again. He even awarded me his most loving of gestures, a surreptitious lick to the inside back of my knee. I bet he wouldn’t mention that little intimacy to Robbie. The knee laceration worried him and he spent some minutes sniffing a diagnosis, while I tried ringing Sunny’s number again. But what with my useless phone continuing to turn itself off and Sunny’s always flicking to voicemail we didn’t make any voice-to-voice contact. Justin’s arrest would have come as a complete shock to her. As far as I knew, she had no inkling that her father was a suspect for Karen’s murder; in fact, she didn’t even know Karen had been murdered. It was a relief when my phone finally rang. I thumbed the answer icon and tentatively held the phone six inches from my head. When the shattered screen did eventually drop out, I didn’t want it falling into my ear.
‘I’m Manny Spears,’ the voice said. ‘Karen Mackie’s friend.’ He made it sound like he was her only friend. ‘I want to talk to you.’ This was a bonus. Tracking down the friend Karen had been planning to go to the commune with had been top of my to-do list. ‘Can we meet?’ he said. ‘I want to talk face to face. I don’t like phones.’
I had two hours before I needed to be at the airport. A gust of wind buffeting the house reminded me of what to expect at takeoff.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What are you doing now?’
Manny arrived less than fifteen minutes later. Giving a stranger my home address is not something I would normally do, but already it felt more like a house than my home. No doubt in preparation for it being sold, I was separating myself from it ASAP, as Jason would say.
Wolf went through his usual theatrical routine with strangers while Manny stood in the doorway: head bent, eyes averted, weighing him up like an old enemy. The prison tattoo on his hands and cheekbone reinforced my suspicion he’d had run-ins with Wolf’s compatriots in the past. Normally I’d tell Wolf to rein in his performance, but this time I let him go the full three acts. After a few days separation from me, he needed to reassert his role in our relationship, and it didn’t hurt for this stranger to know I had an ex-police dog in the room on full alert. Wolf turned on a top-notch performance, baring his teeth and raising his neck hair. I almost forgot myself and applauded. When he had finished announcing his full credentials, I instructed him to stay by the door and offered Manny a coffee.
‘I’ll take a seat but I won’t take up your offer of a drink, thank you,’ he said, and lowered himself tentatively into the chair furthest from the door. He stole furtive glances at Wolf but kept his eyes out of reach of mine. Once seated, he slid a hand into a pocket and extracted a soft-leather black book. It looked suspiciously like a Bible. I didn’t notice any change in Wolf, but it sure made my hackles rise. Manny made no reference to it, but kept the book squeezed tightly in his palm. The cut in my knee oozed blood as I lowered myself into a chair opposite him. ‘What can I do for you, Manny?’ If he started to preach at me, I’d set Wolf on him.
‘Karen liked you. She thought she could trust you. Thought you were straight up.’ He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. ‘I want to meet Sunny. Karen’s daughter. I want you to arrange it.’
Tiny blisters of sweat formed on his upper lip. It was hard to tell if it was me or Wolf causing them. Maybe neither. The simple act of conversing seemed to be a real strain. He had a past, this man. An unpleasant one.
‘I don’t think I can do that, Manny.’
For the first time he lifted his eyes to mine. I saw the sweat bead on his forehead with the effort. ‘I know how I look with the prison tattoos and all and some folk can’t see past them. I don’t blame them for that.’ He’d reached his limit of comfortable eye contact and turned to look out the window. A fine drizzle slurred the glass. ‘I marked myself as a criminal so the world would know it and I have to live with the consequences of that.’ His hand squeezed the Bible, tightly clutched beneath four white knuckles riddled