The Monster in the Box

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Above Webb and Cobb, do you mean?’

  ‘If you choose to put it like that.’ Yasmin’s black sleeve fell back a little, exposing several heavy gold bracelets on her narrow fragile-looking wrist. He noticed how impossibly long and thin her hands were. ‘I thought that man had killed her. From the moment he made that offer to me and Ahmed I feared he had already killed her. And then I saw my daughter at that window. She was looking out between the curtains.’

  ‘Did she see you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t said anything to my husband. It was only an hour ago and he was at work.’

  Wexford finished his coffee, said, ‘We’ll go there now. I’ll take Detective Sergeant Goldsmith with us.’

  He went to pay the bill, returned to hear her say, ‘Can it be someone else?’ She spoke in her usual austere dignified way but her words were harsh. ‘I dislike that woman. I dislike being patronised.’

  How upset Hannah would be, he thought, that she of all police officers might be found wanting in the very area of race relations where she so much desired to meet her own standard of treating black, Asian and white people all with perfect equity. At the same time he admired this woman’s nerve in attempting to make the rules for the law. But he gave in. A call to Burden fetched him to the cafe and they all went up Glebe Road together on foot. Glancing at the black-robed figure beside him, Wexford wondered if this were the first time Yasmin Rahman had ever walked in the public streets accompanied by two men other than close male relatives.

  A sign attached to the ground-floor window of Webb and Cobb proclaimed it as shop premises to let with, underneath, the name of a firm of agents to apply to. The flat immediately above looked empty. At the top, because the winter’s day had turned dull, a light was on behind the drawn curtains in Ian Scott’s.

  ‘Someone’s in,’ Burden said. ‘We ring the bell, do we?’

  ‘It’s the top one.’

  Yasmin proceeded to ring it but nothing happened and no one came. She pressed the bell again. The light upstairs went out and the curtain was twitched. There was no entryphone but there was a letter box. Wexford pushed the flap inwards and called in his strong resonant voice, ‘Police. Open the door, please.’

  Again there was no response.

  ‘Please, may I try?’ Yasmin’s humble words were at variance with her imperious tone. She called through the letter box, ‘Tamima, this is your mother. You must open the door.’ She turned to Wexford. ‘Or you’ll break it down, is that right?’

  ‘I hope we shan’t have to do that.’

  But as she called out, ‘They will break it down!’ a youngish man with blue eyes and brown hair opened the door. He wore a white vest and jeans, a bath towel draped over his shoulders. ‘I was having a shave. It’s bloody freezing out here,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You know what we want, Mr Scott.’ Wexford didn’t wait for further discussion but headed for the stairs, followed by Yasmin and Burden. The stairs twisted round outside the lower flat before going on up. When he had set foot on the second stair of the second flight he looked up and saw, standing at the top, the girl he had last seen coming home from school with a satchel on her back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  At the top, in Scott’s sparsely furnished flat, Tamima sat on one end of the bed, her mother on the other. They avoided looking at each other. Wexford sat on the only chair in the room, Burden and Scott on stools Scott brought in from the kitchen. It was Wexford who broke the silence.

  ‘How long have you been living here, Mr Scott?’

  ‘Since the middle of November.’ He spoke sullenly, then with energy. ‘I’ve a right to be here. I’m the tenant.’

  ‘And you have been here with him all this time?’ Wexford addressed Tamima.

  She shrugged. ‘Since maybe the end of November, whatever.’ As in the case of her lover, speaking spurred her on to animation. ‘I’ve been so bored of everything. I’m bored out of my head. He said he was taking me to a luxury apartment. But he never did, he brought me to this shithole, and in the night too, so nobody would see.’

  She met her mother’s eyes. Veiled and gowned in austere black, Yasmin Rahman was taking in every detail of Tamima’s clothes. Probably she had never seen her daughter dressed like this before, had never seen any good Muslim girl dressed like this, from the low-cut top and the ultra-short miniskirt to the fishnet tights and the cheap high-heeled scarlet shoes. She lifted her head gracefully and turned away.

  ‘Didn’t you see any newspapers? Didn’t you watch television?’ This was Burden. ‘There’s been a nationwide search for you. Didn’t you know?’ He looked at Scott. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘She was scared of her family.’

  ‘I was going to tell them,’ Tamima said. ‘I was. Every day I meant to go next door and tell them. But I don’t know, I don’t know why I didn’t. Well, yes, I do. I didn’t want my mum and dad to hate me. It wasn’t that I was scared of them taking me away from him. I’m sick of him.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Scott. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘I suppose you first saw Miss Rahman while you were living here with your wife,’ Wexford said.

  ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Scott said.

  ‘Is there another?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to be questioned like this. I’ve done nothing wrong.’ A frightening thought occurred to him. ‘She is over sixteen, isn’t she?’

  ‘Of course I bloody am. I don’t know how many times I’ve told you.’ Tamima’s bravado suddenly left her. Her face turned red and she stuck out her lower lip like a child half her age. ‘I want to go home,’ she wailed, and turning to her mother, threw herself upon her, clutching her shoulders.

  Yasmin remained stiff and unresponsive for a moment. Then, her expression softening, she slowly put her arms round Tamima, holding the girl’s cheek against her own. She stroked the long black hair and began whispering to her in what must have been Urdu. Wexford watched them for a moment. Then he turned his eyes on Ian Scott. The man had been correct to say he had done nothing wrong. His small follies were minor compared to what Tamima’s brother had done, what her mother had done. He got up.

  ‘There’s nothing for us to do here,’ he said to Burden and together they went down the stairs and out into Glebe Road.

  Jenny will be pleased nothing’s happened to her,’ Burden said when they were partaking of the lunch that had been long postponed. ‘She was worried about a forced marriage if not an honour killing.’

  Hoping for the drama of it, Wexford thought uncharitably. ‘Not that I ever believed in either,’ said Burden. ‘I am going to have kedgeree,’ said Wexford, ‘which I don’t believe is Indian at all, let alone Kashmiri. I think we invented it in the days of our supremacy.’ They ordered. ‘We shall be able to tell Hannah we told her so.’

  ‘I suppose it was Scott she saw hanging around in the Raj Emporium.’

  ‘And Scott Targo saw with her which made him think the Rahmans would want her killed.’

  ‘I’m afraid the kedgeree is off,’ said the waitress. ‘There has been quite a run on it.’

  ‘All right. I’ll have the chicken tikka masala which I believe is another colonial invention.’

  ‘So will I,’ said Burden. ‘All this has made me wonder just how common these forced marriages are. Or these honour killings, come to that.’

  ‘Common enough in Asia, I fear, less so here. I dare say we shall hear no more of them.’

  Some undefined unease took away his appetite. He left half his main course and wanted nothing more. Burden ate heartily as usual, finishing with what he called that well-known Kashmiri speciality, a large slice of apple pie with cream. It was half past two. While they had been in the restaurant the winter’s afternoon had turned colder and an icy north wind blew out of every narrow side street and alley. Wexford had no belief in telepathy, premonitions, clairvoyance or portents, yet as he walked along in the bitter cold he was increasingly aware
of some foreboding, some horror which lay ahead, and he quickened his pace, prompting Burden to ask what was the hurry.

  The warmth which met them as they passed through the swing doors into the police station foyer was so relieving as for a moment to banish all other sensation. Then Wexford saw Hannah bearing down upon them, phone in hand. Something in her face told him he wouldn’t be passing on triumphant news about Tamima that day.

  ‘I was just calling you, guv,’ and as she spoke his phone began to ring.

  ‘There’s been an honour killing. It’s really happened. A woman in Stowerton found dead in the room she was renting, her throat cut. She’d left her husband of a year and the husband and her father swore they’d kill her. I’m going there now.’

  ‘We’ll all go there now,’ said Wexford and, silently, to himself, at least I know it can’t be Targo this time.

  AFTERWARDS

  The years passed, two or three of them. As Wexford had predicted, Yasmin Rahman received a suspended sentence for assisting an offender, the offender being her son Ahmed, convicted for the unlawful killing of Eric Targo. Ahmed spent the last year of his sentence in an open prison and was released on licence. By that time his family had moved away from Glebe Road, where some of their neighbours, notably Ian Scott – now with a new partner – and the occupants of Burden’s old home, had made life uncomfortable for them. Having secured three fairly good A levels at Carisbrooke Sixth Form College, Tamima had just begun a four-year course in Islamic studies at a university in the Midlands.

  The Rahmans now lived in Myringham where Mohammed still worked but inside the office, the head of social services having decided it would be unwise for him to risk catcalls and other abuse from clients. Yasmin’s criminal record made very little difference to her life. As for Osman, he had given up nursing and was at University College London, studying for a medical degree.

  It was a Sunday in summer when Ahmed came to Wexford’s house. Once more without a gardener, Wexford was at home mowing the lawn, or, rather, after half mowing the lawn, had given up in disgust and was sitting in a deeply cushioned cane chair outside the French windows, reading a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett. Ahmed hadn’t come through the house. He must have entered the front garden on his way to the front door and seen Wexford from there. He walked softly over to within a few feet of him and cleared his throat. Wexford looked up.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m disturbing you,’ Ahmed said.

  ‘That’s all right. How are you?’

  ‘Not bad. Better than I have been.’

  Wexford laid his book face down on the table beside him. ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘I want to tell you something. A confession really. May I sit down?’

  For a moment the sun seemed to have darkened and someone else, something invisible yet grimly present, appeared to have entered the garden and strutted up on to the paving. No one was there, yet Wexford could see a shadow fall, the stocky muscular figure, the white hair and the thick blue-and-white scarf wound round its neck. Ahmed repeated his last words.

  ‘May I sit down?’

  ‘No, Ahmed,’ Wexford said, ‘I don’t think you may because I don’t want to hear what you have to say.’

  ‘I have to tell you. I think you’ll be pleased. You hated him too. When my mother was out of the room, I did –’

  Wexford interrupted quietly but with firmness. ‘I’m not hearing this,’ he said, getting up. ‘I’m hearing none of it. I haven’t even seen you.’ He went into the house by way of the French windows, closing them behind him.

  Ahmed stood outside for a moment, mouthing something, holding up his hands, but the image of Targo, which had never really been visible, had gone. Was he going to say what I think he was? Wexford asked himself. What else could he have been about to confess? But I won’t think of it. I will never think of it again but put the monster back in its box and throw the box onto the rubbish heap. The best place, the only place, for him.

  Copyright © 2009 Kingsmarkham Enterprises Ltd

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Doubleday Canada and colophon are trademarks.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication has been applied for.

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-0-385-66886-6

  Published in Canada by

  Doubleday Canada, a division of

  Random House of Canada Limited

  Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website: www.randomhouse.ca

  v3.0

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Other Books By This Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Afterwards

  Copyright