‘He didn’t look particularly prosperous.’
‘No, the Tanners probably bought him by paying off his debts or putting them on hold. They like to control people on the cheap. That’s their speciality.’
He wasn’t telling me much I didn’t know apart from the information about Pete. He put a few more questions to me which I deflected. His heart wasn’t in it. When an ex-cop-turned-private-detective forms an alliance, however reluctantly, with criminals, you have a recipe for trouble. Pete’s killer would have to be looked for in a dozen different directions and the police didn’t have the time or the motivation. When Watson took a phone call, responding in a series of grunts, my interview was over.
‘Your car’s in the back parking lot. Your keys are at the desk. If any information that might help us comes your way, get in touch.’
I said I would, collected the keys, located the car and drove a few blocks at random to see if I was being followed. Nothing. The contents of the glove box had been left on the seat and I had to assume the police had found the catch that opens the lockable section I’d had Hank install behind the glove box. They’d have learned that the gun hadn’t been fired recently.
I followed my original intention and went back to the same city restaurant for lunch. I try not to drink before 6pm, but circumstances dictate behaviour and hearing shocking news seemed worth a drink. I had two glasses of red with my focaccia. I hadn’t been close to Pete McKnight but I drank a toast to him. Too young to die. His attitude during our talk made more sense now. Maybe he thought he was doing me a favour warning me away from the Tanners and only my disappointment had led him to name the patriarch. Then again, maybe he’d told the Tanners I was coming to Newcastle.
I strung the food and wine out for as long as possible and then took a walk around the harbour, the beach and the city. I got to the coffee bar at the appointed time to find Marisha there already. I could tell by her body language, stiff and somehow hostile, that things had changed.
Still standing, I said, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘You’ve blown it,’ she said.
‘Blown what? How?’
She shook her head dismissively. ‘I should have known.’
I sat down finally. ‘You’re not making sense, Marisha. Known what?’
‘Lily told me that the one thing that worried her about you was that you were a magnet for trouble. She said you drew it towards you and she had a suspicion that you liked it that way. In the end you ...’
I knew what was coming. A lot of people thought Lily had been killed because of me and what I did for a living. It wasn’t true and I thought Marisha knew enough to understand that. I’d run into the problem too many times to be angry and now I was just disappointed. That must have showed because she relaxed some of the tightness in her expression and let her shoulders sag.
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say ...’
‘You shouldn’t think it. It’s not true. But I didn’t know she felt like that about me. She never said.’
‘She loved you.’
We sat in silence for a while. Then she picked up her computer bag and handbag from the floor and stood.
‘You heard about Pete?’ I said.
‘Yes, and about you being taken in by the cops.’
‘Just for a talk.’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t bring you and Jobe together. Not after today. Goodbye, Cliff.’
She walked out with her long athlete’s stride and didn’t look back.
~ * ~
Two disappointments for the price of one. A waitress who’d hovered and then withdrawn, probably thinking she was witnessing a lovers’ quarrel, approached with a tentative smile. I ordered coffee I didn’t really want just to accommodate her.
I toyed with the coffee, thinking how badly things that had seemed so promising had gone. I was no closer to getting something to play off against the Tanner brothers. Pete McKnight had implied a serious rift between them and the father and that seemed likely to widen to a yawning gap if they found out what Jobe was up to. Promising, but I couldn’t reveal that without bringing Marisha into the picture. I needed something solid to neutralise the Tanners, get some cooperation from Twizell for Wakefield and bow out of the whole thing.
If contact with me had brought about Pete’s death, although I couldn’t see how, I was sorry. And I was sorry to lose Marisha’s confidence. But sorrow doesn’t solve problems. The only thing to do was return to Bathurst. Just possibly, Twizell might give me something to deflect the Tanners.