Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box

by Ruth Rendell

  Webb and Cobb was no longer a crime scene and Mohammed's plan was to decorate the shop area and try to let it, to paint the exterior at the same time after replacing the windows in the top flat. This was necessarily delayed and Sharon Scott moved out, leaving the tenancy to the husband she was divorcing, Ian Scott.

  Yasmin Raman's strict morality made her disapprove of Scott's bringing to live there with him a woman he wasn't married to. In Jasmine's absence one evening, this was a topic of conversation between Wexford, Hannah, Mohammed and Oman. The Rahman men were more easy-going. Oman took the robust view that Scott's morals were no concern of theirs so long as he paid the rent. Mohammed was against sitting in judgement. Besides, times had changed and we must change with them, but he didn't know how to talk his wife round. Not for the first time, Wexford marveled at people's selective morality. Presumably, it was all right for Yasmin to help her son conceal the body of a man he had killed and attempt to deceive the police by taking part in a plan to hide that dead man's car, while all wrong to rent out her property to a cohabiting couple.

  He had no intention of visiting Mavis Targo again but one day, a week or so before Christmas, he met her in Kingsmarkham High Street. With two full shopping bags on the pavement beside her, she was contemplating the Mercedes, recently returned to her, and the yellow-painted metal clamp fastened to its rear nearside wheel. Ming and Sweetheart, bouncing about on the back seat, were both barking hysterically.

  'Do something, can't you?' she said to Wexford.

  'Nothing to do with me, Mrs Targo.' Resisting the temptation to tell her he was not a traffic cop, he took a little pity on her. 'Just phone the number they give and pay the fine and they'll release you in no time.'

  'I knew it was a mistake to drive that bloody car. It's always brought me bad luck.'

  He said nothing about the menagerie or the house. The sight of her reminded him of his failure. Targo might be dead but he had died in what was an accident, no more retributive or judicial than if he had met his death in a road crash. And now, even if they ultimately found Tamima's body concealed somewhere, buried or at the bottom of a lake or river or butchered and therefore more easily hidden, Targo could not be responsible. Yet he felt he must find the girl, dead or alive, he must find her. It was terrible to him that the police forces of the whole country had searched for her, her picture had been all over the media, but she remained missing. He tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that it is much easier to hide a living person or for that living person to hide herself, than to conceal a corpse. The dead body cannot move, cannot pick itself up and find a new hiding place. Inert, it lies where it has been left or placed, but that place may be deep under the earth.

  The windows at Webb and Cobb had been replaced and the exterior painted before Ian Scott moved in. Apparently, his private life no longer concerned Yasmin Rahman. She had other things to worry about. Her son Ahmed would come up for trial in February and she had no reason to think that her daughter Tamima would be found before that – if found she ever was.

  Christmas came and went. Mavis Targo sold Wymondham Lodge and moved. Dora Wexford got flu and had to stay in bed while her daughter Sylvia came in to look after her. While he manfully limped to his sixth-form college, Rashid Hanif 's broken ankle refused to mend and required an operation. A vast overhaul of the police station started with builders and decorators moving in and the working lives of a dozen officers disrupted. Then at the end of January when the weather had turned very cold, the trees were silvered with hoar frost and the pavements disappeared under a light covering of snow, Wexford met Yasmin Rahman crossing the high street from Glebe Road.

  He was on his way to meet Burden for lunch at the Dal Lake when he saw her. He had spotted her on the other side of the road, noticed the thick black scarf she wore wound round her head and the unflattering floor-length belted black coat, buttoned from neck to foot and just exposing clumping black brogues. In spite of all this, how beautiful she must have been when young, he thought, reflecting at the same time that this was a truly dreadful thing to say of a woman, as if beauty were necessarily and invariably confined to youth.

  She crossed the street when the light turned red and advanced on him. He could see something in her face he couldn't at first define. Her first words gave an explanation.

  'I've had a shock. I don't know what to do.' She frowned, shifting blame on to him as was her way. 'If you are going out, I suppose I shall have to go back home.'

  He had no idea what could have happened. They were outside a small cafe that specialized in 'natural' foods but also served coffee and tea. 'Let me buy you a cup of coffee, Mrs Rahman. You've made enough for me in recent months.'

  If she had refused it would have come as no surprise. Negativity seemed to be something she enjoyed. But she accepted with a reluctant nod. 'I think perhaps I shouldn't be talking to you,' she said. 'I am a convict now, aren't I?'

  If she meant she would soon have a criminal record, he was bound to agree with her, but all he said was, 'That's all right. Don't worry about it,' and pulled out a chair for her close to the window.

  There were only two other people in the cafe but still she looked to either side of her and over her shoulder to make sure she wasn't overheard. Wexford ordered two coffees which the waitress insisted on calling 'Americans'. Yasmin Rahman preserved silence until she had gone, then said in a steady determined voice, 'I've seen my daughter. I've seen Tamima.'

  He said nothing, looked at her.

  'I saw her yesterday but I couldn't quite believe my eyes.' She spoke slowly and deliberately. 'I thought I was having a delusion, I've been so worried, you see.'

  'Of course you have,' he said.

  'But I saw her again this morning. At the window. She was half behind the curtain but I saw her, I knew her. Of course I know my own child.'

  As others had disbelieved him, so he gave this no credence. 'Are you quite sure, Mrs Rahman?'

  'I'm sure. I know my child. It was Tamima.'

  'Which window was this? Where did you see her?'

  The waitress chose this moment to arrive with their coffee. As soon as she appeared Yasmin Rahman clamped her lips together, sat statue-still, staring at the roadwork's outside the window. The waitress seemed to be purposely taking her time, setting out milk and sugar, then recalling that the bowl of packet sweeteners was still on her tray. Yasmin continued to watch the man with the mechanical digger and the man with the pneumatic drill.

  'Which window was this?' Wexford repeated once the waitress had finally gone.

  Yasmin expelled a heavy sigh as she turned her head back. 'One of the new ones. In the top flat, Mr Scott's flat.'

  'Above Webb and Cobb, do you mean?'

  'If you choose to put it like that.' Jasmine'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 patronized.'

  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 besi
de 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 entry phone 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?' Jasmine'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 23

  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 honor 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 Raja 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 tike macula 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 honor 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 specialty, 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 honor 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 license. 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, t
he head of social services having decided it would be unwise for him to risk catcalls and other abuse from clients. Jasmine's criminal record made very little difference to her life. As for Oman, 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?'