Cruel, needing time to replace one that’s trustworthy (9)
I believe the answer is:
veracious
'trustworthy' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'cruel needing time to replace one' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'time' could be 'era' (era is a kind of time) and 'era' is present in the answer.
'one' could be 'o' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'o' is located in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'that's' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for veracious that I've seen before include "Unvarnished" , "Honest" , "truthful" .)