Uncaged

by Lucy Gordon

  “Whatever his father and I do is in the child’s best interests. Kindly try to understand that, and don’t keep pestering us.” The phone went dead.

  Megan had always disliked her self-righteous mother-in-law, but in the past she’d had the emotional stamina to cope with her. Now, with her nerves in shreds, she had no stamina left. She slammed down the receiver and thumped her fists helplessly against the wall again and again.

  “Hey, come on.” Daniel reached out and touched her shoulder. Megan swung away, staring at him. “That doesn’t help,” he said gently.

  “Nothing helps,” she said frantically. “But it relieves my feelings, until the next time.”

  “Was that your husband you were talking to?”

  “His mother. She won’t let me talk to Tommy.”

  “Let’s have a cup of tea,” he suggested, leading the way to the kitchen. She followed him and watched while he put the kettle on. “It’s good to see you up and looking better,” he said.

  “I don’t remember much about what happened. I ran away into the park...didn’t I?”

  “That’s right. I followed you there and brought you here. You were soaked. I haven’t tried to get your things back from the boarding house in case the press is still sniffing around and it leads them here.”

  “There was nothing I cared about,” she said with a shrug. “Just the things they give prisoners when they’re discharged.” She looked down at his robe and nightwear. “What happened to my nightgown?”

  “I sent it to the laundry. It isn’t back yet.”

  “There was no need to take that trouble,” she said, glancing at the washing machine. “Just throw it in.”

  He was embarrassed. Having stripped the soaking nightgown off her without a second thought, he’d discovered that an unsuspected sense of propriety had made him avoid washing it himself, even in a machine. But he flinched from explaining this, anticipating her derision. “I was afraid you’d be really ill,” he said, concentrating on the kettle, “so I called in my doctor—a woman doctor. She looked after you. Here, the tea’s ready.”

  She accepted the mug and sipped it. “I don’t like depending on you,” she said. “I’ll call my lawyer, and she’ll help me.”

  They looked at each other warily. “I’d rather help you myself,” Daniel said.

  “Look, I’m grateful to you for nursing me, but basically nothing’s changed. I just want to move out.”

  “But not today. I need to talk to you first. We have...a lot to talk about.”

  She regarded him ironically. “Didn’t we talk enough three years ago?”

  “We talked a lot, but maybe not to any good purpose. I’ve been through those interviews, and there are things I’m uneasy about.”

  “You’re...?” She regarded him in cynical hilarity. “You’re uneasy. Now I’ve heard everything. There were one or two things I was uneasy about, too, in particular, the way you deliberately distorted the truth and wrecked my life. Don’t ever imagine that pouring a few aspirin down my throat makes up for it.”

  “I wouldn’t expect it to, if I really had deliberately hidden the truth,” he said edgily. His anger was rising as he discovered how difficult it was to make any impression on her. He was used to being arrogant, dominant, as a policeman had to be. Eating humble pie came very hard to him. “But I didn’t.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said wearily. “We’ve passed that point, surely?”

  “Megan, I didn’t suppress that statement,” he said emphatically. “I simply didn’t remember it.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “You can do better than that.”

  “No, I can’t, because it’s true. I didn’t remember anything about the witness. My mind just...blanked him out.” In despair he could hear how unconvincing it sounded, and her look of derision confirmed it. Perhaps if he told her everything about his mental and emotional agony at that time, and what had caused it, she might understand. But something deep within him shied away from exposing his wounds. He’d never begged for mercy. It wasn’t his way. “I had...a lot of cases on my plate” was the best he could manage.

  “Funny, that. You always seemed to have time to interrogate me,” she observed. “I’ve never heard such a feeble excuse. What are you? Some kind of incompetent who needs your hand held? At least suppressing evidence is decisive. Losing it because you’re muddled is the action of a wimp.”

  His temper rose. “You make very glib judgments,” he snapped.

  “So did you.”

  “The evidence against you was very strong. Without that witness it was a rock-solid case.”

  “And of course you made absolutely sure it was ‘without that witness.’”

  “Will you listen to me?” he demanded hoarsely.

  “Will listening to you make any difference?” she flung back at him. “Will it give me back my reputation, three years of my life—my son? How would you know what it’s like to lose your child and think about him every moment of every day, becoming obsessed with him because they had no right to take him but he’s gone anyway?” She took a deep, shuddering breath and forced herself to calm down. “There’s no point in going through it again. You know what you did, even if you won’t admit it. There must be a way to undo the damage you did. I just...just don’t know what it is.”

  He could have given her the answer. There was only one way to clear her completely, and that was to find the real murderer. But he didn’t say so because he still wasn’t totally convinced. After the days spent studying the interviews, he had serious doubts, but that wasn’t enough. He caught her looking at him, and had an uncomfortable feeling that she’d read his thoughts.

  “I’m going to call my lawyer,” she said. “The sooner I’m away from here, the better.” She went back to the alcove and dialed.

  “Newton and Baines,” the receptionist at the other end said.

  “I’d like to speak to Janice,” Megan said urgently.

  “I’m afraid Mrs. Baines isn’t here. Her son has measles and she’s quarantined at home with him.”

  Megan ground her nails into her palm. “Mr. Newton, then.”

  “One moment.”

  She was reluctant to talk to Newton, a curt man who seemed devoid of all human sympathy, but she was desperate. When he came on the line a moment later her worst fears were realized. He listened in frozen silence as she described her predicament, then said, “I must say I think you were extremely unwise to leave your lodging.”

  “I was driven out. I can’t go back there.”

  “But you appear to have found somewhere else, so I don’t see the problem.”

  Megan tried to keep her temper. “I am temporarily in the home of Detective Inspector Keller, the man who put me away, and that is the problem.”

  “I don’t understand. What are you doing there?”

  “He rescued me from the press and brought me here. But I’ve been here nearly a week, and I don’t want to stay.”

  “Hmm.” Newton sounded bored. “Well, frankly, Mrs. Anderson, I find your point of view hard to comprehend. Having managed to get this man on your side, your sensible course would surely be to make use of him. He has, er, resources denied the rest of us. Give me the address and I’ll arrange for some money to be sent to you, but I’m afraid it won’t be much.”

  As she hung up, Daniel came out into the hall and looked at her inquiringly. “She’s away,” Megan said. “Her partner is going to send me some money.”

  “If you need money, why did you run away from the press?” he asked wryly. “They were offering to buy your story. You could have told the world just what you thought of me. I can’t think why you passed up the chance.”

  “Because my son might have seen it. I don’t want him picking up a newspaper and seeing Megan Anderson Tells All. Brian would claim it made me an unfit mother, and I have enough of a fight on my hands without giving him ammunition.”

  “Won’t he give you some financial help?”

  “Him?” Me
gan asked with withering scorn. “All he wants is for me to vanish from sight. It suited him to have me in prison where I couldn’t challenge him for Tommy. Now that I’m out, he’d like to pretend it hasn’t happened.”

  She sipped her tea in brooding silence, not noticing what he was doing until he placed a plate of bacon and eggs in front of her. “Eat up,” he said. “You haven’t had a proper meal for days, and it takes strength to hate someone as much as you hate me.”

  She thought she couldn’t touch anything he’d cooked, but after the first mouthful she couldn’t stop herself. It was delicious. When she could spare the time to speak, she said, “I’ve lived on hate. I’d almost forgotten what anything else tastes like. You’re a good cook. I’ll admit that. I suppose I really should thank you for taking care of me.”

  Daniel managed a faint grin that briefly lightened the habitual sternness of his face. “Don’t force yourself if it’s hard. Having led the press to you, I had to rescue you.”

  “I suppose your appearance on the scene gave them an even better story.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been watching the papers. One or two of them said you’d been found and escaped. One of them mentioned a ‘mystery man,’ but nobody realized it was me. We were lucky. The light was poor, and they didn’t recognize me.”

  “Well, I’ll swear that’s the first piece of luck I’ve ever had where you’re concerned.”

  “What I said still holds. I’m the best guarantee of your anonymity while we sort things out.”

  “Sort things out? What do you have in mind?”

  “You’re in a kind of limbo. We can’t just leave things there.”

  “Is that why you’ve been going through the evidence?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I’ve seen the room where you keep the tapes.”

  “Did you look at them?”

  “Only briefly. I remember it all pretty well without help. What is this, Mr. Keller? An attack of conscience?”

  “Don’t you think you could call me Daniel? Or is that too much to ask?”

  “Much too much,” she told him.

  “All right. I’ve been going through those tapes, trying to remember the details...to work out where I went wrong—”

  “Will it make any difference?”

  “I’m not sure, but I have to try. If you’re innocent—” He stopped, realizing that anything he could say would be dangerous.

  Megan was looking at him wryly. “Yes,” she said. “My innocence really causes you problems, doesn’t it?”

  “So would your guilt,” he growled. “Okay, let’s leave it for the moment.”

  * * *

  For the first few weeks in prison, Megan’s sleep had been haunted by nightmares. They’d returned when she was released, but for the past few nights, although her dreams had been feverish and disjointed, they hadn’t been painful. But this night she was gripped again by anguish. Tommy was just out of sight, but when she tried to reach him, Brian stood there, blocking her path. She tried to get past him but he fought her off. She lashed out blindly, screaming at him to let her go, but he was too strong for her.

  Suddenly his face changed and became the face of Daniel Keller. She fought harder. He didn’t fight back, but held her, saying, “Hey, come on, it’s all right, wake up. Wake up, Megan.”

  She finally managed to awaken, to find that she was in bed and Daniel really was there, holding her. “Wake up,” he said again.

  She was gasping as if she’d been running hard. “It was a bad dream,” she said. “I’m all right.”

  “Are you sure? You were screaming.”

  “I was trying to find Tommy. That’s all there is in the world now, trying to find Tommy. Brian was keeping me away, and when I tried to get past him, he turned into you.”

  He grimaced. “The villain always turns into me, doesn’t he?”

  She sighed. “You know the answer to that.” He was still holding her and she turned her body to edge away from him. His pajama jacket was much too large for her and the slight movement made it slide halfway down her arms, exposing her breasts. She drew in her breath and snatched at the jacket, pulling the edges together at her throat.

  Daniel snatched his hands away and rose from the bed, moving backward quickly, staring at her in dismay. Somehow he made an excuse and got out, almost running to his own room. There he shut the door firmly and sat down on the bed, trying to stop himself from shaking. He stayed that way for a while, then went downstairs, hoping that a snack might restore his sense of proportion. But that didn’t work, either.

  He was thunderstruck, shattered by the unexpectedness of the moment and what it had done to him. It had been so fast, leaving him no time to steel himself against it.

  Until now it had never occurred to him to see Megan as a sexual being. He’d loved his wife deeply, and her brutal death had numbed him to all normal instincts and sensations, so that for the past three years he hadn’t desired any woman. He’d vaguely assumed that this would continue.

  In one blinding instant everything had changed, not because he’d seen Megan’s naked breasts, but because she’d hastened to cover them. That instinctive movement had betrayed an awareness of herself as a woman in the presence of a man, and by rejecting the possibility of sexuality between them, she had, paradoxically, made him conscious of it.

  Memories and impressions crowded in on him: the sight of her in the park, her thin, sodden nightgown clinging to her; the feel of her near naked body in his arms as he’d carried her to the car; the sight of her pale, smooth flesh as he’d stripped off the nightgown and dried her. All these things had seemed to pass him by, leaving him free to act impersonally. But in fact they’d been lying in wait until the moment he was ready to recognize them. Now that moment had arrived, and suddenly there they were, running on feet as soft and silent as a tiger’s, to spring at him out of the darkness. His senses were pervaded by her, possessed by her. His flesh seemed to sing with the memory of her. Every encounter had imprinted itself on his subconscious, waiting to be played back later with such vividness that it was like living them all over again.

  He could almost have laughed out loud at the irony. It was a disaster, a hilarious disaster: a black, bitter joke against him. Was there a woman in the world who hated him more? Did he have a more relentless enemy? How crazy for him to become so blazingly aware of her! How ridiculous for his loins to ache for her, his heart to beat faster at the thought of her beauty. Ridiculous. Illogical. Outrageous. Absurd. Catastrophic. Something that shouldn’t happen, that couldn’t happen.

  But it had happened.

  * * *

  For the rest of the night Megan lay very still in the darkness, listening to Daniel moving about the house. She heard him return to his bedroom and leave again after only a few minutes. There was the sound of his footsteps going downstairs, followed by the faint clatter of china in the kitchen. Then he went into the back room, and Megan heard the video-player being switched on. She could even make out the sound of her own voice, faint but perceptible.

  She found it was easy to follow what was happening to him, what he was thinking. She’d been desired by too many men not to recognize the signs. The revelation that he wanted her had been like a flash of lightning, illuminating the landscape for one fierce, blazing second, showing her undreamed-of possibilities.

  Newton’s words came back to her. Having managed to get this man on your side, your sensible course would surely be to make use of him.

  She’d dismissed the suggestion, but that was before she discovered that she had power over Daniel Keller. It had been there in his eyes, shocking him as much as it had shocked her. She’d seen that, too. Right this minute he was trying to fight it. His restless movements told her that. But he wouldn’t succeed, because she would make sure he didn’t.

  She had a strange sensation of seeing everything in her life in clear, hard outline. What she was planning would once have been anathema to her, but prison had taugh
t her endurance and survival. She’d always been a strong woman, but now she was strong enough to do anything she had to.

  “That’s enough,” she whispered to herself. “You’ve been behaving like a victim, and now it’s got to stop. It’s going to stop. That man is your lifeline, and you’re going to use him. He ruined your life, now he can put it right.”

  She sat up in bed. She was no longer talking out loud, but the words had mounted to a roar inside her head.

  He deprived me of my reputation and my son. Now he’s going to get them back for me and I don’t care what I have to do to make him.

  Four

  Mr. Newton’s check for two hundred pounds arrived the next morning. With it was a letter regretting that the amount could not be more, but the firm had only limited funds for such purposes, and while her compensation was still being negotiated...et cetera, et cetera.

  Megan stared at the check indignantly. She’d hoped for a reasonable amount to give her a little independence. “He’s not much help, is he?” Daniel asked, reading over her shoulder.

  “None at all,” she answered. “I dare say I can get some social assistance payments—”

  “And be stared at,” he reminded her. “Then the press will get to hear of it, and it’ll all start again.”

  “I’ll have to chance it. There’s nothing else I can do.”

  Daniel knew he was standing on the verge of a precipice. He must get her out of here quickly. Every moment she was here she was a danger to him. The words he ought to speak whirled in his brain. I’ll lend you some money—enough to get you somewhere to live—away from here. Say it now. Make it irrevocable while you still can.

  At last he spoke. “You’re welcome to stay here, but I suppose you’ll throw that offer back in my teeth.”

  Megan hesitated for one split second on the edge of the resolution she’d made in the darkness the night before. Then the die was cast. “I might not,” she said casually, and took an angry pleasure in seeing that he was taken aback yet reluctantly glad. He looked as if he hadn’t slept all night.