The Long Drop

by Denise Mina

  Manuel looks at the salesmen, the couple, the passing maître d’ and then eyes Dowdall. He smirks at Watt. Dowdall is a public man. They all recognise him. He has a reputation to lose. Neither Watt nor Manuel have any reputation worth defending.

  Watt understands what Manuel means. He nearly smiles but Manuel warns him not to with a little shake of his head, no, don’t smile, just begin.

  So Watt says loudly: ‘MANUEL! If I find out that you had ANYTHING to do with the Burnside Affair, why, I will TEAR YOUR ARMS OFF, sir!’

  The room holds its breath.

  Manuel shouts back: ‘NOBODY. DOES. THAT. TO MANUEL.’

  Now no one in the restaurant is speaking. The couple stare at their plates, thrilled. The salesmen have drawn in tight around their table. The maître d’ is watching, frightened, because it’s down to him to break it up if they start throwing punches. And Dowdall, respectable, well-kent Dowdall, has suddenly got a very itchy arse. He’s writhing in his chair but resists the urge to run.

  Watt is delighted by how clever they have been, spotting this weakness in Dowdall’s resolve. He leans across the table. Watt is massive. His giant hands are twice as big as Manuel’s. His huge head, his wide face, his shoulders, they dwarf Manuel. By leaning forward an inch he has colonised the entire table.

  ‘Manuel!’ Watt’s voice is sharp. ‘See here! Before we begin, let me make myself abundantly clear on one issue, right from the off–’

  ‘KNOW YE TALK TOO MUCH, PAL?’ Manuel’s tone is a prison-promise of a fight coming. He leans slowly in to meet Watt. Watt has to drop back or they’d be pressing their faces together like a couple of pansies.

  Manuel exhales a stream of smoke from one side of his mouth and gives a bitter smile. Watt turns his whisky glass around and around on the spot. They smoke at each other.

  Dowdall puts his hand on the table, calling an end to the round by tapping a finger on the tabletop. Tap tap tap. He asks Manuel if he has information for Mr Watt?

  With an unblinking nod Manuel concedes that he does. Dowdall asks, will he give Mr Watt the information?

  A nod.

  Does the information pertain to the murders at Burnside?

  ‘Aye.’ Manuel gives a careless shrug. ‘Sure,’ he says, as if it’s nothing, as if it’s not the murder of three members of Watt’s family and the sex attack of his seventeen-year-old daughter.

  Dowdall reaches for his coat, drawing it onto his knee. He’s planning to escape the moment the information is imparted and he means to take William Watt with him. He nods for Manuel to begin but Manuel doesn’t speak.

  Watt raises his eyebrows, interested to see how Manuel will stop this happening.

  Manuel has a stubby pencil in his hand. He scribbles something in the margin of his newspaper and pushes it across to Watt.

  Newspapermen, it says, as one word.

  Watt doesn’t understand so Manuel nods at the table of salesmen who are now watching plates of gammon steak and potatoes being delivered by the waiter.

  Manuel writes again, Not here.

  Watt shakes his head. ‘Why?’

  Manuel sits back, staring at Watt, and slides his hand across the tabletop to the newspaper. His finger rests on the scribble in the margin: Newspapermen. He taps it.

  It’s bullshit, and bad bullshit at that. Those men are not journalists. Anyway, Manuel and Watt have been shouting at each other. Now they can’t talk quietly for fear of it being in the newspapers? Dowdall draws a breath, his face sceptical, he’s about to say it’s nonsense but suddenly Manuel snarls a loud animal growl at Watt.

  Dowdall is on his feet. His coat is over his arm, the Bentley key is in his hand. He empties his glass of whisky and soda in one smooth move, stepping away from the table with a little bow.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he says, meaning quite the reverse. He squeezes Watt’s shoulder as he passes. A warning: be careful.

  The greasy velvet curtain drops behind him. His relief billows back at them in a draught.

  They are alone.

  Watt means to begin by sounding friendly, hoping the evening will remain collegiate in tone.

  ‘Well, Chief,’ he says. ‘You handled that scenario very nicely. I must say, I am agreeably surprised to meet you.’

  Manuel blows a thick stream of cigarette smoke at the tabletop and narrows his eyes, ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about.’

  Watt smiles pleasantly and toasts his new friend. ‘We most certainly have.’

  Their night together has begun.

  2

  Wednesday 14 May 1958

  IT IS NEARLY SIX months later and Peter Manuel is on trial for eight murders. These include the three Watt women. Seven of the murders are ‘in pursuit of theft’: if he is found guilty of any one of them he will be hanged. The eighth, the murder of Anne Kneilands back in December 1956, is not in pursuit of theft. It’s a lesser charge.

  Laurence Dowdall is a prosecution witness. He is in the witness hall, waiting to be called. In the court, through the wall, every single seat is taken. People are lined along the walls.

  A mob gathers outside the court every day, sometimes a hundred, sometimes a thousand. For the entire three-week trial they stand in the rain, swapping morsels of information. The city has been terrorised by the frenzy of murders, families have been murdered in their beds, blameless teenage girls bludgeoned to death in fields and left lying in the rain and the snow.

  Inside, the bustling court smells of sour sweat, cigarettes and damp overcoats.

  There are two tiers of people watching. On the ground floor are the press benches, print journalists and reporters for the wireless. Such is the public interest that some newspapers have sent five or six journalists to cover various aspects of the trial. Any leftover seats downstairs are reserved for witnesses who have already given evidence and those awarded priority by the court: legal personnel with an interest, nabobs and notaries. Dotted among the journalists today are councilmen, identifiable by a sprig of seasonal flowers on their lapels. Glasgow Corporation gives them out to attendees at its meetings.

  Manuel is in the dock right in front of these seats, separated by a low wooden wall. Journalists and lawyers are trusted not to physically attack him but the public are kept away, upstairs on the balcony.

  There are sixty balcony seats, all taken by women, watching a court staffed entirely by men.

  The women queue overnight, every night for three weeks. They start at six in the evening, settling down on the pavement with thin blankets on their knees, chunks of bread in their pockets to stave off hunger. The queue runs halfway up the Saltmarket. A beat policeman passes every few hours, monitoring them, checking all is well. He counts the people in the queue and warns anyone over the sixtieth person that they probably won’t get in. Might as well go home, dear. The papers print photographs of smiling gangs of chirpy gal-pals, toasting the reader with tea from flasks.

  For the entire trial the viewing public have been almost exclusively women. No one knows why.

  At first the newspapers speculate: are the women here for love? Manuel is handsome. Are they here for blood? The crimes are horrific. Is it because Manuel seems powerful to them? It is a proven scientific fact that women are attracted to power, to being dominated. It is 1958 and a husband has the legal right to rape and beat his wife. That’s a private matter, a matter for the home.

  The journalists ask the women why they’re here. The women say they seek justice, they seek truth, they feel for the victims, hollow phrases that might well be lifted from the papers. But in the queue they don’t seem very serious or justice-seeking. They’re all excited and giggly.

  As the brutal trial draws on the gendered pattern is so consistent and jarring that the newspapers stop struggling to make it chime with clichés about womanhood. The case says enough that is troubling.

  At night, all night, another Glasgow is awake and breathing. This shadow city is full of dark, clever men climbing through suburban windows with guns in their hands, creeping aro
und the homes of the law-abiding. They will hide in your attic for days. They will kill you and then make themselves a sandwich. They will drag young girls down railway embankments, chase them across dark fields, rip and rape them, leave them stuck on barbed wire, shoeless in snow, to bleed to death. They have guns and fancy social clubs in prestigious addresses. They drive an Avis Grey Lady, a car that costs the same as a modest house.

  Whatever the queuing ladies are here for they are good-tempered. Friends have been made. Some have found celebrity.

  Miss Helen McElroy is a regular in all of the newspapers. She is always first in the queue and is emphatic, if not eloquent, about her thirst for justice. Then, abruptly, on the eleventh night, she is missing. There is concern for her safety. She is elderly, wears thick glasses and lives in the Clyde Street Home, a model-lodging house in the Calton for homeless people. On the thirteenth evening she is back. Her absence is explained in a subheading–

  MISS MCELROY TOLD…

  ‘IF YOU CAN QUEUE

  YOU CAN WORK.’

  Miss McElroy is interviewed once again. She is quite indignant: ‘Somehow,’ she says, ‘the Assistance have found out I was in the queue.’ But her determination to attend is undimmed. They will not stop her.

  Young people are not admitted. A sixteen-year-old boy sleeps out on the first night only to be turned away at the door. The officer warns that the nature of the crimes is too unsettling for impressionable minds. Photographs will be shown. Fifty-nine waiting women appeal on the boy’s behalf but the officer has his orders and the boy is sent away. The women think it is a shame until they file into court and see all the evidence laid out on the productions table. Blood-sodden bedclothes, both of the guns, a mangled brassiere on a tray, the angle iron that was used to bludgeon the girl in East Kilbride. Then they’re glad the boy isn’t here to see this. After all the fun of a night on the pavement the reality of what they are about to witness stuns them dumb.

  The court is crammed. The only empty seats are on the bench, next to Lord Cameron. As on the Elizabethan stage, there are VIP seats, looking out into the audience. These places are reserved for people so important that mingling in the general company would compromise their status. On the first day of the trial Myer Galpern, wearing his Chain of Office as Lord Provost of Glasgow, is seated next to Lord Cameron. He comes back for the first day of the defence case but leaves at lunch-time. He is not squeamish but, new in the post, is concerned about the seemliness of appearing either underemployed or too interested.

  Dowdall is in the silent witness hall. Sturdy chairs line the walls. Water is provided for witnesses, as are cigarettes, matches and ashtrays. The court is just through the double doors but he can’t hear any of the proceedings. This is by design. The room is soundproofed so that waiting witnesses can’t hear one another’s evidence before they give their own.

  Dowdall is here to tell the court how Watt and Manuel came to meet. Telling stories is his job. He’s a lawyer.

  Good storytelling is all about what’s left in, what’s left out and the order in which the facts are presented. Dowdall knows how to shape a narrative, calling witnesses in the right order, emphasising the favourable through repeated questioning, skim-skim-skimming over the accused’s habit of beating his widowed mother. Dowdall is a master storyteller, better than other lawyers. He has an innate sense of narrative and he is disciplined. Dowdall can find just the right trajectory to pin his tale to and he can stop before the end. It’s the jury’s job to write the ending. Dowdall will tell them about the penitent street fighter who has a good job waiting for him, an ailing, dependent mother and helpless young children. Dowdall knows how a jury will want this story to go. He knows a story has more power if they feel that they are choosing that ending themselves.

  But today’s story is complex. Dowdall is in this story and he has been tricked. By sleight of hand and word Manuel manoeuvred Dowdall into breaking the law. Dowdall cannot excise himself from the story because none of the subsequent events make sense if he leaves his own misdemeanours out. He has been up half the night playing narrative chess.

  Sitting alone in the witness hall, he worries about this. He feels instinctively that there is a loose thread in this Gordian narrative that he is failing to grasp. This is out of character. He usually can. He smokes and strokes his neat rectangular moustache, first one side, then the other, and wonders if he is becoming ill.

  It’s a shock when the doors open and the noise of the packed courtroom billows in at him. He leaps to his feet.

  The Macer asks him to come, please, Mr Dowdall.

  In court the public are taking the change of witness as an opportunity to move or cough or nip out for a smoke. Wood creaks, throats are cleared, doors shut and open, until the Macer has seen Dowdall into the warm room and closed the witness hall doors behind them. Then the Macer looks at the lower benches, at the public on the balcony above. A sudden silence falls. Dowdall knows that they will have been warned that they will be made to leave if they don’t keep quiet.

  On the balcony a woman is having a coughing fit. She sounds like a heavy smoker and struggles to shift the sticky mucus. Everyone is aware that she will be put out if she can’t stop. As Dowdall takes a step into the court her staccato cough machine-guns over his head. He takes another step, glad of the covering fire.

  He is halfway across the room when her smoker’s cough snaps and she clears her throat. The room drops its shoulders.

  He climbs the four steps up to the witness box, turns and gives Lord Cameron a small respectful bow, sans eye contact, because that would be inappropriately chummy in these circumstances. Cameron and Dowdall know each other socially. Dowdall knows every lawyer in this room, personally and professionally. They golf together, dine together at various clubs, they raise money for spastics, Dowdall’s own favoured charity, but he oughtn’t to bring those connections in here, where he is a prosecution witness.

  He is sworn in. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Dowdall is a storyteller. He knows how slippery truth is. The only part of the oath that Dowdall sincerely means is ‘so help me God’. He really means that part.

  The advocate-depute, Mr M.G. Gillies, stands up. He does a couple of theatrical postures to take control of the moment: touching his papers, standing tall, grasping the lapel of his gown. Somewhat stagy, thinks Dowdall. Dowdall is a solicitor, not an advocate, and doesn’t have a right of audience before the court. He instructs advocates to represent his clients so he finds it hard to watch them work without giving a critical appraisal. He thinks M.G. Gillies’ manoeuvres are a little grubby even if they are effective.

  M.G. Gillies, projecting his clipped voice very nicely, asks Mr Dowdall if he can please tell the court how he came to meet Mr Manuel in connection with the murders at Burnside?

  It is an ideal introduction to the story Dowdall wants to tell. And so he begins.

  Dowdall began representing Mr William Watt while he was remanded in Barlinnie for the murders of his wife, his daughter and his sister-in-law, Mrs Margaret Brown. Mr Watt was–Dowdall hesitates over this word but uses it–disconsolate.

  M.G. Gillies doesn’t like that word. He doesn’t think the jury will understand it. He asks Dowdall to clarify.

  ‘Very upset,’ says Dowdall. ‘Mr Watt had been charged with appalling crimes. He had been in all of the newspapers, day after day, and now he found himself in prison. The police were convinced of his guilt.’

  ‘Were you?’

  All of the lawyers in the room shift uncomfortably at that question. It is not appropriate. Dowdall’s opinion may shift the view of the court but hearsay and opinion could be cause for an appeal, for heaven’s sake.

  Oddly, Lord Cameron lets Dowdall answer. ‘For me to express an opinion would, I think, be potentially misleading.’

  Dowdall now feels gratitude radiating towards him from all the other lawyers in the room. He has nimbly saved them all. Then he adds, ‘Of course, legally, I wouldn’t be able to represent anyone
as innocent if I knew they were guilty.’

  He has pushed the point to the very edge of legal. Now the lawyers love him. Lord Cameron’s heavy eyebrows twitch with understated admiration. Lawyers love the tiptoe across the land-mine, the brilliant navigation of the grey area. Standing in the witness box Dowdall experiences the respect of his peers as a warm hand drawing a comforting circle on his back.

  Half smiling, M.G. Gillies prompts a return to the story and Dowdall continues.

  ‘Mr Watt knew that the police were not looking for anyone else. He knew that whoever killed his family was still out there and might strike again. So he began his own inquiries. He became a “detective”, if you will.’

  ‘How did he go about that?’

  ‘He let it be known, through me, that he was investigating the Burnside Affair and would be receptive to anyone with information.’

  ‘Did people come forward with information?’

  ‘They did. Whatever information we gleaned we immediately took to the police. Mr Watt began to ask questions while in Barlinnie Prison and one name was a refrain in all of our inquiries: Peter Manuel.’

  M.G. Gillies frowns, feigning confusion. ‘A “refrain” ?’ Gillies really thinks the jury are stupid. He knows them better than Dowdall does. He might be right.

  ‘Mr Manuel was mentioned by several people in connection with the incident.’ Now, this is hearsay so Dowdall tempers it. ‘But prisons are full of rumours. It wasn’t until I received a letter from Mr Manuel that we took those rumours seriously…’

  Dowdall must not mention that Manuel wrote to him from prison where he was serving a sentence for housebreaking. That would be prejudicial. Dowdall went to see Manuel because he was visiting Watt in Barlinnie anyway, so, what the hell.

  ‘What did Mr Manuel’s letter say?’

  Dowdall has to step very carefully here. Manuel asked him to visit and act as his lawyer. Strictly speaking Dowdall is bound by client/lawyer confidentiality and shouldn’t be telling anyone what was said.