by Ruth Rendell
She saw him looking, said, ‘It’s a bit shabby, isn’t it? Shame really. I keep meaning to do something about it but I don’t suppose I ever shall. You see, I don’t like having people in unless they’re my friends; I can’t stand cleaners, builders, whatever.’ She flicked back her long little-girl’s hair. ‘What did you want to ask me?’
‘It’s more a matter of what you want to tell us, Miss Thompson.’
‘Well, the first thing is, what d’you want Eric for?’
And then she said something which nearly made Wexford shoot out of the shabby floral armchair he was sitting in. ‘He hasn’t gone and killed someone, has he?’
Barry Vine was nearly as astonished as Wexford. He had gone a little pale. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ he asked her. ‘Were you serious?’
‘I think I was,’ she said. She seemed not in the least alarmed. ‘I don’t know if he was when he asked me.’
‘What did he ask you?’
‘Perhaps I’d better start by telling you about us, Eric and me, that is,’ she said. ‘I suppose I ought to offer you something but I don’t drink tea or coffee. I expect there’s some Coke.’
‘Please don’t bother,’ Wexford said. ‘You were going to talk about your relationship with Mr Targo.’
‘Yes, well, we’ve known each other since for ever. He’d just come to Birmingham and my dad had just died. I was feeling pretty low. I was only just eighteen, you see, and I’d no one. My mother was dead, I’d no relatives. Everyone kept telling me how lucky I was to have so much money and this house. I was sitting on a bench in the park, thinking about things, what loneliness was and not being able to see any future, when this dog came up to me. It was a spaniel, quite old but so sweet and gentle. It licked my hand and when I stroked it it climbed up on to the bench and snuggled up beside me. It put its head in my lap. And then the owner – it was Eric – came up and he said his dog was like that with people he liked. We talked and I told him about myself and he said I ought to get a dog, he’d get me a dog. And, well, he did.’
It didn’t sound much like Targo and yet it did. It wasn’t quite true that he liked dogs and disliked people but rather that he only liked people who liked dogs. ‘Go on,’ Wexford said.
‘We started seeing each other. I suppose you could say we fell in love. He wasn’t my type and I wasn’t his but we sort of clicked. His wife had left him, he wanted sometimes to see his kids but he didn’t want a share of their house. I had enough for both of us, you see, but if you think he took up with me because I was rich you’d be wrong. He was crazy about me. And I was the one who got tired of it first. I gave Eric the price of a house and enough to start a business – a driving school it was – paid him off, you could say, and I married someone else. But I could never get Eric out of my head. His divorce had come through and then I got divorced. Eric didn’t move back with me, he had his own house, and when I found out he’d a woman living with him there, I was so mad I got married to someone else on the rebound.
‘Well, after that it was sort of on and off with us, though you could say he was really the only one for me as I was for him. I’ve been single for years now and there’s never been anyone else. Eric married this Adele he’d been living with and moved to Myringham in Sussex. She came from there. And he came from a place called Stowerton. He’d already got property he let out and he started a dogs’ boarding kennels. Just up his street that was with him being so mad about dogs. I helped him with the money to set it up. I thought we might get back together because Adele only lasted a few months more but he’d met that Mavis and married her and that was like the end for me. I’d invested in this property development of his, getting hold of right-to-buy properties it was, and it was doing well, but he still married Mavis and bought a big house somewhere with her money. And that’s it really. Up to a year ago we were still meeting sometimes and still talking on the phone but when he asked me if there was anyone I wanted rid of – well, that was the end, the really final end.’
Wexford had listened to all this in silence. Now he said, speaking quite slowly, ‘What exactly did he ask you, Miss Thompson?’
‘You want the details?’
‘Please.’
‘He phoned and said he had to come up here on business and he’d like to see me. Time was when he’d have come up to see me and found a bit of business to do while he was here. But never mind, that’s all water under the bridge. He came and I asked him if he’d be staying. No, he said, and he wanted to tell me that we wouldn’t see each other again. He was with Mavis now and they’d settled down. He was getting on and having a bit on the side was no longer on. I said to him, is that what I was, a bit on the side, and all he said was, you know what I mean. He was always saying that, that I knew what he meant – especially when it was hurtful, what he said. Then he said he’d like to do something for me as a kind of thanks for all the years. Was there anyone I wanted rid of? I didn’t understand him – well, no one would. He said he’d put it more plainly. Was there anyone I wanted out of the way, disposed of, and no questions asked. I thought he’d gone mad, I really did.’
‘He meant, did you want someone killed, is that what he was saying?’
‘That’s what he was saying. As a kind of compensation for leaving me and maybe for us not getting married in the past.’
‘What did you say to him?’ Vine asked.
‘What do you think? I said I was glad he’d said he wouldn’t see me again because I felt exactly the same about him and if there was anyone I wanted rid of it was him.’
‘You didn’t think of contacting us?’
‘Well, I did. But what had I got to go on? It would be my word against his. I thought they’d say it was a case of a woman scorned. I mean, look at it this way. He was married, doing well, living with his wife. I was a single woman with two failed marriages behind me, a woman who’d given him God knows how much money over the years and now he’d rejected me. How would that look to the police? Like revenge, don’t you think?’
‘You’ve told us now,’ said Wexford.
‘Because you asked about him. And I thought you wouldn’t if you hadn’t good reason. Right? And you do believe me, don’t you? You don’t see me as a woman scorned?’
‘I believe you.’
Tea with Roger Phillips terminated in a bottle of port being brought out. Wexford had resolved some years before never to drink port again but he had one glass with Roger while he told him about the interview with Tracy Thompson and the ‘compensation’ Targo had offered her, told him too about Elsie Carroll and Billy Kenyon and Andy Norton. Roger echoed the words Wexford himself had used to Tracy.
‘I believe you.’
‘She says she hasn’t seen him since. He’s tried to phone her, left messages, but she hasn’t answered them. That offer he made shocked her to the core.’
‘Well, it would, Reg. We’re used to violent death and death threats so we often fail to appreciate how shocking ordinary members of the public find that sort of thing. Society hasn’t really become depraved, whatever the media says. Most people lead pretty sheltered and certainly law-abiding lives. Are you thinking that he may have made that sort of offer in the past to the people who would benefit from what he was about to do?’
‘He didn’t make it to me,’ said Wexford, ‘and he expected me to benefit from the death of Norton. I’m sure he didn’t make it to George Carroll. If he had, what would have stopped Carroll telling us about it when he was charged with murder? But it may well be that Eileen Kenyon knew. He could have suggested it to Eileen Kenyon after he’d given her a puppy and seen how she was with Billy. If she knew he’d killed Billy it was in her interest to keep quiet about it.’
‘And now he’s disappeared?’
‘I don’t think he’s with a woman. There’s only this Adele left and we’ll contact her but it appears she was with him for a shorter time than any other woman in his life. He could be anywhere.’
‘He must be getting money. Have you lo
oked at his bank account?’
‘I’ve had no grounds to do that till now. It’s my next step.’
With undertakings (neither would adhere to) to keep in touch, meet for a meal when the Phillipses were in Sussex visiting Pauline’s aged mother, they parted. Wexford took the Birmingham Post he had bought that morning out of his raincoat pocket and read it in the train while Vine, afficionado of Donizetti, listened to L’Elisir d’Amore on his CD Walkman.
When he was reading a newspaper belonging to a distant city or even specifically to London, he always looked at the births, marriages and deaths. Time was when people he knew were getting married, then having babies, now some of them were dying. The last name in the deaths column was Trelawney. He knew no one called that, yet … ‘Trelawney, Medora Anne, beloved wife of James, on 31 October at Sutton Coldfield, sadly missed. Funeral at All Saints’ Church, 3 November at 10 a.m., no flowers, please. Donations to the British Heart Foundation.’
It was almost certainly the same one. The boyfriend who had tried to blackmail him she had called Jim and Trelawney was a Cornish name. No age was given for her, he noticed. It looked as if she had died of heart disease. What had she been doing in Sutton Coldfield? Living there with Jim, no doubt, and maybe children who sadly missed her. He folded up the newspaper and went back to thinking about Targo. There was very little doubt now that Targo had disappeared.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hannah Goldsmith picked Jenny Burden up at the school gates at four thirty in the afternoon. It was pouring with rain which meant that everyone had covered their heads or put up umbrellas and was scurrying through the downpour. This suited Hannah well. She didn’t much want to be seen having secret or at any rate private meetings with Mike Burden’s wife. The cafe they went to in a side turning off Queen Street would have been called when Wexford was young a ‘pull-up for carmen’. If they had heard the phrase they would have supposed it something to do with the opera.
It was a shabby little place, ill-ventilated and with condensation running down the windows. The tea was the mahogany-coloured kind they used to say you could stand a spoon up in but now was called ‘builder’s’.
‘I wanted to share with you what I’m doing,’ Hannah began, ‘because I know you’re concerned about Tamima Rahman the way I am. I went along to see the family with the guv yesterday – it was about something quite different – but Yasmin Rahman happened to say that Tamima had gone to London to stay with her auntie. Her brother Osman – he’s the nurse – drove her up there the day before.’
Jenny nodded. ‘So she’s there, is she? Where exactly is she?’
‘Auntie’s called Mrs Qasi and she lives in Kingsbury. That’s a London suburb in the north-west, sort of west of Hendon if you know where that is. But as to whether she’s there I don’t know. They say she is and maybe it’s all right. But I found Mrs Qasi’s phone number and called her and asked to speak to Tamima. That was this morning. She said Tamima was out with her cousin. Apparently she’s got a lot of cousins, all of them in that sort of area. They’d gone to Oxford Street shopping, she said. I asked when she’d be back but Mrs Qasi didn’t know. I phoned again at three and this time there was no answer. I left a message.’
‘What is it you suspect?’ Jenny asked.
‘I don’t know. All these weeks since Tamima left school in July I’ve thought there was a possibility the Rahmans would arrange a marriage for her.’
‘Not force a marriage?’
‘I think they are anxious to keep her and Rashid Hanif apart but sending her to London shows they haven’t succeeded. Now this is perhaps the point where the idea of an arranged marriage becomes a forced marriage.’
‘You mean send her to London and introduce her to some relative, of whom there are dozens up there, and if she’s OK about the idea so well and good but if not …’
‘If not it would be much easier to compel her to marry in London than down here where everyone would know what’s going on.’
‘And if she won’t, she refuses, what then?’
‘I don’t want to go there. Not yet. First of all I want to find if Tamima’s with Mrs Qasi and more to the point if she’s happy to be there.’
But Tamima didn’t call her back as Hannah had asked her. Nor did she call Jenny, though she had her number. Teenagers don’t write letters but they send emails. Jenny got an email from her, though there was nothing to prove Tamima was the source of it.
Hi Mrs Burden. I am having a great time in London with my auntie Mrs Qasi at 46 Farmstead Way, Kingsbury, and my cousins. I didn’t really know them till now and it’s so cool. I may decide to stay for a while and get a job.
Tamima
‘Anyone might have sent that,’ Hannah said
‘Yes, I don’t know why she would send it. After all, I haven’t made any enquiries about her since before she went to Pakistan. Why not contact you?’
Hannah said thoughtfully, ‘Let’s give it a few days. If we haven’t heard any more would you feel like going to London on Friday or Saturday and paying this Mrs Qasi a visit?’
‘Saturday would be best for me. No school.’
But on Friday, when Hannah went with Wexford, to check with the Rahmans that Ahmed had heard nothing from the missing Eric Targo, Osman had the day off and was at home.
Looking very much like his father and half smiling in the same supercilious way, he told Hannah that he knew she ‘took a great interest in Tamima’s activities’. ‘You may care to know that she’s going to share a flat with her cousin and a friend for a while and get a job. Quite enterprising, don’t you think?’
It was one of those areas of not-quite-outer London that still retain vestiges of countryside, spoilt countryside where chain-link fencing, concrete and abandoned factory buildings scar the fields but where the fields still exist. You could see how Farmstead Way got its name. The road Hannah drove along to reach it skirted the Brent reservoir and there was even a small herd of black-and-white cows chewing the cud under a stand of chestnut trees. The rain had cleared away but only temporarily and the blue sky would be short-lived. It was Saturday when Hannah should have had a day off and Jenny had no school
Faduma Qasi’s home was a bungalow, semi-detached, as were all the houses in the street, though their designs had been varied and there were green-tiled roofs among the red. Hannah had phoned to warn Mrs Qasi of their coming and she let them in very promptly. Both she and Jenny had expected a black-robed woman who would have covered her head before answering the door, but Tamima’s aunt was dressed very much as her non-Muslim neighbours might be in a black-and-white dogstooth check skirt, black sandals and a red polo-neck sweater.
When the introductions had been made, she said she would make tea. Jenny and Hannah sat down in a living room in which not a piece of furniture or ornament had its provenance in an Asian subcontinental culture. Hannah was reminded that Mrs Qasi was Mohammed Rahman’s sister. His home had taken on a similarly indigenous British end-of-the-twentieth-century atmosphere. A bookcase was full of English books and, even more to Hannah’s astonishment, a bottle of sherry stood on a tray next to two glasses.
The tea came, much like the tea in the Queen Street cafe, strong, aromatic, dark chestnut colour when a drop of milk is added to it.
‘Now,’ said Faduma Qasi, sitting down to pour, ‘I’d like to begin by setting you right on a few matters. I know what you’re thinking. I can see it in your faces. It’s written all over them, if you don’t mind me putting it that way.’ She passed Jenny’s cup, indicated the bowl of loaf sugar. ‘You expected to see a downtrodden old woman in a burka, didn’t you? You think all Muslim women are like that and your mission in life is to set them free and emancipate them. But I don’t quite fit the picture, do I? I’m a teacher –’ she looked at Jenny ‘– like you. But I’m not married. I was and my marriage was arranged but we were each shown pictures of possible people to marry and we chose each other. We met and liked each other and went out together. Arranged marriages are a
tradition in our family. My brother’s marriage with Yasmin was arranged and you couldn’t find a happier one. I’m divorced now. My husband didn’t say “I divorce you” three times and throw me out, like the newspapers say. We were divorced properly in the court. I’ve a man friend – I refuse to call a man of fifty a boyfriend – and eventually we shall get married.’
Hannah received her teacup and the sugar pushed towards her. ‘My brother was born in Pakistan but I was born here and English is my native tongue. I was born a British citizen of enlightened intelligent parents. I don’t cover up my head because there’s nothing in the holy Koran about a woman having to cover her head. I try to be a good Muslim and I don’t drink alcohol. Yes, I’ve seen you looking at the sherry bottle – that’s for guests. Would you like a glass? No? A bit early in the morning, I expect.’
‘Mrs Qasi,’ Hannah began, ‘we don’t mean to –’
‘No, I know you don’t mean to. I know you think you’re quite without prejudice but you’re racists like English people are. Benevolent racists, is what I call you. OK? Now we’ll talk about what you came for.’
Jenny said, ‘I think you’ve taken the wind out of our sails a bit. Out of mine, at any rate. What we came for was really to ask if your niece Tamima is all right, if she’s staying here, and if – well, if you’re happy about her sharing a flat with your daughter and a friend. I mean, they’re very young, aren’t they? Tamima’s only sixteen and I don’t suppose your daughter’s much older.’
‘My daughter is also sixteen,’ Mrs Qasi said, ‘but when Tamima speaks of her cousin she doesn’t mean Mia. She means her cousin who is my sister’s daughter – we are a large and united family, Mrs Burden – and who is twenty-seven. The friend is my niece’s friend Clare and they have been sharing a flat for five years.’
Hannah asked, ‘Would you give us the address of that flat and your other niece’s name, Mrs Qasi?’
