The Monster in the Box

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘He’s not answering,’ she said. ‘D’you want me to leave a message?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said Wexford. ‘Give me the phone.’

  He asked Targo to contact him and gave him a number to call. If it was Targo, if the numbers she had called had been his.

  ‘Where was he going when he left here yesterday morning?’

  ‘He had a call to make in Kingsmarkham. I do know that. He did say that much but not when he’d be back or nothing.’

  ‘What does your husband do for a living?’

  ‘He’s mostly retired but he still does a bit of property.’

  ‘You mean he’s a property developer?’

  ‘All those right-to-buy flats, that sort of thing.’

  ‘So where is he, Mrs Targo?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? I’ve tried to get him for you and he’s not answering. What more can I do?’

  ‘Your dog is eating the flowers in that vase,’ said Lynn.

  Wexford suppressed a smile. ‘It’s now ten past three. I shall phone you at six, but whether he is back or not, we shall come back at seven. If your husband phones you please tell him I shall see him here at seven.’

  At this point, as they were returning to the hall, a disconcerting thing happened. There came from somewhere in the grounds behind the house a deep-throated roar.

  Lynn said, ‘That sounded like a lion.’

  ‘It is a lion.’ Mavis Targo sighed. ‘That’s King. My husband’s crazy about him but I don’t know …Well, I’ll have to feed him before Eric gets back or he’ll go on like that for hours.’

  ‘Is he allowed to keep a lion like that?’ Lynn asked when they were outside.

  ‘God knows. I’m not going to worry about that now.’Another roar and another sounded more loudly. ‘Good thing he hasn’t any near neighbours.’ Put the lion in a box and shut it up in a drawer …

  At seven, when he and Lynn went back, the lion was silent and in the darkness no other animals could be seen. The sky appeared starless, the land an undulating grey expanse dotted with black trees which the imaginative might have compared to the plains of Africa. Targo was still out. He had phoned, his wife said, or someone had phoned, and left her a message on the landline.

  ‘You mean you were out when this person phoned?’

  ‘I had to feed King, didn’t I? And that scares me to death. And then I had to take the dogs out.’

  ‘Who was it left you a message?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought it was someone in his office but he’s told me he’s got no one working for him just now.’

  ‘Are you saying it was Mr Targo himself disguising his voice?’

  ‘It could have been. I couldn’t tell, I was in a state worrying about King.’

  Perhaps you need a box of your own, Wexford thought. ‘What did the message say?’

  ‘Just that he was OK and he’d call me.’

  ‘What, this mysterious voice simply said it was speaking on behalf of your husband and he’d call you tomorrow?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’d like to listen to it, please.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not there now. I erased it. I always do that with messages to avoid getting in a muddle.’

  ‘All right. I want the address of his office, the numbers of all the phones he has. The number of his car. DC Fancourt will take those numbers from you. Come along now, Mrs Targo.’

  When Lynn had taken the numbers down, having some difficulty in extracting that of the Mercedes from her, she asked about the white van and was told it was in the garage. Mavis Targo was at last beginning to show signs of agitation. It had taken a long time to shake her out of her apathy but she was shaken now.

  ‘I keep telling you I don’t know where he is. I don’t keep tabs on him. I wouldn’t be here long,’ she added with a flash of bitterness, ‘if I did.’

  ‘His son and daughter live here or near here. I’d like their addresses and phone numbers.’

  ‘I haven’t got them! I’ve hardly ever seen them. He doesn’t have them here, he goes to them. I don’t know where they live.’

  ‘Then I suggest you get busy with the phone book. I suppose you know his daughter’s married name?’

  She did. Eventually, it was Lynn who found the phone book and looked up the names while Mrs Targo smoked a cigarette and, fetching herself a gin and tonic, asked Wexford if he and ‘the young lady’ would like a drink. This was refused. The Tibetan spaniel began to whine, its note growing shriller until the puppy followed suit, first yapping, then emitting a full-throated bark.

  ‘They’re asking for their dinner,’ said Mavis Targo.

  Lynn patted the puppy on its head. ‘Missing his master too, I expect.’

  The office address was in Sewingbury, three or four miles away, in a small two-storey building on the edge of the industrial estate. Street lamps were on but most buildings were in darkness, including Targo’s office. Like the place he had had in Myringham when he was a travel agent, it appeared to consist of one room. The door was of glass and the window a sheet of plate glass, through which, as at Myringham, a desk and two chairs could be seen by the light of Lynn’s torch. On the floor were two empty bowls, one for water, the other for dogfood. All that was missing were the posters of exotic locations and the proprietor. Neither Targo nor anyone else were about and the door was locked. No cars were on the parking spaces adjacent to the building. The whole place seemed infinitely desolate.

  Back in his own office, Wexford phoned all the numbers he had been given. On Targo’s he was put on to message. Alan Targo answered his own phone, was polite and pleasant but had no idea where his father was. He hadn’t seen him for three weeks.

  ‘I’m a solicitor,’ he said. ‘My firm’s in Queen Street.’

  Wexford thought of telling him they had last met when Alan was a child of four but he thought better of it.

  ‘My sister’s here, as a matter of fact, if you want to talk to her. But I know she hasn’t seen Dad for weeks.’

  She hadn’t. He recalled that other evening, long ago, when Alan had been sitting at his father’s feet stroking the dog and this woman he was talking to had been still in her mother’s womb. Nothing odd about that, though. Half the people he talked to had been yet unborn when he was young …

  He was wasting his time, Burden said when they met for a drink. When they met for a drink and dinner, Wexford corrected him, for they couldn’t go home yet. He had phoned Mrs Targo five minutes before to be told her husband was still out.

  ‘I shall go back to the zoo. You can come with me if you feel like it. He has to get home sometime.’

  They had deserted the Indus for the restaurant whose gimmick was that it served only old-fashioned British food. Not ‘English’ because haggis was sometimes on the menu and so were Cornish pasties.

  ‘Cornwall’s in England,’ said Burden.

  ‘Not according to the Cornish. They say England starts when you cross the Tamar.’ Wexford had less than happy memories of the county (or country) and the awful Medora in Port Ezra, but happy memories too in that his first meeting with his wife was in Newquay. Strange, though, to remember that he had already come across Targo in those days, that Targo had been with him for the greater part of his life.

  ‘Why does he do it, Mike? Elsie Carroll, Billy Kenyon, and now Andy Norton. He didn’t know any of these people. All he had in common with them was that they happened to live in the same neighbourhood. But why those? Would anyone have done for him? Oh, I know I’ve yet to convince you that he killed them.’

  If a reply was needed, Burden failed to give it. ‘I’m going to have the fish pie. I fancy all that sauce and mashed potatoes. My mum would have called it nourishing, though I don’t know if nutritionists would agree with her these days. Too much fat, probably. Not that I have to worry about that.’

  ‘Please don’t preen yourself. I’ve enough to bear without that.’

  Burden laughed.’A glass of Sauvignon, I think. Shall I h
ave potatoes as well or just the sprouts and the carrots?’

  ‘Potatoes would be adding insult to injury.’ He looked up from the menu, said to the waitress, ‘Fish pie over there, please, and roast beef without the Yorkshire pudding, sadly, for me. Oh, and a glass of tap water. I shall be driving us back there. But I’m not wasting money on bottled fizz, the biggest ramp of all in these extravagant days.’

  Burden studied the decor. A mural of Morris dancers covered half a wall, jousting knights the other half. ‘On the wall behind you that you can’t see they’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace.’

  ‘Christopher Robin went down with Alice,’ said Wexford. ‘Alice is marrying one of the guard. “A soldier’s life is terrible hard,” said Alice. That’s the first poem I ever remember reading.’

  Burden sighed a little. ‘Are we really going back there tonight? What for?’

  ‘Well, in part to ask Targo where he was between seven fifteen and nine thirty yesterday morning.’ Their drinks came, Burden’s Sauvignon filling a large glass. ‘Have you ever thought how much less depressing water would be if it had a colour? I mean, if it was light blue or pink like rosé. A natural colour, of course, not some sort of dye they put in.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. If we weren’t going back there on a wild goose chase you could have a big glass like mine full of burgundy.’

  ‘I have often wondered,’ said Wexford, ‘why it should be so difficult, if not impossible, to catch a wild goose. A tame goose is quite easy to catch and it’s hard to understand why catching a wild one should be so different.’ The waitress brought their food and another came with vegetables. ‘I wish I’d had the Yorkshire pudding but it’s too late now.’ He applied his knife to a slice of beef. ‘I asked you why he does it. Why does he kill people he doesn’t know? It was a rhetorical question really because I know how he chooses the people if not what impels him to kill them.’

  ‘Go on then, tell me. This fish pie is very good.’

  ‘He picks a person,’ said Wexford, ‘that someone wants to be rid of.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘You heard me, Mike. He doesn’t have to know the person but he has to know something about them. First there was Elsie Carroll. It was quite well known in the neighbourhood, if not to poor Mrs Carroll, that her husband wanted shot of her in order to have a free run with Tina Malcolm. Billy Kenyon was expendable because it was only if he was out of the way that Bruce Mellor would marry Eileen Kenyon. Possibly there were others in Birmingham and Coventry similarly in need of someone to rid them of an encumbrance but if there were we don’t know about them. And so to Andy Norton …’

  ‘His girlfriend said everyone who knew him loved him. No one wanted to get rid of him, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I did, Mike,’ said Wexford, ‘or Targo thinks I did.’

  ‘You? Why you?’ said Burden. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. Targo, though quite sane, is a psychopath. He is a monster, entirely callous, indifferent to others’ pain. But for some reason and I don’t know what that reason is – he needs to give people in need of it some help in dealing with their trouble. Perhaps he has a conscience of a kind. Perhaps he does it so that he can say to himself, “I’m not so bad. I did him a service.” Or maybe it gives him a reason for what he does. He needs a death and he needs a hook to hang a death on to.’

  ‘It sounds mad to me. What sort of service are you saying he did you?’

  ‘Think about it,’ said Wexford, drinking an inch down the glass of his tap water. ‘He was parked outside my house day after day, watching. He must have seen Andy Norton go in – not by the front door, mind, but what he would think of as sneaking round the back. He would have seen him park his car, go in the back way and stay for three hours. He’d never see Dora but he would have known she was in. Do you see now?’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘That means you do. It always means that. Look, I hate thinking like this because I know what would be impossible to my wife, but to Targo it would be all in the day’s work. It’s possible too that he saw Damon Coleman watching my house and if he didn’t know he was a police officer he may well have set him down as a private detective, employed by me. I was the deceived husband and Andy Norton my wife’s lover.’

  Burden shook his head, but in wonder rather than disbelief. ‘Do you mean he likes you? He cares about you?’

  ‘Liking and caring don’t come into it with him. It’s dogs he likes and cares for. And llamas and lions. He was performing a service or restoring order where before there was chaos. Or maybe doing this makes him see himself as a just judge, a justified executioner. I rather prefer that line.’ Wexford laid down his knife and fork. ‘I don’t want a pudding. All this speculating about Targo takes away my appetite. He’s my new slimming regime. My thin guru. If we don’t get him for killing Andy Norton what do we do? Keep searching the town, maybe the country, for people other people want out of the way? Such is the sorry state of the world that there’ll be thousands.’

  ‘But he doesn’t ask people if they want rid of someone, so how can he be sure?’

  ‘He didn’t ask me but maybe he sometimes asks. Perhaps he’s asked others. When, for instance, he’s sure the husband or parent or whoever it is will be thankful and keep quiet about his part in it.’

  Burden sat in silence. After a couple of minutes – a very long time for two people sitting at a table not to speak – he made a signal to the waiter and when the man came over, asked for a crème brûlée. Wexford was looking at his watch.

  ‘It’s ten past nine.’

  ‘All right. I won’t be long. It’s not as if we’ve an appointment set in stone with the man.’

  ‘I’ve a feeling he’ll be there. I wonder if he still exercises. Works out, as they say these days.’

  ‘What if he does?’

  Wexford was good on feelings. His intuition usually served him well. But not this time. Last night’s moon, a little thinner but just as red, loomed half risen when Burden rang the Wymondham Lodge doorbell. There was no sound from the menagerie. More lights came on inside the house and the dogs set up an optimistic barking. The puppy rushed out when Mavis Targo open the door.

  ‘Disappointed, are you, poor chap?’ Burden said to it and it plainly was, sadly slinking away when scent and sight told it someone not Targo was on the threshold.

  ‘He’s not here.’

  Once again Wexford had to force his way into the house. ‘Where is he, Mrs Targo?’

  ‘I haven’t heard from him. I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Has he got a passport?’

  ‘Of course he has.’

  ‘Then would you like to see if you can find it?’

  She had not far to look, lifted the lid of a bureau and produced Targo’s passport, the small red booklet sheathed in a leather and gilt case. ‘He wouldn’t go abroad if that’s what you’re thinking. He hates abroad. He took me to Spain on our honeymoon and he hated it so much we came back early and he said he’d never go again.’

  Wexford was unconvinced by this but the passport bore out what she said. It was almost unused, in pristine condition. ‘Has he ever been absent from home this long before without letting you know?’

  ‘Oh, God, yes,’ she said. ‘He’s a law unto himself, he is. He’ll have business dealings somewhere. Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff, you name it. He could be away for days, maybe a week. And when he comes back it won’t be to see me. It’ll be to see if King and his dogs are OK.’

  Wexford pondered for a moment. ‘These right-to-buy flats you mentioned. Where are they?’

  ‘Some are round here and there’s some in Birmingham, I reckon. I don’t really know. I never had anything to do with them. Why would he go there, anyway? He’s not a rent collector.’

  Nothing more was to be done at Wymondham Lodge.

  ‘What’s this about right-to-buy-flats?’ Burden asked when they were in the car. ‘Some property dealing of Targo’
s?’

  ‘I don’t know but I can guess. It works like this. There was a housing bill which made it possible for council tenants to buy their homes. As sitting tenants you got your flat at the market value minus 3 per cent and a couple of million people bought their homes. There was some sort of time limit on when you could sell your house or flat on but when you did you could make an enormous profit.’

  ‘OK, where does Targo come in?’

  ‘Well, suppose you knew of some particular block or, better still, terrace of houses and you know there are ten original tenants in them. Each can exercise his or her right to buy. So you give each one a big cash enticement to buy on your behalf. That way, even allowing for the bribe, you get a property for half what you’d pay on the open market. Then you lease them back to the council who put people from their housing list in. You can make a packet. From what Mavis Targo says I think that’s what he’s been doing.’

  ‘So that’s the business he’s got in Cardiff or Birmingham or whatever and, allowing for what you’ve said, there’s no reason to suppose it isn’t legitimate. As far as staying away, his wife isn’t worried about him. She’s used to this behaviour.’

  ‘I’ve phoned both those mobile numbers repeatedly and they’re always on message. Since we went there I’ve phoned his office landline and it doesn’t even have an answerphone, it just rings and rings. Why would a man live like that if his business was legitimate?’

  ‘I don’t know, Reg, but nor do you. People are peculiar. How many times have I heard you say that there’s nowt so queer as folk?’

  ‘I’m going to trace that Mercedes of his and put out a call for him. Oh, all right, I know I’ve no grounds, no evidence, as you keep telling me but I’ll see Freeborn first. I’ll get to see him first thing tomorrow.’ Freeborn was the Assistant Chief Constable. ‘I think I’ve got a case.’