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

think of in tins and they sell hall meat. They call them corner shops only it's not on a corner. Just one checkout and she was at it.'
       'There's nothing we can do, Mike,' Wexford said. 'We couldn't stop her leaving school, we couldn't make the Rahmans apply to a sixth-form college and we can't ban the child from working. She's over sixteen.'
       'But such work. It wouldn't be so bad if it was some sort of office job or something which involved training.'
       'What a snob you are. I suppose the proprietor's a family friend. He offered the job and she was glad to take it. It may be only temporary.'
       'Jenny says she's going to this place – it's called the Raja Emporium – and she's going to ask her. She could hardly believe it when I told her.'
       Jenny must do as she likes, Wexford thought. If she wants to make private enquiries, let her, but I'm having no police interference. She is determined to stick to her romance, it's her own Romeo and Juliet, and she's hanging on to it. I never would have thought her so foolish. Three weeks passed before he heard any more and by that time it had largely passed from his mind. A boy had been stabbed in the street and the perpetrator, Neil Dusan, a Molloy gang member, was in custody while Kieran Pritchard lingered between life and death. A five-year-old had disappeared and turned up with an aunt in Macclesfield but not before everyone in Wexford's team had abandoned their other work to go out hunting for him. A petrol station owner had installed spikes to spring up from the tarmac if a customer left without paying for his fuel. One driver had called the police, the second had accepted the damage to his car and paid up, but the third had pulled a gun on the owner who was now in hospital with serious if not life-threatening injuries. Wexford had no time to concern himself with Tamima Rahman who had committed no offence, had nothing illegal done to her and made no complaints.
       But meanwhile Jenny Burden had been several times to the Raja Emporium and extracted information from Tamima. Though the corner shop was busy in the evenings, for long hours only the occasional shopper visited the place and few who did weren't immigrants or the children of immigrants. Jenny wasn't quite the only white customer. On one occasion a youngish man with brown hair and blue eyes was in there, filling his wire basket with a selection of spices, his eyes lingering too long on the pretty Asian girl at the checkout. It was Tamima who lost patience with Jenny's visits but the proprietor, apparently her father's brother, was too good a businessman to tolerate her attempts to drive her former teacher away. His checkout girl got a severe dressing-down in Jenny's presence.
       Wexford found her giving an indignant report of what had happened to Dora when he got home one evening.
       'She gives the excuse that she needs the money. Apparently she's not satisfied with the pocket money she gets from her father. She insists it's temporary but she has no idea what other work is being arranged for her. If any is. It wasn't worth doing anything better than working for "uncle", she says, because her mother is taking her to Pakistan on holiday. They'll be away at least a month, staying with relatives, and she's looking forward to it. Why not look on this as a kind of gap year, I said, and get your parents to apply to Carisbrooke for next October. She didn't answer for a bit and then she said that wouldn't be possible. I asked her if she was still seeing her boyfriend.'
       'That was a bit much, Jenny,' Wexford said. 'It wasn't exactly your business, was it?'
       'You wouldn't say that if she were a white girl. You've got inverted race prejudice, you know. Caught it off Hannah Goldsmith, I suspect. I know the boy, he's a nice boy. His name's Rashid Hanif. He's going on to sixth-form college, but he'd be encouraged to. He's male.'
       'Well, is she seeing him?'
       'She says she hasn't got a