A Killing Karma by Geraldine Evans Read Free Book Online

mind off my
predicament,’ he told Catt. He wished the retail therapy of replacing his
ruined suit could take his mind from his current seemingly insurmountable problems.
But as there was no hope of that, he made coffee and they retreated to the
living room to work on their unofficial murder inquiry.
    Once settled
in the living room — a large, tidy room with many books and neat piles of
musical scores, which, unlike his parents' home, boasted no clutter — Casey
began to question him again.
    ‘One of my
contacts has been in touch,’ Catt told him. ‘He's talked to various people,
some druggy and keen to remain friends with their supplier and some non-druggy
and with no need to keep on the guy's right side. By the way, Callender's crack
dealer is a bloke called Tony Magann. The usual nasty piece of work, so my
sources tell me.’
    Catt paused,
took a sip of vodka-laced coffee. ‘There's no way of knowing exactly when that
guy, Kris Callender, died, you said?’
    ‘No. All the
commune could tell me was that it was around two months ago.’ Casey didn't add
that nothing the commune members had told him could be taken as gospel.
Besides, Catt was smart as a whip apart from being as familiar with the effects
of long-term drug use as he was himself, so would be able to come to the
inevitable conclusion.
    'Okay,' he
said, 'I get the drift.’ Proving to Casey that his own conclusion about Catt’s
understanding had been tellingly accurate. ‘For the dead bloke, two months is
the — very rough — timescale. Understood. But for the girl, we've got a
reasonably accurate time of death, you said?’
    Casey
confirmed it. ‘The timescale's about three to four hours. DaisyMay Smith was
last seen around ten a.m. in the kitchen of the smallholding. Apparently, she
and Madonna Redfern were comparing notes on their pregnancies and arguing as to
who was having the worst time. She was found dead in the apple orchard behind
the farmhouse around two o'clock that same afternoon.’
    ‘Then this
drug dealer bloke Magann can't have killed her,’ Catt told him. ‘He was,
according to all sources I spoke to, including the hospital, visiting his sick
mother from ten in the morning till after four that day.’
    Appalled at
the news that he had lost such a strong suspect so early in their shadowing
investigation and even though the evidence of the dogs made the scenario of the
drug dealer as the killer unlikely, wishful thinking was hard to eradicate.
Casey could only stare at his sergeant in dismay. ‘Don't tell me that,’ he
pleaded.
    ‘Sorry, boss.
But even drug dealers can have mothers they love,’ Catt remarked, dryly. ‘And Mrs
Magann is very, very sick. Practically at death's door according to the
hospital. No,’ Catt told him decisively, ‘he can't have done that one, at
least. And as you're convinced the two deaths must be connected in some way, it
doesn't seem likely that he could have had anything to do with the first one,
either.’
    ‘So, unless we
or the official investigating officers can discover some other
criminally-minded outsider who had dealings with one or more of the commune, someone
who had ready access to the place and was known to the dogs, we're stuffed.’
    Catt didn't
need to add — ‘And so are your parents and the rest.’
    This news
brought Casey — and his unofficial investigation — squarely and inescapably,
back, for his chief suspects, to the members of the commune. It didn't help
that all of them had criminal records, as Tom didn't fail to remind him.
    ‘So much for
the “Summer of Love” generation and their adherents,’ ThomCatt quipped. ‘It
seems they're as keen on cheating, lying and stealing as much of the rest of
humanity. More, it seems, in Callender's case. Just as well I've got a friend
on the Lincolnshire force that's dealing with the commune killings and who owes
me a huge favour. It means I have pretty much ready access to their
discoveries.’
    That was the
one piece of good