Читать онлайн книгу «Uncaged» автора Lucy Gordon
Uncaged
Lucy Gordon
She Wanted Her Child Back Daniel Keller never should have handled that homicide case. Still grieving over the accident that had stolen his wife and son, the dazed policeman had nevertheless testified - and unwittingly convicted - an innocent woman of murder. Megan Anderson had spent three years in prison, learning to hate Daniel Keller.Because of him, she'd lost the only thing that mattered: her beloved child. Now she was free, but her battle had just begun. Megan would see that Daniel got her son back for her. And she would fight her own forbidden desire… for the man who had destroyed her life.
Uncaged
Lucy Gordon
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Prologue (#u322b2833-1ec7-5dcb-bba3-0fb97aec95d4)
Chapter One (#u40c9b692-0f9c-5de7-92b5-9fa0def3c856)
Chapter Two (#u0576f7a2-f726-5d74-884d-30654ca6195b)
Chapter Three (#u7a9a0d01-fbe3-5378-9345-19e60b031d71)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
“Megan Elizabeth Anderson, you have been found guilty of the shocking crime of murder. Have you anything to say before sentence is passed?”
The woman in the dock lifted her head. After three months in prison she was still beautiful. If anything, the way her hair was pulled back accentuated her fine bone structure with its high cheekbones and the hollows beneath. Even without makeup, it was still a lovely face, although the dark shadows under her eyes hinted at sleepless nights.
Some of the public who’d crowded in on this last day of her trial had heard of her. Once she’d been a top model, but she’d given it up when she’d become a mother, and settled into a life of domesticity with her son and her businessman husband. She’d seemed the woman with everything—money, a delightful child and a perfect marriage. But the marriage had broken up a year ago, and now she was on trial for murder.
Some of them noticed that Brian Anderson wasn’t there now. Despite their separation, he’d sat through every day of the trial as the evidence piled up against his estranged wife, but he obviously hadn’t been able to face this last day with its inevitable verdict. The onlookers wondered what she felt about his desertion, but no one could tell. After the first glance at his empty place, she’d averted her gaze and never looked again. A cool customer, they said.
One man who’d made sure of being present was Detective Inspector Daniel Keller, the policeman who’d made the case against her. He’d given his evidence in a hard, expressionless voice, and taken his place in the body of the court. He was here now for the verdict. He was in his early thirties, with a face that might have been handsome, except that something had happened to it. It was as though he’d fitted a cage over his features, a cage made of harshness and grim determination that had subtly reshaped every line, crushing out human vulnerability. He didn’t look at Megan Anderson, but stared into the distance. He was deathly pale and seemed strung up with tension, as though only an almighty effort of nerves kept him going. Eerily, the prisoner wore exactly the same expression.
“Have you anything to say?” the judge repeated.
Megan Anderson took a step forward and gripped the edge of the dock. “I’ve only one thing to say,” she declared in a voice that rang around the courtroom. “And that’s what I’ve said from the start, and what I’ll say until my dying day. I am innocent of murder. As for those who falsely put me here, may God forgive them, because I never will!”
At last something seemed to reach Detective Inspector Keller. He looked at her sharply, as though his head had been wrenched around by force. No one doubted that her words were meant for him. She was looking at him with hate, and now the spectators had no doubt that she was a murderess, because if she could have struck him dead she would have done so. He returned her gaze with harsh stoicism. For a moment, the bitter, jagged atmosphere between them was stronger than anything else in the courtroom.
Even the judge was taken aback, but he recovered himself and addressed the prisoner again. “You will do yourself no good by these outbursts,” he told her severely. “You’ve made your allegations and the jury has rejected them and found you guilty of murder—rightly, in my opinion. I have no choice but to sentence you to imprisonment for the rest of your life.”
An hour later Megan Anderson was sitting in a van with black sides and high barred windows, on her way to start a life sentence in prison. At the same moment Detective Inspector Keller was locked in his bedroom with a bottle of whiskey, determinedly seeking oblivion.
One
“Frankly, I think you’ve been very lucky,” the policewoman said.
Megan stared at her. “Lucky? I was imprisoned for a murder I didn’t commit, and after stealing three years of my life they finally admit they were wrong, and you say I’m lucky?”
The policewoman gave her a hard look. “If you listened carefully to what the appeal court judges said, they didn’t actually admit they were wrong. You got off on a technicality.”
“Oh, yes, a technicality.” Megan seethed. “They discovered that there was a witness to my alibi all the time, but a corrupt policeman had suppressed it. You call that a technicality?”
Before her tormentor could answer, the door opened and Janice Baines, Megan’s lawyer, came in. They were in an anteroom of the court, where three appeal judges had just ordered Megan’s release. She’d arrived in a prison van, but she would leave in Janice’s car a free woman—whatever that might mean.
“There’s a crowd outside,” Janice observed. “A lot of them are journalists.”
“I’m not talking to journalists,” Megan insisted. “I just want to be left alone.”
“That’s a good line,” the policewoman said cynically. “You can sell your story for twice the price if you play hard to get.”
“Get me out of here, Janice,” Megan said bitterly, “before I commit a real murder.”
“My car’s around the back,” Janice said, taking her arm and steering her out into the corridor.
There were a couple of journalists covering the rear entrance, and they made a dash when they saw Megan. She managed to get in the car and slam the door, but they hammered on the roof, shouting questions, and one of them pressed a checkbook against the window. Luckily Janice was a skilled driver, and in seconds they’d left the pack behind.
“She as good as said I was guilty,” Megan said furiously. “A technicality, my God!”
“Look, I don’t want to spoil your day of triumph,” Janice said after a moment, “but I’m your lawyer, and I have to give you the facts. I’d have been happier if they’d given you a ringing endorsement of innocence.”
“But there was a witness who said he saw me miles away at the moment Henry Grainger was killed,” Megan said wildly.
“Not quite,” Janice interrupted. “In his statement he said he saw a woman who answered your general description, but it was too dark for him to make out details. If he’d appeared at your original trial, the jury might easily have decided that it didn’t prove anything. The appeal court released you today because Detective Inspector Keller concealed the statement instead of giving it to the defense, as he should have done. I hate to be brutal, Megan, but it was a technicality, and that’s going to affect what happens now.”
There was a silence before Megan said, “I saw Brian’s lawyer in court.”
“Yes, I talked to him before I collected you. I’m afraid he said that nothing’s changed. Brian still thinks you’re guilty, and he’s not going to give Tommy back to you. He won’t even let you see him.”
“Oh, God.” Megan’s words were almost a scream as she buried her head in her hands and sat shaking.
Janice gave her a sympathetic glance before returning her attention to the road. “We’ll fight it,” she said. “Don’t despair yet.”
Megan raised her head abruptly. She was calm again. “I’m not despairing,” she said. “If I didn’t give way to despair during three years in that place, I’m not going to do it now.”
“That’s the spirit.”
* * *
“Frankly, I think you’ve been very lucky,” Detective Chief Inspector Masters said.
Daniel Keller stared at him. “Lucky? I’m being kicked off the force and you say I’m lucky?”
“You’re lucky to have only been suspended on paid leave. You haven’t been kicked off the force, although if I had my way you would have been.”
“Oh, yes,” Daniel said. “It’s no secret that you’ve been looking for ways to get rid of me ever since you came here two years ago.”
“I don’t like mavericks, Keller. I don’t like loners. I don’t like officers who undermine my authority by tossing the book aside whenever it suits them, or officers who suppress evidence and then get caught. I don’t like seeing a murderess go free because one of my men fouled up. It’s a black mark against this station.”
It’s a black mark against your possible promotion, Daniel thought. That’s what’s really worrying you. But all he said was, “Who says she’s a murderess? The appeal court cleared her.”
“Oh, no, they didn’t. They very carefully stopped short of declaring her innocent, but because you cut corners they had to let her go. That makes me angry.”
Masters was a red-faced, choleric man who seemed to be angered by everything in sight. But in particular he was infuriated by the tall, rangily built man in the battered leather jacket and old jeans standing on the other side of his desk. Daniel Keller was in deep trouble, yet instead of looking chastened, he regarded his superior coolly, his lips twisted in an arrogant half smile that only just escaped being a jeer.
“It makes me angry,” Masters repeated. “So do these headlines.”
He waved an impatient hand at the newspapers on his desk. One headline read Suppression Of Evidence Leads To Release. Another, Why Did He Conceal Evidence? Witness Asks, Why Wasn’t I Called To Testify?
“It’s either incompetence or corruption, and I won’t tolerate either,” Masters snapped. “By rights you should be out of here for good, but I’ve had to listen to a lot of bleeding hearts stuff from your colleagues about how you were under strain from ‘personal problems’ at the time—although how that justifies fouling up, I don’t know.”
Daniel went rigid with distaste as his most painful wounds were casually flicked by this gross creature. “My problems were—and remain—my own affair,” he said stiffly. “I never asked for allowances to be made for me on that account.”
“So I should think. Clear your desk and go. And don’t come back until you’re sent for.”
“Which will be never if you have your way,” Daniel said ironically.
“As you say.”
When Daniel had gone, a genial, lazy-looking, middle-aged man pushed open a glass door to enter Masters’s office. “That was a bit rough, wasn’t it, Chief?” he asked. “They weren’t just any old personal problems. His wife and son—”
“We all have things to bear, Canvey,” Masters said without looking up. “Get back to your work.”
Canvey retreated, but instead of returning to work he slipped downstairs and waylaid Daniel as he was leaving. “You’ll be back,” he said reassuringly. “Probably do you good to have a rest. It’s a pity you didn’t have one back then.”
“Do you think she did it, Canvey?” Daniel asked slowly.
“‘Course she did. This was just a technicality.”
“I should hate to think I sent an innocent woman away. If only I could remember exactly what happened...but it’s all so blurred in my head.”
“You weren’t yourself in those days. You should have taken some time off. I told you so at the time.”
Daniel made his way out to his car, trying not to be conscious of the looks that followed him, some of them sympathetic, some full of barely concealed pleasure. His brusque manner, short fuse and unorthodox methods had made him many enemies, and not only among the criminal fraternity. Some of his so-called colleagues were glad to see him brought low. The thought made him lift his head still higher.
He groaned as he saw two men, one with a television camera, waiting for him. “I’ve got nothing to say,” he told them firmly.
They followed him to his car, the reporter constantly trying to shove a microphone in front of him. “How do you feel about Megan Anderson’s release?”
“I have no feelings about it one way or the other,” he snapped. It was partly true. His feelings were in such turmoil that he couldn’t sort them out.
“Is it true that the police are refusing to reopen the case?”
“Ask them.”
“Does that mean you’ve been dismissed?”
Now he knew how a fox felt when the hounds were after it. It was a horrible experience. He managed to keep hold of his temper until he got in the car, but when the reporter banged on the window, he wound the glass down and said “Get...out...of...my way” with such slow, emphatic menace that the man blanched and backed off.
He reached his house without further incident, and noted with relief that the crowds of press who’d made it a nightmare the day before had disappeared. But as he got out of his car, a man, who seemed to be mending the road, suddenly straightened and blocked his path. “Have you got any statement to make, Inspector?”
Daniel took hold of the reporter’s ear. “Yes, I have a statement,” he said with deceptive mildness. “It’s this. You have one second to get out before you feel my foot in your rear.” He let go, and the man scuttled away.
* * *
When Janice had asked where she’d wanted to go, Megan’s answer had been simple. “Somewhere I can hide.”
The result was an obscure boarding house in a shabby part of London. She had one room that doubled as a bedroom and living room, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom the size of a postage stamp. The apartment wasn’t much bigger than her prison cell, which accorded with Megan’s mood. She was free only in the most limited sense. Everything that had once formed her life had been stripped from her, including her good name, but most of all, her son. For the moment she could see no way of getting them back.
She called her ex-husband repeatedly that afternoon, but he wouldn’t speak to her. His mother answered the phone at home, and at work his secretary had orders not to put her through. Between calls she sat and brooded in terrible bitterness.
Her thoughts were chaotic, but one thing stayed constant. The face of Daniel Keller was there all the time—hard, unyielding, judging her—so convinced that he was right that he’d twisted the case and destroyed her. His face was burned into her consciousness by her hatred of him. She watched the television news reports and caught the moment when the reporter asked how he felt about her release, and his reply. “I have no feelings about it one way or another.”
“Of course you haven’t,” she flung at his face on-screen. “What’s it to you?”
It was some slight comfort to learn that he’d been suspended, although she felt, cynically, that he would be allowed back when the dust had settled. It was her own future that had been blasted.
Her first night alone was tormented by nightmares and she awoke crying out. One of the other residents knocked on her door to ask if she was all right. After that she tried to catnap for short periods, fearful of rousing the house. So far no one seemed to have recognized her, and this was her only hope of peace.
It was early spring, not a green, enchanted spring promising hope and rebirth, but a sodden fag end of winter, where it rained and rained and rained. The endless cascades of water beat against her ill-fitting windows and seeped in through the cracks, making the room damp. And the noise sometimes made it hard to hear anything else.
On the evening of her fourth day, just as she’d finished dressing for bed, she thought she heard a knock outside. Yawning she made her way to the door, then hesitated. A sudden letup in the rain gave her the chance to hear the knock again. “Who is it?” she called cautiously.
“Mrs. Anderson?” A man’s voice reached her from the other side of the door.
“If you’re a journalist, go away.”
“I’m not a journalist....” The man hesitated. “I’m Daniel Keller.”
Sheer outrage made her pull open the door to confront him. “Get out of here!” she said fiercely. “How dare you come pestering me?” Her voice rose to a cry. “Haven’t you done enough?”
He was already halfway in. “I have to talk to you,” he said urgently.
“And I don’t have to talk to you,” she said bitterly. “This isn’t like those times you had me in the police station and I had to talk to you whether I wanted to or not. I’m free now, free of that damned prison where you put me with your lies and your frame-up, and free of you. I can tell you to get out, and that’s what I’m doing.”
He hesitated, driven by desperation but unwilling to use force. Megan’s sharp voice had attracted attention in the shabby little boarding house. Doors were opening, curious heads appearing. “Please let me in,” he said urgently.
“I told you to get out of here.” She tried pushing against the door but he pushed harder and managed to get right into the room. Megan backed away swiftly, as though afraid he might touch her. “What’s the matter with you?” she snapped. “Don’t you understand the word no? Oh, but of course you don’t. How often did I say ‘no’ to you three years ago? No, I didn’t murder Henry Grainger. No, I don’t know who did. No, I’m not lying. No, no, no. And how much notice did you ever take? Not a bit because you were so sure you were right and it was just a question of wearing me down until I confessed. And when I refused to oblige, you framed me.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to me,” she cried. “You lied before and your lies cost me three years of my life. They cost me my son.”
Without warning, her fury drained away. She seemed to have little physical strength left, only what her taut nerves could give her. She’d lived on nervous energy through the agonizing days of her appeal; now that she was free, the energy came and went, so that she roller-coasted between being high on adrenaline and being too weak to stand. Only a moment ago she’d been possessed by the strength of anger. Now she felt like a rag doll. “Why on earth did you come here?” she asked, sitting down tiredly.
Daniel hesitated. If she’d looked up at his face she would have seen that it was as tortured as her own. He’d been little more than thirty when they’d first clashed, but the years since then had scored themselves twice over on his features. He’d been to hell, just as she had. But she saw none of this.
“I came because I had to,” he said. “I can’t just leave things like this.”
“Why? Because you’ve been suspended? I’d say that you’d come by your just deserts and things should be left exactly like that.”
With her brown eyes blazing at him, he remembered that as a model she’d been called Tiger Lady. She was rumored to have a short fuse and an explosive temperament, which had counted against her at the trial.
He remembered his first sight of her, three years ago, glamorous in a silk evening dress and velvet cape, her face skillfully made up. She’d been working for an escort agency and had just returned from a date when he’d called to “ask a few questions” about the violent death of her landlord, Henry Grainger. He’d made a professional note of her extravagant beauty, but it hadn’t moved him. His heart had died exactly two months, three weeks and two days earlier—the day his wife had been killed by a drunken driver.
If he’d felt anything about Megan’s looks it was antagonism at the expensive trappings that showed them off. The trappings were gone now. She wore no makeup, and her face was pale. The glamorous clothes were gone, too. Her plain cotton nightgown was mended in a couple of places, and her feet were bare. Yet an irreducible beauty remained. It was there in the high cheekbones and curved mouth, in the large, haunted eyes.
“Mrs. Anderson,” he said at last, “I know you find this hard to believe, but I swear I wasn’t corrupt. I didn’t suppress evidence.”
“Don’t take me for a fool. You had a witness who’d seen me ten miles away at the time Grainger was killed, and you buried his statement because it would have ruined your case. How lucky for you that the constable who took that statement left the force and went to Australia. You must have thought everything was working out wonderfully. Only he came back and started asking awkward questions, and that was lucky for me because you were exposed for the cheat you are. The only thing that amazes me is that you contented yourself with hiding the statement. Why not destroy it while you had the chance? Or would that have been too dangerous for you? I suppose you prefer your corruption to be nice and safe.”
“Stop this,” he said desperately. “I didn’t hide the statement because I didn’t know about it.”
She looked at him derisively. “You can do better than that. Constable Dutton handed it to you himself.”
“Maybe he did. I don’t know. I only know that I have no recollection of it.”
“And I suppose you have no recollection of scribbling something on it? It was your handwriting.”
“Yes, but—”
“And the way it got conveniently lost—hidden away in a file belonging to another case. I suppose you have ‘no recollection’ of that, either?”
“None at all. When it was found in that file I was as amazed as anybody, I swear it.”
She actually smiled with incredulity that he should try to fool her with such a feeble story. “I don’t know why you came here, but you’re wasting your time,” she said firmly.
“I came because I have to know the truth.”
“Has the truth suddenly become important to you after all this time?” she asked sarcastically. “What use is it to tell you the truth? You don’t believe it when you hear it. You really came because you want me to confess, then you’d feel all right, wouldn’t you? And the force might take you back.”
“It wouldn’t make me feel all right to know you’re guilty,” he said harshly. “That would mean I’d made my case so clumsily that a murderess was freed too soon. Did I do that? Or did I jail an innocent woman? Either way, it’s just as bad.”
“Your arrogance is beyond belief,” she snapped. “‘Just as bad’? It may make no difference to you which way it turns out, but what about me? I don’t matter, do I? To you I’m just part of an academic exercise in finding out which way your guilt lies. But I’m not. I’m a human being, and you’ve ruined my life. I didn’t kill anyone, but because you made it look as if I did, they took my son away. Because of you I can’t get to see him, even now. If my ex-husband has his way, I’ll never see him again, and it’s all because of you.”
Her voice rose to a scream as her nerves finally snapped, and she flew at him. For three dreary years she’d longed to inflict on him a fraction of the pain he’d caused her, and now he was here. She lashed out blindly, striking, clawing at his face, driven by uncontrollable fury.
Daniel backed up, raising his hands as a shield. What he saw in her face appalled him. Through his job he was used to witnessing despair and misery, but this was worse. It was as though Megan was too demented with anguish to know what she did. Some instinct made him stop trying to push her away and pull her against him, tightening his arms around her so that she was trapped. “Let me go,” she screamed.
“I will when you stop trying to attack me,” he said, speaking breathlessly for she was still thrashing about. “I just want us to talk.”
“The only words I want to say to you are words of hate,” Megan snapped. “Is that clear enough?”
But she was too exhausted to keep it up. The roller coaster was at work again, carrying her to the peak of rage only to plunge her back down into the depths. Suddenly she went limp in his arms and started to shake, not with anger but with grief. Daniel felt the violent trembling of her body against his own and it went through him like a pain. He knew what it was like to suffer like that, to curse heaven in bitterness and misery, and realize that cursing changed nothing. The loved one had gone, and the world was still a dark, barren place to be endured.
Sounds were coming from her, not weeping, but a kind of half-gasping moan, like the keening of a distraught animal. And again his own experience showed him the answer. That sensation of being an animal, feeling the loss of one’s young like an agony in the flesh. How well he knew it. He was a man with a bitter sense of irony, and it wasn’t lost on him that, of all the world, he was the best placed to empathize with her, yet there was no one whose help she wanted less. But then irony fled and he felt nothing but an overwhelming desire to calm her storm of grief. “Megan,” he pleaded. “Megan...let me help you....”
She grew still and he thought he’d gotten through to her. “It’s cold in here,” he said. “Haven’t you got a dressing gown? And something to put on your feet?”
“When you’ve gone, I’m going to bed,” she said tiredly. “I wish you’d leave now. Just go, and I’ll be all right.”
He realized that he hadn’t gotten through, after all. She was simply too tired to argue anymore. “How can I walk away and leave you like this?” he demanded.
“The same way you walked away and left me in prison. I’m not your problem.” She pushed against him and he reluctantly freed her. “Please go.”
“Look—”
“Go.” She went to the door and pulled it open. “Go away now, and don’t come back.”
Her head was turned toward him, so she didn’t see what was outside the door. She saw only the sudden look of tension on his face, and when she turned, it was too late. The little crowd of men and women surged into her room, all babbling at once and taking pictures, blinding them both with flashbulbs.
“Mrs. Anderson have you anything to say?”
“...I’m authorized to offer you.”
“...exclusive...”
“Why aren’t the police looking for someone else?”
“Your story...if you’d only—”
“Go away,” she screamed. “Go away and leave me alone!”
Instead of leaving, they pressed in on her further, forcing her to back away from them. But she suddenly stopped and plunged forward between them, forcing them to part. By the time they’d recovered from their surprise, she was out the door and racing down the stairs toward the front door. They raced after her, baying like hounds in pursuit.
Daniel hesitated, torn between two opposing instincts. He wanted to intervene and get them off her track, but if they recognized him, they’d have an even better story, one that would make them pursue her even more mercilessly. At last he followed them down and out into the street and saw that Megan had vanished. The pack poured into their vehicles and tore off in pursuit. He gave them a moment to get clear before going to his own car. He didn’t think he’d have far to look for her. She was bound to be hiding nearby.
But an hour of combing the streets produced nothing. He checked her apartment in case she’d returned, but all he found was a journalist who’d had the same idea and looked set to wait out the night.
Cursing, Daniel got back into his car and began the search again. But it was useless, and at last he had to face the fact that Megan had vanished into the pouring rain wearing only a thin nightgown and nothing on her feet.
Two
Megan didn’t stop running until she was out of breath. She clutched something nearby and stood there heaving, trying to fight off a pain in her side. Gradually her head cleared enough for her to realize that she was holding a tree. She looked around and found herself in a large park that seemed empty except for herself.
She was unfamiliar with this part of London and she didn’t know where she was. She’d fled blindly, and now she had no memory of entering the park and no idea of how to get home. But the dreary little apartment had never been home, and now it wasn’t even a refuge. They’d found it and would be watching for her return. Her feet were bruised and bleeding and she was shivering with cold. She wondered why she’d ever thought things would be better once she’d left jail. They were worse. She was as much a prisoner as ever, but now she was a prisoner on the run, with nowhere to go.
To her surprise she discovered she wasn’t cold anymore. Heat was stealing pleasantly through her limbs and all over her body, although the icy rain was still pouring down, plastering her hair over her eyes. She brushed her hair back, but it was still hard to see through the curtain of water that surrounded her. She began to stumble about, seeking an exit, although what she would do when she found one she didn’t know. The whole evening seemed like just a dream. She’d dreamed that her enemy had come to call, just as she was dreaming now that she could hear his voice through the lashing of the rain.
She came to another tree and stopped to rest against it. But something in the pattern of the knots seemed familiar, and she realized that it was the same tree as before. How long had she been wandering around in circles? She had no notion of time.
“Megan.” The voice was there again in her dream, and Daniel Keller mysteriously appeared through the curtain of water. “Megan. Thank God, I found you.”
She regarded him without hostility, but without interest. He was no more than a shadow in her overheated consciousness. “Go away,” she said indifferently. “I’m fine, really I am.”
He put his hand on her forehead and swore. “You’re burning up with fever. Come on.” He picked her up and ran with her in his arms to where he’d left his car. He almost threw her into the backseat, wrenched off his jacket and wrapped it around her before getting into the front and starting up.
As he drove, he used his car phone to call his doctor, who was also a good friend. “I need a home call urgently,” he said. “Can you be there in ten minutes? Thanks.”
Dr. Angela Lang was there before him. She stood by his front door, a reassuringly motherly figure, as Daniel hurried up the path with Megan in his arms. “Help me put her to bed,” he grunted as he carried Megan inside and passed Dr. Lang on the stairs without waiting for a response.
In the guest room, he stripped off Megan’s sodden nightgown and dried her fiercely. “Good grief!” Angela exclaimed in sudden shock. “Isn’t she—?”
“Yes, she is,” Daniel said urgently. “Never mind that. Do something for her feet while I try to stop her getting pneumonia.”
“The best thing is if I get her admitted into the hospital—”
“No!” Daniel said explosively. “She’s had enough of institutions and people staring at her. She needs peace and privacy.”
“Daniel, are you mad? If you want to save your career, this woman is dynamite.”
“I know that,” he said through gritted teeth.
“So what the devil is she doing in your house, unconscious and naked?”
“You’re right,” he said quickly. “She needs something warm to wear.”
“That wasn’t what I—” But Daniel had vanished, returning a moment later with a pair of his own clean pajamas. Angela gave up arguing and tended to Megan’s bleeding feet.
“She isn’t going to get pneumonia, is she?” Daniel asked when Megan was dressed and wrapped up under an electric blanket.
“I don’t think so. Probably just a feverish cold, but if she gets worse, call me at once. Are you a good nurse? She’ll need a lot of attention at first.”
“Don’t worry,” he said with bleak humor, “I’ve got nothing else to do.”
* * *
The heat that had comforted Megan in the park had given way to violent shivering. She was burning up with fever, yet at the same time she was like ice. Somebody was piling blankets onto her, but it was no use. Aches and pains chased themselves through her limbs. She wanted to sleep but she felt too ill.
Then she was being raised to a sitting position and a mug was being pressed to her lips. “Drink this.” She vaguely remembered the man’s voice but she couldn’t place it. “It’s hot milk and whiskey, and it’ll do you good,” he added.
She obeyed, and took the tablets he gave her. But when she lay down she was still restless and began tossing about, throwing off the blankets. He piled them back onto her and she threw them off again. He seemed to have inexhaustible patience, because no matter how often it happened he was always there to push her back against the pillows and soothe her. She tried to fight him off, muttering, “I’ve got to...got to...”
Got to what? She didn’t know. She only knew that some terrible problem was going unsolved while she lay here, and nobody else understood.
But it seemed that he did understand because he murmured, “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right. Just sleep and let me do the worrying.”
After a while she stopped struggling and lay there, her hand in his.
Daniel stayed quite still until he was sure she’d fallen asleep, then he gently tucked her hand under the blanket. He rose and stood looking down at her flushed face on the pillow. The strain was smoothed away from it now, but the dark shadows around her eyes told the story of inner torment.
“What have I done?” he murmured. “Dear God, what have I done?”
* * *
In the limbo between sleeping and waking Megan found herself experiencing a new sensation. Suddenly there was nothing to worry about because someone was taking care of her, someone strong who could shoulder all her burdens until she could cope with them again herself.
That had last happened when she was a child. Her parents had died when she was only sixteen, after which she’d had to fend for herself. She’d capitalized on her height and slender beauty to become a model, and for a few years she’d been in the front rank.
Then she’d met Brian Anderson. At first she’d been charmed by him, but the charm had faded as she’d realized he’d had only one priority—success. He’d been an accountant in a high-profile firm, and he’d adored her because she was successful and well-known. He’d enjoyed being seen with a beautiful woman on his arm, but she’d gradually become convinced that his feelings went very little deeper than that. She’d been on the verge of breaking off the relationship when she’d found out she was pregnant.
She’d never even considered an abortion. She’d wanted her baby, and Brian’s eagerness to marry her had warmed her heart again. Perhaps his child would make him see the world in less monetary terms. But it had had the opposite effect. Money and success became doubly important. He was furious when she’d abandoned her career because she couldn’t bear to be apart from her adored little son.
When Tommy was a year old, Brian had broken away from his firm to start up on his own. Megan had been an asset to him, presiding over dinner parties where every detail was perfect, including her own impeccable appearance. But the socializing had meant nothing to her. The guests were invariably people who might be “useful” and afterward Brian would discuss them entirely in terms of their money and the business they might bring his way.
The gap between herself and her husband had yawned wider every day, but she’d made the best of it for Tommy’s sake, and would have continued doing so, if Brian hadn’t gone too far. Trying to land a hugely rich but personally repellent client, he’d instructed her to “be nice” to him.
“Just how ‘nice’ do you want me to be?” Megan had asked in an icy tone that should have warned him.
Brian had shrugged. “He’s worth millions, he’s got no family and his hobby is speculation. Work it out.”
Their own physical relationship had been over for a year at that point, but it was still a shock to discover that he’d respected her so little that he could suggest such a thing. When Brian returned home from work that evening, he’d found Megan and Tommy gone.
He’d tried to starve her back to him, refusing to allow her a penny even for the child’s upkeep. So she’d returned to work, taking the kind of low-ranking modeling jobs that would once have been beneath her, and supplementing her income with escort work. In comparison to the luxurious life-style she’d left, they were hard up, but she was happier than she’d been for a long time—until the sky had fallen on her.
In all those years there’d never been anyone to murmur “It’s all right...let me do the worrying.” But now someone had said it, and the words had given her ease.
She opened her eyes and found herself in a strange room. It was large and shabby but comfortable. It didn’t surprise her that she recognized nothing. The events of the past few days had made the unfamiliar familiar, and the unexpected, the norm. She was hot and achy all over, and her head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton wool.
Then the door opened, and her enemy came in. She stared, aghast, and tried to pull herself upright in the bed, but lead weights pulled her back. “What are you doing here?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper.
“This is my home,” Daniel told her. “I brought you here after I found you in the park.”
“How dare you!” It was hard to sound angry when she could hardly speak.
“I had no choice, Megan. I couldn’t take you back to that apartment. The press had it staked out.”
“Not here. Anywhere but here,” she croaked.
“If you think about it, you’ll see that this is the best place. Who would ever think of looking for you with me?”
She started to cough and could do nothing until the fit had subsided. When it was over, she lay back, drained, and looked at him helplessly.
Daniel laid a gentle hand on her forehead. “You’ve got a feverish cold,” he said. “You stay here until you’re well.”
“You’ve taken a lot for granted,” she said hoarsely.
“What would you prefer, the hospital, where you’ll be stared at?” She shook her head weakly, beyond speech. “Don’t waste what little voice you’ve got left in abusing me,” he advised. “The doctor left you something to take. I’ll get breakfast and make you comfortable, then you must get some more sleep. The bathroom’s next door. Put this on.” He indicated a thick terry-cloth robe lying across a chair, and left the room.
As soon as she got out of bed, her head swam. It took ten minutes to get into the robe and out of the room. The bathroom mirror showed her looking haggard, with large, feverish eyes, but it had been a long time since she’d cared what she looked like. Almost subliminally she noticed that the room was exclusively male. There was shaving tackle and toothpaste, but no talcum powder, or anything else to suggest a woman.
She slowly made her way back to the bedroom, holding on to the wall, and was leaning against it to regain her breath when Daniel appeared with breakfast. “Let me help you,” he said, setting down the tray and reaching for her.
Her eyes glittered at him. “Don’t...touch...me....” she said in an emphatic whisper.
Reluctantly he let his hands fall to his sides and watched edgily as she tottered back to bed. After that, she seemed to have no more fight in her, accepting the tablets he offered without protest, eating some of the breakfast, falling asleep and staying that way for the rest of the day.
That afternoon Daniel called Canvey. His old colleague greeted him with cautious warmth, until he heard what Daniel wanted. Then he exploded with outrage and apprehension. “Are you out of your mind, man? Do you want me to be thrown off the force, as well?”
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Daniel said urgently, “but nobody need suspect. Just for one night, and you can have them back in the morning.”
“Masters will have my head on a plate if he finds out.”
“He won’t find out. Please, Canvey, I’m desperate.”
In the end, Canvey gave in as he was bound to do, since he owed his life to Daniel. He arrived after work that evening with a parcel that he thrust into Daniel’s hands with the words, “Have these ready when I call tomorrow morning, or we’re both in big trouble.”
Daniel went into the back room where he kept his audio-video equipment, the one luxury he allowed himself. He opened the parcel and found that Canvey hadn’t let him down. Inside were cassettes, both audio and video, of his interviews with Megan, three years ago, plus all his own notebooks.
He spent the night duplicating everything, and had just managed to get the parcel packed up by the time Canvey called on his way to work the next day. After thanking Canvey, he made his way upstairs with Megan’s breakfast. He found her coughing and sneezing, and unable to do much more than nibble on some toast. He put fresh sheets on the bed and helped her back in. She made no protest. In fact, she hardly seemed aware of him, falling asleep almost at once.
Then Daniel was free to settle down with the videocassettes and papers. He wished he could remember more about what had happened. It wasn’t uncommon for policemen to forget details in time, as other cases took over, but he’d always been known in the force for his phenomenal memory. Not with this case, though. His mind seemed to have wiped it out.
He tried an old trick. Stop worrying about the thing you needed to remember. Go back to something that had happened earlier and work forward. But that meant reviving a memory he flinched from; of how a gentle, loving woman and a bright-faced little boy had been mowed down in a car driven by Carter Denroy, a lout with booze running in his veins, a man so drunk that he couldn’t afterward remember what had happened. And that led to another terrible memory—Denroy walking from court, a free man, smirking because his only punishment had been a fine. That smirk had burned itself into Daniel’s consciousness so deeply that it still tortured his dreams.
He wanted to shy away now, but he forced himself to relive the scene, and gradually another detail emerged. There had been a woman there, too. A glossy, expensive woman who’d looked bored and impatient with the whole business of coming to court, as though it was simply too ridiculous to make a man pay for the lives he destroyed. As Denroy and the woman had walked out together, Daniel had heard her say, “You see, I told you it would be all right.”
Daniel had stepped out quietly to stand in front of them, which had made the grin fade from Denroy’s face. He’d halted, saying nothing, looking nervous. But the woman hadn’t been nervous. She’d looked Daniel up and down before saying imperiously, “Kindly get out of our way.”
Daniel had neither moved nor spoken. He’d just stood looking at the man who’d killed his wife, his face possessed by a cold, silent hate that had made Denroy flinch. He’d been scared. Was that what had made him say such a stupid, fatuous thing? No hard feelings, eh? Just an accident. Then he’d fallen back at the menace in Daniel’s face.
Now Daniel remembered how Denroy had cast a nervous glance at the woman, and how her contempt had seemed to force some courage into him—enough courage to shoulder his way past. That look had told Daniel all he’d needed to know about their relationship. Denroy had been intimidated by her, had wanted to impress her. That was why he’d driven her home when he’d had no right to be behind the wheel of a car. He’d probably bragged, “Don’t worry. What’s a little booze? I can handle it.”
Daniel had thought of Denroy often, but the woman had faded from his mind—until now.
Another memory—Canvey, there with him in court, hovering beside him as he’d confronted his wife’s killers, hands at the ready to stop him from physically attacking Denroy. He was a good friend. He’d hauled Daniel away to the nearest pub and poured drink down him. “Take some time off,” he’d said. “Take as much as you need.”
“I can cope,” he’d insisted.
“You think you can, but you shouldn’t work in this state.”
“I tell you, I can cope.”
He’d prided himself on being a hard man, a strong man who could stand up to anything. He’d thrown himself into his job, working all hours, ignoring weariness, driving himself to the limit. It was the only way he could endure. Canvey had been concerned. “I see you staring into space sometimes,” he’d said, “and when I say your name, you don’t seem to hear.”
Daniel had responded by driving himself even harder. Whether he’d done his work well or not was something he didn’t know, because he could hardly recall a single detail of that time.
But he had to remember. He forced his mind back. Henry Grainger. Hang on to that name. Henry Grainger, the owner of a small block of apartments, had been found dead. Someone had hit him over the head with a blunt instrument. Daniel had been sent to investigate.
All the signs pointed to Mrs. Megan Anderson, one of Grainger’s tenants, who’d been heard quarreling with him the night he’d died. He hadn’t been found until the following evening, at which time Mrs. Anderson was out on an assignment for an escort agency. Daniel had waited until she’d returned late that night. She’d walked in, glossy, expensive, consciously alluring, dressed and made up for effect. He recalled that she’d made that impression on him, but strangely, he couldn’t conjure up her face. Instead he kept seeing the face of Denroy’s companion, who’d also been glossy and heavily made up. He tried hard to concentrate, but he couldn’t clear the confusion, and at last he gave up and put a cassette into the video machine.
For a moment he didn’t even recognize the woman who appeared on the screen. Surely she couldn’t be the same person as the tense, feverish invalid upstairs? The contrast shocked him. He stared at the screen, noting her defiance, almost arrogance, tinged with bafflement at finding herself in a police station under suspicion of murder.
He heard his own off-camera voice. “Let’s go back to your quarrel with Mr. Grainger, Mrs. Anderson.”
“It wasn’t a quarrel,” the woman on the screen said wearily. “I didn’t know him well enough to quarrel with. He tried to paw me about, I told him to push off.”
“That’s not what your neighbors say. According to them, the whole thing was very violent.”
“They weren’t there. I was.”
“They heard screaming and shouting.”
“I was angry. He disgusted me. He was a worm.”
“That’s how you saw him, was it? A worm?”
Such an obvious trap, he thought now, but she hadn’t seen it. “Yes, a worm,” she said with a shrug. “Or a sewer rat. Take your pick.”
Wouldn’t a woman have to be innocent to walk so blindly into danger? he wondered. He almost winced as he heard his own voice springing the trap. “In other words, vermin—to be destroyed? A worm to be trodden on. A rat to be hit on the head—like Henry Grainger?”
“I didn’t kill him. He was alive when I left the building. I walked miles away. I told you that before.”
“Yes, you told me you went to Wimbledon Common. I’ve got a team out there trying to find someone who saw you. But so far there are no witnesses to confirm that you were there.”
The words brought Daniel out in a cold sweat. There had been a witness. He’d been lying, unless...
He leafed frantically through the papers until he came to the photocopied statement from the man who’d seen “a woman who might have been Megan Anderson,” on Wimbledon Common at the time Grainger had been killed. There was a note scribbled on it in Daniel’s own writing, saying he’d received it on February twenty-third. He yanked the cassette from the machine to study the label, but in his haste to duplicate everything, he hadn’t made notes. But it would be on the cassette, at the very start. His heart thumping madly, he shoved the cassette in, rewound it and pressed the play button. In the few seconds it took the machine to start, he felt as if he was dying.
Then his own voice, “Mrs. Megan Anderson being questioned by Detective Inspector Keller in Interview Room 10. Interview timed at fifteen hundred hours, February twenty-first. Let’s go back to...”
The twenty-first. Two days before the statement. He hadn’t been lying to trap her. The relief was so overwhelming that he almost blacked out. When he’d steadied himself, he poured a stiff drink and wondered at the pass he’d come to. It was appalling to have to rely on outside evidence to confirm his honesty to himself, but he had no recollection of either the statement or the interview.
He ran the tape forward to where he’d left off. “...no witnesses to confirm that you were there. It’s a pity you can’t remember seeing anyone else there.”
“I wasn’t looking at other people,” Megan said. “I just walked there to be alone and brood on how much Henry Grainger disgusted me.”
Her tone struck him. She sounded bored, exasperated and edgy, but not frightened, as though she knew this was only a misunderstanding that was bound to be cleared up in the end. It was a tone he associated with innocence, and he wondered if he’d noticed it at the time.
This interview had taken place two days after Grainger’s death. She’d changed from the gorgeous evening wear of their first meeting, but she was still smartly dressed and groomed. A lot of care had been applied to her face, as though beauty was a tool of her trade.
He saw himself appear on the screen. Evidently he’d risen and walked around the table to confront her more closely: he sat on the table in front of her and leaned down. Watching himself, he made a face of distaste at what looked like an intimidatory tactic. But the woman he confronted wasn’t intimidated. She raised her head and looked up at him coolly, defiantly. He felt a flicker of admiration now for the way she wouldn’t back down in front of a bully.
A bully? Himself? Yes. The sound of his own voice grated on him. “Tell me about it from the beginning, Mrs. Anderson.”
“Oh, God, not again! I’ve told you so often.”
Suddenly his face came into view, and he was shocked. He looked like a dead man, a zombie, and it was a dead man’s voice that said, “Tell me again. Let’s see if you can remember any details you’ve forgotten.”
Daniel shivered.
Three
After three days of feeling too ill to care about anything, Megan awoke to the discovery that the fever had left her and her body no longer ached. Getting gingerly out of bed, she found that she was still weak, but after being unable to eat anything she was now ravenously hungry. She put on the thick socks Daniel always left for her feet, pulled on his robe, and left the room, holding on to things as she moved. The house was a big, rambling building that looked as if it might have been built a century ago. Although clean, it was shabby and in need of redecorating. Glancing out the window, she saw a large garden with trees and a rockery, the sort of garden that cried out for dogs and children romping together. But it was empty.
Everywhere was silence and there was no sign of Daniel. What Megan could see of the house was austere, as though its occupant lived in it only in passing.
One room was different. It was at the back of the house, and it was filled with electronic gadgets, audio-video equipment, tapes, records, magazines. How like Daniel Keller, she thought, to have a hobby that offered him the world at a distance. It fitted her picture of him as a man without human feeling.
She glanced idly through the videocassettes strewn on the floor. Their labels bore hastily scrawled notes in pencil. One of them read Interview 3. Feb. 23rd, 19—
Her heart began to beat hard. February 23rd was the day of her third interview with Keller. But surely...?
She hurried, switched on the set, and shoved the cassette into the machine. Shocked, she saw her own angry face on the screen. And from off camera came Daniel’s voice, taunting her. “You could have killed him easily. He wasn’t a big man, and I’ll bet you’re not as fragile as you look.”
Then the woman on the screen did the worst possible thing. Losing her temper, she launched herself forward at her tormentor. For a moment Daniel came into the shot, fending her off. He was right. She was stronger than she looked, and he had some trouble keeping her nails from his face. “Was this how you went for Henry Grainger with that heavy ashtray?” he asked, gasping slightly.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“The ashtray had your fingerprints and nobody else’s except Grainger’s own. How do you account for that?”
Megan shut off the set, shaking. She tried to calm her own thoughts. If she brooded about how much she hated Keller, it would overset her mind, and she needed her wits about her. Quickly she pulled out the cassette and began to rummage through the others, which all turned out to be copies of her interviews in the police station. The last thing she came to was a thick, buff-colored envelope, which she accidentally knocked off the sofa, sending its contents spilling over the floor. Gathering them up, she found herself looking at her own face.
Amazed, she studied the other papers. Every one of them was a piece about herself from her modeling days. Most were straightforward fashion shots, in which she was wearing a succession of glamorous clothes. One was a magazine cover, showing a close-up of her face, looking sensual and gorgeous. Megan considered the beauty in that picture as if she were a stranger, which in a sense was true. She had nothing to do with the shattered woman regarding her now.
There were some pages attached to the cover, containing a feature about her from inside the magazine. It was headlined, Tiger Lady and the writer had started by quoting Blake’s “Tyger, tyger, burning bright/In the forests of the night.” From there he’d gone wild, lavishing purple prose over “a woman with the power and sultry eroticism of a tiger, who moves with the sleek, silent grace of a jungle creature, stalking the forests of the night.”
The first time Megan had read it she’d laughed, thinking it wildly overdone. Now she wondered who that proud, confident woman had been, and how she’d ever come to this pass.
What astonished her most was finding the piece here, along with the copies of her interviews with Keller. It looked as though he’d been studying her in some depth. But why? Was he seeking the truth after all this time, or merely trying to confirm his original verdict? She decided it was probably safest to think badly of him. He was concerned with saving his own face and rebuilding his life. The rebuilding of her life wouldn’t concern him.
Megan rose suddenly and began to search for the telephone, which she found in an alcove in the hall. It was nearly four o’clock. Tommy would have just arrived home from school. If she called now there was a chance that he might pick up the phone. With trembling hands she dialed the number and sat, white-knuckled, listening to the ringing on the other end. So intent was she that she didn’t hear the front door open and Daniel come quietly into the house.
At last there was an answer. Megan’s heart sank as she heard the voice of Brian’s mother. “I want to speak to Tommy,” she said as firmly as she could.
“I’ve told you before, that isn’t possible,” said Mrs. Anderson in the cool, inflexible voice that Megan hated. “Please don’t call again.”
“I’ll call as often as I have to,” she raged. “He’s my son, and you can’t keep him from me.”
“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?” Megan 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.”
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Lucy Gordon
She Wanted Her Child Back Daniel Keller never should have handled that homicide case. Still grieving over the accident that had stolen his wife and son, the dazed policeman had nevertheless testified - and unwittingly convicted - an innocent woman of murder. Megan Anderson had spent three years in prison, learning to hate Daniel Keller.Because of him, she'd lost the only thing that mattered: her beloved child. Now she was free, but her battle had just begun. Megan would see that Daniel got her son back for her. And she would fight her own forbidden desire… for the man who had destroyed her life.
Uncaged
Lucy Gordon
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Prologue (#u322b2833-1ec7-5dcb-bba3-0fb97aec95d4)
Chapter One (#u40c9b692-0f9c-5de7-92b5-9fa0def3c856)
Chapter Two (#u0576f7a2-f726-5d74-884d-30654ca6195b)
Chapter Three (#u7a9a0d01-fbe3-5378-9345-19e60b031d71)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
“Megan Elizabeth Anderson, you have been found guilty of the shocking crime of murder. Have you anything to say before sentence is passed?”
The woman in the dock lifted her head. After three months in prison she was still beautiful. If anything, the way her hair was pulled back accentuated her fine bone structure with its high cheekbones and the hollows beneath. Even without makeup, it was still a lovely face, although the dark shadows under her eyes hinted at sleepless nights.
Some of the public who’d crowded in on this last day of her trial had heard of her. Once she’d been a top model, but she’d given it up when she’d become a mother, and settled into a life of domesticity with her son and her businessman husband. She’d seemed the woman with everything—money, a delightful child and a perfect marriage. But the marriage had broken up a year ago, and now she was on trial for murder.
Some of them noticed that Brian Anderson wasn’t there now. Despite their separation, he’d sat through every day of the trial as the evidence piled up against his estranged wife, but he obviously hadn’t been able to face this last day with its inevitable verdict. The onlookers wondered what she felt about his desertion, but no one could tell. After the first glance at his empty place, she’d averted her gaze and never looked again. A cool customer, they said.
One man who’d made sure of being present was Detective Inspector Daniel Keller, the policeman who’d made the case against her. He’d given his evidence in a hard, expressionless voice, and taken his place in the body of the court. He was here now for the verdict. He was in his early thirties, with a face that might have been handsome, except that something had happened to it. It was as though he’d fitted a cage over his features, a cage made of harshness and grim determination that had subtly reshaped every line, crushing out human vulnerability. He didn’t look at Megan Anderson, but stared into the distance. He was deathly pale and seemed strung up with tension, as though only an almighty effort of nerves kept him going. Eerily, the prisoner wore exactly the same expression.
“Have you anything to say?” the judge repeated.
Megan Anderson took a step forward and gripped the edge of the dock. “I’ve only one thing to say,” she declared in a voice that rang around the courtroom. “And that’s what I’ve said from the start, and what I’ll say until my dying day. I am innocent of murder. As for those who falsely put me here, may God forgive them, because I never will!”
At last something seemed to reach Detective Inspector Keller. He looked at her sharply, as though his head had been wrenched around by force. No one doubted that her words were meant for him. She was looking at him with hate, and now the spectators had no doubt that she was a murderess, because if she could have struck him dead she would have done so. He returned her gaze with harsh stoicism. For a moment, the bitter, jagged atmosphere between them was stronger than anything else in the courtroom.
Even the judge was taken aback, but he recovered himself and addressed the prisoner again. “You will do yourself no good by these outbursts,” he told her severely. “You’ve made your allegations and the jury has rejected them and found you guilty of murder—rightly, in my opinion. I have no choice but to sentence you to imprisonment for the rest of your life.”
An hour later Megan Anderson was sitting in a van with black sides and high barred windows, on her way to start a life sentence in prison. At the same moment Detective Inspector Keller was locked in his bedroom with a bottle of whiskey, determinedly seeking oblivion.
One
“Frankly, I think you’ve been very lucky,” the policewoman said.
Megan stared at her. “Lucky? I was imprisoned for a murder I didn’t commit, and after stealing three years of my life they finally admit they were wrong, and you say I’m lucky?”
The policewoman gave her a hard look. “If you listened carefully to what the appeal court judges said, they didn’t actually admit they were wrong. You got off on a technicality.”
“Oh, yes, a technicality.” Megan seethed. “They discovered that there was a witness to my alibi all the time, but a corrupt policeman had suppressed it. You call that a technicality?”
Before her tormentor could answer, the door opened and Janice Baines, Megan’s lawyer, came in. They were in an anteroom of the court, where three appeal judges had just ordered Megan’s release. She’d arrived in a prison van, but she would leave in Janice’s car a free woman—whatever that might mean.
“There’s a crowd outside,” Janice observed. “A lot of them are journalists.”
“I’m not talking to journalists,” Megan insisted. “I just want to be left alone.”
“That’s a good line,” the policewoman said cynically. “You can sell your story for twice the price if you play hard to get.”
“Get me out of here, Janice,” Megan said bitterly, “before I commit a real murder.”
“My car’s around the back,” Janice said, taking her arm and steering her out into the corridor.
There were a couple of journalists covering the rear entrance, and they made a dash when they saw Megan. She managed to get in the car and slam the door, but they hammered on the roof, shouting questions, and one of them pressed a checkbook against the window. Luckily Janice was a skilled driver, and in seconds they’d left the pack behind.
“She as good as said I was guilty,” Megan said furiously. “A technicality, my God!”
“Look, I don’t want to spoil your day of triumph,” Janice said after a moment, “but I’m your lawyer, and I have to give you the facts. I’d have been happier if they’d given you a ringing endorsement of innocence.”
“But there was a witness who said he saw me miles away at the moment Henry Grainger was killed,” Megan said wildly.
“Not quite,” Janice interrupted. “In his statement he said he saw a woman who answered your general description, but it was too dark for him to make out details. If he’d appeared at your original trial, the jury might easily have decided that it didn’t prove anything. The appeal court released you today because Detective Inspector Keller concealed the statement instead of giving it to the defense, as he should have done. I hate to be brutal, Megan, but it was a technicality, and that’s going to affect what happens now.”
There was a silence before Megan said, “I saw Brian’s lawyer in court.”
“Yes, I talked to him before I collected you. I’m afraid he said that nothing’s changed. Brian still thinks you’re guilty, and he’s not going to give Tommy back to you. He won’t even let you see him.”
“Oh, God.” Megan’s words were almost a scream as she buried her head in her hands and sat shaking.
Janice gave her a sympathetic glance before returning her attention to the road. “We’ll fight it,” she said. “Don’t despair yet.”
Megan raised her head abruptly. She was calm again. “I’m not despairing,” she said. “If I didn’t give way to despair during three years in that place, I’m not going to do it now.”
“That’s the spirit.”
* * *
“Frankly, I think you’ve been very lucky,” Detective Chief Inspector Masters said.
Daniel Keller stared at him. “Lucky? I’m being kicked off the force and you say I’m lucky?”
“You’re lucky to have only been suspended on paid leave. You haven’t been kicked off the force, although if I had my way you would have been.”
“Oh, yes,” Daniel said. “It’s no secret that you’ve been looking for ways to get rid of me ever since you came here two years ago.”
“I don’t like mavericks, Keller. I don’t like loners. I don’t like officers who undermine my authority by tossing the book aside whenever it suits them, or officers who suppress evidence and then get caught. I don’t like seeing a murderess go free because one of my men fouled up. It’s a black mark against this station.”
It’s a black mark against your possible promotion, Daniel thought. That’s what’s really worrying you. But all he said was, “Who says she’s a murderess? The appeal court cleared her.”
“Oh, no, they didn’t. They very carefully stopped short of declaring her innocent, but because you cut corners they had to let her go. That makes me angry.”
Masters was a red-faced, choleric man who seemed to be angered by everything in sight. But in particular he was infuriated by the tall, rangily built man in the battered leather jacket and old jeans standing on the other side of his desk. Daniel Keller was in deep trouble, yet instead of looking chastened, he regarded his superior coolly, his lips twisted in an arrogant half smile that only just escaped being a jeer.
“It makes me angry,” Masters repeated. “So do these headlines.”
He waved an impatient hand at the newspapers on his desk. One headline read Suppression Of Evidence Leads To Release. Another, Why Did He Conceal Evidence? Witness Asks, Why Wasn’t I Called To Testify?
“It’s either incompetence or corruption, and I won’t tolerate either,” Masters snapped. “By rights you should be out of here for good, but I’ve had to listen to a lot of bleeding hearts stuff from your colleagues about how you were under strain from ‘personal problems’ at the time—although how that justifies fouling up, I don’t know.”
Daniel went rigid with distaste as his most painful wounds were casually flicked by this gross creature. “My problems were—and remain—my own affair,” he said stiffly. “I never asked for allowances to be made for me on that account.”
“So I should think. Clear your desk and go. And don’t come back until you’re sent for.”
“Which will be never if you have your way,” Daniel said ironically.
“As you say.”
When Daniel had gone, a genial, lazy-looking, middle-aged man pushed open a glass door to enter Masters’s office. “That was a bit rough, wasn’t it, Chief?” he asked. “They weren’t just any old personal problems. His wife and son—”
“We all have things to bear, Canvey,” Masters said without looking up. “Get back to your work.”
Canvey retreated, but instead of returning to work he slipped downstairs and waylaid Daniel as he was leaving. “You’ll be back,” he said reassuringly. “Probably do you good to have a rest. It’s a pity you didn’t have one back then.”
“Do you think she did it, Canvey?” Daniel asked slowly.
“‘Course she did. This was just a technicality.”
“I should hate to think I sent an innocent woman away. If only I could remember exactly what happened...but it’s all so blurred in my head.”
“You weren’t yourself in those days. You should have taken some time off. I told you so at the time.”
Daniel made his way out to his car, trying not to be conscious of the looks that followed him, some of them sympathetic, some full of barely concealed pleasure. His brusque manner, short fuse and unorthodox methods had made him many enemies, and not only among the criminal fraternity. Some of his so-called colleagues were glad to see him brought low. The thought made him lift his head still higher.
He groaned as he saw two men, one with a television camera, waiting for him. “I’ve got nothing to say,” he told them firmly.
They followed him to his car, the reporter constantly trying to shove a microphone in front of him. “How do you feel about Megan Anderson’s release?”
“I have no feelings about it one way or the other,” he snapped. It was partly true. His feelings were in such turmoil that he couldn’t sort them out.
“Is it true that the police are refusing to reopen the case?”
“Ask them.”
“Does that mean you’ve been dismissed?”
Now he knew how a fox felt when the hounds were after it. It was a horrible experience. He managed to keep hold of his temper until he got in the car, but when the reporter banged on the window, he wound the glass down and said “Get...out...of...my way” with such slow, emphatic menace that the man blanched and backed off.
He reached his house without further incident, and noted with relief that the crowds of press who’d made it a nightmare the day before had disappeared. But as he got out of his car, a man, who seemed to be mending the road, suddenly straightened and blocked his path. “Have you got any statement to make, Inspector?”
Daniel took hold of the reporter’s ear. “Yes, I have a statement,” he said with deceptive mildness. “It’s this. You have one second to get out before you feel my foot in your rear.” He let go, and the man scuttled away.
* * *
When Janice had asked where she’d wanted to go, Megan’s answer had been simple. “Somewhere I can hide.”
The result was an obscure boarding house in a shabby part of London. She had one room that doubled as a bedroom and living room, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom the size of a postage stamp. The apartment wasn’t much bigger than her prison cell, which accorded with Megan’s mood. She was free only in the most limited sense. Everything that had once formed her life had been stripped from her, including her good name, but most of all, her son. For the moment she could see no way of getting them back.
She called her ex-husband repeatedly that afternoon, but he wouldn’t speak to her. His mother answered the phone at home, and at work his secretary had orders not to put her through. Between calls she sat and brooded in terrible bitterness.
Her thoughts were chaotic, but one thing stayed constant. The face of Daniel Keller was there all the time—hard, unyielding, judging her—so convinced that he was right that he’d twisted the case and destroyed her. His face was burned into her consciousness by her hatred of him. She watched the television news reports and caught the moment when the reporter asked how he felt about her release, and his reply. “I have no feelings about it one way or another.”
“Of course you haven’t,” she flung at his face on-screen. “What’s it to you?”
It was some slight comfort to learn that he’d been suspended, although she felt, cynically, that he would be allowed back when the dust had settled. It was her own future that had been blasted.
Her first night alone was tormented by nightmares and she awoke crying out. One of the other residents knocked on her door to ask if she was all right. After that she tried to catnap for short periods, fearful of rousing the house. So far no one seemed to have recognized her, and this was her only hope of peace.
It was early spring, not a green, enchanted spring promising hope and rebirth, but a sodden fag end of winter, where it rained and rained and rained. The endless cascades of water beat against her ill-fitting windows and seeped in through the cracks, making the room damp. And the noise sometimes made it hard to hear anything else.
On the evening of her fourth day, just as she’d finished dressing for bed, she thought she heard a knock outside. Yawning she made her way to the door, then hesitated. A sudden letup in the rain gave her the chance to hear the knock again. “Who is it?” she called cautiously.
“Mrs. Anderson?” A man’s voice reached her from the other side of the door.
“If you’re a journalist, go away.”
“I’m not a journalist....” The man hesitated. “I’m Daniel Keller.”
Sheer outrage made her pull open the door to confront him. “Get out of here!” she said fiercely. “How dare you come pestering me?” Her voice rose to a cry. “Haven’t you done enough?”
He was already halfway in. “I have to talk to you,” he said urgently.
“And I don’t have to talk to you,” she said bitterly. “This isn’t like those times you had me in the police station and I had to talk to you whether I wanted to or not. I’m free now, free of that damned prison where you put me with your lies and your frame-up, and free of you. I can tell you to get out, and that’s what I’m doing.”
He hesitated, driven by desperation but unwilling to use force. Megan’s sharp voice had attracted attention in the shabby little boarding house. Doors were opening, curious heads appearing. “Please let me in,” he said urgently.
“I told you to get out of here.” She tried pushing against the door but he pushed harder and managed to get right into the room. Megan backed away swiftly, as though afraid he might touch her. “What’s the matter with you?” she snapped. “Don’t you understand the word no? Oh, but of course you don’t. How often did I say ‘no’ to you three years ago? No, I didn’t murder Henry Grainger. No, I don’t know who did. No, I’m not lying. No, no, no. And how much notice did you ever take? Not a bit because you were so sure you were right and it was just a question of wearing me down until I confessed. And when I refused to oblige, you framed me.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to me,” she cried. “You lied before and your lies cost me three years of my life. They cost me my son.”
Without warning, her fury drained away. She seemed to have little physical strength left, only what her taut nerves could give her. She’d lived on nervous energy through the agonizing days of her appeal; now that she was free, the energy came and went, so that she roller-coasted between being high on adrenaline and being too weak to stand. Only a moment ago she’d been possessed by the strength of anger. Now she felt like a rag doll. “Why on earth did you come here?” she asked, sitting down tiredly.
Daniel hesitated. If she’d looked up at his face she would have seen that it was as tortured as her own. He’d been little more than thirty when they’d first clashed, but the years since then had scored themselves twice over on his features. He’d been to hell, just as she had. But she saw none of this.
“I came because I had to,” he said. “I can’t just leave things like this.”
“Why? Because you’ve been suspended? I’d say that you’d come by your just deserts and things should be left exactly like that.”
With her brown eyes blazing at him, he remembered that as a model she’d been called Tiger Lady. She was rumored to have a short fuse and an explosive temperament, which had counted against her at the trial.
He remembered his first sight of her, three years ago, glamorous in a silk evening dress and velvet cape, her face skillfully made up. She’d been working for an escort agency and had just returned from a date when he’d called to “ask a few questions” about the violent death of her landlord, Henry Grainger. He’d made a professional note of her extravagant beauty, but it hadn’t moved him. His heart had died exactly two months, three weeks and two days earlier—the day his wife had been killed by a drunken driver.
If he’d felt anything about Megan’s looks it was antagonism at the expensive trappings that showed them off. The trappings were gone now. She wore no makeup, and her face was pale. The glamorous clothes were gone, too. Her plain cotton nightgown was mended in a couple of places, and her feet were bare. Yet an irreducible beauty remained. It was there in the high cheekbones and curved mouth, in the large, haunted eyes.
“Mrs. Anderson,” he said at last, “I know you find this hard to believe, but I swear I wasn’t corrupt. I didn’t suppress evidence.”
“Don’t take me for a fool. You had a witness who’d seen me ten miles away at the time Grainger was killed, and you buried his statement because it would have ruined your case. How lucky for you that the constable who took that statement left the force and went to Australia. You must have thought everything was working out wonderfully. Only he came back and started asking awkward questions, and that was lucky for me because you were exposed for the cheat you are. The only thing that amazes me is that you contented yourself with hiding the statement. Why not destroy it while you had the chance? Or would that have been too dangerous for you? I suppose you prefer your corruption to be nice and safe.”
“Stop this,” he said desperately. “I didn’t hide the statement because I didn’t know about it.”
She looked at him derisively. “You can do better than that. Constable Dutton handed it to you himself.”
“Maybe he did. I don’t know. I only know that I have no recollection of it.”
“And I suppose you have no recollection of scribbling something on it? It was your handwriting.”
“Yes, but—”
“And the way it got conveniently lost—hidden away in a file belonging to another case. I suppose you have ‘no recollection’ of that, either?”
“None at all. When it was found in that file I was as amazed as anybody, I swear it.”
She actually smiled with incredulity that he should try to fool her with such a feeble story. “I don’t know why you came here, but you’re wasting your time,” she said firmly.
“I came because I have to know the truth.”
“Has the truth suddenly become important to you after all this time?” she asked sarcastically. “What use is it to tell you the truth? You don’t believe it when you hear it. You really came because you want me to confess, then you’d feel all right, wouldn’t you? And the force might take you back.”
“It wouldn’t make me feel all right to know you’re guilty,” he said harshly. “That would mean I’d made my case so clumsily that a murderess was freed too soon. Did I do that? Or did I jail an innocent woman? Either way, it’s just as bad.”
“Your arrogance is beyond belief,” she snapped. “‘Just as bad’? It may make no difference to you which way it turns out, but what about me? I don’t matter, do I? To you I’m just part of an academic exercise in finding out which way your guilt lies. But I’m not. I’m a human being, and you’ve ruined my life. I didn’t kill anyone, but because you made it look as if I did, they took my son away. Because of you I can’t get to see him, even now. If my ex-husband has his way, I’ll never see him again, and it’s all because of you.”
Her voice rose to a scream as her nerves finally snapped, and she flew at him. For three dreary years she’d longed to inflict on him a fraction of the pain he’d caused her, and now he was here. She lashed out blindly, striking, clawing at his face, driven by uncontrollable fury.
Daniel backed up, raising his hands as a shield. What he saw in her face appalled him. Through his job he was used to witnessing despair and misery, but this was worse. It was as though Megan was too demented with anguish to know what she did. Some instinct made him stop trying to push her away and pull her against him, tightening his arms around her so that she was trapped. “Let me go,” she screamed.
“I will when you stop trying to attack me,” he said, speaking breathlessly for she was still thrashing about. “I just want us to talk.”
“The only words I want to say to you are words of hate,” Megan snapped. “Is that clear enough?”
But she was too exhausted to keep it up. The roller coaster was at work again, carrying her to the peak of rage only to plunge her back down into the depths. Suddenly she went limp in his arms and started to shake, not with anger but with grief. Daniel felt the violent trembling of her body against his own and it went through him like a pain. He knew what it was like to suffer like that, to curse heaven in bitterness and misery, and realize that cursing changed nothing. The loved one had gone, and the world was still a dark, barren place to be endured.
Sounds were coming from her, not weeping, but a kind of half-gasping moan, like the keening of a distraught animal. And again his own experience showed him the answer. That sensation of being an animal, feeling the loss of one’s young like an agony in the flesh. How well he knew it. He was a man with a bitter sense of irony, and it wasn’t lost on him that, of all the world, he was the best placed to empathize with her, yet there was no one whose help she wanted less. But then irony fled and he felt nothing but an overwhelming desire to calm her storm of grief. “Megan,” he pleaded. “Megan...let me help you....”
She grew still and he thought he’d gotten through to her. “It’s cold in here,” he said. “Haven’t you got a dressing gown? And something to put on your feet?”
“When you’ve gone, I’m going to bed,” she said tiredly. “I wish you’d leave now. Just go, and I’ll be all right.”
He realized that he hadn’t gotten through, after all. She was simply too tired to argue anymore. “How can I walk away and leave you like this?” he demanded.
“The same way you walked away and left me in prison. I’m not your problem.” She pushed against him and he reluctantly freed her. “Please go.”
“Look—”
“Go.” She went to the door and pulled it open. “Go away now, and don’t come back.”
Her head was turned toward him, so she didn’t see what was outside the door. She saw only the sudden look of tension on his face, and when she turned, it was too late. The little crowd of men and women surged into her room, all babbling at once and taking pictures, blinding them both with flashbulbs.
“Mrs. Anderson have you anything to say?”
“...I’m authorized to offer you.”
“...exclusive...”
“Why aren’t the police looking for someone else?”
“Your story...if you’d only—”
“Go away,” she screamed. “Go away and leave me alone!”
Instead of leaving, they pressed in on her further, forcing her to back away from them. But she suddenly stopped and plunged forward between them, forcing them to part. By the time they’d recovered from their surprise, she was out the door and racing down the stairs toward the front door. They raced after her, baying like hounds in pursuit.
Daniel hesitated, torn between two opposing instincts. He wanted to intervene and get them off her track, but if they recognized him, they’d have an even better story, one that would make them pursue her even more mercilessly. At last he followed them down and out into the street and saw that Megan had vanished. The pack poured into their vehicles and tore off in pursuit. He gave them a moment to get clear before going to his own car. He didn’t think he’d have far to look for her. She was bound to be hiding nearby.
But an hour of combing the streets produced nothing. He checked her apartment in case she’d returned, but all he found was a journalist who’d had the same idea and looked set to wait out the night.
Cursing, Daniel got back into his car and began the search again. But it was useless, and at last he had to face the fact that Megan had vanished into the pouring rain wearing only a thin nightgown and nothing on her feet.
Two
Megan didn’t stop running until she was out of breath. She clutched something nearby and stood there heaving, trying to fight off a pain in her side. Gradually her head cleared enough for her to realize that she was holding a tree. She looked around and found herself in a large park that seemed empty except for herself.
She was unfamiliar with this part of London and she didn’t know where she was. She’d fled blindly, and now she had no memory of entering the park and no idea of how to get home. But the dreary little apartment had never been home, and now it wasn’t even a refuge. They’d found it and would be watching for her return. Her feet were bruised and bleeding and she was shivering with cold. She wondered why she’d ever thought things would be better once she’d left jail. They were worse. She was as much a prisoner as ever, but now she was a prisoner on the run, with nowhere to go.
To her surprise she discovered she wasn’t cold anymore. Heat was stealing pleasantly through her limbs and all over her body, although the icy rain was still pouring down, plastering her hair over her eyes. She brushed her hair back, but it was still hard to see through the curtain of water that surrounded her. She began to stumble about, seeking an exit, although what she would do when she found one she didn’t know. The whole evening seemed like just a dream. She’d dreamed that her enemy had come to call, just as she was dreaming now that she could hear his voice through the lashing of the rain.
She came to another tree and stopped to rest against it. But something in the pattern of the knots seemed familiar, and she realized that it was the same tree as before. How long had she been wandering around in circles? She had no notion of time.
“Megan.” The voice was there again in her dream, and Daniel Keller mysteriously appeared through the curtain of water. “Megan. Thank God, I found you.”
She regarded him without hostility, but without interest. He was no more than a shadow in her overheated consciousness. “Go away,” she said indifferently. “I’m fine, really I am.”
He put his hand on her forehead and swore. “You’re burning up with fever. Come on.” He picked her up and ran with her in his arms to where he’d left his car. He almost threw her into the backseat, wrenched off his jacket and wrapped it around her before getting into the front and starting up.
As he drove, he used his car phone to call his doctor, who was also a good friend. “I need a home call urgently,” he said. “Can you be there in ten minutes? Thanks.”
Dr. Angela Lang was there before him. She stood by his front door, a reassuringly motherly figure, as Daniel hurried up the path with Megan in his arms. “Help me put her to bed,” he grunted as he carried Megan inside and passed Dr. Lang on the stairs without waiting for a response.
In the guest room, he stripped off Megan’s sodden nightgown and dried her fiercely. “Good grief!” Angela exclaimed in sudden shock. “Isn’t she—?”
“Yes, she is,” Daniel said urgently. “Never mind that. Do something for her feet while I try to stop her getting pneumonia.”
“The best thing is if I get her admitted into the hospital—”
“No!” Daniel said explosively. “She’s had enough of institutions and people staring at her. She needs peace and privacy.”
“Daniel, are you mad? If you want to save your career, this woman is dynamite.”
“I know that,” he said through gritted teeth.
“So what the devil is she doing in your house, unconscious and naked?”
“You’re right,” he said quickly. “She needs something warm to wear.”
“That wasn’t what I—” But Daniel had vanished, returning a moment later with a pair of his own clean pajamas. Angela gave up arguing and tended to Megan’s bleeding feet.
“She isn’t going to get pneumonia, is she?” Daniel asked when Megan was dressed and wrapped up under an electric blanket.
“I don’t think so. Probably just a feverish cold, but if she gets worse, call me at once. Are you a good nurse? She’ll need a lot of attention at first.”
“Don’t worry,” he said with bleak humor, “I’ve got nothing else to do.”
* * *
The heat that had comforted Megan in the park had given way to violent shivering. She was burning up with fever, yet at the same time she was like ice. Somebody was piling blankets onto her, but it was no use. Aches and pains chased themselves through her limbs. She wanted to sleep but she felt too ill.
Then she was being raised to a sitting position and a mug was being pressed to her lips. “Drink this.” She vaguely remembered the man’s voice but she couldn’t place it. “It’s hot milk and whiskey, and it’ll do you good,” he added.
She obeyed, and took the tablets he gave her. But when she lay down she was still restless and began tossing about, throwing off the blankets. He piled them back onto her and she threw them off again. He seemed to have inexhaustible patience, because no matter how often it happened he was always there to push her back against the pillows and soothe her. She tried to fight him off, muttering, “I’ve got to...got to...”
Got to what? She didn’t know. She only knew that some terrible problem was going unsolved while she lay here, and nobody else understood.
But it seemed that he did understand because he murmured, “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right. Just sleep and let me do the worrying.”
After a while she stopped struggling and lay there, her hand in his.
Daniel stayed quite still until he was sure she’d fallen asleep, then he gently tucked her hand under the blanket. He rose and stood looking down at her flushed face on the pillow. The strain was smoothed away from it now, but the dark shadows around her eyes told the story of inner torment.
“What have I done?” he murmured. “Dear God, what have I done?”
* * *
In the limbo between sleeping and waking Megan found herself experiencing a new sensation. Suddenly there was nothing to worry about because someone was taking care of her, someone strong who could shoulder all her burdens until she could cope with them again herself.
That had last happened when she was a child. Her parents had died when she was only sixteen, after which she’d had to fend for herself. She’d capitalized on her height and slender beauty to become a model, and for a few years she’d been in the front rank.
Then she’d met Brian Anderson. At first she’d been charmed by him, but the charm had faded as she’d realized he’d had only one priority—success. He’d been an accountant in a high-profile firm, and he’d adored her because she was successful and well-known. He’d enjoyed being seen with a beautiful woman on his arm, but she’d gradually become convinced that his feelings went very little deeper than that. She’d been on the verge of breaking off the relationship when she’d found out she was pregnant.
She’d never even considered an abortion. She’d wanted her baby, and Brian’s eagerness to marry her had warmed her heart again. Perhaps his child would make him see the world in less monetary terms. But it had had the opposite effect. Money and success became doubly important. He was furious when she’d abandoned her career because she couldn’t bear to be apart from her adored little son.
When Tommy was a year old, Brian had broken away from his firm to start up on his own. Megan had been an asset to him, presiding over dinner parties where every detail was perfect, including her own impeccable appearance. But the socializing had meant nothing to her. The guests were invariably people who might be “useful” and afterward Brian would discuss them entirely in terms of their money and the business they might bring his way.
The gap between herself and her husband had yawned wider every day, but she’d made the best of it for Tommy’s sake, and would have continued doing so, if Brian hadn’t gone too far. Trying to land a hugely rich but personally repellent client, he’d instructed her to “be nice” to him.
“Just how ‘nice’ do you want me to be?” Megan had asked in an icy tone that should have warned him.
Brian had shrugged. “He’s worth millions, he’s got no family and his hobby is speculation. Work it out.”
Their own physical relationship had been over for a year at that point, but it was still a shock to discover that he’d respected her so little that he could suggest such a thing. When Brian returned home from work that evening, he’d found Megan and Tommy gone.
He’d tried to starve her back to him, refusing to allow her a penny even for the child’s upkeep. So she’d returned to work, taking the kind of low-ranking modeling jobs that would once have been beneath her, and supplementing her income with escort work. In comparison to the luxurious life-style she’d left, they were hard up, but she was happier than she’d been for a long time—until the sky had fallen on her.
In all those years there’d never been anyone to murmur “It’s all right...let me do the worrying.” But now someone had said it, and the words had given her ease.
She opened her eyes and found herself in a strange room. It was large and shabby but comfortable. It didn’t surprise her that she recognized nothing. The events of the past few days had made the unfamiliar familiar, and the unexpected, the norm. She was hot and achy all over, and her head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton wool.
Then the door opened, and her enemy came in. She stared, aghast, and tried to pull herself upright in the bed, but lead weights pulled her back. “What are you doing here?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper.
“This is my home,” Daniel told her. “I brought you here after I found you in the park.”
“How dare you!” It was hard to sound angry when she could hardly speak.
“I had no choice, Megan. I couldn’t take you back to that apartment. The press had it staked out.”
“Not here. Anywhere but here,” she croaked.
“If you think about it, you’ll see that this is the best place. Who would ever think of looking for you with me?”
She started to cough and could do nothing until the fit had subsided. When it was over, she lay back, drained, and looked at him helplessly.
Daniel laid a gentle hand on her forehead. “You’ve got a feverish cold,” he said. “You stay here until you’re well.”
“You’ve taken a lot for granted,” she said hoarsely.
“What would you prefer, the hospital, where you’ll be stared at?” She shook her head weakly, beyond speech. “Don’t waste what little voice you’ve got left in abusing me,” he advised. “The doctor left you something to take. I’ll get breakfast and make you comfortable, then you must get some more sleep. The bathroom’s next door. Put this on.” He indicated a thick terry-cloth robe lying across a chair, and left the room.
As soon as she got out of bed, her head swam. It took ten minutes to get into the robe and out of the room. The bathroom mirror showed her looking haggard, with large, feverish eyes, but it had been a long time since she’d cared what she looked like. Almost subliminally she noticed that the room was exclusively male. There was shaving tackle and toothpaste, but no talcum powder, or anything else to suggest a woman.
She slowly made her way back to the bedroom, holding on to the wall, and was leaning against it to regain her breath when Daniel appeared with breakfast. “Let me help you,” he said, setting down the tray and reaching for her.
Her eyes glittered at him. “Don’t...touch...me....” she said in an emphatic whisper.
Reluctantly he let his hands fall to his sides and watched edgily as she tottered back to bed. After that, she seemed to have no more fight in her, accepting the tablets he offered without protest, eating some of the breakfast, falling asleep and staying that way for the rest of the day.
That afternoon Daniel called Canvey. His old colleague greeted him with cautious warmth, until he heard what Daniel wanted. Then he exploded with outrage and apprehension. “Are you out of your mind, man? Do you want me to be thrown off the force, as well?”
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Daniel said urgently, “but nobody need suspect. Just for one night, and you can have them back in the morning.”
“Masters will have my head on a plate if he finds out.”
“He won’t find out. Please, Canvey, I’m desperate.”
In the end, Canvey gave in as he was bound to do, since he owed his life to Daniel. He arrived after work that evening with a parcel that he thrust into Daniel’s hands with the words, “Have these ready when I call tomorrow morning, or we’re both in big trouble.”
Daniel went into the back room where he kept his audio-video equipment, the one luxury he allowed himself. He opened the parcel and found that Canvey hadn’t let him down. Inside were cassettes, both audio and video, of his interviews with Megan, three years ago, plus all his own notebooks.
He spent the night duplicating everything, and had just managed to get the parcel packed up by the time Canvey called on his way to work the next day. After thanking Canvey, he made his way upstairs with Megan’s breakfast. He found her coughing and sneezing, and unable to do much more than nibble on some toast. He put fresh sheets on the bed and helped her back in. She made no protest. In fact, she hardly seemed aware of him, falling asleep almost at once.
Then Daniel was free to settle down with the videocassettes and papers. He wished he could remember more about what had happened. It wasn’t uncommon for policemen to forget details in time, as other cases took over, but he’d always been known in the force for his phenomenal memory. Not with this case, though. His mind seemed to have wiped it out.
He tried an old trick. Stop worrying about the thing you needed to remember. Go back to something that had happened earlier and work forward. But that meant reviving a memory he flinched from; of how a gentle, loving woman and a bright-faced little boy had been mowed down in a car driven by Carter Denroy, a lout with booze running in his veins, a man so drunk that he couldn’t afterward remember what had happened. And that led to another terrible memory—Denroy walking from court, a free man, smirking because his only punishment had been a fine. That smirk had burned itself into Daniel’s consciousness so deeply that it still tortured his dreams.
He wanted to shy away now, but he forced himself to relive the scene, and gradually another detail emerged. There had been a woman there, too. A glossy, expensive woman who’d looked bored and impatient with the whole business of coming to court, as though it was simply too ridiculous to make a man pay for the lives he destroyed. As Denroy and the woman had walked out together, Daniel had heard her say, “You see, I told you it would be all right.”
Daniel had stepped out quietly to stand in front of them, which had made the grin fade from Denroy’s face. He’d halted, saying nothing, looking nervous. But the woman hadn’t been nervous. She’d looked Daniel up and down before saying imperiously, “Kindly get out of our way.”
Daniel had neither moved nor spoken. He’d just stood looking at the man who’d killed his wife, his face possessed by a cold, silent hate that had made Denroy flinch. He’d been scared. Was that what had made him say such a stupid, fatuous thing? No hard feelings, eh? Just an accident. Then he’d fallen back at the menace in Daniel’s face.
Now Daniel remembered how Denroy had cast a nervous glance at the woman, and how her contempt had seemed to force some courage into him—enough courage to shoulder his way past. That look had told Daniel all he’d needed to know about their relationship. Denroy had been intimidated by her, had wanted to impress her. That was why he’d driven her home when he’d had no right to be behind the wheel of a car. He’d probably bragged, “Don’t worry. What’s a little booze? I can handle it.”
Daniel had thought of Denroy often, but the woman had faded from his mind—until now.
Another memory—Canvey, there with him in court, hovering beside him as he’d confronted his wife’s killers, hands at the ready to stop him from physically attacking Denroy. He was a good friend. He’d hauled Daniel away to the nearest pub and poured drink down him. “Take some time off,” he’d said. “Take as much as you need.”
“I can cope,” he’d insisted.
“You think you can, but you shouldn’t work in this state.”
“I tell you, I can cope.”
He’d prided himself on being a hard man, a strong man who could stand up to anything. He’d thrown himself into his job, working all hours, ignoring weariness, driving himself to the limit. It was the only way he could endure. Canvey had been concerned. “I see you staring into space sometimes,” he’d said, “and when I say your name, you don’t seem to hear.”
Daniel had responded by driving himself even harder. Whether he’d done his work well or not was something he didn’t know, because he could hardly recall a single detail of that time.
But he had to remember. He forced his mind back. Henry Grainger. Hang on to that name. Henry Grainger, the owner of a small block of apartments, had been found dead. Someone had hit him over the head with a blunt instrument. Daniel had been sent to investigate.
All the signs pointed to Mrs. Megan Anderson, one of Grainger’s tenants, who’d been heard quarreling with him the night he’d died. He hadn’t been found until the following evening, at which time Mrs. Anderson was out on an assignment for an escort agency. Daniel had waited until she’d returned late that night. She’d walked in, glossy, expensive, consciously alluring, dressed and made up for effect. He recalled that she’d made that impression on him, but strangely, he couldn’t conjure up her face. Instead he kept seeing the face of Denroy’s companion, who’d also been glossy and heavily made up. He tried hard to concentrate, but he couldn’t clear the confusion, and at last he gave up and put a cassette into the video machine.
For a moment he didn’t even recognize the woman who appeared on the screen. Surely she couldn’t be the same person as the tense, feverish invalid upstairs? The contrast shocked him. He stared at the screen, noting her defiance, almost arrogance, tinged with bafflement at finding herself in a police station under suspicion of murder.
He heard his own off-camera voice. “Let’s go back to your quarrel with Mr. Grainger, Mrs. Anderson.”
“It wasn’t a quarrel,” the woman on the screen said wearily. “I didn’t know him well enough to quarrel with. He tried to paw me about, I told him to push off.”
“That’s not what your neighbors say. According to them, the whole thing was very violent.”
“They weren’t there. I was.”
“They heard screaming and shouting.”
“I was angry. He disgusted me. He was a worm.”
“That’s how you saw him, was it? A worm?”
Such an obvious trap, he thought now, but she hadn’t seen it. “Yes, a worm,” she said with a shrug. “Or a sewer rat. Take your pick.”
Wouldn’t a woman have to be innocent to walk so blindly into danger? he wondered. He almost winced as he heard his own voice springing the trap. “In other words, vermin—to be destroyed? A worm to be trodden on. A rat to be hit on the head—like Henry Grainger?”
“I didn’t kill him. He was alive when I left the building. I walked miles away. I told you that before.”
“Yes, you told me you went to Wimbledon Common. I’ve got a team out there trying to find someone who saw you. But so far there are no witnesses to confirm that you were there.”
The words brought Daniel out in a cold sweat. There had been a witness. He’d been lying, unless...
He leafed frantically through the papers until he came to the photocopied statement from the man who’d seen “a woman who might have been Megan Anderson,” on Wimbledon Common at the time Grainger had been killed. There was a note scribbled on it in Daniel’s own writing, saying he’d received it on February twenty-third. He yanked the cassette from the machine to study the label, but in his haste to duplicate everything, he hadn’t made notes. But it would be on the cassette, at the very start. His heart thumping madly, he shoved the cassette in, rewound it and pressed the play button. In the few seconds it took the machine to start, he felt as if he was dying.
Then his own voice, “Mrs. Megan Anderson being questioned by Detective Inspector Keller in Interview Room 10. Interview timed at fifteen hundred hours, February twenty-first. Let’s go back to...”
The twenty-first. Two days before the statement. He hadn’t been lying to trap her. The relief was so overwhelming that he almost blacked out. When he’d steadied himself, he poured a stiff drink and wondered at the pass he’d come to. It was appalling to have to rely on outside evidence to confirm his honesty to himself, but he had no recollection of either the statement or the interview.
He ran the tape forward to where he’d left off. “...no witnesses to confirm that you were there. It’s a pity you can’t remember seeing anyone else there.”
“I wasn’t looking at other people,” Megan said. “I just walked there to be alone and brood on how much Henry Grainger disgusted me.”
Her tone struck him. She sounded bored, exasperated and edgy, but not frightened, as though she knew this was only a misunderstanding that was bound to be cleared up in the end. It was a tone he associated with innocence, and he wondered if he’d noticed it at the time.
This interview had taken place two days after Grainger’s death. She’d changed from the gorgeous evening wear of their first meeting, but she was still smartly dressed and groomed. A lot of care had been applied to her face, as though beauty was a tool of her trade.
He saw himself appear on the screen. Evidently he’d risen and walked around the table to confront her more closely: he sat on the table in front of her and leaned down. Watching himself, he made a face of distaste at what looked like an intimidatory tactic. But the woman he confronted wasn’t intimidated. She raised her head and looked up at him coolly, defiantly. He felt a flicker of admiration now for the way she wouldn’t back down in front of a bully.
A bully? Himself? Yes. The sound of his own voice grated on him. “Tell me about it from the beginning, Mrs. Anderson.”
“Oh, God, not again! I’ve told you so often.”
Suddenly his face came into view, and he was shocked. He looked like a dead man, a zombie, and it was a dead man’s voice that said, “Tell me again. Let’s see if you can remember any details you’ve forgotten.”
Daniel shivered.
Three
After three days of feeling too ill to care about anything, Megan awoke to the discovery that the fever had left her and her body no longer ached. Getting gingerly out of bed, she found that she was still weak, but after being unable to eat anything she was now ravenously hungry. She put on the thick socks Daniel always left for her feet, pulled on his robe, and left the room, holding on to things as she moved. The house was a big, rambling building that looked as if it might have been built a century ago. Although clean, it was shabby and in need of redecorating. Glancing out the window, she saw a large garden with trees and a rockery, the sort of garden that cried out for dogs and children romping together. But it was empty.
Everywhere was silence and there was no sign of Daniel. What Megan could see of the house was austere, as though its occupant lived in it only in passing.
One room was different. It was at the back of the house, and it was filled with electronic gadgets, audio-video equipment, tapes, records, magazines. How like Daniel Keller, she thought, to have a hobby that offered him the world at a distance. It fitted her picture of him as a man without human feeling.
She glanced idly through the videocassettes strewn on the floor. Their labels bore hastily scrawled notes in pencil. One of them read Interview 3. Feb. 23rd, 19—
Her heart began to beat hard. February 23rd was the day of her third interview with Keller. But surely...?
She hurried, switched on the set, and shoved the cassette into the machine. Shocked, she saw her own angry face on the screen. And from off camera came Daniel’s voice, taunting her. “You could have killed him easily. He wasn’t a big man, and I’ll bet you’re not as fragile as you look.”
Then the woman on the screen did the worst possible thing. Losing her temper, she launched herself forward at her tormentor. For a moment Daniel came into the shot, fending her off. He was right. She was stronger than she looked, and he had some trouble keeping her nails from his face. “Was this how you went for Henry Grainger with that heavy ashtray?” he asked, gasping slightly.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“The ashtray had your fingerprints and nobody else’s except Grainger’s own. How do you account for that?”
Megan shut off the set, shaking. She tried to calm her own thoughts. If she brooded about how much she hated Keller, it would overset her mind, and she needed her wits about her. Quickly she pulled out the cassette and began to rummage through the others, which all turned out to be copies of her interviews in the police station. The last thing she came to was a thick, buff-colored envelope, which she accidentally knocked off the sofa, sending its contents spilling over the floor. Gathering them up, she found herself looking at her own face.
Amazed, she studied the other papers. Every one of them was a piece about herself from her modeling days. Most were straightforward fashion shots, in which she was wearing a succession of glamorous clothes. One was a magazine cover, showing a close-up of her face, looking sensual and gorgeous. Megan considered the beauty in that picture as if she were a stranger, which in a sense was true. She had nothing to do with the shattered woman regarding her now.
There were some pages attached to the cover, containing a feature about her from inside the magazine. It was headlined, Tiger Lady and the writer had started by quoting Blake’s “Tyger, tyger, burning bright/In the forests of the night.” From there he’d gone wild, lavishing purple prose over “a woman with the power and sultry eroticism of a tiger, who moves with the sleek, silent grace of a jungle creature, stalking the forests of the night.”
The first time Megan had read it she’d laughed, thinking it wildly overdone. Now she wondered who that proud, confident woman had been, and how she’d ever come to this pass.
What astonished her most was finding the piece here, along with the copies of her interviews with Keller. It looked as though he’d been studying her in some depth. But why? Was he seeking the truth after all this time, or merely trying to confirm his original verdict? She decided it was probably safest to think badly of him. He was concerned with saving his own face and rebuilding his life. The rebuilding of her life wouldn’t concern him.
Megan rose suddenly and began to search for the telephone, which she found in an alcove in the hall. It was nearly four o’clock. Tommy would have just arrived home from school. If she called now there was a chance that he might pick up the phone. With trembling hands she dialed the number and sat, white-knuckled, listening to the ringing on the other end. So intent was she that she didn’t hear the front door open and Daniel come quietly into the house.
At last there was an answer. Megan’s heart sank as she heard the voice of Brian’s mother. “I want to speak to Tommy,” she said as firmly as she could.
“I’ve told you before, that isn’t possible,” said Mrs. Anderson in the cool, inflexible voice that Megan hated. “Please don’t call again.”
“I’ll call as often as I have to,” she raged. “He’s my son, and you can’t keep him from me.”
“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?” Megan 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.”
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