Hector didn’t like not being the spokesman. Didn’t like his brother very much, possibly, but he played along. ‘Right.’
I sat down. ‘How about another drink while I think about it?’
‘Why not?’ Hector filled my glass. I held it up and then poured it slowly out onto the dusty cement floor.
‘You prick,’ Joseph said, half rising from his chair.
‘Easy,’ Hector said. ‘Just as a matter of interest, what were you seeing Johnnie about?’
I stood and moved towards the door. ‘It was about money. Maybe a more attractive offer than yours.’
Hector didn’t react but my reward was a worried frown on Joseph’s face. I opened the door and looked back. Hector waggled his mobile phone at me. He wouldn’t unravel under pressure as quickly as his brother, but he was probably the more dangerous of the pair.
I had no idea where I was. I walked down the lane. No sign of Rog, Clem or the station wagon. I went towards the loudest traffic noise and walked until I reached a small shopping centre. I located a taxi rank with one cab waiting. I got in and swore when I was asked where I was going. My mind was on Tanner’s threat. Bluff or for real? I told the driver to take me to the gaol car park. My manner discouraged any friendly chat he might have had in mind. We didn’t exchange a word the whole way.
~ * ~
7
Motel rooms aren’t hard to break into. The room keys aren’t complicated and, with a bunch of people who don’t know each other circulating about, things don’t get noticed. Whoever had been in my room hadn’t tried to conceal the fact; quite the opposite. Lying on top of Lord Jim was a disc of silver foil about the size of a ten-cent piece. I unwrapped it; maybe the white powder was coke, maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t care. I flushed it down the toilet. Then I made a thorough search of the room and my belongings in case there was a second stash which would have been a cunning thing to have done—and Hector Tanner was cunning personified. There wasn’t. I made a cup of instant coffee and sat down to think.
There was no point in going to the police and accusing the Tanners of deprivation of liberty and making threats. They’d deny it and I had no evidence. I could do as they said, give Twizell the message and get on with the job Wakefield had hired me to do. That went against the grain: I was being threatened and blackmailed. I’d been used to threats ever since I’d got into this business but blackmail was something new. I felt in my guts that if I gave in to it I was finished.
The first thing to do was buy some time. I rang the gaol and arranged to see Twizell again. I assumed the Tanners’ contact would let them know that. The next step was to find some way to neutralise the threat. The Tanners were based in Newcastle and I had contacts there—a PIA named McKnight who I’d worked with in the past, and Marisha Henderson, a journalist on the Newcastle Herald who’d been a friend and colleague of Lily Truscott. I rang and arranged to meet Pete in his office at Hamilton that evening.
While Pete was wary, knowing that I needed something from him, Marisha sounded genuinely pleased to hear from me.
‘Hello, Cliff,’ she said. ‘Hey, it’s been too long. What’s up?’
I told her I was going to be in Newcastle that night and wanted to talk to her about Novocastrian matters.
‘Like what?’
‘Bad guys.’
‘Right up my street. Dinner?’
‘Has to be later.’
‘Come to my place. How long are you in this shithole for?’
‘Don’t know. I thought you were glad to get the job in Newcastle.’
‘I was. Now not so much. Anyway, we can talk about it. I hope you’re still drinking. Not one of these born-again teetotallers, are you?’
I said I wasn’t. She gave me the address. A mental picture of her formed as we finished the call—tall, slim and energetic with a slight and attractive overbite. Lily had said she was my type and she was, but at the time Lily was all I needed.
It was 3pm and I had a four-hour plus drive ahead of me. I checked out, paying for two nights, and headed north after topping up the tank and washing down a couple of No-Doz with black coffee. I headed north-east, picking up the Bells Line of Road, keeping a close watch in the rear vision mirror for the first stretch, but there was no tail. I paid a toll for the short run on the M2 and got onto the Newcastle freeway. I played a series of CDs, mostly blues. Hummed along or sang when I knew the words. I was tired from the meeting with Twizell, the confrontation with the Tanners and having to concentrate on the driving, but the caffeine kept me alert.