The Monster in the Box

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘My niece who owns the flat is called Jacqueline. Her father is an Englishman, you see. But I don’t think I shall give you the address. I would if you had an order or a warrant or whatever you call it but you haven’t. Tamima has done nothing wrong and nor have Jacqueline or Clare. As you must know, Tamima is in London with the full approval of her father and mother. She intends to return home at the end of the year. At Christmas, I believe. You see, I celebrate that like any other British citizen while not believing in the faith behind it – again like most British citizens. Incidentally, Tamima was here until yesterday. She left with Jacqueline and Clare just about the time you phoned to make this appointment. If you want her address I suggest you ask my brother for it.

  ‘By the way,’ she added, speaking to Jenny, ‘the email Tamima sent you was written at my suggestion. It seemed a sensible and polite thing to do.’

  The interview had turned out very differently from the way Hannah had expected. Much as she hated being called a ‘benevolent racist’, she was obliged to admit, if only to herself, that Faduma Qasi had been precisely correct when she described – in cringe-making detail – the kind of woman she and Jenny had expected to find. Some of the expressions she had used, especially with regard to dress and marriage, were the very things they had discussed while driving along the road from west Hendon. She, who had prided herself on her utter lack of race prejudice, her persuading of herself that all people, regardless of race and skin colour and origin, were equal, must now thoroughly examine her attitudes and revise them. She felt humiliated, an unusual sensation for her. But she was anxious not to show it.

  ‘Tamima lived here with you for how long?’ she said.

  ‘About a week. It was like a holiday for her. Jacqueline works from home so she could take days off and she took Tamima about in London. To a theatre matinee, you know, and the cinema and to museums. We are not entirely uncultured, our family. Then she and Clare suggested Tamima got a job at the Asian supermarket Spicefield and moved in with them. She asked her parents if that would be all right and they agreed.’

  ‘I believe,’ said Jenny, ‘that it’s a fact that Mr and Mrs Rahman were anxious to separate Tamima from a boy she was friendly with, Rashid Hanif.’

  ‘I know nothing about that. Tamima never mentioned him.’

  Hannah spent the rest of the weekend preparing a report for Wexford. It outlined her suspicions but also contained incontrovertible facts. There was no proof that Tamima Rahman had ever been in London, only the word of her parents and her aunt Faduma Qasi. Mrs Qasi had refused to give the details of her niece Jacqueline’s flat so Hannah had no idea where it was, who the friend was apart from her being called Clare, or which branch of Spicefield was supposed to be employing Tamima.

  Preoccupied with Targo, Wexford nevertheless took the time to read it.

  ‘I’ve asked you this before, Hannah, but I’ll ask you again. What is it you suspect?’

  ‘That they’re forcing her to marry someone.’

  ‘But what makes you think so?’

  ‘It’s in the report, guv.’

  ‘I’ve read the report. Now I’d like you to answer a few questions I’m going to put to you. Has Tamima or anyone in the family ever spoken to you of forced marriage, as something they favour or, conversely, are opposed to? Have any of them ever told you they disapprove of Rashid Hanif? Or named someone they prefer over him to be a boyfriend or fiancé or husband for Tamima? You say – though not in the report – that the Rahmans are an enlightened Westernised family, yet you suspect them of inflicting on their daughter a cruel and ancient custom. Why? Above all, why have you, whom I always take to be particularly pro-Muslim and anti-racist, suddenly begun showing what seems to me like unreasoning prejudice?’

  This last was too much for Hannah. She burst out with a passionate rejoinder. ‘Oh, guv, I haven’t. It’s not like that. I’m trying to be open-minded. I’m afraid that if I – well, veer too much to being pro-Muslim I’ll lose my judgement.’

  ‘No fear of that,’ Wexford said briskly. ‘Now there’s a lot to do here. We’ve got someone missing who’s almost certainly committed at least one murder. And I’ve just heard that the Mercedes has been found, parked at the roadside in a village in Essex. Apart from Targo, wherever he is, crime goes on. Petty crime if you like but you wouldn’t call it petty if it was your house that had been broken into and pillaged and wrecked. So you can have one more go at finding where Tamima Rahman lives and works and if that fails you have to give up. Are you happy with that?’

  ‘I have to be if you say so, guv,’ said Hannah. But she made a mental note that on her own, without backup, without even Jenny’s support, she would pursue her enquiries into Tamima’s whereabouts. She would start with the supermarket and find which, if any, of their branches employed her.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  This time it was in the Olive and Dove’s ‘snug’ that they met. Ashtrays on the tables were piled with ash and cigarette ends, the ceiling yellow and polished with tar deposits.

  ‘If the day ever comes when they bring in a smoking ban,’ Wexford said, ‘this place will get a clean-up. They might even get new curtains.’

  ‘More likely to close down. People won’t come. Smokers like to smoke while they drink.’

  ‘Or we shall have the place to ourselves.’

  Wexford went to get their drinks. The saloon bar was quieter than usual as if in anticipation of restrictions to come. Two girls sat chatting and smoking at a corner table. In his youth, Wexford thought, they would have been in a teashop but they would have offered each other cigarettes then as now. The elderly man who sat alone with his yellow Labrador – did people now refer to him as an elderly man? – had a pipe in his mouth. Pipes would disappear. Even now his grandsons talked of seeing someone smoke a pipe as he when a boy might have spoken of seeing an eccentric in galoshes or using a monocle. The man with the dog brought Targo to mind – not that he was ever far away.

  ‘What we need to know,’ he said to Burden, ‘is what he was up to in Kingsmarkham between the time he left the Rahmans at around three – say three thirty – and came back to fetch the Mercedes sometime after eight fifteen. We know it was still there after eight fifteen because the girl from the nail bar saw it. So even if he drove it away at half past eight it had been there for getting on for six hours.

  ‘He didn’t go home. Mavis Targo says he didn’t and why should she lie? He didn’t call on his children. He didn’t go to his Sewingbury office. Because if he had he would have gone in his car. It’s too far even for him to walk.’

  Burden took a sip of his wine. He wrinkled his nose but made no comment on the quality or taste of what he was drinking. ‘Why didn’t he have a dog with him? Oh, I know Mrs Rahman wouldn’t have a dog in the house but when he’d been there on at least one previous occasion he brought the dog but left it in the car. Why didn’t he have a dog this time? Because of what he intended to do after he’d been to the Rahmans? He left the car where it was because there are no parking restrictions in Glebe Road and he went off to do whatever he did.’

  ‘Yes, but what was that? His not bringing a dog suggests to me that he knew he wouldn’t be going back home. He was running away. He’d committed another murder and this time he knew he’d been seen going into his victim’s garden.’

  ‘But did he know that, Reg? Surely he didn’t. If he had he wouldn’t have wasted time ordering fancy computer equipment. Wouldn’t he have been off as soon as he could pack a bag and be off?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Wexford. ‘He couldn’t have known. He wasn’t in a hurry. It looks as if he expected to return home. His wife says he took no clothes with him. So did something happen while he was at the Rahmans or soon after he left the Rahmans to make him realise he might have been seen? Perhaps. Maybe we should go and ask what used to be called “gentlemen’s outfitters,” but no doubt aren’t any longer, if they sold a whole new wardrobe to a single customer that afternoon.’

 
; ‘What, and carry the stuff all the way back up Glebe Road to the car?’

  ‘I know it’s not a brilliant theory, Mike. How about he went to get a false passport from some mate?’

  ‘I know this place has degenerated along with the rest of the countryside but surely you’d have to do that kind of thing in London or maybe his other favourite haunt, Birmingham?’

  ‘Mike, I just don’t know. The whole thing doesn’t add up. But I’ve been busy with a map of Essex before we came down here. Melstead where the Mercedes was found, is about seven miles from Stansted airport. That’s why I thought about the clothes and the passport. He could have got out of the country before anyone started looking for him. Of course that doesn’t answer why he left the car where he did. It was bound to be found so why not leave it in the long-stay car park at Stansted?’

  ‘Come to that,’ said Burden, ‘why go to Stansted at all when Gatwick is on our doorstep?’

  ‘I know. I thought of that. I phoned Mavis Targo and told her about finding the Mercedes. She just said, “Abroad?” in the sort of tone a woman might use if I’d suggested her husband had gone to Mars. Then she repeated that stuff about him hating abroad. He’s only once been out of this country and that was to Spain on their honeymoon.

  ‘I said he’d renewed his passport just the same. That was because they were going to New York, she said. Her daughter was getting married in New York and she wanted to go to the wedding. I didn’t know she had a daughter. She’s not Targo’s of course. Targo was apparently going too but when it came to the crunch he couldn’t face flying and he’s seasick on boats. When I said it was still possible he’d left the country all she said was she was left to feed the bloody animals. Every time she goes in the cage to feed the lion she’s so frightened her hands shake and she can hardly hold his steak dinner.’

  Burden laughed. ‘I don’t hold with keeping wild animals – dangerous animals – as pets. Why does he do it?’

  ‘I suppose he has an affinity with them. He’s a dangerous animal himself. He’s a monster.’

  ‘What d’you think made him leave the country – if he has?’

  ‘While the car was parked outside the Rahmans’ and while he was walking about Kingsmarkham, shopping or seeing someone or, for all I know, revisiting the scenes of his past crimes, he spoke to someone or saw or read something and realised he was in danger. I don’t know what that something was but it’s the only thing that accounts for his not going home as he planned. Instead he had to get away fast.’

  ‘Yes but, Reg, he didn’t get out fast even then. This discovery of his – I mean that he would be a suspect – was probably made during the afternoon, at latest by about six when it’s dark and the only people about are in the pubs. But we know he didn’t leave Glebe Road until after eight fifteen. When he did leave he drove, not to the nearest airport, but up to north Essex, a long way, taking in the Dartford Crossing and endless miles of motorway. That’s not getting out fast.’

  ‘No, you’re right. And what we haven’t considered is how did he get from where he parked the car to Stansted, if he did. Walked? In the middle of the night? If it’s anything like most of these country places – think of the villages round here – he’d be walking along narrow totally unlit lanes, sometimes no houses for miles and if there were any they’d be in darkness at that hour. Did he know the way? Had he ever been there before? I asked Mavis that and she said not that she knew of. She did know he’d never been anywhere from Stansted airport.’

  ‘The prints on the Mercedes – I take it they’re his?’

  ‘His and Mavis’s. Whatever she says, Mike, he’s left the country now and he’s not planning on coming back. There’s only one thing that really worries me about that theory. Would he leave all those animals? Would he leave his dogs? Oh, he could rely on her to look after them but surely only for a while. The dogs permanently maybe but the llamas? The lion? That’s the part I don’t understand. I have to see this place where the car was parked. I’m going up to Melstead tomorrow.’

  The route from the Dartford Crossing along the M25 and the M11 was almost uniformly ugly and spoilt. But beyond the hoardings and the proliferation of road signs, behind the flower stalls, the prefab cafes and the golf courses, meadows and untouched woodland could be distantly seen, with here and there a church spire or an ancient half-timbered house. The scenery improved once Donaldson took the turning for Braintree, and Wexford, who had heard, along with most Sussex people, that Essex was generally a flat eyesore, was surprised. He had only previously been to Colchester and hadn’t expected gently hilly country, willow-bordered streams and pretty villages boasting more thatched cottages than in his own county.

  Melstead was such a place. It was approached – and apparently exclusively approached – along a network of narrow lanes without pavements. At one point Donaldson was forced on to the verge and halfway into the hedge when a woman sped past them without any relaxation of speed. Wexford considered doing something about it, then told himself he wasn’t a traffic cop and had better things to occupy his time with.

  The street where Targo’s Mercedes had been found ran from the heart of the village, where there was a green with a war memorial, the church and the vicarage, up to a pub called the Prince of Wales Feathers and a small council estate. Donaldson parked the car and Wexford and Lynn Fancourt walked up to the middle point of the street. Here were the only two shops remaining in the village, a butcher’s which had about it that indefinable atmosphere of pride and conceit that proclaims its reputation as ‘the best butcher in Essex’ and a general store and post office.

  Recently converted to vegetarianism, Lynn shuddered theatrically at Mr Parkinson’s display of locally shot pheasants and turned her face away to follow Wexford into the general store. Another surprise was in store for him. Out here, in this rustic and intensely English spot, the proprietor and postmaster was Asian. And a particularly dark-skinned hooknosed Asian at that. Wexford wondered if it was politically incorrect even to think these things. He showed Anil Mansoor his warrant card and introduced Lynn.

  ‘Sussex, eh? I have cousins in Sussex. Maybe you know them?’

  This reminded Wexford of the sort of people who when you tell them you’re going to Sydney, say that maybe you’ll see their brother who emigrated to Perth ten years before. He ignored the remark and asked about the car.

  Mr Mansoor said he hadn’t noticed it until a customer told him it had been there four days and asked him what he thought should be done about it. Minding one’s own business seemed to be a watchword of the postmaster’s.

  ‘I said it was nothing to do with us. There are no parking restrictions in this street. Anyone could leave a car here if he wished, plenty of room for us remains.’

  ‘Do you live over the shop, Mr Mansoor?’ Wexford asked.

  A note of pride came into Mansoor’s voice. ‘No. I have a home in Thaxted. I drive here each day, it isn’t far.’

  ‘You didn’t see the man who parked the Mercedes here?’

  ‘As I say, I go home to Thaxted each evening sharp at five. Indeed, you might call that afternoon rather than evening, but that is when I drive to my home.’

  ‘If someone wanted to get to Stansted airport from here and had no car, what would he or she do?’

  ‘He could walk.’ This was such an alien notion to Mr Mansoor that he burst out laughing as if he had been exceptionally witty. ‘If he was mad or stricken by poverty, yes, he could walk. It is seven miles. Better to get a taxi. You will find the taxi man’s home opposite the pub. It says Tip-Top Taxis on the gate which is rather a silly name, in my opinion.’

  Today Mr Mansoor’s side of the street was parked with cars almost nose to tail, there being just two gaps large enough for someone to squeeze a vehicle in. If there had been even a single car or van on the other side the space left between would have been wide enough for no more than a bicycle.

  ‘What happens when something comes the other way, Lynn?’

  ‘T
hat happens, sir,’ she said, pointing.

  The van which had just about passed the halfway mark in the street moved relentlessly on while the Fiat coming towards it was forced to reverse, a manoeuvre which was a challenge to the old man at the wheel who was several times in danger of scraping the bodywork of a Rolls-Royce, a VW and a Transit van. They watched with interest but desisted from applause when the older driver succeeded in escaping with no damage to his own car or the others. They walked up the path to Tip-Top Taxis.

  Wexford was almost certain the taxi driver was going to tell him he had received a phone call from someone requesting to be driven to Stansted airport or even to a station on the London to Cambridge mainline at midnight on the relevant date. But the owner of Tip-Top Taxis disappointed him. Mr Davis kept his books efficiently. No such call and no such appointment were recorded.

  ‘I’d have remembered anyway.’

  ‘Why is that, Mr Davis?’

  ‘Because I’m sixty-five years old and I reckon I’m past driving some lazy sod to Stansted at that hour when there’s no flights before six in the morning.’

  ‘It could have been in the morning,’ said Lynn, thinking of Targo sleeping in his car. ‘Have you any bookings to the airport or a train the next morning?’

  ‘Not a sausage, Miss. I do a regular run Wednesday mornings without fail. Take a lady to see her mum in an old folks’ place in Newmarket, wait for her and bring her back. That satisfy you?’

  So Targo had parked his car and vanished. He was strong and fit and resourceful. He could have walked. ‘Along those lanes, sir?’ Lynn asked as they walked back to the car. ‘In the dark? You noticed how fast the locals drive. He’d have been lucky not to be killed. Do you remember that woman that passed us on the way here?’

  ‘I do. A pedestrian would get short shrift from someone like her.’

  Hannah was put on to someone called a personnel coordinator at the Spicewell supermarket headquarters. This was far from London and even further from Kingsmarkham on an industrial estate outside Peterborough.