Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box (27 page)

The lion was still at liberty. In this countryside, Wexford thought, there was very little reason why it shouldn't retain its freedom for weeks, months even, provided it found enough small animals to feed on. The area abounded in wildlife, badgers, foxes, hares and rabbits, pheasants and partridges. On his way to Stringfield, he found himself noticing all the road kill, squashed bloody pelts and bundles of black and brown feathers. Would a lion eat carrion? Probably, if it was hungry.

   While Donaldson stopped at a red light at the Local Traffic exit, Wexford made a phone call to the Rahmans. It was Yasmin who answered and once again her magisterial tone and economy of speech impressed him.

   'Hallo? Who is speaking?'

   Wexford said he wanted to talk to her and her husband, her son Ahmed too if that was possible.

   'My husband will be here,' she said. 'My son Ahmed also.' The faintest hint of humor came into her voice. 'And my son Oman too if you want the whole family.'

   'That must include Tamima, of course.'

   She was annoyed. 'How many times do we have to tell you? Tamima is in London with her cousin.'

   'No, she isn't, Mrs Rahman. But we can talk about that later.'

   It was a fine sunny day, the grounds of Wymondham Lodge and the downs beyond looking at their autumn best. English woods have few trees in them which turn red in November. That display is confined to North America where forests have a preponderance of maples. Here, in Sussex, the fields were green and the woods dark green and yellow and brown, the gold coming from the birches and the tawny colour from beech and oak. A little breeze ruffled the treetops, making the different shades mingle and shiver. On some distant slopes sheep grazed and there were black-and-white cattle in the meadows by the Brim. But nearer home was more exotic fauna, the llamas enjoying the sunshine, the two remaining mantas running for the cover of the hedge at the sound of Wexford's car. No lion, of course, to greet him with a roar.

   The front door wasn't opened immediately. Mavis Targo called out, 'Who is it?' Wexford couldn't help smiling as he answered. Did she imagine the lion would reply with 'It's me, King!'

   She was very much dressed up for his visit. Or dressed up for her own satisfaction. A tight black suit and green blouse set off her heavy gold jeweler, several necklaces, earrings as large as coat buttons. Her thick fingers were stiff with gold and diamond rings. Wexford imagined her, forced by her fear to stay at home, diverting herself by trying on various outfits and hanging jeweler on to some designer creation, experimenting with colours and shapes in front of the mirror, like a little girl playing with mother's clothes.

   'I haven't heard from him,' she began, and she didn't mean the lion. 'Not a word since he went off that morning. I don't believe he's abroad. He wouldn't go abroad. And now Ming's ill. He's pining for Eric, that's what it is. I had to take him to the vet yesterday and she says it's a virus. It's no virus, it's missing Eric.'

   The Tibetan spaniel lay curled up on a pile of silk cushions in the corner. 'Poor lamb, he won't go in his basket. All he wants are those cushions and Sweetheart keeps annoying him. Well, he's only a puppy, he wants to play.'

   'May I sit down, Mrs Targo? I want you to tell me all over again but in greater detail this time what happened on the day your husband went missing. Starting with first thing in the morning, please.'

   They went into the ornate drawing room.

   'Eric was up very early,' she began. 'But he often was. He went out somewhere – in the van, I think it was.'

   To take himself to Pomfret and what he meant to do in Cambridge Cottages, Wexford thought. 'Did he take a dog with him?'

   'I don't know. It was five in the morning. I woke up when he left and then I went to sleep again. When I got up he was back and both the dogs were there. Oh, yes, I remember he said he'd taken them out for a walk. I went shopping later on and when I got back he was out in the grounds with the animals.' She gave Wexford an exasperated look. 'You don't know how many times I've been over this in my mind. I've nearly done my head in, trying to think what he said and if he said where he was going. But he never did say, I'm certain of that.'

   'When did he go out again?'

   'It would have been two or three in the afternoon. He phoned someone on his mobile first but I don't know who that was. Then he went off in the Mercy.'

   'Not taking a dog with him?'

   'I didn't know that till he'd been gone half an hour. I hadn't seen Ming for a bit, I'd seen Sweetheart, so I thought, he'll have taken Ming. But he hadn't because Ming came in from the garden soon after that.'

   'He said nothing to you about where he was going?'

   'No, but he often didn't. If I thought about it I'd have said he went over to the Sewing bury office or maybe to see a tenant. And when he didn't come back I thought, no, he's gone to Birmingham and he's stopping overnight.'

   'I know this is very personal, Mrs Targo,' he said, 'but I have to ask it. Yours wasn't a very happy marriage, was it?'

   Very cagily, she said, 'What makes you say that?'

   'What, when a man goes off without a word to his wife as to where he's going, no phone call to her from wherever that is or from his car on the way there? He stays away for days on end and doesn't contact her?'

   'It's just his way,' she said. 'He's always been like that. Maybe you'll say most women wouldn't put up with it but I don't care that much, I'm OK. I've got this place and the dogs and most of what I want. I don't complain.'

   It was useless pursuing this line. 'The phone call you received, the message from someone whose voice you didn't recognise, are you sure of that? Are you sure you didn't know the voice?'

   'It wasn't Eric's and it wasn't Alan's, I do know that. But I do think I'd heard it before. It sounds a funny thing to say but I think it was the voice of someone who's been here to do some work, a builder or a gardener or maybe someone to do with the animals.'

   'Can you be more specific?'

   'I don't think so. I just know it was a voice I'd heard before.'

   'Someone employed by your husband at the Sewingbury office?'

   'I never met them – well, there was only one and he left before Eric went missing. I never heard his voice.'

   Wexford sighed internally. 'The forensic tests on your car – that is the Mercedes – have been completed. It will be brought back tomorrow.'

   She nodded indifferently. 'I never drive it.' Sweetheart came padding in, its tail wagging when it saw Wexford. Mavis picked it up and held it in her arms. 'Poor lamb hasn't been out alkies for three days. But what can I do? I can't risk my life to take a dog out.'

   Targo would, Wexford thought irrelevantly. With nothing more in view than to provide her with some reassurance, nothing but to look at the quiet, empty, sunlit land, Wexford got up and approached the French windows. He put his hand to the doorknob. 'May I?'

   'You can if you want but be careful.'

   'Mrs Targo, your lion isn't going to be waiting outside, enjoying the sunshine.'

   But it was.

   Wexford stepped back, closed the door again. King was fast asleep. It lay curled up on the terrace like the big cat it was, at the foot of its marble facsimile and its woman attendant, a yard or so from him the pathetic remains of what had once been a small deer. Only the deer's almost fleshless long legs had been rejected. The rest had been King's breakfast or perhaps the previous night's supper.

'I phoned the Big Cats man from the zoo,' Wexford told Burden several hours later. 'I'm probably being unfair but I thought the Feline Foundation chap might be a bit trigger-happy. Then I sat down with Mavis in that awful pseudo-Versailles room and she kept saying over and over, "What am I going to do?" I kept telling her to do nothing, just wait for the man with the anesthetic to come. "You could make us a cup of tea," I said, but she's no Yasmin Rahman. It took her a good fifteen minutes and when the tea came it was pale grey and tepid. Made me wonder if she'd ever made tea before. While I was drinking it or pretending to, Ming the spaniel was sick.'

   'But the zoo man did come?'

   'Oh, yes, he came. By that time I was wondering how long that lion would stay asleep and what if he woke up before Big Cats arrived. However, King stayed asleep, the man came – accompanied by two other chaps, maybe what we used to call zookeepers – a shot was fired into King's flank, he rolled over quietly and sort of collapsed into unconsciousness. Mavis started screaming that he was dead and what would Eric say when he came back. I felt like saying, "He won't come back here, he'll be in custody," but of course I didn't.'

   'What's happened to the lion?'

   'Big Cats and his mates lifted him up on to a sort of stretcher and put him into the back of their van. A black van, incidentally, with Myringham Zoo's logo on the side, a giraffe gobbling up the top of a tree. One of the mates came back and cleared up the remains of the unfortunate manta. He told me that if no one claimed him they'd keep King. Apparently, they're looking for a stud male for their three lionesses.'

   'So a happy ending for King and his harem.'

   'Yes. At least there's been something good coming out of Targo's disappearance. Have we time for lunch before I go to the Rahmans?'

   'I've ordered Indian takeaway,' said Burden.

   Wexford sat behind his rosewood desk which was his own private possession and Burden – his attempts to perch himself on one corner of it meeting with a frown – took the only other comfortable chair in the office.

   'I'm going to see the Rahmans, all of them except Tamima of course, to try and lay to rest this obsession of Hannah's with Tamima's forced marriage or honor killing. But if I get nothing out of them except denials we're still left with the dilemma of where the girl is. Now what I think is that she's simply gone off with Rashid Hanif. His mother told Hannah he'd inherited "a little bit" of money. That might be ten thousand pounds or fifty, depending on whether you yourself are rich or poor. Whatever it is I don't think he's camping as his mother says he is. I think he's having a teenage honeymoon with Tamima somewhere.'

   'You mean her parents know this?'

   'I doubt it. But they must know not she's not in any of the places she's supposed to be, that is with her aunt Mrs Asia, or with the two girls who share a flat in Wands worth. In any event, I expect them to be worried and therefore glad to see me. I'm also going to ask Ahmed and his mother – she was in the house at the time while Oman was out and their father was ill – exactly what happened when Targo called at their house in Glebe Road some eight or nine hours after he'd killed Andy Norton.'

   The takeaway that arrived came from the Dal Lake, chicken korma, aloof Gobi, rice and mango chutney plus a plateful of chapattis, all brought up by Lynn Fancourt, who also provided on the tray a jug of iced water and a packet of paper napkins, rather incongruously printed with a design of holly and mistletoe berries.

   'Left over from someone's Christmas party, I suppose.'

   'You're out of date,' said Burden. 'Shops in the high street have been selling Christmas stuff since September.' He spooned out some rice and korma for himself. 'Surely,' he said, returning to the subject of Targo, 'we know why he went there. He wanted that computerized thing that switches lights and heating on.'

   'Yes, maybe. But doesn't it strike you as very odd that a man who apparently hasn't basic computer skills – like me – a man who needs help with using the equipment in his office, wants to buy a device that presumably demands those skills for its functioning? His wife is at home all day to see to switching things on and making the heating work. Also, there's the matter of why he stayed so long. He came in the afternoon – half past two or three, nobody seems sure – but it's sure when he left. Not till at least eight fifteen because the nail bar lady and Mrs Scott saw his car still there "after eight fifteen".'

   'It looks as if he didn't want to leave until after dark.'

   'Yes, but it would have been dark at five, so that doesn't really answer the question.'

   'We've thought he might have been buying clothes and maybe a suitcase and just left the car there.'

   'But we know he wasn't buying clothes, Mike. No one sold him clothes in Kingsmarkham that afternoon and if he went to Stowerton or Myringham to buy them why would he, for instance, take a taxi or a bus when he could have used his own car? I'm starting to wonder something quite different. Suppose he was with Ahmed and his mother for only an hour or two and when he left he left on foot? Took himself off somewhere by train or took a taxi to Gatwick?'

   'He can't have done that.' Burden took some more spinach on the grounds that his wife, though she wasn't there to see, would approve of healthy eating. 'He can't have gone on foot because his car was found up in north Essex.'

   'He isn't the only person in the Kingsmarkham area who can drive a car, Mike. Suppose he went off walking and someone else – later on in the dark to avoid being seen – drove the Mercedes up to within easy distance of Stinted to make it look as if he had gone there.'

   'Some pal, d'you mean? Some accomplice? How about his wife?'

   'Mavis says she never drives the Mercedes. But that means nothing. She could have driven it. Her prints were all over the interior, as they would be whether she drove it that day or not, and no one else's were. She could have taken the van down to Glebe Road at nine, say, or ten, left it somewhere not in Glebe Road and driven the Mercedes up the M11 to north Essex.'

   'Wait a minute, Reg. We always come back to the problem of whoever drove the car up to that village having to get to Stinted or, harder, get back to London. Say she drove the car away from Glebe Road at nine she'd have had a three-hour journey ahead of her, through the Dart ford Crossing, up the M25, onto the M11, past Stinted airport, out along the A120 to Taxed or Braintree and then to that village. So she gets there at midnight more or less. How does she get back?'