Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box

by Ruth Rendell

  'Bruce Mellor never did marry Eileen. They fell out and he was seen no more in Leighton Close. Targo gave up the travel agency and the boarding kennels about a year afterwards and moved away with his menagerie but not with Adele. They'd split up and were divorced after a couple of years. He went back to Birmingham and that woman he'd been with off and on for years, Tracy Whatever-it-was.'

  'And now he's back.'

  'And now he's back. Living in some style. Is he still in the travel agency business? Does he still move around with a private zoo? I think he does. I saw signs of it when I went to Stringfield to have a look at his place. Perhaps it doesn't matter. I haven't a hope of proving any of this. He's got older and he may have given up this homicidal spree of his. But I've thought like that before. I thought like that when he followed me into that hotel in Coventry and when I imagined I'd seen him in London but I hadn't. Even if it's true now and he's changed, that wouldn't mean he hadn't done those things or justice shouldn't be done.'

  'I don't believe it, you know, Reg. I'm sorry but I don't.'

  'I know,' said Wexford, 'and I don't care. It makes no difference.'

  Chapter 11

  It was plain that the Rahman family disliked Hannah Goldsmith and she knew it. Not usually a sensitive woman, she did her utmost with Mohammed and Yasmin Rahman, their sons Ahmed and Oman and their daughter Tamima not to appear patronizing; the more she tried the worse it got. Hannah's way of showing immigrants from Asia or the children of immigrants that she and they were all equally free citizens of the United Kingdom was to be excessively polite, flattering and considerate. Of course they saw through this at once, Mohammed with amusement, Yasmin with a kind of indignant suspiciousness and the sons with indifference.

  She began, not for the first time, by telling them what a 'lovely home' they had. A pity the house was attached to that eyesore, Webb and Cobb next door. She was a little abashed when Yasmin said the defunct shop and flats above it was their property. But she made things worse by saying that building an extension at the rear, culminating in a conservatory, was such a marvelous improvement she couldn't understand why their neighbours hadn't done the same thing.

  Mohammed smiled, said in his pleasant slightly sing-song voice, 'They are far from well off, Miss Goldsmith. I doubt if they could afford it. We have three incomes coming in here.'

  Hannah had by then made up her mind that both sons probably lived on the benefit. 'Oh, what do you do then?' she asked Ahmed.

  'Computers,' he said. 'I'm an IT consultant. Work from home.'

  She looked enquiringly at his brother. Both were good-looking, dark; Ahmed clean-shaven, Oman with a beard like his father. All wore Western dress while Yasmin was in the long black gown of the traditional Muslim woman but hung with valuable-looking, heavy gold jeweler. Oman didn't answer her unspoken question, so she prompted him.

  'I'm a psychiatric nurse at the Princess Diana.'

  Hannah nearly gushed, 'How splendid!' but curbed herself just in time and said, 'Really?'

  In the cold voice which was the only tone Hannah had ever heard from her, Yasmin said, 'If you wanted to see Tamima, Miss Goldsmith, she's not here. She's still at the shop.'

  'Oh, do call me Hannah. Yes, I know she is, I've been there today. She told me you and she were going home to Pakistan for a holiday.'

  'It is no longer home. This is home. But we are going there.'

  Not easily daunted, Hannah was this time temporarily silenced by Yasmin Raman's icy, clipped tone. Every word sounded like a snub. With a faint smile, probably intended as a tribute to his mother's handling of this interfering police officer, Ahmed picked up an armful of folders and other papers and moved to a desk at the far end of the extension. Oman followed him, settling in an armchair with the evening paper. Hannah rallied, asked Mohammed what future was planned for Tamima after her return.

  'Perhaps she may go to London for a while to stay with her auntie. My sister, that is. There are girl cousins to go about with and have a good time. Fair enough, don't you think, when you have worked hard for your exams? Then, she says, she would like a gap year.'

  'But people have gap years between school and university,' said Hannah, recalling her own.

  'And why not between school and sixth-form college, then? Sixteen is a difficult age, you know. Teenage is a troubling time and we should all remember that. Oh, yes, she will probably go to sixth-form college. But we don't know yet for sure. Let her enjoy herself in Islamabad and London first and then we shall see.' With magnificent aplomb which Hannah was forced to admire, Mohammed said, 'We mustn't keep you any longer, Hannah. You are a busy woman.'

  Hannah had hoped to have something significant to tell Wexford. She had nothing, yet she was convinced now, partly by the suave yet resolute behavior of all the Rahmans, that the purpose of the Pakistan visit was to find a husband for Tamima. That, she thought as she walked along Glebe Lane towards her car, was exactly as such a family would behave if they intended to carry out some ancient traditional rite in defiance of laws they despised. She looked up at the windows of the flats above Webb and Cobb and a woman looked back at her, a white-skinned woman. Hannah wondered how well this woman knew the Rahmans. A future interview with her might yield useful information.

  Street stabbings had until recently been confined to big cities. When the second happened and the victim, Nicky Dusan, died in hospital twelve hours later, Wexford feared a trend had started. People were imitative. They followed a fashion even if that fashion led to terrible consequences. DS Vine and DC Coleman were the investigating officers and three days after the knife attack Barry Vine arrested a sixteen-year-old called Tyler Pike. Kathy Cooper and Brian Dusan, the dead boy's parents, had appeared on television with the customary emotional appeal for any witnesses, Kathy claiming that her son had been in a gang against his will. He had been forced into it, she said, by 'evil' contemporaries he had been at school with who told him he had to join to defend them all against the 'Pike–Samuels gang'.

  'Nicky Dusan,' Hannah told Wexford, 'is the first cousin of that boy Rashid Hanif who is Tamima Raman's boyfriend and also cousin of Neil Dusan. He's Brian Dusan's sister's son.'

  Wexford considered the name. 'You mean Brian Dusan and his sister are Muslims?'

  Hannah was always happy to show off her extensive knowledge of Islam and its history. 'They're Bosnians. Bosnians have been Muslim for centuries. It's a legacy the Turks left behind when they went. Brian Dusan is presumably lapsed, though it's hard for Muslims to lapse.' Wexford could see that Hannah was having problems here. A declared atheist herself and one who would have no hesitation in condemning any manifestation of Christianity out of hand, she steadily avoided criticism of Islam. 'The sister is a devout Muslim,' she said hastily. 'She married Amber Hanif and Rashid is one of their seven children.'

  How she would have condemned so large a family if the parents had been Roman Catholics! He smiled at her. 'You've really been into this, haven't you?'

  'It wasn't difficult, guv. I knew it long before this stabbing happened. It's been part of my research into the antecedents of people connected with the Rahmans.'

  'So you know as much about, say, Mr and Mrs Raman's relatives as you do about their daughter's boyfriend's.'

  'More. Much more. It's a very large extended family. Mohammed Rahman has at least two sisters living in London. Yasmin Rahman has a sister in Stowerton who didn't object at all to telling me her family's history. Among the things she told me was that they've got another sister living in Pakistan whose marriage was arranged, though it sounded more like forced to me. This woman has a son who may be lined up to marry Tamima.'

  'May be? Not "is"?'

  Hannah was a good police officer. She wasn't prepared to exaggerate to serve her own ends. 'Only "may be", guv. The sister thought this man a likely candidate but that's all. It was really guesswork.'

  'Let's concentrate,' said Wexford, 'on Kingsmarkham's incipient gang warfare for now, shall we?'

  He no more be
lieved in the Rahman forced marriage theory than Burden believed in his insistence on Targo as a murderer. Hannah took a few steps towards the door and turned round. She was fond of having the last word.

  'Tamima and her mother go to Pakistan on Thursday. I bought a loaf from her in the Raja Emporium yesterday and she told me.'

  When he drove himself home the route Wexford took was along Glebe Road into Glebe Lane, into Orchard Road and then the Avenue. He stopped when he saw a white van he thought might be Targo's parked outside Webb and Cobb. He parked his own in front of the nail bar and looked up the white van's number in the notebook he still carried. It was Targo's but there was no sign of the van's owner. Hannah had told him one of the Rahman sons was a computer consultant and when he had seen Targo go in there back in August he had been carrying what was very likely a computer. Wexford's own skills in this particular technology were very limited but still he had an idea that a consultant or engineer or whatever the man was could make adjustments to what he called a machine by what he called remote control. Why then would Targo take the thing there? Or was he visiting for some other purpose?

  Wexford disliked the thought of showing himself. From where he sat in his own car he could see that the driver's window in the van was open about four inches. No doubt the Tibetan spaniel was inside, no doubt waiting for an intruder to poke his face through that gap so that it could utter its single sharp yap. I shan't give it the satisfaction, thought Wexford, laughing at his aunt's phrase and driving off.

  On the day Tamima Rahman and her mother left for Islamabad, Hannah went to call on Fata Hanif. With her husband and seven children she lived in a house in Rectangle Road, Stowerton, that had once been two houses but had been converted into one by the local authority. In spite of its size, and the car parked on concrete slabs in what had once been a front garden, the Hanes were obviously doing far less well than the Rahmans. Amber Hanif had no job, had been out of work for years, and he and his family lived on benefits.

  He was not at home and nor were five of the children, for school had just returned after the summer holidays. Fata Hanif took her time answering the doorbell, possibly due to her pausing to tie a scarf round her head in case her caller were a man. There are many ways a woman can cover her hair but perhaps the most unflattering is when the scarf is brought low down over the forehead and high up to skim the chin. A pale face that had once been pretty peered out at Hannah from inside the black cotton oval. The voice was unexpected, south-east London which would be called cockney north of the river.

  'What do you want?'

  It was said diffidently rather than rudely. It sounded feebly frightened.

  'May I come in?' Hannah produced her warrant card, wondering if it would mean anything to this woman. 'I'm a police officer but there's nothing for you to worry about. There's nothing wrong.'

  The door opened a few inches wider. Fortunately, Hannah was very slim. She squeezed through the opening. 'This is just a friendly visit. I hope to have a talk with you about Tamima Rahman.'

  Immediately Mrs Hanif said, 'I don't know her.'

  They went into a living room. A baby lay asleep on the centre cushion of a three-sweater sofa. An older child, perhaps two, was strapped into a high chair with, in front of it, a plateful of some sort of cereal he was slowly and almost ritualistically transferring to the floor, scooping it up in his fingers and smiling as it flopped on to a rug. Mrs Hanif took no notice of either child. It was the sort of room Hannah wouldn't want to stay in for more than ten minutes at the most. Though clean, it showed the signs on every article of furniture of the depredations of children. Everything was broken or battered or scuffed or chipped or cracked or torn or split or crushed or frayed. With all those children the Hanes must be receiving considerable amounts of benefit, but whatever they did with it, they didn't spend it on improving their home.

  Hannah sat down next to the baby. Every other seat in the place was damaged in some way. A leg missing and the chair propped up on bricks, the seat itself split or the cover ripped off to expose splintered wood and sharp nails beneath. Mrs Hanif sat in the chair on the bricks and, though it wobbled, it held her weight.

  'I'd heard,' Hannah said carefully, 'that your son Rashid was friendly with her.'

  'He's only a boy,' Fata Hanif said. 'He doesn't go out with girls. His dad and me, we wouldn't have it.'

  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 Haled 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 Pike 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.

  Mullen 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. Mullen had killed Shirley just as Christopher Roberts had killed his wife Maureen. But he wondered. Although by this time Mullen 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.