The Dunbar Case(39)

‘Is that glad you’re back or you want something?’



‘Both. Where are you?’



I told her and she told me the easiest way to get to her place from there. It wasn’t far. I wondered about turning up in my dishevelled state but I needn’t have worried. She had my sweaty shirt off almost as soon as I walked in and the dirty pants and muddy sneakers soon after. We made a mess of her neatly made bed, which brought it into line with the rest of the room. The bedroom doubled as a study and Marisha was a very untidy worker. The desk was awash with papers and file cards and sheets of printout and photocopies. The paper flowed onto the bookshelves and the floor.



She saw me looking at the chaos and laughed. ‘I know where absolutely everything is.’



We were lying close together in the bed. I’d felt something rustling behind my head and I reached under the pillow and pulled out a sheet of paper.



‘I knew that was there,’ she said. ‘I was reading it in bed last night before I fell asleep thinking of you.’



I laughed and did my Bogart. ‘You’re good. You’re very good.’



She jumped out of the bed. ‘I’m having a shower and you better have one as well. I’ll wash that shirt and stick it in the dryer.’



‘Do the socks and the jeans while you’re at it.’



A while later we were sitting on her balcony with coffee and fruit salad watching a storm sweep in from the east. The sky and the sea were purple and, as the light dropped, the sand took on a hard, metallic glow. The trees bent to the wind and the rain moved in, turning the road black and the gutters into rushing streams. I couldn’t help thinking of the old house in the bush. It must have endured hundreds of such assaults and it was a wonder it had lasted as long as it had.



‘So,’ Marisha said. ‘You turn up here filthy dirty but horny as hell. What have you been doing?’



I told her.



‘So the next step is to find Kristie. I want in on that.’



‘Johnnie, or should I say Jack, Twizell thinks the next step is to get protection from Hector Tanner. How do you feel about that? Hector can’t be happy about you.’



‘You’re here to protect me, aren’t you? Why are you smiling?’



‘It’s just that I’ve got a job I’m being paid to do here and now I’ve got two people asking for my protection.’



‘I’ll pay you. My agent’s negotiated a very good advance for this book. I was just doing it on spec before. I can take some unpaid leave now and knock it off.’



‘I don’t want you to pay me. How did the agent manage that?’



‘I wrote a detailed synopsis and she pitched it really well. She’s good.’



‘Must be. Did you put anything in about the buried money?’



‘Yes, why?’



‘Did you mention Twizell?’



‘Not by name.’



‘What does that mean?’



‘I referred to a prisoner about to be released. Hey, why the grilling?’



‘The people who stole that money don’t know where it is. All this time they’ll have been hoping they’d hear something that’d help them find it.’



‘They’re not likely to hear about a synopsis given to a publisher.’



‘Who knows? Your agent might have gossiped; the publisher probably got its legal team to work. They might have had an outside reader look at it.’



‘God, I thought the money was just a footnote to the story, but if those people, whoever they are, come after Hector and Twizell it becomes much more important. By the way, I did some checking and an English backpacker named Roy Flanagan did go missing from around Newcastle at that time.’



The storm hit and drove us inside. Marisha’s reaction was squarely in line with her character. Her whole focus was on her book and she’d view events from that vantage point. If Jack Twizell or Hector Tanner were tortured to reveal what they knew, it’d just be useful collateral damage to her. Maybe I should’ve viewed it in the same way myself, but I couldn’t. I had to warn Twizell at least; Hector I cared less about.



Marisha was keen to get back to work. As soon as the worst of the storm had passed I left, wearing my clean clothes still warm from the dryer. She promised to be extra careful in all her movements and to contact me the second she thought she might be in danger.



‘You scrub up pretty well,’ she said as she kissed me goodbye. ‘Go out and find Kristie for yourself and for me.’



~ * ~



The mobile phone Megan and Hank had given me for a birthday present had an internet function I hadn’t yet used. I sat in my car and fumbled my way to the White Pages website and got an address and a number for the Mayfield Apartments, which I rang.