Lucy Gordon - Uncaged

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.