Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box by Ruth Rendell Page A

all this?'
       'I made it my business to know. Just as I believe he made it his business to know about me. You see, if I was obsessed with him, as you'll say I was, he was obsessed with me. Oh, I don't mean in any sort of homosexual way, I mean he got it into his head that it would be – well, fun, to have a policeman in a way in his power, someone who knew what he'd done and, incidentally, would do in the future, but who could do nothing about it. But then I never suspected, for instance, that he might be a psychopath. I never considered he might be a serial killer and Elsie Carroll only the first of his victims or an early one .'
       Burden began to expostulate, as he had done on the previous occasion this had been discussed. 'But you'd no evidence. Just a look and a man being fond of his dog. You'd nothing.'
       Wexford shook his head. 'I had the stalking. It started again. I'd just got married and we were living in one of those houses near the Kingsbrook. You remember.'
       'Sure I do. There was a meadow at the end of your garden that ran down to the river.' Burden added rather sadly, 'It's all built on now.'
       'Well, people have to have places to live,' said Wexford. 'Targo began exercising his dog down there. It was the same dog, the golden spaniel, and it must have been very old by then. There were a good many ways of getting into that meadow, one of them being the Kingsbrook towpath and another a gate to a path off the high street, but he chose to pass my house and take the footpath that ran down to the right of it. I got used to seeing him and I didn't like it.'
       'What, just because he was walking his dog?'
       'At that time, Mike, he was living – alone, I think – in his mother's old house at 8 Glebe Road. To have come into the meadow by any of a dozen entry points would have been easier than walking uphill to my house and using that footpath.'
       'What did he do when he saw you?'
       'Well, of course, he seldom did see me. It was summer when this started and very early in the morning. I'd see him from my bedroom window just after I'd got up. Sometimes he'd pause and look up at my windows the way he did when I had that single room. He always had a scarf tied round his neck. He always stared. Once and only once I was getting into my car – it was later because autumn had come – he said good morning and I said good morning and after that the stalking stopped. He didn't stay long. He sold the place he'd inherited and went back to Birmingham.'
       'If it was stalking,' said Burden, 'you'd nothing to go on for calling him a psychopath.'
       'I had the man who sneaked across the Carrolls' garden at seven o'clock, the short man, the man who lived so near the Carrolls that he could have left his sleeping child, done the deed and been back home in ten minutes.'
       'It's a bit thin, isn't it, for calling someone a psychopath and a serial killer? Just that one murder and that of a woman he'd never even spoken to?'
       'Ah, but there were his fantasy murders. I mean the killings he wanted me to think he'd done. Yes, I'm serious. Maureen Roberts, for a start. The next real one – as far as I know – was years later after he'd done rather well for himself – inherited his mother's place, had money from that Tracy – bought a house and set himself up running a boarding kennels. You'll remember the case. Well, I know you do. You mentioned it the other day, that poor chap who was strangled in the botanical gardens. Billy Kenyon. Remember?'
       'You mean you think Targo was responsible for that? '
       'More than "think", Mike. I'm sure.'
       'Are you going to tell me?'
       'Maybe I'll wait till you ask.'

Chapter 7

    She was behind the counter at the checkout.
       'And it wasn't even Tosco,' Burden said, as if the size or status of the supermarket where Tamima Rahman was working made any significant difference. 'It was one of those Indian places where you can buy everything you can