by Ruth Rendell
Hannah could hardly say she had seen the boy and girl together. ‘When he is older will you arrange a marriage for Rashid?’
For a moment she thought Fata Hanif would refuse to answer. She was silent for a long time. She got up and lifted the baby in her arms. Boy or girl, Hannah couldn’t tell which it was. The child in the high chair had emptied his bowl and was looking with pride, Hannah thought, at the piles of rejected porridge on the floor.
At last Mrs Hanif spoke. ‘I expect we will,’ she said.
‘Will it be with a local girl?’
Suddenly she became talkative. ‘We’ve no relations round here except for that Nicky and his dad that’s my brother. All my husband’s relations are in Pakistan. He’s got girl cousins there.’
Trying to treat it as if were a laughing matter no one would take seriously for a moment, Hannah said, ‘So you wouldn’t consider Tamima Rahman as a possible bride for your son?’
‘We don’t know the Rahmans. Her and Rashid go to the same school, that’s all, and my sons Hussein and Khaled go there too and they’re not any of them going to marry Tamima Rahman. You people think that because we’re all Muslims we must know each other. Well, that’s wrong, we don’t. Is that all? Because I’ve got to feed the baby.’
Still asleep, the baby showed no sign of wanting to be fed but Mrs Hanif was already unfastening the bodice of her long lilac-print dress. Hannah let herself out.
Concentrating on the murder of Nicky Dusan was hardly necessary now that Tyler Pyke had been charged and committed for trial. It would be months before that trial happened. Wexford sometimes thought how strange the system must be for the public, for the inveterate reader of newspapers or viewer of television news broadcasts. The killing happened and the media went mad. Photographs of the victim and the victim’s family dominated front pages and screens. The ‘quality’ papers carried statistics, giving prominence to whatever number in the list of like murders this latest one was, the sixteenth or the eighteenth in as many weeks in the south of England. The victim’s ‘loved ones’ were interviewed or appeared on television, giving appeals. Wexford dared to speculate – knowing how politically incorrect this would be – if there would ever be a death by violence after which the dead man or woman’s relatives for once failed to describe them as perfect, the soul of kindness, loving, ‘bubbly’, helpful to all and the ideal son, daughter or sibling. No doubt, most of the dead had been in fact much like everyone else, a mixture of good and bad with virtues and faults. A few might be as saintly as their grieving relations said they were but others would balance that by being as satanic as – well, as Targo.
He hadn’t set eyes on Targo since the day he had seen him carrying the laptop into 34 Glebe Road and seen too the spaniel in the passenger seat of the white van. Had he ever seen the man without a dog? Perhaps not. In the travel agency he had been accompanied by a corgi, in Myringham by his own pet dogs and those in the boarding kennels, in Jewel Road, Stowerton, by what Wexford called ‘the original spaniel’ and with that same spaniel when he walked past Wexford’s window on his way to the Kingsbrook meadows. But yes, there had been one occasion when he was without a dog. In the hotel bar in Coventry he had been on his own and this was no doubt only because the hotel banned dogs.
It must be over a month now since he had seen Targo sitting in his van on Glebe Road. Because Targo had seen and recognised him he had half expected the stalking to begin again. But it hadn’t and now Wexford began to see that this supposition was unrealistic. The stalking had been confined to those early days in Kingsmarkham. Later there had been the incident of the snake. But he had never again been the subject of Targo’s sustained surveillance and since the death of Billy Kenyon and subsequent investigation, he had encountered him only once. That had been when Targo told him how he had given the puppy to Billy’s mother.
Mullan had got life imprisonment for the murder of Shirley Palmer in Coventry, but Wexford still wondered. Everyone he talked to about that murder, every police officer, said that if ever there was a justified penalty that was it. Mullan had killed Shirley just as Christopher Roberts had killed his wife Maureen. But he wondered. Although by this time Mullan had served decades in prison he had never admitted to the crime, though such an admission might have have resulted in his release. This was usually regarded as an argument against guilt.
Did this perhaps mean Targo had been responsible for Shirley Palmer’s death? It was possible. The recent murders in the Kingsmarkham area had been knife crimes and Targo himself had only killed by strangling and claimed involvement in murders by strangling. Serial killers gave up when they got old, he thought. As he reflected on this, listing in his mind notorious killers who in age had left their life of crime behind them, he realised that there weren’t so many. Most known killers had been caught before old age. Then the thought came that Targo couldn’t be called a serial killer. Even Wexford, obsessed as he was, could hardly give that title to a man who was possibly responsible for only two deaths. Or perhaps three and others which Targo would have liked to be blamed for.
Now, with old age encroaching, would he be strong enough to strangle someone? It was a method which took physical strength. If his victim were a woman he would have. Wexford conjured up an image of him, short, sturdy, brawny with the muscles of a mini-sumo wrestler. Did he still lift weights, do press-ups? The question really was, would he want to? Perhaps he was satisfied now with the life he had made for himself, with his wife, his house, his cars and, of course, his dogs.
I will get him for what he’s done, Wexford said to himself. Whatever it takes, I will get him. One day, no matter how far away and how long it takes. The murder of the innocent and harmless Billy Kenyon got to me like no other death by violence I have come across for a long time. If I let myself I could weep for Billy Kenyon, even now, after all these years, but I won’t, of course I won’t. I will watch him and wait and one day bring him to justice for Billy Kenyon and Elsie Carroll and perhaps too for Shirley Palmer.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Three weeks later they came to him with the same subject on succeeding days. Hannah first, sandwiching her information between her report on Nicky Dusan and the health or lack of it of Tyler Pyke. Jenny avoided the police station and came to his home. But they had the same thing to tell him. Yasmin Rahman had returned from Pakistan and Tamima with her. Tamima was not married, there was no husband and no marriage ceremony had taken place. They had come home early because Tamima was homesick.
‘These children, they have their way these days, don’t they?’ Yasmin had told Hannah, echoing her husband.
‘I hoped to have a word with her,’ Hannah had said. But Tamima wasn’t there. In spite of what her mother had said, she was back working for her uncle at the Raj Emporium. ‘She will soon be going to London to stay with her auntie in Kingsbury.’
Hannah remembered that this was exactly what Mohammed Rahman had told her would happen. She asked when that would be but Mrs Rahman said she didn’t know. She was growing indignant by this time and Hannah finally had to acknowledge that she hadn’t a leg to stand on when Tamima’s mother said, ‘I don’t know why it interests you. She is free to do what she wants. What wrong has she done? What wrong have me and her father done?’
‘Nothing, Mrs Rahman, nothing at all.’ Hannah was appalled that she of all police officers might appear to be victimising people for no more reason than that they were immigrants. ‘I’m sorry. I’d no intention of upsetting you.’
‘Tamima is over sixteen. She can leave home if she wants. You see, I know your law.’
Jenny had met with an even colder reception, in her case from Tamima’s father. ‘Tamima is working for her uncle. She’s there because she likes to earn some money, as many young people do. Would you like to speak to her uncle? Or, better, would your husband like to speak to him? He, I think, is the policeman, not you.’
Shaken, Jenny said, ‘No, no, of course not.’ And, making matters worse, ‘It’s just that I’ve gro
wn fond of Tamima and I want to see things turn out well for her.’
‘And aren’t I fond of my own daughter? My only daughter? Do you think I want her to be unhappy? Perhaps you should remember, Mrs Burden, that I am a childcare officer, specifically Myringham’s teenage care manager. Don’t you think maybe I know as much about adolescents’ needs as you do?’
‘Of course you do, of course.’ Appalled, Jenny was admitting to herself that this man was too much for her. This man was a great deal cleverer, more sophisticated and astute than she had given him credit for. ‘It’s just that –’
He interrupted her. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Burden, but I am busy and cannot talk much longer. Tamima is planning to go to her auntie in London shortly. She will enjoy herself there, go out with her cousins. The length of time she stays is down to her and to my sister. Then she will come home and decide what her next move should be? OK? All right?’
‘I had to be satisfied with that,’ Jenny said.
‘Aren’t you?’ Wexford raised his eyebrows. ‘Dare I ask what all the fuss is about?’
‘If that’s your attitude, I give up,’ said Jenny.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He changed the subject and spoke to Dora. ‘Did Andy Norton come today?’
‘He always comes on Thursdays. Well, twice he’s changed to a Tuesday but he’s always phoned well in advance to let me know. Three o’clock. You could set your watch by him.’
On the following Thursday he got home early. Andy Norton was still there, still engaged in cutting back the lushly overgrown shrubs and climbers which covered the rear garden wall. Wexford saw a tall thin man, white-haired and gaunt. He went outside, introduced himself and noted the mellifluous tones and fine enunciation conferred on its alumni by Eton College.
‘You’re doing overtime,’ he said with a smile.
‘I want to get things shipshape before the rain starts.’
‘Shipshape’, the word Targo had used long ago. He watched Norton get into his ancient but gleaming Morris Minor and drive away, waving as he went.
It was later in the evening that Dora told him. He had noticed when he got home from work how especially nice she looked in a new dark green dress and high-heeled dark green shoes. Her legs had always been one of her best features with their long calves and fine ankles. Round her neck she wore a necklace of gold and green garnets he had once given her. In his eyes she hadn’t lost her looks at all; only in her own was she less attractive than she had been. He remembered how he used to compare her – was ‘contrast’ rather the word? – with other men’s wives and how there was really no competition. He smiled and complimented her on her appearance.
She smiled back, thanked him, said, ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you. There’s been a white van parked outside here for most of the afternoon. That’s the second time this week. It was here on Tuesday too. I went out to check if it had a residents’ parking pass in the windscreen but it hadn’t. Still, the traffic warden didn’t appear. They never do when you want them.’
Far from smiling now, he felt a sharp chill, like icy water trickling down his spine, the warmth her evident pleasure had brought him all gone.
‘As a matter of fact, I took the number.’
He looked at the slip of paper she held out to him. It was Targo’s. Of course it was.
‘It comes of being married to a policeman,’ she said.
He tried to speak casually, ‘Dora, don’t do that again. I mean, don’t check up on a vehicle’s right to park. Please.’
‘But why, darling?’
‘Suppose I said, because I say so? Would that be enough?’
‘That’s what you say to children. All right, then. But I would quite like to know.’
The white van didn’t come back to Wexford’s street the next day or the next. That meant little. Targo had at least one other car. Wexford decided not to frighten Dora by asking her if she had seen a silver Mercedes parked where the van had been. Nor was he going to ask her if there had been a dog in the van. Besides, Targo might well have a collection of motor vehicles. Or he might do his surveillance on foot, parking the van farther away and walking the Tibetan spaniel half a mile or so.
What puzzled Wexford was the question of whom Targo was keeping under observation and why. Not himself, surely. The man must know he was out of the house all day. So he was watching Dora. Wexford didn’t like that at all. Only a few days ago, he had half made up his mind that Targo had abandoned his need to kill, had become a law-abiding citizen. Now he thought of the two occasions he had seen that van in Glebe Road. On both Targo had been calling on the Rahmans because one of the sons was an IT consultant, a legitimate reason for a visit. But Ahmed Rahman might have knowledge of Targo which would be invaluable to him. His thoughts went back to his wife.
Two years before, along with four other people, she had been abducted and held hostage by a group of countryside campaigners. He still thought of the three nights and four days as the worst period of his life. Suppose I lost her? was the question he kept asking himself. Suppose I never see her again? When she came back, he had sworn to himself that he would value her more, and for the most part he had stuck to that. He had appreciated her more and had shown it. But there was no reason to suppose that what had happened then would happen again. As far as he knew, Targo had never abducted anyone. He felt that cold trickle again when he spoke aloud what Targo did: ‘He kills. It’s a hobby with him’. He had killed at least one woman and one man, possibly two women. Maybe there had been others, ‘unregistered in vulgar fame’. He remembered what Kathleen Targo had said to him when they met all those years ago in the Kingsbrook Precinct, ‘He likes animals. He doesn’t like people.’
What was to be done? He could hardly send a PC to keep an eye on the street outside his house. In the eyes of everyone but himself, Targo had done no wrong. Perhaps he should start again on proving that the man was not the innocent he looked to be. It was Friday afternoon, a mild day in October. The trees were turning brown and their leaves had begun to fall. The sunshine was rather thin and the pale blue sky streaked with strings of cloud.
The walk to Glebe Road constituted half his daily exercise but he was held up – almost swept up – by the crowd of Muslim men returning home or to their work from Stowerton mosque. They seemed remarkably happy, laughing and joking with each other, though not rowdily, and he thought how different a group of home-going church attenders would have been. Be careful not to be an inverted racist, he told himself, you’re just as much a racist as Hannah if you favour immigrants over indigenous people. Letting the crowd go ahead of him, he fell in behind them. Most lived in this neighbourhood but by the time he was halfway up Glebe Road only two young men remained and an older man. Outside Webb and Cobb the older man paused to look between the boards which covered what had been a shop window and, apparently satisfied, passed on. They all turned into number 34. Mohammed Rahman and his sons, they must be, Tamima’s father and brothers. He waited until they were inside before ringing the bell.
The door was opened by the son with the beard, the older one, Hannah had told him.
‘Chief Inspector Wexford, Kingsmarkham Crime Management.’ Wexford produced his warrant card. He had nearly said ‘Kingsmarkham CID’, for old habits died hard and to him the new title sounded like a mafioso managing a bunch of gangsters.
‘You want my dad? He’s inside with my brother. I’m off to work.’
Wexford walked in and was met in the narrow passage by a man of about fifty with black hair but a grey beard. He seemed to recognise Wexford, though Wexford had no recollection of ever having seen him before.
‘Mohammed Rahman,’ he said, held out his hand, and indicating the young man behind him, ‘This is my son Ahmed.’
If the father seemed calm but wary, the son looked rather tense. He was a handsome man of perhaps twenty-five, pale-skinned with coal-black eyes and black hair. He had the face of a young Mogul emperor. They were absurdly crowded together in that narrow space, three ta
ll men so close to each other that father and son had to shrink back to avoid touching Wexford while Wexford pressed himself against the wall.
‘Come into the lounge,’ said Mohammed Rahman.
A ridiculous word for a living room at any time, owing its provenance, Wexford thought, to early-twentieth-century Hollywood and luxury liners. Here it was less absurd than it might have been, for the room was unexpectedly spacious with ample light coming in through the conservatory. A large fireplace of stone blocks with a mantelpiece of polished granite held on its grate a bowl of dried flowers. Kelim rugs covered the floor and the conservatory was full of plants, a pale blue plumbago, a rose-pink oleander, which, had they been outside, would by now have been killed by frost. Apart from the rugs, not a single object was what Wexford would have called ‘oriental’. He was rather ashamed to confess to himself that he had expected the decor of an Indian restaurant.
He was shown to a black leather armchair. The two Rahmans waited expectantly, the father managing a smile, the son still ill at ease. ‘Do you know a man called Eric Targo?’ he asked them.
The tension slackened. It was interesting to watch this lightening in each of them. Had they expected him to talk about Tamima? Ahmed spoke for the first time. ‘He’s a client,’ he said.
‘Your client? You’re a computer consultant, aren’t you?’
The young man nodded. ‘I work from home. I have an office upstairs.’
‘You look after Mr Targo’s computer? Service it? Mend it if it goes wrong?’ He was aware he was using the wrong terminology.
Evidently Ahmed was also aware of it for he smiled. ‘Mr Targo has three PCs. If he has a problem I talk him through it or I call at his house.’
‘He has sometimes brought a computer here, Ahmed,’ his father reminded him.
‘That’s right. So he did. His Toshiba, his laptop, that was. Look, let me explain. Some of my clients – well, they’re not exactly computer-illiterate, I wouldn’t say that. But they get a bit nervous. They don’t quite understand that when something’s wrong I can put it right if we’re – well, both of us get online. That’s when I can talk him through what’s bothering him.’ He looked searchingly into Wexford’s face, in case the Chief Inspector failed to follow him. ‘Anyway, that’s how it is but a lot of clients think I have to have the PC here to look at. And that’s when he brings the Toshiba in for me to deal with it.’