Uncaged (9 page)

“Here...” Denroy began to protest, but his voice died away as Daniel look at him again.

The sergeant regarded Daniel with new interest. “It’s Detective Inspector Keller, isn’t it?” he said. “We worked at the same station once, for about six months. Sergeant Gladstone.”

Daniel nodded. “I remember you. Good evening, Sergeant. Can we get on with it?”

Denroy was hurried away. A young constable ushered them into the depths of the station and declared himself ready to take their statements. Megan tried to concentrate, but her mind was seething with what she’d heard.

She’d known that Daniel’s wife and son had been killed three years earlier, just before her own arrest. But somehow it had slipped to the back of her mind and she’d never fully examined the implications. Tonight’s events had made it real, immediate.

Three years ago Daniel’s life had been contented, happy, just like her own. Then misfortune had sprung on them both like a cat out of the jungle. Teeth had ripped up their lives and spat them out in raw, agonized chunks. Ruthless claws had torn the happiness to shreds. For him as for her. Three years ago.
Three years ago.

“Fine, that’s all I need.” Megan came out of her reverie to realize that the sergeant was speaking to her. She’d given her statement from the surface of her mind, hardly knowing what she’d said.

Daniel took her arm and together they left the station. He looked different to her. There’d been a terrible hardness about him while he’d dealt with Denroy and gave his statement. It was there still, shading into a bitter exultancy that she understood. It mirrored her own triumph when she’d learned that he’d been suspended from the force. It had seemed a just and righteous feeling at the time, but seeing it in him, she felt uneasy, both about him and about herself.

When they were in the car, he said, “Heaven knows what that respectable boarding house is going to think about the time I get you back there.”

“I don’t want to go back there tonight,” Megan said.

“What?”

“I want to go home with you. There are things we must talk about.”

At once he was wary. “Not tonight, Megan.”

“Yes, tonight. It’s important, Daniel. You know it is.”

He didn’t ask what she meant, but turned the car in the direction of his home.

W
hen they were inside the house, Daniel said, “What is it, Megan? What’s on your mind?”

“Daniel, I want you to do something for me, without asking why.”

“All right,” he said, but his voice was guarded.

“I want you to let me interview you.”

“What?”

“The way you interviewed me.”

“What’s going on in your head, Megan?”

“Please, Daniel, just do as I ask.”

“But why?”

“Because there are things about you I must know—about Carter Denroy.”

She saw his face close against her. “There’s no need for that.”

“There’s every need. Who gave you the right to know the details of
my
life while keeping your own a secret?”

“That’s different. I have to know about you. It’s part of the case. What happened to me—” a tremor went through him, “—doesn’t come into it.”

She looked at him. “Doesn’t it? Are you sure about that?”

His eyes fell first. Her clear, searching gaze seemed to bore straight into his soul, uncovering places he’d kept protected from the world. “Never mind,” he said, turning away.

“I mind very much. I think it matters.” She put a gentle hand on his arm and turned him back. “Please, Daniel, talk to me.”

“Will it help us nail Jackson Grainger?”

“That’s not what I’m thinking of.”

He didn’t answer, but he offered no resistance when she urged him into a chair and sat opposite him. “This is your interview,” he said. “I take it you want to ask questions?”

“Yes. I want to know about...” She hesitated before taking her courage in both hands. “About Mrs. Sally Keller.”

For a long moment he was silent. When at last he began to talk, he didn’t look at her, but at a point over her shoulder. “We were married for seven years. We had a son called Neil, whom we both loved very much. We loved each other very much, too.”

“What sort of a person was she?”

“She was sweet and gentle, and full of generosity. I was a bit of a tearaway when we met. We were both of us just kids, and I could have ended up on either side of the law. All I cared about was getting my kicks out of life. But then I began to care for her, too, and she made it plain that if I wanted her, I’d have to straighten myself out. So I did. I pulled myself together, got into the police, and waited three years to marry her.”

“She must have been quite a person,” Megan breathed.

“She was my salvation,” Daniel said simply.

Megan was silent, trying to cope with the sensations that possessed her at the fervent intensity of that statement. Just as she’d learned only recently what it was like to wait for a phone call that didn’t come, so now she was discovering jealousy. Daniel’s few words had conjured up a whole world—a world that contained himself, his wife and their son, and that excluded her. Three years after her death Sally still had the power to bring a glow to her husband’s eyes, a warmth to his voice. And Megan was jealous.

But Tiger Lady’s jungle powers were useless now. Her claws could only damage the delicate fabric of the relationship that was growing between herself and this man. So she kept her feelings to herself, and said only, “And you were happy.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I didn’t know what it was like to be happy until we were married. I thought I had everything a man could want. Only then, Neil was born, and I discovered there was more.” He fell silent. He was still looking past Megan, and he seemed to have forgotten her. A reminiscent half smile touched his mouth, as if he could see something hidden from her. She resisted the temptation to look behind her to see if his wife and son were standing there. There was no need. For Daniel, they
were
there, conjured up by the power of his love. Megan’s jealousy flickered again. What sort of woman could wring a man’s heart with such yearning, bittersweet memory? What sort of love was it they had known?

“And then?” she prompted at last. Part of her was reluctant to speak, but she had to know.

“And then...she took Neil to visit her parents for a weekend. She drove back on Sunday evening. I was expecting her about nine o’clock—but she didn’t arrive. At ten I called her parents, but they said she’d left early. Then one of my colleagues from the station turned up on my doorstep. They’d been called out to a fatal accident...and he’d recognized her.” He stopped.

“Go on,” Megan said, gently but persistently.

“The car was a write-off. It had taken three hours for them both to be cut free. When I went to identify her, I hardly knew her—” He broke off and closed his eyes. “She’d always been so full of life, and now she was cold and still—not like my Sally at all. And Neil—he was a real boy, full of bounce, and noise and mischief. Suddenly he was so silent—”

“And Carter Denroy did that?”

Daniel bowed his head. “Yes.”

“Did you see him that day?”

He opened his eyes again and spoke in a hard voice. “He was at the station. He’d sobered up by then and was refusing to say anything. The woman with him did all the talking. She kept saying they wanted a lawyer and weren’t going to talk until they had one. He was shivering, but she was very cool and collected. Her only thought was how best to manage the situation and extricate themselves. Denroy was a weakling. She knew it, too. She kept giving him little glances of contempt even while she protected him.”

“What was she like?” Megan asked in a voice that gave nothing away.

“I’ve told you—”

“I mean, what did she look like?”

“She was a glamour puss, done up to the nines, face made up to kill.”

“Like me, in fact, the first time you saw me?” She spoke so casually that for a moment the force of her remark didn’t impress Daniel. But when it did, he turned horror-filled eyes on her. Horror at her implication. Horror at hearing his own half-suspected prejudice dragged out into the open.

She was merciful. She didn’t insist on an answer, but continued, “It was just before Christmas, wasn’t it? Gladys told me. She said you went straight back to work.”

“I couldn’t face this house. I turned to my work to save my sanity.”

She took a deep breath. “Tell me about that work.”

“What?” He stared at her.

“Tell me about your cases then. What were they?”

“How can I remember after all this time?”

“Can you remember
anything
you did then, Daniel?”

He saw where she was leading. Dumbly he shook his head. His eyes were desperate.

“Perhaps you should have taken some time off,” she suggested gently.

“That’s what Canvey said—in fact several people—but it’s the way I was raised. You didn’t give in. That was what being a man meant—you didn’t give in. You were hard and stoical, and didn’t let the world see you were hurting. Time off was for wimps.” A shudder went through him. “I believed I was being strong. I never thought—” He couldn’t bear to go on.

“It was about then that...that we met,” Megan said carefully. She knew she must tread carefully from now on.

But Daniel had the courage not to shy away. “It was then that I took on the Grainger case,” he said. “I thought I was in control. It seemed so simple—” He came to a halt, but Megan was too wise to speak. She was holding her breath.

At last he repeated, “I thought I was in control. I know now I was deluding myself. Canvey tried to warn me. He said I used to stare into space, and when someone spoke to me it was like I was coming around from a trance. I didn’t believe him. You see, I had no recollection...I don’t know why it never occurred to me that I might harm an innocent person, but it didn’t. I was so stupid, so self-satisfied, so damn sure that I was being strong and rising above everything...and...and
you
paid the price.”

He dropped his head into his hands. Shattered, Megan watched him, aching to comfort him yet knowing the moment hadn’t yet arrived. She ventured to stroke his hair, very gently, but she was holding her breath. There was more to come, and she must be patient.

Still with his head bowed, not looking at her, Daniel said, “When someone gave me that statement, I must have put it away to be studied later, and then forgotten all about it. Even now I can’t remember it. I wrote something on it—the handwriting is mine—but I have no memory... I didn’t frame you Megan, not deliberately. But I wronged you just the same, by being arrogant and self-absorbed, and so convinced that I was infallible that I never thought what I was doing... Oh, God.
Oh, God.
”

A sob tore through his great frame. Without raising his head, he reached out blindly for her, and she enfolded him in her arms. It was the embrace of a mother as much as a lover, enveloping, protective, offering him a place to hide. While his shoulders shook, she kissed and caressed him, seeing again in her mind the way he’d looked three years ago. His face had been pale and livid, the face of a man who was dead, yet still walking. How much had he had to suppress simply to function at all? And all the time the things he’d suppressed seethed and gnawed away inside him, making him a little mad.

He’d made a terrible mistake and she’d paid a terrible price for it, but the mistake had come out of his agony. For three years she’d seen only her own suffering. She didn’t blame herself for that. She’d had little else to think of. But now she was presented with
his
suffering, and it appalled her.

“Daniel,” she whispered. “Daniel, it’s all right...truly it is.”

But he didn’t hear her. “Forgive me,” he choked. “Try to forgive me if you can.”

“Yes,” she said urgently. “Yes, yes, my love, I forgive you.
Yes.
We’ll make everything come right.”

He raised his head to look up at her, and his face was wet. He looked desperate, as if he’d been fending off an enemy for years, and that enemy had finally broken through, crushing and defeating him. Now he was as totally defenseless as she’d once longed to see him. She could say and do anything to him, accuse him of any wickedness, hurl any insult, and he would believe her and slip a little further down into hell. It was what she’d once wanted. But not anymore.

She took his face between her two hands, looking down intently into his eyes. “Listen to me,” she said fiercely. “It’s over. We’ve got to stop living in the past and tormenting ourselves and each other about our mistakes.”

“Say you forgive me,” he pleaded.

“I forgive you. It’s over.”

But she could tell that her words didn’t help him. They were, after all, only words, and it would take more than that to give him peace. Slowly Megan leaned down and began to kiss his face. She covered it with small, gentle kisses; his mouth, his eyes. She could feel the tension in his body through her own pressed against it. Gradually Daniel seemed to divine the message of warmth and loving reassurance she was trying to convey. He placed his hands tentatively on her waist and drew her closer yet.

“Megan,” he whispered, “I don’t deserve this.”

“Yes, you do,” she whispered back. “You deserve all my best...my love...”

She didn’t know whether she was calling him her love or saying that he deserved her love. It didn’t matter. Both were true. Everything in her was concentrated on this one man and his grief. She kissed him repeatedly. With her lips still on his, she dropped her hands and began to run them over his shoulders, his arms, his chest. Comfort was shading into excitement at the thought that he could be hers again.

But he understood her intention and stopped her. “I swore this wouldn’t happen again,” he said huskily. “For your sake...you’re too vulnerable.”

“Not anymore,” she said against his lips. “It isn’t me who’s vulnerable now. Don’t fight it, Daniel. Let me give you everything I have to give. It’s the only way I can say...what I want to.”

In answer, Daniel tightened his arms and buried his face against her in the action of a man coming home. He stayed like that for a moment, trying to believe that this miracle was really happening. The scent of her warm, sweet body was in his nostrils. It was the scent of desire, of a woman’s passion stirring in response to one man, and it called forth his own desire for her, which was never far below the surface. He was possessed by feelings such as he’d never thought to experience, feelings of need and longing so strong that they were indistinguishable from love.

He felt her move, and he drew back, releasing her from his embrace. She took his hand and drew him to his feet. “Come with me,” she whispered.

She took him to what had been her bedroom, closed the door behind them, and kissed him softly on the mouth. She began to remove her clothes, but not feverishly as though the need of their flesh was all that mattered, or slowly, as if she meant to tease him. He knew already that what was happening went too deep for that. She did it with a kind of intent simplicity, seeming to have her mind fixed on something that could only be achieved in this way. Daniel watched with wonder as her slim, beautiful body was revealed, offered to him gently and with a graciousness that signified more than passion.

He followed her lead, understanding that it was only when they were naked together that they could communicate. When flesh lay against flesh, skin against skin, warmth against warmth, they would find a truth deeper than words.

He took her into his arms, and she pressed her body against the length of his. He could feel her eager trembling, sense the heartfelt gladness of her response. His manhood was hard and powerful, wanting her, but he waited, leaving the initiative with her, knowing he could trust her for everything.

Her kiss was a promise of peace, calming him even while it enticed him. He accepted the invitation of her mouth, sliding his tongue between her lips to venture into the sweet darkness within. It would be so easy to lose himself in her, trust everything to her. All his life and his training was against such surrender, but now he seemed to have no resistance, and moreover he’d learned to mistrust his own apparent strength, seeing it as a trap and a delusion.

He understood that Megan’s strength was the only kind that counted, the strength to forgive a hideous wrong from the depths of a full and courageous heart. True strength lay in soft arms around his neck, sweet lips pressed to his, and a gentle hand leading him to bed.