Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page B

he reached the grass and trees he would let the spaniel off the lead, first stroking its sleek golden head. He learnt a lot about Targo in the few days he watched him, the stiff way he walked, strutted really, the cockiness that might have been put on for Wexford's benefit but which Wexford felt was natural to him. Then there was the attention he gave to the dog, stopping once or twice to pat it and say something, 'Good boy' or 'honey' perhaps, but Wexford was out of earshot.
       After a few weeks Targo ceased to walk his dog that way. He had made his point, whatever that was. About that time a Kingsmarkham woman was murdered by strangling. Her name was Maureen Roberts and there was no doubt her husband was her killer. He was in their house when she died, he made no attempt to defend himself and on the following day he confessed to the crime. It was very different from the killing of Elsie Carroll. But she had been strangled. The murder weapon was one of her own stockings. The day after Christopher Roberts, her husband, was charged with her murder Targo reappeared, walking his dog to the Kingsbrook footpath past Wexford's window.
       'This time,' Wexford said to Burden at lunch next day, 'I was looking out of the window. I mean, anyone passing could see me. I'd gone to the window to open it. I didn't expect to see Targo because it seemed he had given up exercising his dog that way. But there he was, strutting along, bending down right outside my window to pat the dog on the head, and then looking right up at me. He had a blue-and-white-striped wool scarf wound round and round his neck.'
       'Chelsea,' said Burden.
       'Oh, possibly.' If he had taken the interest in football advocated by Alison he would have known about things like that. But he did know that it was the same scarf as Targo had been wearing when he went into the Rahmans' house in Glebe Road the other day. 'He didn't smile,' he went on. 'He seldom does but he stared at me and opened his eyes very wide. I knew he meant me to think he'd killed Maureen Roberts.'
       'He must be mad.'
       'At least you're not saying I must be mad.'
       'No, but I'm tending that way.'
       'It was a strangling, you see, and he meant to take the strangling of victims as his trademark, whether he did it or not. And in this case he certainly didn't do it. Well, he winked at me and then he walked on, the same walk he had always taken until a few weeks before. When he came to the field and the path he bent down, stroked the dog's head and let him off the lead and that was the last I saw of him for a long time. He moved away from Kingsmarkham to Birmingham where his mother came from. He had relatives there and soon one very good friend. He started a driving school and I thought I'd seen the last of him.
       'I had until a few years later when the stalking began again.'
       Burden was giving him the sort of look he would have given his wife when she raised once again the subject of Tamima Rahman. It was compounded of those two opposites, patience and exasperation.
       'You aren't going to want to hear any more of this, are you?'
       'There's more?'
       'Oh, yes, lots more, but I'm not suggesting telling you now.'
       They had left the restaurant and walked across to the Broadbridge Botanical Gardens. There on a seat along the main central path which led to the arboretum and the subtropical house, they sat down and contemplated the artificial lake with its island, its ducks and its two black swans. A squirrel ran down one tree, sat up on its haunches for a moment on the grass, before running up the trunk of another. A dog began to bark at the foot while the squirrel stared at it with loathing, making angry chattering sounds.
       'I've got to go back,' Burden said. 'It's gone two and I'm due in court at half past when Scott Molloy comes up for perverting the course of justice. See you.'
       Wexford watched him go, then got up himself. He seldom visited the