Free Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box by Ruth Rendell

to admit it's hard, guv. While Yasmin was going on about the virtues of being a housewife, Tamima came in. Yasmin said something to her in Urdu, I suppose it was, and whatever it was she looked mutinous – well, resentful. I couldn't help wondering if it had been something about the boyfriend they don't approve of . . .'
       'Come on, Hannah, that's pure guesswork or else your Urdu's come on a lot.'
       'OK, you're right, of course. I couldn't say anything to Tamima in her parents' presence, though I will. As soon as the chance comes along I will. Anyway, one of the brothers arrived and Yasmin started busying herself getting his food – I noticed she didn't get Tamima's, suppose she had to wait till the men were done. Oh, I know, but you can't excuse everything in every culture. So I left. It wasn't exactly satisfactory, was it, guv?'
       He was preoccupied because he had been thinking, before she came in, of times long past. He asked himself how astonished he would have been if, when he was young, some soothsayer had told him forced marriage would one day be an issue in England. The answer was simple – he wouldn't have believed it.
       But Hannah's visit hadn't been exactly satisfactory. It hadn't been satisfactory at all. It seemed to him that she and Jenny had manufactured a serious problem out of nothing. A girl had chosen to leave school at sixteen as the law said she could. No doubt she wanted to earn some money, the way they did. That same girl had been seen walking with a schoolmate who happened to be male. Out of this, those two had composed a tragic romance. The girl was in love with a boy but snatched away from him into a forced marriage with a cousin. Perhaps she resisted, ran away with the boy, the result of which was that the two of them were murdered in horrible circumstances by one of the girl's brothers. It was a good thing neither of them knew of his sighting of Eric Targo, otherwise they would have hauled him into the plot, as the hired assassin employed by the brother.
       He believed none of it. It was more than ever a pleasure to go home now work had begun on his garden. Andy Norton had done two afternoons' work on the flower-beds and twice mowed the lawn. No one had got around to pruning the roses the requisite six weeks prior to blooming so this year they were a failure. But red and yellow begonias were out in the tubs and purple and red salvias in the borders, now freed from weeds. Dora told him the names, otherwise he would have had no idea. It was enough for him to look, admire and be soothed. To forget for half an hour Targo the stalker, the murderer, the dog lover with the birthmark. The birthmark which was now gone. He'd like to know, he thought, when that naevus was removed and why, considering, to say the least, the man was no longer young.

Chapter 6

    He was to be best man at Roger Phillips's wedding. It was a sign, Wexford thought, of the almost friendless state the man found himself in, that Roger, who had known him for less than a year, should have no one closer available for this 'best friend' role. And he wasn't much better himself. He would have been lonely in Brighton if there had been less work to do and fewer books to read. And if he hadn't met Helen Rushford. He had been taking her out once or twice a week for the past three months.
       Couples saved for years to give themselves a luxury wedding. He thought now of his younger daughter's fabulous feast, the marquee, the champagne and flowers, the dinner for two hundred. It had been different in the days when Phillips got married, a small affair paid for by the bride's father, the reception in a church hall, beer and lemonade to drink. No one drank wine then, sherry maybe and port but none of what they would have called 'table' wines. No gift lists deposited at a West End department store. No presents picked out and ordered on the Internet. Guests gave toast racks, tea trays or modest cheques. Wexford asked Helen what