallon's not here, perhaps you could tell us something about your relationship with the late Mr Oliver?’

Carole Brown sneered. ‘What's this? Discretion Is Us? And to call it a relationship is stretching it a bit far. We met for sex, that's about as far as any relationship went. He bought me a few trinkets which I had to sell in case Max found them and started asking questions.’ Her thin lips tightened. ‘It's just as well the bastard's dead or I'd have killed him myself.’

‘Why's that?’ Casey asked.

‘Bastard gave me the clap, that's why. He never used condoms. Complained they were uncomfortable and took away from the sensations. It wouldn't have mattered too much, only before I knew I had it, I'd passed it on to Max.’ Involuntarily, she touched her black eye, giving the lie to her tale of the wind-blown front door. At Catt's grin, she pulled a face and admitted the truth.

‘All right. I lied. I got this when Max started getting symptoms and had them checked out. He slapped me around till he learned the name of the culprit who'd given me the disease.’

Casey's gaze met Catt's as the significance of this sank in: Fallon, prone to violence and with a conviction for assault, would be unlikely to take kindly to a man who had not only persuaded his girlfriend to be unfaithful, but who had also infected them both with gonorrhoea. Had they found Oliver's killer so soon?

The front door slammed and a sour-faced Max Fallon entered the room. He was tall with hair that was styled to within an inch of its life; he had that much in common with Catt, but that was where the similarity ended. He wore a flashy suit of a light mauve with a white stripe. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar as he came towards them. He selected a chair and sat back, seemingly at his ease, before he directed a grey-eyed and challenging stare at the two policemen. It seemed he had no difficulty in recognizing their profession, for he said sharply, ‘Cops? What are you doing here? My club licenses are already renewed.’

‘We're not here about your licenses, Mr Fallon,' Casey said. He began to introduce himself and Catt, but Fallon waved away his words.

‘No need for introductions, gentlemen. It's my belief that when you've met one cop you've met 'em all.’ He sat forward and demanded, ‘So, what's she told you? Did the dirty bitch tell you she gave me the clap?’ It was clear from his manner than Fallon had been drinking a little too unwisely. If he hadn't been he would surely had kept that gem of a motive to himself.

‘Indeed she did, Mr Fallon,’ Casey replied. ‘She also told us who gave it to her. A man who has since died very violently. Did you perhaps decide to take revenge on Mr Oliver?’

'I might have done if I'd managed to catch up with him,’ was the candid reply. He removed his tie, by the simple expedient of pulling the loosened garment over his head before he flung it in the corner. ‘But this is one thing you can't pin on me. I was at my club till the early hours on Friday night. Ask any of my staff there.’

‘Oh, I will, Mr Fallon,’ said Casey, though he thought asking Fallon's staff such a question was likely to prove singularly unproductive. Given Fallon's tendency to violence it was unlikely any of his staff would be so foolhardy as to contradict him. Fallon could easily have slipped out and laid in wait near Oliver's house for him to emerge. A knife would be an excellent incentive to get him to the dark edge of the rubbish-strewn alley. It would have been the work of moments to stab Oliver in the groin. Cutting off the victim's penis and stuffing it in his mouth, would — if the knife was sharp and Casey doubted that Max Fallon would carry anything but a slick and sharpened blade — have taken little longer.

It certainly seemed the sort of crime that had Fallon's name all over it: most criminals progressed up the ladder of villainy and violence over time, so, given the provocation of a sexually transmitted disease and having been thoroughly cuckolded, such a leap up the ranks of the criminal fraternity didn't seem unlikely.

The only difficulty with this was Dr Merriman's emphatic insistence that Oliver's body had been moved after death. If Fallon had lain in wait for Oliver outside the latter's home, he could, of course, have bundled him into a car, but the argument against this was that unless it was a stolen vehicle, which he thought unlikely in Fallon's case, he wouldn't want Oliver's blood on his seat covers. And if he had walked his victim to the alleyway at knifepoint and killed him there, the body wouldn't provide evidence of its transport from somewhere else. It was a conundrum, the answer to which evaded Casey. But one thing he could do was to get Catt to look again through the CCTC footage. They'd need to check what car Fallon drove — this was something he preferred not to ask Fallon directly. CCTV was more likely to tell them the truth than either Fallon or his hired help.

‘I’d like the names of the staff you claim can provide you with an alibi, Mr Fallon,’ Casey told him, in spite of the belief that getting these names would be a waste of time.

Fallon didn't demure. With an expression that tended to the smug, he reeled them off. Catt noted them down.

‘We'll be paying a visit to your local club, sir,’ he told Fallon. ‘It was the one in King's Langley rather than one of your other establishments where you claim to have been?’

 ‘That's right.’ Fallon nodded. ‘King's in the High Street. And not “claimed”, but was. My staff will, I'm sure, be glad to assist you.’ His still smug expression foretold the opposite.

‘We'll be in touch, sir,’ Casey murmured as they headed for the door.

‘Please do, Chief Inspector. I always aim to help the police.’

‘He's certainly done that a few times,’ was Catt's comment once they were on the other side of the front door. ‘Let's hope he's not guilty of this crime because alibied up as he is, we're unlikely to prove it. He'll have primed his staff with the answers he wants.’

‘Don't I know it. Still, the CCTV might, with luck, contradict him and them. We'll question his staff this evening, anyway. And maybe one of the regular customers will spill any beans to be had.’

‘Only the more idiotic of them would do so, given Fallon's reputation.’

‘We must hope we hit on an idiot, then, as it seems the only way we're likely to get some straight answers. Unless Fallon proves to be the idiot and we find his car captured by the CCTV cameras, heading towards Oliver's home. I want you to check it out as soon as possible.’

Catt nodded. And with thoughts of idiots to comfort them, they headed back to the station.

 

Max Fallon's nightclub was the usual combination of loud strobe lighting and even louder music — if such it could be called. Its garish colours and furniture bore a marked similarity to those of his apartment. Perhaps he had bought a job lot at a knock-down price.

But, as Fallon claimed in his advertisements, his club attracted celebrities; according to the barman they had two weather girls as regulars. He had seemed quite proud of the fact that the club could boast such Z-listers amongst their clientele. It was comforting to Casey to discover that Fallon wasn't as high up the totem pole as he would have liked them to believe. People of influence were one of the banes of a copper's life, so it was good to learn that the nightclub owner's was only likely to be as high as that of his ‘celebrity’ clients.

The barman and the rest of the staff were quick to confirm what Fallon had told them — that he hadn't left the club till around four on Saturday morning, at which time Gus Oliver's body must already have begun to cool. Presumably, as Casey had anticipated, Fallon had rung his staff after he and Catt had left the apartment and primed them with what they were to say. But at least, during their earlier scout around the car park, they had spotted what had seemed likely to be Fallon's car and had rung in for confirmation of ownership.

Max Fallon, perhaps in order to live up to his would-be reputation as a favourite of celebrities, drove a silver Porsche with a personalized registration.

‘At least it should be easy to spot on the CCTV tapes,’ was Catt's comment.

The nightclub visit hadn't been the waste of time that Casey had expected. But if the CCTV footage failed to come up trumps they would, in the lack of any other evidence to connect Fallon to the crime, have to pursue their inquiries elsewhere.

Once they had left King's nightclub and returned to the station car park, they headed their separate ways — Catt off on a ‘hot’ date and Casey home to Rachel.

She'd made a casserole, she told him when he arrived home, rather to his surprise, after he'd kissed her hello. In her lack of domesticity, he had often thought that Rachel would fit right in with Moon, Star and the commune lifestyle, which was why he usually made sure to have a hot meal in the police canteen. She had a touch of the Bohemian about her. Perhaps it was because she led such a gypsy existence with her music and the orchestra. However, grateful for the hot meal to quieten the hunger pangs, he spooned out a generous portion of the casserole and returned to the living room with his steaming plate.

‘So how are your two investigations progressing?’ Rachel asked from the depths of the settee, where she lay stretched out like a cat.

‘My murders are going as well as can be expected,’ he told her solemnly, ‘which is pretty poorly.’

‘That bad, huh?’

‘That bad. We seem to be getting nowhere with our official inquiry, at least.’ He paused. ‘Well, I suppose that's not strictly true. There are a number of possibilities with that one. As for the murders at the commune, it seems the late DaisyMay might well have been a tad over-friendly with Kris Callender.’'

‘What? They were having an affair, you mean?’

Casey waited till he had swallowed another mouthful of casserole before he replied. ‘It's a possibility, seeing as those at the commune are so into making love and not war — though, according to Moon, war's been breaking out all over lately. Anyway, the possibility that DaisyMay and Callender were sleeping together means it might not be her partner's baby she was carrying.’

‘Interesting.’

'I thought so. Which is why I suggested that Catt put the idea of blood or DNA tests to his tame policeman so he could pass the idea on to his boss. DNA would be the clincher; it's the only way we'll find out just whose baby DaisyMay was carrying. Though contradictory to that theory, I have to wonder from Dylan's protective behaviour towards her whether he suspected a thing. At least, according to Moon, Catt's policeman friend has managed to persuade his superiors that DNA tests are necessary. It could save a lot of time and suspicions.’

‘Only if Dylan, DaisyMay's partner, knew she was carrying another man's child, and you said there's no evidence for that.’

‘True. In fact, given his solicitous behaviour right up to her death, all the evidence points the other way.’ Casey finished his meal and put the bowl on the table. ‘That was delicious. I was ready for it.’ He pushed his plate away from him and leaned back, rubbing his tired eyes as he did so. ‘Without the DNA evidence, there's apparently little else to point to the guilty party. Though, seeing as the dogs didn't start to bark anywhere around the time DaisyMay must have been killed, the commune's marked preference for a guilty outsider is unlikely to hold water. It seems her murderer has to be one of the commune members. As to Kris Callender's murder, the perpetrator is anyone's guess. Not only did it happen weeks ago, but he seems to have spent his time putting everyone's backs up, so the field's wide open.

‘It's surprising really that we haven't got a chief suspect, given what a slapdash, drugged-up lot they are in that commune. You'd have expected the murderer or murderers — though I can't believe there are two of them in such a small community — to be careless about leaving clues to their identity behind. But whoever killed the pair was smart enough not to contaminate the scene of DaisyMay's murder. It's too late, of course, to check out any such traces from Kris Callender's murder as he's been in the ground for around two months if not longer — they're not terribly precise on dates at the commune.’ He paused. ‘By the way, I meant to ask you — how did your rehearsal go?’

'I thought it went well, but Mr Baton Man clearly didn't agree with me. He threw a massive hissy fit and made us work later that anticipated. Lucky I put the casserole in the slow cooker before I went out.’ She sat up straight ‘But I don't want to talk about him. I have enough of him all day without allowing him to dominate my free time as well. In fact —' she swung herself off the settee in one lithe movement — ‘I'm for bed.’ She reached the door and gave him a come hither look. ‘What about you?’

Casey needed no second invitation.

 

It was raining when Casey got up the next morning; a veritable downpour. Summer hadn't lasted long in spite of the weathermen's optimistic predictions. He could hear the rain hammering against the window as he got dressed.

He made coffee and brought both cups upstairs. It was Rachel's day off and Casey asked her what she was going to do with it.

 'I thought I might try some more retail therapy and spend some of your hard-earned salary.’

‘Just as well one of us is a good earner,’ Casey smiled. As an orchestral musician, Rachel didn't earn good money; for her the labour was for love rather than filthy lucre. 'I certainly never seem to get time for shopping.’

‘All the more for me, then.’

Casey finished his coffee, kissed Rachel goodbye and ran through the downpour to his car.

 

As the questioning of the staff and the trickle of early customers at Max Fallon's' nightclub had yielded little to go on, Casey knew they would have to dig deeper. It was a shame they still had no results, he mused, as he stared down at the latest reports that had come in. He had to outline the progress on the case to Superintendent Brown-Smith later. Unless Catt's re-watching of the CCTV tapes bore fruit he didn't know what he could tell him, though he supposed he should be grateful that, unlike in his previous case, the victims weren't Asian. Brown-Smith was so politically-correct he always preferred his suspected criminals to be white; it confirmed his prejudices. And as he remembered his last telephone conversation with Moon, Casey could only imagine how hot his superintendent's prejudice would run if they were officially investigating the deaths at the commune. He supposed he should be grateful for small mercies.

Moon had told him the murders had, in their wake, brought an atmosphere you could cut with a knife. Several of the commune had taken to barring their bedroom doors at night. And not just the commune women: Scott ‘Mackenzie’ Johnson and Randy Matthews had, by Moon's account, taken similar precautions.

‘Willow Tree,’ his mother had pleaded, ‘hurry up and find the killer before the commune is destroyed. Star and me are too old to start over somewhere else.’

He had assured her he was trying. ‘But it's a bit difficult attempting to solve a case, as I'm doing, at one remove.’ Especially when he was receiving so little help from the commune members themselves. He paused, not sure he really wanted an answer to the question he had felt forced to ask several times already, but he posed it anyway. ‘How's Star bearing up?’

‘He's all right. Nothing much affects him. Not now he's getting his normal ration of sleep, anyway. He's as laid-back as ever, but then he's never been one of life's worriers, though I was anxious he'd blurt something out to the cops.’

‘He didn't though?’ Casey broke in urgently. ‘You said he hadn't.’

‘No. But it was a close run thing. You know how out of it he can get. At such times he'll tell anybody anything. I had to sit beside him and keep pinching him when he was questioned.’

‘Surely the police questioned him alone?’

Moon laughed. ‘They tried to. But all they got was monosyllables. In the end they admitted defeat and allowed me in to prompt him — not that they got much more sense out of him then — something I made sure of, as you can imagine, hon.'

The court case was scheduled for later that afternoon and Casey could only hope his father maintained this Sphinx-like silence. He'd be on tenterhooks till it was over. It wasn't even as if he could attend in case someone recognized him. He'd just have to rely on Moon's report afterwards — always assuming their brief managed to get bail for the pair…

Casey glanced at his watch and sighed. He still had a lot to do before he could set off for the Fens and the commune to see how the court case had gone and, now they'd had time to let the consequences sink in, to find out how the murders had affected them all after they'd been questioned by a Crown Prosecution Service barrister.

Catt came into the office. ‘I've worked my way through two of the CCTV tapes,’ he told Casey. ‘I'll try the rest when we get back.’

Casey nodded. Soon after, he and Catt were on their way to see the Merediths again.

So far, several of Oliver's lovers and their partners had signally failed to provide alibis worthy of the name. And the Merediths were no better in this regard than the Garretts or Max Fallon and Carole Brown.

 

Once they were admitted to the Merediths' expensive detached home and seated in the living room, Casey became aware of a simmering atmosphere. Had Roger Meredith succeeded in getting the truth from his wife about her infidelity? Had she admitted it after their visit in response to her husband's probing? Or had he discovered it prior to Oliver's murder and concealed the knowledge, only now, after Casey and Catt's previous visit, letting his suspicions surface?

'I think it's safe to say, Mr and Mrs Meredith,’ Casey began, ‘that neither of you has an alibi for the night Mr Oliver was murdered.’

‘No. That's true enough,’ Meredith blithely confirmed. ‘Though why you think we need alibis is beyond me. I barely knew the man and he was nothing more than a sometime acquaintance of my wife. Isn't that so, Amanda?’

Amanda gave a brief nod.

Casey stared at Meredith. Meredith stared back as if daring Casey to contradict him. But he got the strongest feeling that Roger Meredith had known that Gus Oliver was rather more than a ‘sometime acquaintance’ of Amanda's. He wondered if Oliver had also passed gonorrhoea on to her. It seemed a distinct possibility. Had she, in turn, passed it on to her husband? Or had she or one of the other harem members been the one to pass the disease on to Oliver? If Meredith hadn't been playing away himself, he, like Max Fallon, would know his wife had been unfaithful as soon as he had his symptoms checked out. No wonder, if so, that the atmosphere felt so tense. Such a betrayal would stick in the craw of anyone.

According to what the Merediths had told them so far, they had both been at home at the relevant times — Mrs Meredith watching television in the first-floor living room and her husband working in his study at the top of the house. Either could have sneaked out without the other being aware of it. It would, of course, have been taking a chance, but presumably they were each sufficiently familiar with the other's habits and routines and would know when the other was settled for several hours.

Amanda Meredith was more voluptuous than either Carole Brown or Sarah Garrett. She also struck Casey as being, beneath her frilly femininity, far tougher than either of the other two women.

Roger Meredith was rangy and lean and looked to keep himself very fit. He was good-looking in a sharp-faced way and dressed expensively and well. It was clear he was a man with more than his share of pride. How must he and the other harem husbands/boyfriends have felt when, in Fallon's case, and if in that of the other men, they had discovered their partners' infidelity? Casey guessed Meredith, for one, wouldn't sit back and take it. He also guessed he would find it hard, if not impossible, to forgive. He would want revenge on someone. Though whether that someone was his wife or Gus Oliver was something they had still to discover.

‘Are you sure that neither of you went out that evening?’ he asked.

Meredith answered with a sharpness that equalled his angular features. 'I told you, we were both at home all evening.’

Casey thought it would be worth questioning the neighbours again. He'd do that in any case, as part of the normal house-to-house routine. But this time, to judge from the shiftiness of Roger Meredith's gaze, he thought he might just get something useful. Maybe there was a lonely old woman in their street who had nothing better to do with her time than watch the neighbours' comings and goings.

But, for now, it was clear they would get nothing more out of the pair but pleas of innocence, which, for all Casey knew, might even be true.

Back in the car on the way to the station, he and Catt discussed the case.

'Gus Oliver really set the cat among the pigeons with these three couples, didn't he?’ Catt commented. ‘Do you think Oliver knew he'd caught the clap? And was he impervious to who he passed it on to?’

‘God knows. But symptoms of STDs show up far quicker in men than women, so it's a possibility he knew and carried on regardless.’

'If so, it seems possible one of the six thought he deserved to die. It's like those cases of men — it's usually men — who have unprotected sex knowing they have the HIV virus.’

Casey went down to second gear as he approached the red traffic light at the corner. He braked and put the gear lever into neutral before he changed the subject and told Catt, ‘I'm going to the commune tonight. I want to hear from the horses' mouths how the court case against them went. I think I'll have a chance of getting more out of Moon if I'm there in body rather than just a voice over the telephone.’

‘Well, be careful. And check around the lanes yourself before you approach the commune. It's possible the Boston cops have been trying to lull them into a false sense of security by removing their presence, only to take up a watching brief on the place again. The last thing you want is to risk them becoming aware of the association. It wouldn't do your promotion prospects much good if it became known. You might even need your Get out of Jail Free card.’

‘Remind me to take it out of the Monopoly set before I go.’ Casey gave a wry smile as he moved the gear stick into first and pulled away from the lights.

 

Superintendent Brown-Smith’s down-drawn lips declared his sour mood when Casey went to see him to report on their progress on Gus Oliver's murder; a mood not improved by the lack of results on the case.

‘You'll have to do better than this, Casey,’ Brown-Smith told him when Casey had outlined what was happening. ‘It's the thin end of the widget.’ The superintendent had a habit of mangling his metaphors and vocabulary, especially when agitated. ‘You have enough suspects. What about this Fallon type? He sounds a likely prospect. I want you to look deeper into his motions.’

‘We're already doing that, sir,’ Casey replied, understanding his boss's intended meaning, and trying to expunge from his mind the toilet-image the superintendent had unintentionally conjured up. 'Catt's looking through the CCTV footage again to see if he can spot FalIon's car anywhere close to the alley where the body was found.’ Indeed, anywhere at all at the relevant times, Casey thought, seeing as Fallon had been emphatic that he'd left the night-club in the early hours of Saturday morning.

‘He won't see it if the man left his club with murder in mind. He sounds to me to be smart enough to take steps to avoid incriminating himself.’

Casey swallowed an involuntary sigh at this self-evident truth.

‘You'll need to check the footage for the cars of his staff as well. Likely he borrowed a vehicle from one of them.’

‘Yes, sir. I'll get Catt or one of the others to do that as well.’ He already had that in hand, but it was as well to humour Brown-Smith by letting him think he was the only one with the good ideas.

The superintendent let him go soon after.

Catt was still checking out the CCTV footage when Casey set off for the Fens. He couldn't help but wonder what he'd find at the smallholding now the atmosphere of fear and suspicion had had time to breed.

 

 

Chapter Fourteen

As Casey got nearer to the smallholding, in the distance he could see Boston Stump dominating the grey skyline. This was the name given to the tower of St Botolph's Church and was a misnomer since the tower, to Casey's knowledge, soared not far off 300 feet and could be seen for thirty miles around. Apart from the misnamed tower, the church was well known for its abundance of bizarre medieval carvings in wood and stone: a bear playing an organ; a man lassoing a lion; a fox in a bishop's cope taking a jug of water from a baboon. Moon had told him about them and he had gone to see them himself on an earlier visit.

But now was not the time for musing on bizarre carvings, he told himself as he approached the smallholding and braced himself for an unfriendly welcome.

The brand new 4x4 had vanished from the smallholding's yard, Casey immediately noticed as he pulled up. Had some of them gone for a joyride following the court case after an unexpectedly good result? he wondered as Moon opened the gate and let him in. He shrugged and thought no more about it apart from going in for a brief headcount as he entered the living room. As expected, the elusive Dylan Harper was still conspicuous by his absence; probably he was once more secreted in his bedroom away from those he presumably suspected of murdering DaisyMay.

His headcount revealed that Scott ‘Mackenzie’ Johnson and his lover, Randy Matthews, were not amongst the motley crew sprawled about the untidy living room. They had previously been a silent but visible presence, sitting close together and seemingly with eyes only for each other. Casey questioned Moon and soon learned that, unlike the rest, Randy and Scott had decided to remove themselves from the area of suspicion.

‘They've done a bunk? And taken the four by four?’

Moon gave a glum nod.

The taking of the new car clearly rankled: was Moon getting a liking for the pleasures of property ownership in her middle years?

‘Randy must have persuaded Scott the police would be on their case, you lot being so against their kind.’

Casey smothered an amused smile. She wouldn't say that if she knew Superintendent Brown-Smith. It was his own kind he had a down on. He was almost as keen on homosexuals as he was on ethnics; he even wore a ribbon in his lapel on Gay Pride days, so determined was he to suck up to minorities. Anyway, doubtless DI Boxham would have circulated the details of the car as Casey presumed the pair had failed to show up at court.

Moon confirmed it.

‘Any idea where they've gone?’ he questioned the room generally. But no one knew the pair's whereabouts. Or, if they did, they weren't saying. Unsurprisingly, the commune, in spite of the festering suspicions, seemed to have closed ranks even against Casey, who was doing his best to help them.

‘Dare I presume that you've reported their disappearance to the police?’ Casey asked.

'Hey man,’ Foxy Redfern put in, ‘we just have, right?’

Casey breathed in on a sigh and told him, ‘You know very well that I'm investigating unofficially and can't report my findings to the Lincolnshire police. You'll have to do it. It'll look better if it seems you're trying to help them.’ As opposed to hindering them, which was what they seemed determined to do to him. He was surprised Boxham hadn't called in to question them, but when he asked about this he learned the police had so far failed to put in an appearance. But they might yet do so, he realized, so he told them he was moving his car to the rear as a precaution and went out.

When he returned to the living room, he asked, ‘So when did you notice Johnson and Matthews had gone?’

'Latish this morning,’ Moon told him. ‘When they hadn't stirred from their room for our court appearance I went and checked on them. All their stuff had gone. They'd even taken all our scented candles.’ Moon sounded more put out about this than she had at the loss of the 4x4.

‘Well, they did buy them,’ Kali put in. ‘Why shouldn't they take them?’

Moon, in spite of her firm belief that property was theft and that everything in the commune belonged to them all, clearly excluded the purchasers of the candles in her Utopian vision. But, equally clearly, she had no answer to Kali's pert observation.

‘Would they have gone on the road?' Casey asked. ‘Joined a bunch of travellers, perhaps?’

Moon scoffed. ‘Not those two. Very particular, they were. Forever complaining about what they called our slovenly habits. They'll have found some comfortable place to nest in.’

‘Real pair of queens, those two,’ Foxy put in from the sofa where he had again taken up a sprawling residence. ‘Our ways weren't good enough for them. Just as well they've gone. I've longed to boot them out for some time. Can't stand fairies, man. The way they used to keep their own company as if the rest of us weren't good enough for them stuck in my craw.'

Yet more evidence of their brotherly love, Casey thought as he nodded. In spite of his misgivings about the stained state of the furnishings, he propped himself on the arm of one of the moth-eaten settees, determined to get something more in the way of information from them than he'd so far gained.

‘You must know something,’ he insisted, ‘living cheek-by-jowl as you do. Come on, Moon.’ He turned to his mother. ‘Even if it's true that you don't know where our errant pair took themselves off to, you must have some idea as to who killed DaisyMay and Callender.` It was for certain, beyond a few unsubstantiated theories, that he didn't. ‘You're all living in suspicion of one another. Surely it's better to get such suspicions out in the open?’

Moon didn't look too sure of this, so he mentioned that DaisyMay and Callender had been seen together in a local pub, being very touchy-feely.

‘Means nothing,’ Moon told him. ‘That's how we are. We love one another, man.’

Having just listened to Foxy Redfern's tirade of hate against the missing pair, Casey dredged up a faint smile at this.

‘DaisyMay hadn't been feeling too well, what with her pregnancy. I imagine Kris had taken her out to cheer her up. It's what we do, hon: support one another.’

Only if they're as pretty as DaisyMay had been, in Callender's case, was Casey's immediate thought. He'd never noticed the man being touchy-feely or loving to anyone else, including his wife.

‘Surely it was up to Dylan to offer solace and cider, rather than Kris Callender?’ Casey remarked.

‘We're family,’ Moon insisted. ‘We're not exclusive to our regular partners when someone else is in pain. Love, hon, is what it's all about.’

From what she had told him over the phone, the other women in the commune — who had taken to locking their bedroom doors at night — clearly didn't embrace this sentiment. Or, if they once had, they did so no longer.

Neither, it appeared, did Scott or Randy or their resident homophobe, Foxy.

But, if they suspected one another of murder, none of them was inclined just yet to grass to the cops, even one such as Casey. That much was clear. So after enquiring about the court case and getting mumbled responses, Casey heaved himself from the arm of the settee and left them to their mutual suspicions; maybe, given sufficient time, their suspicion and fear would overcome the brotherly love.

Swamped with possibilities on two murder investigations, Casey felt he needed a break. Rachel was playing in the orchestra in a local venue, so that evening, after visiting the commune and driving back to King's Langley, he took himself off to the local theatre. He arrived just on the interval when everyone was piling out to the bars to get their alcohol intake.

Casey joined the crowd. He was surprised to see Roger Meredith in the crush; he wouldn't have thought the rugby-playing Meredith inclined toward the arts. He was in deep conversation with another man at the corner of the bar. Casey edged closer to try to overhear what they were saying, but all it turned out to be was one of those rugger buggers' conversations about the merits of various wing-halves. He turned away before he was seen and, moving to the other end of the bar, he finally managed to attract the barman's attention and order a tonic water. Casey, unlike Catt, made it a point to never drink and drive.

The bell for the end of the interval rang soon after and he was carried along by the crowd back to the auditorium. He found his seat, and prepared to enjoy the orchestra's rendition of Brahms, but he found himself nodding off barely halfway through the piece and shrugged himself awake. It wouldn't do for Rachel to spot his drooping head. Even though she was unlikely to see him in the dim theatre, Casey sat up straighter and concentrated. He smiled at Rachel's serious face above her violin, her concentration fierce on her music; she made it a point to ignore the conductor as much as possible, Casey noted with amusement as he watched her. He found himself relaxing and getting into the music. The orchestra was good and the audience was appreciative in their applause as the concert drew to a close.

Casey fought his way against the human tide to the stage and caught up with Rachel before she disappeared into the wings.

‘Why didn't you say you were coming?’ Rachel asked. ‘I'd have got you a front row seat.’

And catch me snoozing? Casey thought. 'I didn't know I'd be able to make it,’ he excused himself. ‘You were good. I enjoyed it. And knowing how hungry you always are after a concert, I thought I'd take you for a meal.’

‘Great. Just give me time to get changed and I'm all yours.’

She disappeared into the wings and Casey waited. She was soon back, carrying her cased violin and the black dress she had performed in. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked as they left the theatre and made for the car.

'A little place Catt told me about,’ he told her. ‘New restaurant. Just opened.’ Catt knew all the best haunts in the surrounding area; given his multiplicity of girlfriends, such knowledge was essential to his love life, or so he believed.

Not long after, they were seated at a table for two at a small Italian restaurant that exuded intimacy. Romantic Italian ballads wafted their love themes around the room followed by attentive waiters. They ordered spaghetti and Chianti. It wasn't long before Rachel asked him about his parents and their dilemma.

Casey shrugged, poured Rachel more wine and wound some spaghetti around his fork. ‘Nothing much to tell, beyond the fact their suspicions of one another seem to be growing. Oh, and two of commune have cleared out, bag and baggage.’

‘Really? Who?’

‘Funnily enough, it's the two I had least reason to suspect of murder. The two homosexuals, Randy Matthews and Scott Johnson.’

Rachel laughed. ‘Why didn't you suspect them, Will? Because they're queer? You should play in the orchestra and see just how queer men can nurse grudges. Some of them have come to blows over accusations of getting off with one another's boyfriend.’

'I don't doubt it. No, it's not because they're homosexual. It's because, when I saw them, they were so clearly wrapped up in one another there could have been no room for anyone else, not even in the free-loving commune in which they lived. They didn't seem to take any interest in the murders, they never asked me one question, unlike the others; it's as if they thought the killings were nothing to do with them.’

‘They seem to have thought it enough to do with them to do a bunk,’ was Rachel's response.

'Touché.' He poured Rachel another glass of wine — her thirst after performing under the hot lights was always as strong as her appetite for food. Casey just sipped at his water, as one glass of wine was all he allowed himself whilst driving..

‘So, have you any idea where they might have gone?’

‘No. But Moon seemed of the opinion they would be somewhere that didn't feature muddy fields and caravans.’

‘That gives you plenty of scope.’

Casey nodded and addressed himself to his spaghetti, glad it wasn't he who was responsible for finding the errant pair.

They didn't linger long over their meal. They were both tired and a reasonably early night beckoned.

 

The following morning brought the news that Max Fallon hadn't remained in his nightclub till the early hours of Saturday morning as he had claimed. One of his neighbours said he had passed Fallon around nine fifteen on Friday evening, close to the alley where Oliver had been found. Had he been leaving the scene of the crime? Casey wondered. Unlucky for Fallon if so and that he had been spotted, and spotted by someone with reason to recognise him.

The demands of the case had interrupted Catt's viewing of the CCTV footage, so he was, as yet, unable to confirm the sighting from the tapes.

‘I'll get straight back to it as soon as we've spoken to Fallon,’ Catt promised. ‘Though now his neighbour has confirmed where and when he saw Fallon and that he was driving his own car when he spotted him, it'll be quicker.’

Casey nodded, though the knowledge made him uneasy. If Fallon had left his club with the intention of waylaying and murdering Gus Oliver, it was strange that he hadn't taken the precaution of borrowing the car of one of his staff as the superintendent had suggested he might. It would have been the sensible course to follow.

 

Fallon was still at his kitchen table enjoying a late and leisurely breakfast when Casey and Catt arrived at his home. The kitchen, more tastefully furnished than the living room, with its granite worktops, huge American fridge and bright red Aga, spoke as loudly of money as the rest of their home.

Carole Brown propped herself against the double sink after she had let them in, careful, this time, to keep her black eye turned away from them.

‘Glad we managed to catch you, Mr Fallon,' Casey told him.

Fallon’s gaze narrowed at this. It was almost as if a guilty conscience had made him assume Casey was alluding to Oliver's murder when it came to ‘catching’ him. Now, why should that be? he wondered.

Fallon folded his newspaper and asked with a studied casualness, ‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’ It was apparent that doing anything for them was the last thing on his mind.

‘Perhaps you can clear something up for us,’ Casey began. ‘You told us you were in your nightclub until the early hours last Saturday morning. Yet now we learn that you were seen much earlier, in your car close to the scene where Mr Oliver's body was found. Perhaps you can explain this discrepancy?’

Max Fallon chewed on a piece of toast while he considered his answer. Then he said, ‘Whoever told you that must be mistaken. Mine isn't the only silver Porsche about, you know. I presume you’ve already questioned my staff and they confirmed what I told you. I don't know what else I can say.’

So he was going to deny it. Casey could only hope the evidence turned up on the CCTV footage that Catt had yet to check. ‘We are investigating a particularly vicious murder, sir,’ Casey reminded him. Fallon simply continued to munch on his toast. ‘What clothes were you wearing that night?’

‘My usual rig. A monkey suit. I like to look the part as my club attracts high-end punters.’

The latter caused Casey to smother a smile. Self-absorbed as he was, Fallon had failed to catch it.

‘They expect the owner to take some trouble.’

Someone had certainly taken trouble in killing Gus Oliver, Casey thought. Was Fallon the type, he wondered, to commit such a vicious crime? Or maybe, as Catt had suggested, whatever he had done in the past, these days he would be more likely to pay one of his violent criminal associates to dispose of his love rival for him. Fallon struck him as the type who had learned to keep his nose clean when possible; not for him the night in the cells on suspicion. And he would be sure to have an expensive brief to get him out of such insalubrious surroundings if ever he were again careless enough to find himself cautioned and locked up.

Carole Brown had been silent during this exchange. Now she spoke up, turning towards them so the black eye was in evidence. And in spite of the yellowing remains of the black eye arguing the contrary, she told them defiantly, ‘My Max isn't a violent man, Chief Inspector. He wouldn't kill anyone. Surely, you must have someone else, someone of a violent tendency, to get your claws into?’

‘I'm not “getting my claws”, as you put it, into anyone, Ms Brown. I just want to know why Mr Fallon lied.’

‘What do you expect him to do when you come round to our home virtually accusing him of murder?’

'I expect him to tell the truth like any other law-abiding citizen. Besides, I don't think any accusations of murder have been levelled at Mr Fallon,' Casey pointed out.

‘Not yet, no. But you police have a down on him because he has money and a nice life, not to mention his own string of nightclubs. It's just jealousy.’

While Casey wouldn't mind being wealthy — who wouldn't? — owning a string of nightclubs had never featured as an ambition. It was clear that neither Fallon nor Carole Brown were about to break down and sob out a confession. So unless they found another witness who saw Fallon with the victim, or the CCTV footage confirmed the neighbour's story, they were stumped for the present.

‘What now?’ Catt asked after they had left Fallon and his girlfriend and were in the car, considering their options. Decisively, he added, ‘You can get back to studying the camera footage.’

Catt, who far preferred to be out and about, gave a disgruntled nod.

’As for me, I’m going to organise another house-to-house. There's sure to have been some neighbours we missed first time around, such as teenagers, for instance, hanging around near that alley on Friday evening who saw Max Fallon. His car wasn't bought for invisibility.’

The silver Porsche was parked in the drive; beside it, Carole Brown's more humble hatchback looked like the poor relation. ‘By the way,’ Casey added, ‘you know I visited the commune again last night?’

'Yes.' Clearly still disgruntled at again being lumbered with studying the tapes, Catt added, 'I hope you didn't bring any fleas back with you.’

‘Moon would probably have demanded them back if I had,’ Casey responded lightly, determined not to let Catt rub him up the wrong way. ‘She seems to have become very keen on personal possessions all of a sudden. Anyway, it seems two of the commune’s members have decamped from their love-in: Randy Matthews and his lover Scott Johnson.’

‘First I've heard of it,’ Catt muttered in aggrieved tones.

‘Your Lincolnshire contact will probably confirm it for you. They only left yesterday morning. The police hadn't been round to check on their possible whereabouts by the time I left. They mightn't have gone far. Hopefully, the official investigators will turn them up shortly.’

‘Any idea why they left?’

‘Not really. Though young Randy struck me as the nervy type. Moon told me he tried to persuade Scott Johnson to leave with him before, but Scott convinced him they should stay. Randy must have worked on him as the tempers got more frazzled.’

Casey turned on the ignition and drove off the apartments' frontage and on to the road. ‘We’ll get back to the station. Checking out the CCTV footage is the priority for now. I need someone I can rely on to check it out.’ Casey smiled to himself as, beside him, Catt sat up straighter ‘If it corroborates the neighbour's story, Fallon will have some questions to answer.’

'I suggested to my contact that the Lincolnshire cops do DNA tests on the hippie lot,’ Catt told him. ‘But they'd already put it in motion.’

‘Good,’ said Casey. ‘Though we mustn't rely too much on the results. We know there are several possible scenarios over the two commune murders: that DaisyMay was having an affair with Callender and Dylan found out about it; that Kali found out about it — and while it might seem that there was little love lost between Kali and her husband, she didn't strike me as the type to take any infidelity lying down. She'd strike back, probably by trying some infidelity of her own, but it's possible she thought murder good enough for him. Lastly — and this applies to any member of the commune — that one of them took great exception to Kris Callender cheating them over their produce, such as it was, and decided he had to go — permanently.’

‘Still leaves the field wide open,’ Catt remarked.

'Mmm,' was all Casey said. The worst of it was, Casey thought as they arrived at the station and he parked up, that the latter equation still left Moon and Star in the frame along with the rest of them.

Once back in Casey's office and before Catt went off to finish his study of the camera tapes, they discussed their official investigation.

‘Interesting that Max Fallon lied to us,’ Catt remarked. ‘There would have been enough people about to take note of his fancy car. It was stupid of him.’

‘True. And he doesn't strike me as a stupid man. Over-confident, perhaps.’

‘Probably liked to think he'd got one over on the idiot plods,’ said Catt.

‘True again. Let's hope the knowledge that we know about his little drive shakes some of his confidence. Anyway, he's still a definite possible. Let's consider the rest: Carole Brown; Sarah and Carl Garrett; Roger and Amanda Meredith; and Mrs Oliver. Somehow, I can't see this as a woman's crime, even if one or all of them had discovered he was cheating on them with other women. Besides, two of them are small and slim and surely easily disarmed. Which leaves us with Fallon and the other two men, neither of whose alibis is strong. We'll need to dig a little deeper and see if we can't unearth some motive; maybe the same motive as applies to Fallon—’

‘That he passed on a dose of clap to their partners.’ Catt nodded and swigged his machine tea. ‘Though I can't see that forming a motive for murder, especially as it's easy enough to cure.’

‘An embarrassing condition, though,’ Casey pointed out.

‘Being seen going into the clap clinic, you mean?’

Casey nodded. ‘Particularly for a successful man like Fallon.’

‘Surely he would get the cure from a private quack? He's not likely to mingle with the diseased proles at an NHS clinic. Want me to check out if he's a private patient with one of the local doctors?’

Casey nodded. ‘Do that after you've finished with the tapes.’ Casey glanced at his in-tray; more statements awaited his attention. ‘While you're doing that, I'll make a start on this lot.’

Catt was soon back, clearly having disregarded Casey's instructions on the order of his priorities. 'Yep,' he said. 'Fallon had a private quack and the bastard’s discretion itself. Insisted I made an appointment to see him.’

‘Have you done so?’

Catt nodded. ‘It's for two days' hence.’

‘Check out Carole Brown too. I want medical confirmation that they were both infected, rather than just take their word for it, which they could retract at any time. If Fallon's doctor doesn't confide in us, we might have more luck with Ms Brown's doctor — I don't suppose she attended the private practice.’

Catt grinned. ‘Psychic, me. I've beaten you to it. I've already asked and you suppose right. Seems Fallon wasn't only tight-fisted about the car she drove. She's with an NHS practice in the town. I checked.’

‘And what did you find out?’

'I was lucky. Her doctor's young and hasn't yet learned how to erect a wall against unwanted questions. And although she didn't actually confirm that Ms Brown had caught a dose of the clap, her manner more than gave the game away. So it seems likely she did infect Max Fallon as she claimed.’

‘Interesting that she should have been so quick to admit it. Makes you wonder why she did so.’

‘If she knew about Oliver's death, could be she wanted to place Fallon under suspicion in payment for the black eye.’

‘Maybe. Strange, though, if he's the guilty party that he should also be so ready to admit to having caught the disease.’

Catt shrugged and made for the door. ‘I’ll get back to studying those tapes.’

Half an hour later, Catt interrupted Casey's unproductive study of the latest reports from the house-to-house teams by bursting into the office. ‘Guess what? We've only had a result on the CCTV footage. Who do you think I spotted in his fancy silver Porsche not a million miles from where Gus Oliver was found?’

'Fallon.' Casey smiled. Got him, he thought. But even as he had the thought, the fact that Fallon had taken his own car niggled him. Surely, if he had set out with murder in mind, he would have taken the precaution of using a car that was more pedestrian in appearance? The dimmest criminal knew he would be caught on camera several times when driving around the town. Why make himself so conspicuous? Perhaps the man was simply playing with him . . .

But if Casey had doubts about these latest findings it seemed Catt had none.

 'I reckon the man's too cocky for his own good. Let him argue with this evidence. This time it won't just be a case of his word and that of his staff against his neighbour. Do you want me to have him brought in for questioning?’

'I certainly do. As you said, ThomCatt, let him lie his way out of this evidence.’ Catt's reaction to this latest news made Casey question his own response. But, at the very least, it would rattle the man. Which, if he was their murderer, was all to the good.

 

Max Fallon didn't even try to pretend he hadn't lied. He merely shrugged and said, ‘Okay. I admit it. I popped out for some air. The club was packed and I had a headache, so I drove around the town for a bit to see if I could clear it. That's all. The lie was worth a try to get myself off your suspect list. But I didn't kill Oliver and your CCTV footage can't prove I did. If a man can't drive around his hometown without having accusations hurled at him—’

'I don't think I accused you of anything, Mr Fallon,’ Casey said. ‘But the evidence puts you in the right vicinity at the right time.’ And he had had the means and the motive to go with the opportunity.

Fallon’s lip curled. 'A mere coincidence. And why am I supposed to have murdered him? Tell me that. Because he gave my girlfriend the clap?’ Fallon laughed. ‘Carole's history anyway and so I told her before I left the apartment. She can pass her disgusting diseases on to some other poor guy. This one's taken the cure and will soon be back on the market.’

Casey stared at him. Fallon was taking this interview a little too casually for his liking. Was the man really so relaxed about such a social taboo as gonorrhoea? Casey didn't think it likely. What man — least of all the sure-of-himself, nightclub-owning Fallon — would take such an infection so in his stride? He'd smashed Carole Brown in the face for giving him the disease. What was he likely to do to the man who had him for a fool twice over: firstly in sleeping with his girlfriend and secondly being the cause of such an infection?

Aware the interview wasn't progressing smoothly, Casey glanced at Catt, who formed his back-up and nodded.

‘We've questioned the witness who saw you in the vicinity of Oliver's house,’ Catt told Fallon. ‘This witness says he was behind you all the way from the nightclub to just yards from Oliver's home.’ Catt didn't add that the neighbour had turned off then and didn't see if Fallon had parked up by Oliver's house.

‘What do you want me to say?’ Fallon demanded. ‘That I waited for Oliver to come out of his house and then knifed him? Hell, I don't even know where he lived. Why would I? And how would I find out his address?’

‘Carole Brown springs to mind. I presume she'd taken the trouble to get his address before she went to bed with him. Is that why you smacked her about?’ Catt probed. ‘So she would tell you Oliver's address?’

‘No. She got the black eye for the reason you already know about. Besides, she didn't know Oliver's address. The creep had apparently been too cagey to give it to her.’

‘So you did ask her for it?’

Fallon scowled at his faux pas but said nothing.

‘Okay. So you found it out some other way. I'm sure it's not beyond you to have him traced. I recall you claiming you would have killed him if you'd caught up with him. Strange if you're not guilty of his murder when you managed to find your way to within yards of his door.’

‘Coincidence, Sergeant, as I said. Sheer coincidence.’ Fallon stood up. 'I think my brief would tell you you'll have to do better than that. to keep me here.’ He shot his cuffs. There was a glint of gold as he made for the door. ‘That being the case, I'm out of here.’

Catt looked at Casey, the question — Shall I stop him? — in his gaze.

Casey shook his head. And as the door closed on Fallon, he said, ‘We can't hold him, ThomCatt. You know that. As the man said, his brief would soon have him released. No.' Casey sat back  ‘I think we should try a more subtle means to get at the truth. Didn't he say Carole Brown was now his ex-girlfriend?'

‘That's right.’ Catt grinned. 'A woman scorned. She must surely be keen to get back at him.’

‘That's what I thought.’ Casey glanced at his watch. ‘I wonder if she's busy packing her stuff up? We'd best get around there before she leaves and goes we know not where.’

 

Carole Brown was in a vengeful mood. She carried on throwing her clothes into a couple of suitcases while she spilled what beans she knew.

‘You know,’ she said, pausing in her frenetic activity, ‘you should get the Fraud Squad to check out the finances of Max's nightclubs. They're far from kosher. His accountant has some scam set up to hide the bulk of the profits from the taxman. I often heard Max boast about it to show off how clever he'd been.’

Casey, having enough to contend with in the two murder investigations, wasn't interested in whatever crooked scams Fallon and his accountant had going. Time enough for that when he’d got his current investigations squared away. 'I wanted to ask you about the late Gus Oliver, Ms Brown.’

‘Him again. What about him?’ The brief hiatus in the packing came to an abrupt end as more clothes were hurled into the cases and she added, half to herself, ‘Maybe I should slash his expensive suits? That would hit him where it hurts.’

'I think you already did that,’ Catt told her. ‘You infected him with gonorrhoea, remember?’

‘So I did.’ She shrugged. 'I don't suppose it's the first time he got a dose. Occupational hazard I would think, in his line of work.’

'I asked you about Gus Oliver,’ Casey prompted.

‘Another shit. The world's full of them.’

‘Did Fallon ever let slip if he had anything to do with Oliver's death?’

‘No. But then he wouldn't. Would he be likely to tell me when he must have already been planning to dump me?’

‘Put like that, it seems unlikely.’

‘Believe me, if I knew anything about it, I'd tell you in a heartbeat.’

Casey nodded. It seemed she could tell them nothing more, so they left her to her packing, but not before Casey added the rider, ‘You won't forget to let us know where you're going to be staying, will you, Ms Brown? We don't want to have to come looking for you should we need to question you again.’

She gazed sullenly back at him. ‘I’ll be staying with a girlfriend,’ she told him. ‘I'm off men.’ She rattled off a name and address and Catt's pen raced across the page as he noted them down.

Questioning Carole Brown about Oliver's death had been a long-shot. And, like most long-shots, it hadn't come off. Still, as Casey remarked to Catt once they reached the pavement, Max Fallon was still in the frame. He'd had the motive and the opportunity to kill Oliver. Maybe, if they could find the murder weapon, it might still retain some traces of the murderer.

‘He'll have got rid of the blade, for sure,’ said Catt.

‘Of course. Friend Fallon might be a lot of things, but I doubt if he's foolish enough to hang on to it. I think we should redouble our efforts to find it. That and the clothes he was wearing that night. If he planned on killing Oliver, he'd have been prepared with a fresh set of clothes and would have dumped the suit, shirt, tie — even his shoes and socks along with the knife as they would have been heavily blood stained.’

‘Maybe some tramp got lucky and is walking around dressed to kill,’ Catt put in.

Once in the car, Catt picked up the mike. ‘I’ll get the lads to check out the local hobos.’

‘Get them to check the local shops that deal in expensive second-hand clothing, too. If a tramp found a suit of fancy clothes it's more likely he'd sell them to buy the next bottle or three.’

‘Good thinking.’ Catt relayed the message and sat back. ‘Now what?’

‘Now we wait.’

 

 

Chapter Fifteen

Randy Matthews and Scott ‘Mackenzie’ Johnson still hadn't been traced two days later in spite of the combined efforts of the Lincolnshire force.

Casey, as he arrived home from the station, convinced the commune members must have some idea where the pair had gone even if they had failed to confide the fact of their going until questioned, decided he'd have to drive to the Fens once more and delve a bit more deeply. It was a depressing prospect; not only were their memories drug-impaired, but they were just as likely to come up with something — anything — in order to get rid of him; they seemed now to be as tired of his questions as they were of those of the official investigators.

But then, answering questions from the police had never been their favourite pastime; most of them had been busted for drug possession too often in the past to welcome such attentions. But questioned again they must be; maybe one of them had remembered something relevant to the investigation. He kissed Rachel goodbye, told her he'd see her later, and went out.

It was with a mixture of hope and the expectation of disappointment that Casey again drove to the Fens. By now the commune members had abandoned their brief flurry into being security conscious and the big gate to the smallholding was wide open. Craggie, the smelly and over-affectionate mongrel, was out in the yard with the other two dogs: clearly they'd abandoned attempts to keep the dogs separate much as they'd abandoned their security measures, because all three dogs came racing towards him, zigzagging between the car wrecks, as he got out of his vehicle, Thankfully, this time they recognized him as a welcome visitor and didn't set up their previous frenzied barking. The only attentions Casey received were drools over his trouser legs and the attempt by Craggie to hug him to death while breathing his halitosis fumes in his face. He escaped this unwelcome embrace and hurried into the farmhouse, shutting the door firmly behind him.

For once, the living room was deserted — even hippies had to do some chores if the place was to remain habitable. Casey shouted, 'Hello?’ and Moon appeared from the depths of the farmhouse.

‘Hi, Willow Tree. Didn't expect you.’

Casey, having thought it might be advisable to come unheralded, ignored this observation and simply asked, ‘Where are the others?’

‘Oh, they're around somewhere,’ Moon replied vaguely, waving her hand to encompass the entirety of the house and yard. ‘What do you want, anyway?’

'I suppose a cup of tea's out of the question?’ He hadn't stopped for a meal or a drink, but had left home five minutes after his arrival from work.

‘We're not entirely uncivilized, you know. We can run to a cup of tea, though you'll have to have it black as Madonna had her baby and drank the last of the milk to build her strength up for feeding the kid.’

‘Oh? What did she have?’

'A boy. Going to name him David.’

‘Nice name.’ Nice normal name, thought Casey. It seemed he hadn't been wrong about the younger generation turning conservative against the Sixties’ rebels. He followed Moon into the kitchen. As he got nearer, the smell of curry powder and other eastern spices became stronger, mixed with the scent of burnt toast and rancid cooking fat. Strangely, he had never ventured into the dim recesses of the house as far as the kitchen, for which he was grateful, it being better to imagine the shambles of encrusted food on the cooker and the damaged and unhygienic work surfaces than to know for sure. He hoped they didn't bring the new baby in here. But then, he reminded himself, the other children of the house had been mostly born and brought up here and survived virtually unscathed. And didn't they say a few germs were good for you? But then ‘they’ could surely not have encountered so many germs in one place.

It was the drugs, of course, always the drugs. And although Casey thought it probable that Kris Callender had been the only one using crack cocaine, the rest of the commune had their own drugs of preference.

Dirty mugs and plates overflowed every flat surface, along with empty takeaway containers which were piled on top of one another higgledy-piggledy rather than put in the bin. None of this piled-up detritus fazed Moon; she simply picked up two of the mugs, dunked them under the tap in a cursory wash and put the kettle on. Once it had boiled and she'd made the tea, she cleared assorted junk from two of the chairs and, ever the punctilious hostess, she took the chair with the broken back after telling Casey to sit down.

Casey, who should have known better than to eat or drink from any of the dishes in this house, forced the tea down once it was poured.

‘As I recall,’ he began, ‘Foxy Redfern said the idea of growing the plants in the loft had been Kris Callender's. And the rest of you simply went along with it?’

‘No,’ she contradicted him. ‘It was a mutual idea. We'd been batting around possibilities of how to make some bread, seeing as how the government sees fit to give us a pittance. We're not as work shy as people seem to think — it took plenty of labour to lug all the equipment up those rickety stairs to the loft. All Kris did was find a contact willing to put up the money for the equipment.’

‘Who was the contact? His usual drug dealer, Tony Magann?'

‘No. It was someone else. Some Vietnamese, I think. He wasn't very forthcoming about his identity.’

‘I'm not surprised. Honestly, Moon, have you and the rest no sense? Some, if not most of these Vietnamese who are part of drugs gangs are extremely dangerous and you've already said that Kris Callender had been cheating you on your other produce. Didn't it occur to any of you that he might try the same tactics with this Oriental Man?’

Moon just gave a shrug to this, then added, ‘Hardly matters now, seeing as the cops have confiscated the lot. And with them still sniffing around it's unlikely we'll see the Viets for dust, seeing as they're probably all illegals.’

Moon gave another shrug. She seemed remarkably unperturbed by this.

Casey shook his head. It didn't seem possible to get through to her that they might all be in danger. Still, he comforted himself, the Lincolnshire force was aware of the situation and must have put feelers out. Perhaps they'd caught the Vietnamese already. He questioned Moon some more and learned that they hadn't confided this knowledge to the Lincolnshire police.

‘Why not?’ he demanded.

'I don't know. One or two of the others suggested if we kept quiet we might be able to do another deal with the Viet when he came calling as he seems sure to once all the hullabaloo has died down.’

‘You're to tell them now,’ he insisted. ‘Do you hear me, Moon?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I hear you.’

But would she obey? was the question. He could but hope while thinking that yet another suspect had entered the ring. Was it possible that Callender had attempted to cheat this Vietnamese as he had cheated his fellow commune members? Maybe so, with the confidence-giving properties of crack cocaine behind him. And if he had and he was caught, Kris's contact would want to teach him a lesson and Vietnamese drug gangs were ruthless and unlikely to consider killing a lesson too far. But that still didn't explain the murder of DaisyMay…

Casey sighed and asked the question he knew he should have asked before. ‘So how long had this arrangement been going on and how did he meet up with his contact?’

‘Kris obtained the equipment to set up in the loft around four months ago as far as I recall. As for how he met up with his contact—' Moon gave yet another careless shrug. ‘I've no idea. Kris tended to be secretive and wasn't too into sharing.’ Dryly, she added, ‘As we found out to our cost.’

Casey nodded and changed tack to ask, ‘You've still got the mobile?’

‘Stop worrying, Willow Tree. I've still got it. It's in a safe place.’

The loud cry of a new-born disturbed the rare peace and Moon got to her feet. ‘Duty calls. Madonna has no idea about looking after a baby and Lilith, her mum, tends to leave the girl to get on with it on the basis that she'll learn through doing.’ She glanced out of the window. ‘There's Jethro. I sent him to the shop for some more milk.’

‘Madonna's breast feeding?’ It was probably de rigueur at the commune.

‘Trying to. Not very successfully. Will you have another cup of tea now that the milk's arrived?’

Hastily, Casey excused himself. There had been some foreign body in the first cup so he was unwilling to risk a second. ‘I'd like a word with Dylan Harper before I go, Moon.’ He felt he'd given the widower more than enough considerate leeway. ‘Can you go and get him?’

Moon gazed at him with a disappointed air, but nodded and went out.

Dylan Harper, when he finally appeared, along with Jethro and the milk, looked dreadful. His olive skin was sallow and his face sunken. His hair an uncombed tangle of black curls, he slouched into the kitchen and sank on to Moon's vacated chair.

‘You wanted to speak to me,’ he bluntly observed.

‘Yes, Mr Harper. As I presume you know, I've questioned the others several times.’ With little result for his trouble. 'I thought it was time I spoke to you.’

Dylan shrugged — this bodily gesture seemed to have reached epidemic proportions in the commune. Casey found it increasingly irritating.

'I can tell you nothing, man. You should question the others again, though. It would, I think, serve you better than questioning me.’

Casey chose not to take his advice. Instead, he changed the subject and to Dylan's surprise, commented pleasantly, ‘You seem very relaxed about the mumps outbreak, Mr Harper. Moon told me you were unfazed in the face of the other men's anxiety.’

Dylan Harper laughed. There was an edge of relief in his voice. ‘Is that all you wanted to ask me? I had mumps as a boy, so it didn't trouble me. There's no worries about my fertility. I've already proved it, even though I've no baby to show for it.’ He scowled. ‘Maybe the others aren't quite so sure of their baby-making abilities.’

‘Have you any idea as to who might have killed DaisyMay?'

‘Could be any of them, though I doubt Star could find the energy.’ His lips pulled back in a twisted grin. ‘Moon, though, now I could see her doing the deed, especially if she discovered Star had found his lost libido with my Daisy.’

Casey stared at him, unwilling to rise to the bait. ‘What about the others?’

He shrugged again. ‘As I said, it could be any of them. It's about time you found out.’

'I agree, Mr Harper. That's just what I intend to do.’

A shadow passed across Harper's face and he said abruptly, ‘Is that it?’

‘Yes. For now. Warn the others not to attempt a flit like Scott and Randy, won't you?’

Dylan didn't answer, but simply got up and left.

Casey found Moon and said goodbye. Star was nowhere to be seen; he was probably asleep somewhere where he couldn't be rousted out to help with the chores.

He told Moon to give his love to Star, reminded her, with some force, that she must tell their local police about the Vietnamese drug dealer, and headed back to King's Langley.

 

The weather was once again atrocious. Rain flung itself down in torrents soon after he hit the A17, keeping the wipers doing double time from the spray thrown up by the lorries. He was glad to reach King's Langley and the station as his neck and shoulders ached with the tension of concentration.

He was surprised to find Catt waiting for him. ‘Thought you'd gone home,’ he murmured as he took off his damp jacket.

‘Decided I'd hang around and see if you came back to the station. Get anything more from the great unwashed?’ he asked.

‘You might remember that two of the great unwashed are my parents, ThomCatt.’

‘Yeah. Right. Sorry.’

‘And to answer your question, all I found out was that Kris Callender's contact who supplied the hydroponic equipment for the cannabis in the loft was a Vietnamese — no name or other details, of course.’

‘Bugger. That widens the scope of the investigation. Wonder why they didn't confide that little titbit to the Lincolnshire cops? My contact made no mention of it.’

‘Probably didn't want to end up like Callender.’

‘Still, it might provide your friends and parents with a get-out clause. Ruthless lot, Orientals. They'd kill Callender without a qualm if it suited them.’

‘Doesn't explain DaisyMay's death. I can't see it as likely that she was meeting with foreign gangsters. She rarely left the smallholding according to the others, and if the contact visited the farm someone else would probably have mentioned it to me by now, even if only to get me off their backs. Still, it's another lead. There can't be that many Orientals living in the Fens.’

'I wouldn't bet on it, said Catt. ‘I've just been reading the cops' comic—' This was what Catt called the Police Review, the official organ of the police force — ‘and there's more about than you'd think. And a number of them have set up these drug places. It's big business. Vietnamese criminals are responsible for any number of illicit cannabis factories.’

Casey nodded. He had read the same report. Operation Atone, a national initiative which targeted the money men behind the rise in drug crime, had already found many cannabis factories, including one that was run on such a massive scale that the criminals responsible must rake in a million pounds a year.

‘According to what I read,’ Catt went on, ‘they can get up to four crops a year if they use the most efficient growing technique. Sounds a nice little earner and then some. Certainly worth killing for. Especially if the Vietnamese found out that Callender was cheating on them.’

‘Don't depress me,’ Casey said. ‘Getting a lead into this particular Vietnamese drug gang seems a challenge too far.’

‘Got to be done though,’ remarked the irrepressible Catt. ‘Want me to pass the info about the Vietnamese on to the Boston force?’

Casey was unsure; he felt he would be breaking Moon's confidence. And what if he gave Catt the OK and Moon and Star bore any reprisals? But, in the end, he decided he had no choice as he couldn't rely on Moon or one of the others giving their Lincolnshire opposite numbers the information, so he gave Catt permission. Better the Lincolnshire force knew that Vietnamese criminals were responsible for financing the factory than let Moon, Star and the rest take all of the blame. Besides, hopefully the commune murders would be solved without involving any Oriental gentlemen long before the Lincolnshire force could succeed in infil-trating an undercover cop into the Vietnamese community.

The next day, they had a breakthrough in the official investigation. It seemed Caitlin Osborne, Gus Oliver's illegitimate daughter, had confessed to killing her father. Although they'd had no luck in finding her, she had come into the police station voluntarily from wherever she'd been living after she had left the Liverpool home of her adoptive parents and had bluntly told all to the duty sergeant. And when Casey and Catt went along to the interview room to question her she didn't retract her confession of guilt.

Caitlin Osborne looked much as he'd expected. Living rough wasn't the best beauty regime. She had a strong look of her father around the eyes and, like him, her lips were the full and sensual type that hinted that their owner was more than ready to indulge the vices. From the look of her, she'd indulged her love of drugs to the full.

Casey leaned back on the hard chair in the windowless interview room and stared across the scarred table at Caitlin Osborne. She looked grubby and unkempt, which was to be expected if she'd been living on the streets or in some derelict building. ‘Okay. You said you killed your father. So what time was this?’ he asked her. ‘And how did you get him into that alleyway? We know his body was moved after death.’

The last question seemed to give her problems because she was silent for several seconds, then she said, as if suddenly inspired, 'I don't know exactly what time it was as I've pawned my watch. But it was getting towards dusk. I'd been waiting for him in the shadows behind a large shrub and I killed him as he came out of the house. He was startled and I was able to take him by surprise before he was able to react. No one could see me as the house is quite private and the hedges surrounding the house screens it well. The side gate was unlocked. I hid him in the garden shed for a couple of days — I needed the time to get up my nerve to move him. There was no wood or coal stored there so I didn't think his wife would go in there. I used his own wheelbarrow to move him early on Monday morning; it was just sitting there on the back path. I had the knife because I've been living on the streets in the town and I needed it to protect myself.’

‘Did you see Mrs Oliver at all?’

‘Before he came out and while I was waiting, I could see her in the downstairs room. She was reading.’

'I see. What did you do all over the weekend? Wait in the shed with the body?’

She nodded again, but said nothing more.

'A bit spooky, wasn't it?’

‘It was dry and private. Better than the streets. And I've slept in worse.’

‘How were you sure he was dead?’

'I just was, all right? He didn't move. He just lay there as unresponsive in death as he'd been in life.’ She gave them a twisted smile as she said, 'I remember thinking that it was the longest time I'd spent with him in my whole life.’

‘So what did you do with the knife?’ Catt put in.

For a moment, she looked anxious as if scared her story was unravelling. Then she said, 'I lost it somewhere. I bought some smack after I dumped his body in the alley and the rest of the night's a blur.’

So far, it sounded plausible enough. If it wasn't for the fact that Caitlin was skin and bone. She looked half-starved and probably was. Her face was pasty with deep shadows under her eyes. Her lank hair was unwashed and uncombed. Altogether, she looked a wreck, incapable of either moving a man's dead body or formulating any kind of plan.

But then again, the outline of her murderous attack hadn't called for any great planning; merely the luck not to be seen. Though the strength required to shift Oliver looked to be lacking, which was a weak point on which Casey tackled her.

‘Did you have help to move him?’ Oliver hadn't been a heavy man, but he would have been a dead weight. Surely she hadn't been able to shift him along to the alley on her own?

But she insisted that was just what she had done. ‘He deserved to die. I'm not sorry I killed him. I'm glad he's dead. He treated me like dirt. Ignored me all my life.’

Casey felt sorry for the girl. He could sympathise with her rampant self-pity. She was still very young, her father’s rejection of her clearly still very raw. But was this claim to have killed the father who had rejected her just a drug-fuelled fantasy, one enacted in Caitlin's mind over and over again until she had come to believe in its veracity? Or was she telling the truth? They had enough for now to hold her so she wouldn't disappear like the runaway commune pair. Meanwhile, they would see if Alice Oliver or any of her neighbours had noticed Caitlin hanging around the house.

After cautioning her and suggesting she avail herself of the services of the duty solicitor, Casey left the room, followed by Catt, and gestured to the uniformed officer waiting outside the door that she was to be taken to the cells.

‘Think she did it?’ Catt asked.

‘As to that, God knows. She doesn't look as if she could lift a kitten, never mind a grown man. Moving him to the alley and tipping him out of the wheelbarrow wouldn't be easy.’

‘Maybe hate gave her the required strength.’

‘Maybe so. She certainly seems to have been nursing plenty of it.’

Catt, the abandoned product of a number of children's homes, remarked, ‘Can't blame her for that. Her father must have been more of a bastard than she is to ignore her as he did. I'm surprised she persisted in trying to see him and gain his acknowledgement.’

‘She seems the obsessive type. And then she's had treatment for paranoia, according to Alice Oliver. Who's to say what action her tormented mind might order up? Perhaps living rough on the streets, as she has for the past few weeks, concentrated her mind. Anyway, hopefully one of the Olivers' neighbours will be able to enlighten us if she was loitering with intent.’

 

The Olivers' neighbours proved not to have noticed a loitering Caitlin. Neither had Alice Oliver when Casey and Catt questioned her. But if she'd been in the drawing room with the lights on she would have been able to see little outside and the double glazing would have muffled all but the loudest noise.

It was another possibility with nothing to prove it either way. Even if Caitlin Osborne was guilty, Casey felt it unlikely she would have to face a charge of murder. As with Moon and Star, her brief would doubtless try to persuade her to plead diminished responsibility, especially given her medical history.

What now? Casey wondered as he settled down to yet more reports. Surely they must get a breakthrough in both cases soon? In this, he was lucky — in the commune murder investigation at least. For the runaway pair of Scott Johnson and Randy Matthews had been found and were singing like caged canaries according to Catt when he sauntered in.

‘So what have they said?’ Casey questioned as Catt sat down.

‘That Dylan and DaisyMay weren't quite the love's young dream we've been led to believe.’

'Oh?'

‘No. Johnson and Matthews were in the next bedroom, they said, and often heard the pair rowing.’

‘What about? Did they hear?’

‘No. All they heard was voices shouting, but not the words. Still, it's a pointer that Dylan might not be as grief-stricken as we've been led to believe. Maybe he discovered that DaisyMay had been meeting Callender for afternoon drinkies and had concluded that the drinks had led to something more, as drink so often does.’

‘Maybe so. Perhaps it's time I pulled him out of his bedroom again and asked him a few more questions. Probably should have pressed him harder when I spoke to him last time,’ Casey acknowledged.

‘Better late than never.’

Reluctantly, Casey said, ‘I’ll drive up there this evening.’ He hoped that evening's questioning brought some answers worthy of the round trip because he was heartily tired of the journey.

 

Dylan Harper, when, for the second time, he was winkled from his bedroom, proved even more sullen and uncooperative than the last time he’d been questioned.

‘You do want your girlfriend's killer caught?’ Casey asked. This only brought a glowering response.

‘Only that's not the impression you're giving. You and Ms Smith had a number of rows before her death, I understand?’

This got his attention. ‘Who told you that?,’ he sharply demanded.

‘That's not important. But I notice you don't deny it.’

‘It was a hard time for both of us. DaisyMay had a difficult pregnancy. She threw up morning, noon and night and often couldn't sleep and that woke me up. The lack of sleep made both of us irritable, inclined to snap at the least little thing.’

‘And that's all the rows were about?’

That's all,’ Dylan insisted.

‘Not because DaisyMay had been out drinking with Kris Callender?’

Dylan made no response to this.

‘She was seen, you understand. They looked very friendly.’

‘Why wouldn't they?’ Dylan snapped. ‘There were friends, man. We were all friends.’

‘But not any more?’

‘How can I be friends with any of them until I learn which of them killed her?’

Dylan's response was entirely natural. So why did Casey think the man wasn't telling him the entire truth?

 

 

Chapter Sixteen

If Casey found it hard to believe in Caitlin Osborne's confession of guilt over her father's murder, he found it even harder to believe in the innocence of several of the other suspects in the case. Fallon, in particular, given his tendency to violence, headed the suspect list.

But, unless something moved on the investigation, he was stumped as to how he would prove Fallon, or any of them, a murderer. And although they now had the CCTV footage as well as the neighbour's statement, Fallon had still denied he'd had anything to do with Oliver's death. Without forensics to link him to the killing, it was stalemate.

He and Catt had also closely questioned each of the other suspects, again with the same result as before: lots of protestations of innocence mostly, plus the odd burst of temper. Even the polite and reserved Alice Oliver seemed to be losing her cool. Apart from Mrs Oliver, they had all followed the example set by Fallon and equipped themselves with a solicitor who would fend off any more unwanted questions.

But at least things were moving in their shadow investigation. It was Catt's contact in the Lincolnshire force who provided them with the breakthrough.

The DNA results were in, as Catt revealed the next morning. ‘Turns out Kris Callender was going to be a daddy twice over. He not only fathered young Madonna Redfern's child, he also fathered DaisyMay's.’'

‘That still begs the question of whether Dylan knew.’ Casey paused. ‘Wait a minute. Dylan told me he had had mumps as a child — which would explain why he took such a relaxed attitude to the disease when the boy, Billy, brought it home. But what if he lied? What if he'd caught the disease when he was a grown man and it made him infertile?’

‘Then he'd have known for sure that DaisyMay had cheated on him,’ Catt finished. ‘Just like Max Fallon when he caught the clap.’

‘Exactly. Better check out Dylan Harper's medical records. Find out if he had mumps as a boy or later.’

‘I’m on to it,’ Catt told him as he made for the door.

 

The line of inquiry into their newly-elegant tramp theory on the official murder investigation came to nothing, in spite of a smelly parade of men of the road being hauled into the station and questioned. They had the same result on finding the murder weapon. But on their unofficial investigation, Catt had found out that Dylan Harper had lied about one thing at least — his claim that he had had mumps as a boy. He hadn't: he had contracted the disease as an adult.

Casey had been right in his guess. But now he decided to err on the side of caution. 'I suppose it's possible he might have thought the doctors had made a mistake and he wasn't infertile at all.’

‘That's one view,’ said Catt. ‘On the other hand, maybe he didn't doubt the doctor's diagnosis. Maybe he just went along with the idea that the baby was his for his own purposes. You said he and DaisyMay had been an item for two years?’

Casey nodded.

‘He caught mumps some months before he met DaisyMay,’ Catt told him. ‘What do you bet he didn't tell DaisyMay that he couldn't give her babies?’

‘I told you, ThomCatt — I don't bet. But even if I did, that's one bet I certainly wouldn't take you up on. Dylan must have known as soon as she told him she was pregnant that she'd been unfaithful. I think he must have planned to kill her all along. Why else would he have spoilt her in that unlikely fashion throughout her pregnancy, but to make himself look the eager soon-to-be dad? Moon told me he doted on her during the weeks of her pregnancy. That he would hardly let her do a thing. Strange behaviour from a man who must have known she'd been cheating on him.’

‘Covering the tracks he intended to make. A gypsy's revenge. Crafty.’

‘But not crafty enough. Did you tell your Lincolnshire policeman about our discovery?’

‘You bet. Or not.’ Catt rubbed his hands. 'I think we can expect an arrest very shortly. Don't you?’

Casey nodded. ‘Let's just hope we have a similar result soon in our own investigation,’ Casey put in before Catt became too gung-ho.

Catt's face fell. ‘I'd almost forgotten about that in all the excitement,’ he revealed.

'I hadn't. But I've had an idea about that.’

'Oh yes? Tell all, O wise one.’

Casey tapped his nose. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I've one or two things I've got to find out first. But when — if — I do, you'll be the first to know.’

Catt pulled a face, but had to be satisfied with that.

 

Catt's mobile rang just as he entered Casey's office. He whisked it out of his pocket and glanced at the display. ‘It's my force contact up in Boston,’ he said before he took the call.

Casey listened to one half of the conversation with growing frustration.

'Yeah,' said Catt. 'I see. Has he said anything else?’ He listened some more, then asked, ‘What about the rest of them?’

Casey's frustration was growing by the second. His fingers drummed on the top of his desk and he made wind it up gestures at Catt.

Finally, Catt said, 'I see,’ once more, thanked his caller and snapped the mobile shut. ‘The Lincolnshire cops have arrested Dylan Harper.’

Casey stared at him. ‘And?’

‘And nothing,’ Catt said as he sat down. ‘He's not talking. According to my source they've barely got a word out of him since they took him in.’

Casey nodded. ‘I'm not surprised. He's not exactly the most chatty individual. So what have they got on him?’

‘Apart from the DNA evidence that proves he's not the father of DaisyMay's baby and that he and the dead woman rowed a lot before she died? Nothing.’

‘So if he keeps quiet they'll shortly have to let him go.’

‘That's about the size of it.’

‘What about the arguments Scott and Randy said Dylan had had with DaisyMay? He's not said anything more than that they were caused by irritability brought on by lack of sleep?’

‘No. He's sticking to that .He won't admit he was aware that Daisy's baby wasn't his.’

‘Damn.’ Casey thought for a moment, then he asked, ‘The police have all left the commune?’

Catt nodded. ‘All back at the station with friend Dylan. Getting more frustrated by the second, I shouldn't wonder.’

'I know the feeling. I'll ring Moon.’ Casey pulled his mobile from his pocket. ‘Maybe Dylan let something slip before he was taken away.’

But there was no answer to his telephone call, even though he let it ring for an age, so he simply keyed in some texted questions and put the phone away. He'd just have to hope that Moon would read his texts sometime soon.

‘It's no good just waiting for answers on the commune murders,’ he observed. ‘Has anything more come in on the official investigation?’

‘Not a lot. But Max Fallon's private doctor, although reluctant, eventually confirmed that Fallon had received treatment for an STD.’

Carole Brown and Fallon himself had already told them that, Casey mused, but it didn't hurt to get official confirmation.

‘Gives us a confirmed motive, too. Maybe it's time we checked out if the partners of Oliver's other lovers had a similar motive.’

‘Might as well. Nothing else springs to mind. Unless—'

Casey's ears pricked up. ‘Unless what?’

‘Unless we set a trap for Fallon and see if he falls in. This case needs some sort of a shot in the arm, so I suggest we give it one.’

‘What sort of trap?’

Catt told him.

But before they could put Catt's plan in motion, they had other tasks to get through; routine, painstaking tasks that brought no glory but which still had to be done. Reading statements, more interviews and yet more checking. The hours and the duties passed slowly. But eventually evening fell and they could put the plan into action.

 

‘You're sure you'll be able to hear everything?’

‘Of course,’ Casey reassured Carole Brown. ‘Don't worry. There'll be a couple of plain clothes officers inside the club, near Fallon's office, and Catt and I will be right outside in the car park. We'll move at the first sign of trouble.’

She still looked doubtful. ‘He's already thumped me once. I’m scared.’

‘There'll be other people about as I said; the couple in the club will be dressed to look like clubbers. All you have to do is scream if you feel any concern. Any concern at all. They'll be there immediately and we won't be far behind.’ She stared at him for several moments, then she nodded. ‘All right. I'll do it. I just hope I can help you get something on that bastard. He deserves it.’ It was a sentiment Casey echoed.

By nine o'clock they were all in place. It was perhaps a bit early by clubbers' standards, but both Casey and Catt were eager for the off and could contain themselves no longer. Besides, there was always the worry that Carole Brown would change her mind if they delayed. She and her unsuspecting male friend drove to King's nightclub in the friend's car, while Casey, Catt, Shazia Khan and Jonathon Keane, the last two dressed as clubbers, followed behind in an unmarked vehicle. They dropped Shazia and Jonathon around the corner from the club. Casey gave them last-minute instructions before he let them go. He watched as they sauntered off around the corner before he followed them in the car and made for the club's car park.

Jonathon and Shazia were also miked-up just in case anything should go wrong with Carole Brown's equipment.

Casey parked up and doused the headlights. He and Catt settled down to await developments. They were slow in coming.

 

Carole Brown and her friend seemed to have settled themselves at the bar, to judge from the sounds of tinkling ice against glass that carried over the mike Shazia had fixed to Carole's bra.

‘Could do with some of that myself,’ Catt said. ‘That Carole can certainly drink. That's her third in half an hour by my reckoning.’

‘Just pray she doesn't get drunk and forget the reason she's there,’ Casey remarked. 'I want her pleasantly merry only; merry enough to make a scene and barge into the office, not create such a disturbance that she gets the pair of them thrown out.’

They sat back and waited some more. It was another hour before things kicked off. They heard Carole's voice loud and clear. It had been growing steadily more shrill as the minutes and the drinks passed.

‘No more drink, Carole, there's a good girl,’ Catt murmured. ‘We want the outraged ex-girlfriend, not a fish-wife shouting her wares.’

‘Shush. Let's listen,’ Casey admonished.

'I won't be quiet,’ Carole Brown screeched, almost as if she had heard Casey's words. ‘I'll have my say and be damned to who's listening. Your boss is a crook, Mr Muscles.’ Casey assumed she was addressing one of the bouncers. Or door stewards, in current parlance. ‘Not only is he a crook, he's a murderer, too, and you're all his accomplices. I know he got you all to lie for him about where he was when Gus Oliver was murdered. Why would he do that if he hadn't something to hide?’

A deep, rumbling voice said something they couldn't catch, then Carole said, ‘Where is he? Is he hiding in his office, too scared to see me? Don't worry. I'll find him myself. I know the way.’

It all went quiet then. The sound of the throbbing musical beat receded and Casey guessed they must have moved to the corridor that led to the office through the door marked ‘private’.

‘Let go of me, you great ape.’

‘Yes. Let her go, Rupert. I'll speak to her.’

Catt sniggered. 'A bouncer called Rupert? Now I've heard everything.’

‘Come into the office.’ Quietly but clearly, Max Fallon's voice came over the mike as the throb of the music faded. There was the sound of a door shutting, then Fallon's voice again. ‘I'd offer you a drink, but from the look of you and the noise of your banshee voice, I'd say you've had enough.’

‘What's the matter, Max? Too tight to give a girl a free drink out of all your ill-gotten gains?’

Carole's taunt must have stung, must have warned him that she could make trouble for him with the taxman if she chose, because the next sound they heard was the clink of bottle against glass.

'I won't ask you to say “when”. It was never one of your strengths, Carole, was it?’

‘Cheers.’

‘So what do you want?’ Fallon's voice sounded dangerously smooth. ‘Some kind of pay off?’

'That'd be nice. It's not as if you can't afford it with all the taxman's money you've got salted away. But it was something else I came for. I want to hear what you've got to say for yourself about Gus Oliver's death. And I'd like the truth.’

Fallon laughed. It was an ugly, threatening sound. ‘What does it matter to you what happened to him? He used you, gave you — and me — the clap, and then dumped you.’

The dumping part was a new discovery for Casey.

‘Why should you care what happened to him?’

‘Oh, don't get me wrong, Max. I don't give a damn that he's dead or even whether or not you killed him. I'd just like to know, that's all. I hope he suffered. Did he?’

‘My dear girl, how would I know? I wasn't there.’

‘What — did you get one or more of your heavies to kill him for you? Found you didn't have the bottle to do the job yourself?’

There was a long, strained silence, then the sound of a glass being thumped heavily down.

‘That's it, you drunken bitch. You always did have a loose tongue. You want to be careful someone doesn't cut it off for you like they did with your friend's prick.’

‘Are you threatening me?’ Carole suddenly sounded more sober. There was a wobble in her voice that, for all her attempted bravado, hinted at fear.

‘Threatening you? Of course not. It's just a friendly warning, that's all. You're free to ignore it, though I wouldn't advise it. Drunken ladies staggering about the streets on their own are an easy target.’

‘I'm not on my own.’

‘No? Brought another of your lovers for protection, have you? Where is he, then? He seems to be conspicuous by his absence. But then you never were a good picker, Carole, were you?’

‘You said it. A cheat, a murderer and a wimp. My three latest conquests. I agree. It's not much of a tally.’ She gave a cry. ‘Let go. You're hurting me.’

‘Call me a murderer again and I'll do more than twist your arm and bunch up your dress.’ There was another pause. ‘What's this?’

‘Get your hand out of there. You've no longer got the right to let your hands roam around my underwear.’

'A mike. You came here kitted up to try to catch me out. You bitch. I've a good mind to—' Fallon broke off. ‘But you'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd like to get me up on an assault charge with the evidence all down on tape.’

‘I'd like to see you up on a murder charge.’

Fallon gave a slow, mocking laugh. ‘Dream on. That'll never happen and you know it. Think I'd get caught — if I decided to go in for murder?’

Fallon must have buzzed the bouncer because the door opened again.

‘Rupert, please escort this —' he paused — ‘lady and her little friend from the premises. Oh, and Chief Inspector, I assume you're listening to this. For your information, I didn't kill Gus Oliver. Maybe after the failure of your charade here tonight you'll believe me and play no more games.’

Casey had been expecting the noise of the club's sound system to break in, but it didn't. Instead, they heard the clip-clop of Carole's stiletto heels and the crash of the fire escape door before he and Catt saw Carole and her friend pushed out into the night and the doors banged shut behind them.

Catt cursed. ‘Stupid bitch couldn't do subtle if her life depended on it. So much for my cunning plan.’

‘You win some, you lose some. It was worth a try.’

‘Not with her as the scouting party. Sorry boss.’

Carole's clip-clopping heels were advancing across the car park. Casey winked his lights and she and her companion made for the car. She opened the back door and got in, slamming the door firmly shut behind her, leaving her male friend standing outside like an uninvited party guest.

‘Sorry, Chief,’ she said. ‘It went wrong. I was sure I could get him to admit his guilt. But all I got was a twisted arm and a torn dress. Maybe I should press charges?’

Casey dissuaded her. It wouldn't look good if the papers picked up the story of their failed enterprise. They would have to come up with some other means to get at the truth.

Carole’s friend banged on the window and shouted, ‘Are you coming, Carole?’ in a petulant voice.

‘No,’ she told him bluntly, while shaking her head vigorously. ‘These two gentlemen are giving me a ride home. Aren't you?’

Casey glanced across at Catt and shrugged. ‘Of course. If you like.’

'I do like. Besides, my feet are killing me in these shoes. I can't walk another step. ‘But I do like to look my best when I go to beard the enemy in his den. Don't you, boys?’ Pausing only to light a cigarette and without sparing a glance for her abandoned escort, she said,’ Come on then. Let’s get out of here.’

 

After the failed excursion of the previous night, Casey was left with few options. He'd already, that morning, given Catt the job of finding out the names of the Merediths' and Garretts' GPs. It would be interesting if the gonorrhoea that Oliver had passed on had infected them also. For the moment at least, that possibility looked like being their last hope.

But even if all the members of both married couples had                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 caught the disease, they still lacked any evidence that connected them with Oliver's murder.

Round and round went Casey's thoughts, but however often they circled his mind, things didn't look any more hopeful. He didn't know what avenue to try next. He was running out of options — and Superintendent Brown-Smith out of patience.

He'd forgotten to ring Moon at seven the previous night as arranged. Forgotten, too, to see if she had texted back any answers to the questions he had posed. Feeling disgruntled and expecting nothing but more complaints, Casey flipped his phone open and checked his  messages. Then he smiled. Moon, that new capitalist, had come up trumps.

Casey had asked Moon if she had heard Dylan and DaisyMay arguing and she'd denied it. But when he had texted her and told her that if — when—- Dylan was released from custody, if she had any evidence that pointed to his guilt over the murders, she might be in danger, she admitted she might know something.

He dialled her number, hoping she would pick up the phone. To his surprise, he was in luck.

‘So tell me, Moon, what do you know?’

‘It's not much. I don't know if it's even worth telling you.’

‘Let me be the judge of that,’ Casey replied.

‘Okay. I don't know anything about Dylan and Daisy arguing, as I told you. They were married or the same as, so what's new if they have spats now and then? No. It wasn't those two I overheard, but Dylan and Kris. They were in one of the outbuildings, trying to get it set up for growing more cannabis plants when I passed the door. Going at it in a furious fashion, they were. I heard Dylan accuse Kris of trying to get into Daisy's knickers and Kris said, in that sarcastic way he always had with him —“Trying? I've already been there, man. Several times.” Then I heard a cry. It sounded like it was from Kris and that fists were flying in his direction.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Do?’ Moon sounded puzzled at this strange concept. 'I didn't do anything. Why would I? If the guys want to punch seven bells out of each other, that's up to them. I left them to it.’

‘Did they see you?’

‘Dylan did. Kris had his back to me. Dylan looked wild and mad as hell. Kris was dead two days later.’

‘Why didn't you tell me this before, Moon?’ How had she remembered this when it had occurred over two months ago? he wondered. It was another question he wouldn't mind having answered.

'I wouldn't have told you now, but for poor DaisyMay. And that you seem to think Dylan might do the same to me. I suppose you'll want me to tell the cops up here what I've just told you?’

‘Of course.’ What did she expect? ‘It should be enough to keep Dylan locked up out of harm's way. ‘You'll have to give them a statement.’

Over the line came the sound of a drawn-out, put upon sigh and the words. 'I suppose so, hon. If I must.’

‘Yes. You must. If Dylan’s released because you fail to give evidence, you'll be the first person he targets. Remember that.’

After he put the phone down, Casey went in search of his sergeant. He found him in the canteen, surrounded by a laughing throng of officers.

‘Sorry to break up the happy home, but I need Catt's services.’

The others melted away and Casey, aware the other officers would all have their ears out on stalks, took Catt's arm and led him to his office. He told him what Moon had said and waited for Catt's reaction.

‘God, boss, didn't your mum realize what danger she's been in?’

‘Apparently not. I wouldn't have got this out of her now but for stressing that if Dylan's killed once, twice already, he'll have no compunction in doing so a third time if it means he escapes being locked up.’

Catt nodded. ‘Should be enough to charge Dylan. Maybe, faced with this evidence, he'll come clean.’

 

According to Catt some hours later, Dylan Harper broke down and confessed to the murders when presented with the evidence that he had known all along that DaisyMay's baby hadn't been his. Like a rabbit from a hat, Catt produced a copy of Harper's statement and handed it to Casey.

'I just lost it,’ Dylan Harper had written. 'I didn't mean to kill her. It was an accident. I'd so looked forward to the baby being born even if I knew it wasn't mine. But then to discover that it was that bastard Callender's. He'd boasted to me that he'd taken Daisy out once or twice, but he said nothing to me about sleeping with her. Not till we had the bust up. I was still furious two days later. I followed him to the greenhouse and punched him hard. He went down, cracking his head on a rock. I didn't realize I'd killed him, not till later.

'I could have taken the news that the baby was someone else's, even that idler Star's, but when Daisy finally admitted that it was that womanizing bastard Callender's child, I lost it again and went for her. I didn't know what I was doing. Before I knew it, she lay dead at my feet.’

Casey didn't trouble to read the rest as a glance told him it was the usual self-justifying clichés. If Dylan had planned on killing DaisyMay as soon as he had learned of her pregnancy — which seemed only too likely given his zealously attentive behaviour towards her — he was doing his best to hide the fact of premeditation. Maybe the Boston cops would winkle the truth out of him.

‘The commune lot are still going to be done for concealing Callender's body, growing and supplying cannabis and stealing the lecky,' Catt told him. ‘Though they're currently all doing their best to shift the blame on to Callender, seeing as the dead can't defend themselves. They're pretending they knew nothing about what was growing in their own loft. Amazing they think such a defence has legs.’

Casey gave a tired smile. ‘You'd be surprised what they can delude themselves into believing. Now, perhaps, we can concentrate on our investigation,’ he said, relieved that his parents were out of the frame for the murders. Maybe, this whole case would be a lesson to them. Or maybe not. What was it they said about old dogs and new tricks? That the two were incompatible.

 

 

Chapter Seventeen

Catt's time spent in checking out the Merediths' and Garretts' GPs soon brought new evidence. And although Amanda and Roger Meredith hadn't caught the STD, both the Garretts had.

‘Gives us another avenue to follow if Fallon drops off the radar as he threatens to do,’ he said. ‘Neither of the Garretts — or the Merediths, come to that — have an alibi worth spit. Even so, I hope it's Fallon. I'd love to see him banged to rights.’ He paused. ‘By the way, I was just coming to tell you, boss. The Boston cops have charged Dylan with murder.’

‘Good. It’s a relief to get that one squared away.’

 But their official murder investigation was still on-going. Fortunately, their further inquiries into Gus Oliver's death accomplished results more quickly than he could possibly have hoped. He hadn't even had to apply for a court order, though the continuing investigation and, hopefully, the final truth, would require several of their officers to do some serious digging. He strongly suspected that Caitlin Osborne had come up with her story about killing Oliver after watching how his real murderer had gone about the crime. It seemed likely. She had admitted she had hung around the house, hiding in the shadows of hedges and shrubs in the large front garden. Who had been better placed to observe what had really happened? Finally, Casey confided his suspicions to Catt.

‘You clever dog,’ Catt exclaimed. ‘Now you've explained, it makes perfect sense. Wonder why I didn’t hit on it?`’

‘Perhaps because, like Gus Oliver and Kris Callender, you expend too many of your energies in the physical.’

Catt pulled a face. ‘So, have you questioned Caitlin Osborne again?’

‘No. Not yet. I thought you might like to be present to hear what she has to say when confronted with what I think happened. It's my belief she must have seen the actual murder. Maybe she'll even admit it and give up the fantasy.’

‘So what are we waiting for? Let's get to it.’

 

Caitlin Osborne had been released on police bail pending their further inquiries. She was put up in a local hostel.

‘So, do you finally believe that I killed my father?’ were the first words with which she greeted their appearance. It seemed so important to her that Casey was gentle as he broke the news to her.

‘I'm afraid not, Ms Osborne. We both know it's not true. So how about you listen while I say what really happened?’

She said nothing, so he began.

Caitlin Osborne seemed totally deflated by the time Casey had finished telling her what he believed had really happened to her father. He had no more interest in hearing the truth from her; he suspected her delusional mind would refuse to cooperate. Though it might be useful to have his suspicions confirmed, even if the words of a drugged-up and psychotic girl would hold little weight in a court of law.

'Okay,' he said, once they had left Ms Osborne to her delusions. ‘We'll need some spades and some bodies. Get them together, will you, Catt, while I see about arranging a warrant.’

Neither exercise took long. They drove to Alice Oliver's house in two cars. She didn't seem surprised to see them arrive mob-handed.

The new turf took some time to dig up. But when it was finally removed samples of the soil beneath were taken, bagged up and sent to the lab. It should, with luck, reveal traces of Gus Oliver's blood.

 

 

Chapter Eighteen

'All your husband's women friends told us that Gus never wore condoms.’ Casey directed his comment at Alice Oliver's bowed head. ‘So that when he caught a sexual disease, it was only too likely that he'd pass it on to all the women in his life. Including you, his wife.’ It was, as he had already figured out, their separate sleeping arrangements that had delayed him in coming to what he now believed was the right conclusion. Not forgetting the evidence of Alice Oliver's cleaning woman, Mary Clarke, which he'd finally got her to admit.

Alice Oliver sat very quiet and still. She neither confirmed nor denied Casey's claim. He hadn't expected her to. But he'd applied to the courts to get her medical files released. And he expected shortly to have the laboratory results from the soil samples they had dug up from her back garden. She must have planned her husband's death all along, ordering the new turf once she'd decided that killing him in the garden would prevent revealing blood spatters in the house. She'd probably hosed down the grass after returning from dumping him in the alley with the help of Mrs Clarke.

He voiced the last supposition to see her reaction. ‘Did you have help to move him to the alleyway?’

She looked up, startled at this, but still said nothing.

Casey mused out loud. ‘You said yourself you have no friends or family. No one to identify your husband's body for you or to hold your hand while you did so. And after killing him on the Friday evening, you hid the body under a tarpaulin and waited till early Monday morning to move him — the time when your loyal cleaning lady, Mrs Clarke, arrived. Did she help you? She struck me as a lady with little love for the male of the species, including Mr Oliver.’

It seemed the only explanation. But apart from the quick flush that told him he had struck the truth, there was no further reaction. It was clear she had no intention of implicating her obliging cleaner. Maybe, he thought, she'd confess once she knew that her husband's poor sad daughter had claimed the crime as her own, so he told her. 'Caitlin Osborne must have watched you and Mrs Clarke wheel his body out and concocted her own confession. Poor Caitlin. Unloved and unwanted. Maybe she thought her confession would gain her some much wanted attention, even if it was only from the police and the media.’

Still she said nothing. Casey pressed on. Not without sympathy, he said, ‘Having your husband pass on a sexual disease to you must have been the last straw.’

She bowed her head at this. By now, she seemed to have accepted that their digging up of her turf and the taking of soil samples would reveal the truth about where her husband had died because she made no attempt to lie but simply told him in a whisper, ‘You're right, Chief Inspector. It was. It was the ultimate humiliation after all the others that he'd made me bear. I swore it would be the last. That was when I decided to kill him and kill him in the most degrading manner possible. Fit punishment, I thought, for all the humiliations he'd heaped on me over the years.’ She raised her head and met his gaze. In a firm voice, she told him, ‘But I did it alone. Quite alone. I had no help as you implied.’

Surprised but thankful that she had decided to tell them what had really happened, Casey realized he should have got on to the truth before now. He suspected it had been Catt's comment about the Olivers not sleeping together that had led him astray in his thinking. Well, that and Mary Clarke's false testimony about the Monday morning when Oliver's body had been found dumped in the alley. He had lost his open mind about the case somewhere along the way, too, probably owing to the many distractions the commune murders had brought. The separateness of the Olivers' sleeping arrangements must have infected his subconscious and steered him away from suspecting her. But their shadow investigation into the commune murders had eventually turned his thoughts around on the case, the evidence against Dylan Harper being the clincher. Just because one person in a relationship goes astray and sleeps with someone else doesn't mean they're not still sleeping with their regular partner. As he'd finally realized in the Olivers' case.

 

It was later, when Mrs Oliver had been cautioned, removed to the police station and her formal statement taken and signed, that Casey and Catt allowed themselves a few moments of relaxation.

‘So what put you on to the answer?’ Catt asked as he sat down.

'I suppose it was the commune inquiry and the fact that Dylan had contracted a disease and tried to conceal just when he caught it,’ Casey replied. ‘And then Mrs Clarke struck me as too adamant in her evidence. It was clear she had had no liking for Oliver. I wondered what she was hiding. It made me think. These two cases have been entwined in my head for days, going around and around and tying me in knots for so long that it took me longer than I liked to get around to the “what if?” scenario on our official case. What if, I finally thought, someone in our official investigation had done something similar? Only instead of muddying the waters about when they had caught a particular disease, they made it seem as if they hadn't been in a position to catch the disease at all, hence the separate A KILLING KARMA ON AMAZON.FRA KILLING KARMA ON AMAZON.FR. Now that Alice Oliver has made her statement Mrs Clarke has admitted that they had indeed shared a bedroom. They only moved Oliver's clothes and other belongings to one of the spare rooms once Mrs Oliver had killed him. Doubtless DNA tests on the bedding will confirm it. Anyway, once I asked myself that question, others followed: which of the women in the case would be most keen to conceal such a shameful thing — the promiscuous women who were Oliver's lovers, or his reserved wife who had put up with his infidelities for years? As Mrs Oliver said, it was a humiliation too far.’

Casey propped himself on the corner of his desk and said, ‘By the way, ThomCatt, I've got a little present for. you.’ He put his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of Durex. He kept his face straight as he added, ‘You can never be too careful. Especially given your lifestyle.’

‘Touché, boss.’ Catt twitched the packet from Casey's fingers. ‘Always grateful for contributions to my love life. And, after these two cases, I might even use them.’