Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box

by Ruth Rendell

  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 New quay. 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 neighborhood. 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 have 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 neighborhood, 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 Brule. 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 hear
d 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 behavior.'

  '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 answer phone, 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 newt 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.'

  'I don't,' said Burden. 'Listen to me. You'll tell him that God knows over how many decades Targo murdered three people in Kingsmarkham and environs. How do you know? You intuited it. Where's the evidence, he'll say, and you'll give him all that stuff about Targo killing people other people want out of the way and how once upon a time he stalked you. So now you'd like to track his car and put a watch on all UK exits in case he tries to go abroad on a fake passport. You what, he'll say, and then he'll say, go away and stop wasting my time.'

  And this was what happened – with small variations. Freeborn didn't tell Wexford to stop wasting his time or to go away but he did tell him there could be no question of putting a watch on ports and airports. Targo was not even a missing person. Old he might be but, if what Wexford said about his physical health and strength was accurate, to believe that his disappearance was in any way age-related was nonsense.

  'Has his wife reported him as missing, Reg?'

  Wexford shook his head. 'She says that going off like this and switching off mobiles isn't unusual with him.'

  'Well, then.'

  There was no more to be said.

  Damon Coleman and Lynn Fancourt had questioned everyone in the Pomfret neighborhood of Cambridge Road without any positive result. Wexford went back to Cambridge Cottages and carried out, purely for his own satisfaction, a reconstruction of what he thought had happened on the morning Andy Norton was murdered. He played Targo's part himself. Being Targo, he let himself into the shed and found the box of rope coils and balls of string from which the killer had taken the window-sash cord. Straightening up, he banged his head on the roof. Targo was about seven inches shorter than he, so he wouldn't have done that. Holding a short length of rope – a length just short enough and long enough to strangle someone – he sat down on a stool and asked himself what sort of time he was trying to recreate. Five thirty? No, too early. Six, then. And how had Targo got here? In one of his vehicles, parked it anywhere in Pomfret and walked to Cambridge Road. It wasn't a very big place.

  The back door was unlocked but when had it been unlocked? Wexford got off his seat and, carrying the length of rope, walked down the path past the chrysanthemums and the Michaela's daisies to the small area of yard between the back door, the wall and the kitchen window. Targo would only have wanted to be invisible while he was doing that under the cover of darkness but once there there was no hiding place for him. It seemed likely that the back door was unlocked. Did he go in without knocking? Or knock and fetch Norton down? How did he know Catherine Lister had left? Because he saw a light come on in the house next door. Wexford looked over the dividing wall and saw that this would have been quite possible. Wexford did what Targo may have done and rapped on the glass with his fist. Lynn came to open it and Wexford stepped inside.

  Surely the first thing Andy Norton would have said was to ask him what he was doing there and how had he got in. Well, no doubt he had asked. That wouldn't have deterred Targo once he was inside. It hardly mattered what he said, for the grim truth was that Norton would never see him again.

  Wexford walked into the living room as Targo must have done, following Norton, and there got the sash cord round his neck from behind, the way the thug gee of India had once done with their garrotes. He felt his anger rise as he thought of this gentle and innocent man becoming another of Targo's victims.

  All I want, he thought, sitting in the car, is a small breakthrough. Just something to make one other person believe me or approach believing me. One person to give me the benefit of the doubt. I don't know what to do now, short of trying to call all those numbers all over again, short of going back to Wymondham Lodge and talking to that woman and being assaulted by a pack of crazy dogs. I don't know what to do unless I get a breakthrough.

  Lynn Fancourt had seen him sitting there and was coming up to the car. He opened the driver's window.

  'I've been talking to a woman in Oxford Road, sir,' she said. 'That's the street that runs parallel to this one. The lane's between the gardens. But maybe you know that.'

  'I know that, Lynn. What have you got to tell me that I don't know?' Make it good, he didn't say aloud.

  'She's called Wentworth, Pauline Wentworth. On the morning Andy Norton was killed she came downstairs to answer her phone just before six. She hasn't got an extension upstairs. She answered the phone because her daughter's due to have a baby and she thought that was what it was about. It wasn't, it was a wrong number. But she didn't go back to bed because she knew she wouldn't go to sleep again. It was dark, of course, but there was a big moon if you remember. She went into the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea. It was then she looked down the garden and noticed that the door in her rear wall was flapping open. No mystery about that, she'd left it open the night before. She went down the garden to close it and as she did so she
saw someone go through the door in the wall into Andy Norton's garden.'

  'Why didn't she call us?'

  Lynn cast up her eyes. 'She says because she thought she recognised him. This person, she meant. She thought she recognised him as a man she'd seen a couple of years ago out walking his dogs. One of his dogs had gone after her cat and she'd told him to put it on a lead. She said he was a small man, no taller than her, and not young, but – listen to this, sir – and when she'd seen him before he had a big birthmark on his neck but this man didn't.'

  Wexford kept his excitement under control and spoke calmly. 'She could see that in the dark – well, moonlight?'

  'She keeps a light on all night at the end of her garden. Apparently we told her – I mean, uniform did – to do that after she'd had a break-in.'

  'What did she think this man was doing?'

  'She didn't know, of course. But she thought it was all right because he was what she called "a respectable person" and an animal lover. Maybe, she said, one of his dogs had got into the garden and he wanted to get it back without disturbing the householder. In my opinion, sir, these animal people are a bit nuts.'

  He laughed. 'Thank you, Lynn,' he said. 'Well done.'

  I know him, Wexford said to himself. I know the way he works and the way his mind works but this new scenario I am imagining, it can't be that way. And, letting himself into his house, he went to find his wife.

  Chapter 14

  'I felt I knew him really well,' she said slowly. 'He was a friend. As you know, I don't usually feel like that about someone I've only known a few weeks.' She suddenly thought of something. He guessed what it was from her face and knew it was the very thing he wanted her not to feel. 'He wasn't killed because of anything to do with this house and – well, me, was he?'

  'I don't know why he was killed,' he said truthfully and then he lied. 'But it couldn't have had anything to do with you. That's out of the question.'

  'Only I'd hate to think that. I'd never get over that. Oh, Reg . . .'

  He held her close. She put up her face for a kiss. It was just the way she had done this the second time they had gone for one of those evening walks at New quay. The most trusting act he had ever known . . .