Uncaged (4 page)

“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 taught 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.

M
r. 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.

“Then you’ll stay?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I may as well. I’ll need some clothes. Can you cash this check for me?”

“No problem.”

As she had nothing to wear to go shopping, Daniel went upstairs and returned with a few basic things, including a dress and a coat. “These used to belong to my wife,” he said briefly. “They’re all I have of hers. You’ll find them a little out of fashion, but serviceable.”

“Don’t worry,” she told him, “I haven’t been keeping up with fashion.”

Half of her mind noted that they were in the style that had been popular when she’d gone to prison, but she was too preoccupied to read any significance into this. Daniel’s wife had been sturdier in build than herself, and not as tall, but with the help of a needle and thread she managed to produce a passable result.

Daniel drove her into town, well away from the area where he was known.

Despite everything, Megan’s spirits rose at being out and about after three years of gray walls. She received a nasty shock when she saw the prices, and realized that two hundred pounds would stretch even less than she’d thought. She resolved the problem by diving into a shop that Daniel would have overlooked. “It’s only secondhand stuff in here,” he objected.

“There can be treasures in secondhand shops if you know how to look,” she told him.

She chose slacks and sweaters and a couple of dresses that could easily be altered. The only things she bought new were underwear and shoes. When she’d finished, she had thirty pounds left. “Enough for another pair of shoes,” Daniel suggested.

“No, I have something else in mind. Will you wait for me here?”

She slipped away and found a shop selling makeup and perfume. She didn’t want Daniel to know the details of what she bought there, but she was providing herself with vital weapons in her campaign to turn him into her instrument.

At home she offered him his wife’s dress and coat back, but he refused with a brief shake of the head and a curt gesture that told her the subject was closed.

Gathering her purchases, Megan went up to her own room to work at altering the secondhand clothes. She was a skilled needlewoman, having picked up the hobby in prison, and when she’d finished, she had a reasonable wardrobe, one in which she looked good.

When she was ready, she dressed and applied makeup, but only very discreetly. Daniel was no fool and would be instantly suspicious of an obvious come-on. So when she went downstairs in the late afternoon she was conservatively dressed in a plain skirt and simple, unrevealing top, with makeup so subtly laid on that it might almost have been natural.

The door to the video room was closed, but she could hear sounds coming from behind it. The words were muffled, but it was her own voice, followed by Daniel’s, then clicks, as if someone had stopped the tape to wind it back. He played the same section three times over before he was satisfied. Megan went quietly away into the kitchen.

Half an hour later she knocked on the door and called, “I’ve made something to eat.”

He grunted his thanks for the food she set in front of him, and ate in abstracted silence. Megan left him to his thoughts until the meal was over, then said, “Did you find those tapes illuminating?”

“Not very. I’ve been over them so often now they’re not making any impact anymore.” He looked at her abruptly, as if he’d made a sudden resolution. “Megan, listen to me. There may be a way I can help you, but only if we go about it properly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want you to let me interview you again...like I did before.”

“Oh, no,” she said at once. “You’ve got all you want on those tapes.”

“That’s just what I haven’t got. The interviews I did then are bad, clumsy. I missed so much. I want to do it differently...the way I should have done then.” When he saw her torn by indecision, he demanded urgently, “What have you got to lose?”

She shrugged. “You’re right. What do you want me to do?”

“Come with me.” He led her into the living room and pointed to the sofa, while he took an armchair. “Sit and face me. Imagine it’s three years ago. We’re talking for the first time. Do you remember that?”

“Yes. I’d been out on a date for an escort agency. I came home to the apartment block and found the police there. Henry Grainger, the landlord, had been found dead that evening. He’d been killed the night before, but it was some hours before he was discovered. I went up to my apartment, and after a while there was a knock on the door. When I opened it, you were outside.”

In his mind he saw the door being opened by the supremely beautiful, confident woman. She’d been wearing a red figure-hugging dress, and her glorious brown hair had spilled over her bare shoulders. In his mind he reproduced the face, its smoky sensuality skillfully accentuated by the careful makeup, and he recalled how the mere sight of that casually flaunted beauty had made his hackles rise.
But why?

He took up the thread. “I told you Grainger had been found dead, and asked you about a quarrel you’d had with him the night before. Tell me about that quarrel now...as if it were then.”

“He came to see me to remind me that I was behind with the rent. I told him I’d be able to pay in a couple of days, and he said, why didn’t I pay him ‘in kind.’ That was how he put it.”

“Did you ask him exactly what he meant by that?”

“There was no need. He’d made the suggestion before. He was always smarming around me, trying to touch me, making suggestive remarks. He was a horrid little man. He disgusted me, but I couldn’t get rid of him.”

“Why didn’t you move to another address?”

“I wanted to, but I couldn’t find a decent place at a rent I could afford. I found out that he was charging me a lower rent than the others in the block, to induce me to stay. I had no choice. He kept hinting that I ought to be ‘nice’ to him to make up the extra. I didn’t do it, but I felt trapped.”

“What about your husband—alimony—that sort of thing?”

“My husband was furious with me for taking our son. He was trying to starve me back to him.”

“Where was your son that evening?”

“He was spending the night with the family of one of his school friends. He stayed the next night, too, because I was going to be out.”

“Doing ‘escort’ work?”

“Yes, and let me make it plain that my escort work was just that—escort, and nothing else. I didn’t do ‘private’ work on the side.”

“Was there nothing else you could do?”

“Like what? I left school as soon as I could. I was a model at sixteen. Jobs are hard to come by even for people with qualifications. I did a little modeling—”

“Do,” he interrupted.

“What was that?”

“You
do
a little modeling. This is three years ago. We’ve been allowing ourselves to forget that, and we shouldn’t. It’s important.”

“You can’t turn the clock back like that,” she protested.

“It’s the only way we can make this work. You and I have just met for the first time. We never saw each other before. There are no...ghosts...between us.”

“No ghosts, or no guilt?” she challenged him. “Can you wipe your guilt out by pretending it doesn’t exist?”

He gritted his teeth. “We have to pretend that
everything
doesn’t exist.”

She sat regarding him for a moment. “All right,” she said at last. “In that case, I have some changes to make.” She hurried from the room and went upstairs. She was gone half an hour. It was longer than she’d intended, but she wanted to get everything just right. What would have been wrong earlier in the evening was right now. When she was satisfied, she smiled at herself in the mirror. She’d made her decision. Now it was time to carry it through.

She had her reward when she returned to him and saw the shock in his eyes as he took in the change in her. Gone were the demure skirt and top, replaced by a pair of figure-hugging slacks. The knitted top buttoned down the front and had a low neck that just revealed the swelling of her breasts. The glamour had been laid onto her face like a mask. “That wasn’t necessary,” he said roughly.

“Oh, but it was. You’re trying to reproduce that first interview as closely as possible, but it wasn’t pale, dreary Megan Anderson you interviewed. It was Tiger Lady, and you hated her. Come on, Daniel, admit it. You hated everything about her, hated her so much that—”

“That’s enough,” he broke in harshly.

“No, it isn’t. You’re the one who wanted to relive the past, so let’s relive that bit—the bit where you hated me at first sight.”

He hated her now for the wounds she was reopening and the turmoil she was creating inside him. He couldn’t tell her that reliving the past had become suddenly difficult. Back in those days he’d looked on her exotic beauty with indifference, his heart buried, his senses dead. Now his senses had flamed back to life. She was forbidden fruit: forbidden by every law of common sense and sheer self-preservation. But last night the desire to touch her had come blazing out of nowhere to inflame and engulf him. And the more he fought it, the more it possessed him.

“All right,” he said at last, with an effortful assumption of indifference. “Let’s do it this way. You were saying that you do a little modeling.”

She moved languidly across the room and dropped into the sofa opposite him, leaning back and looking at him. Everything about her was graceful. “I don’t earn much by modeling,” she said. “I’m over twenty-five, way past my best.”

He studied his notes, refusing to look at her. “Tell me about what happened between you and Grainger that evening.”

“Nothing happened. That was the point. Nothing was ever going to happen, but he couldn’t get that into his head. I said no in a dozen different ways, but he wouldn’t accept it. Then he started trying to paw me.”

“And you reacted violently, according to your neighbors.”

“I yelled at him, yes. I called him all the names I could think of. Why not?”

“You did a bit more than call him names, didn’t you?”

“I told you, he tried to paw me. There was a struggle. I threw him out.”

“And called something after him as he went downstairs?”

“I told him he wasn’t fit to live. I should think the whole building must have heard me. But I didn’t kill him.”

“What did you do when he’d gone?”

“I dashed out. I wanted to get as far away from the building as possible. I walked and walked for hours. I couldn’t—can’t—afford a car. I ended up on Wimbledon Common,
where someone saw me.
”

“Where someone saw a woman who answered your general description,” Daniel reminded her.

“At exactly the time I said I was there.”

“It helps, but it’s not conclusive.”

“I was there. Your forensic experts said Grainger died at three o’clock in the morning. I left the building at midnight and I didn’t get back until seven.”

“Unless you’d taken a taxi.”

“So now you’ve got a taxi driver who dropped me at the block in time for me to kill Grainger?”

“No, but I’ve only your word for it that you ever left the building.”

“Plus the witness on Wimbledon Common,” she insisted.

“All right. Plus the witness on Wimbledon Common. What happened when you got back?”

“The room was still a mess from our struggle. I tidied it up and wiped the corner of the mantelpiece. He’d fallen against it when we struggled, and it split his lip.”

“You didn’t tell me that the first time,” Daniel said, stopping her quickly.

“Yes, I did.”

“Not at the first meeting. You didn’t mention it until two days later, after I’d had forensic tests done on the clothes you were wearing that night, and found Grainger’s blood.”

“Thus proving that I invented the story of the struggle to account for his blood?”

“Proving nothing. I just wished you’d mentioned it earlier.”

“I was confused and upset. Haven’t you ever been in such a state that you couldn’t think straight? No, of course not. You wouldn’t begin to know what it’s like.”

“I might,” he said after a moment.

“Not you.”

“You criticized me for making glib judgments, Megan. Be careful you don’t make them yourself.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to make my judgments about you. Three years.”

“But you didn’t know all the facts,” he said quickly.

“So tell me the facts. Let’s talk about you, Daniel.”

There it was again, the chance to make her understand how ill and distraught he’d been three years ago, and perhaps remove that cold, judgmental look from her eyes, perhaps even soften her so that she would let him reach out and—

“This isn’t doing any good,” he said harshly. “We should try to keep to the point. Grainger’s blood was found in your apartment.”