The Long Drop

by Denise Mina

  ‘Mr Manuel sent me a letter concerning one matter but, in an addendum, stated that he had information concerning another client of mine, one who had been described in the press as “an all-round athlete”.’

  ‘And you took this to mean Mr Watt?’

  This may sound unlikely to the jury because Watt is a big fat man, so Dowdall explains.

  ‘Mr Watt had been a competitor in the Highland Games in his youth. He had been referred to in those terms by a newspaper just the week before so I deduced that it was about him.’

  ‘Do you still have this letter?’

  ‘I’m afraid it was not kept.’ The letter is damning for Dowdall. It is clear Manuel is inviting him to visit in his capacity as his legal representative. He wanted Dowdall to put in a hopeless application for bail. Dowdall told him it was pointless but Manuel insisted they put it in anyway.

  Dowdall knows what innocent looks like: he maintains eye contact with Gillies. He forces himself to take a breath and blink slowly.

  ‘And so you went to see Mr Manuel?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Our first meeting was brief. Mr Manuel told me that Mr Watt was innocent. He said he knew the man who had really committed the murders.’

  The public benches gasp. The jury scribble in their notepads. Gillies strikes a pose and lets the statement sink in.

  ‘And what did you say to Mr Manuel?’

  ‘I urged him to go to the police and tell them.’

  ‘And what did he say to that?’

  ‘Well, Mr Manuel was reluctant to do that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He indicated to me that he was not a very great fan of the police.’

  ‘How did he indicate that?’ Gillies is solemn. He is hoping Manuel threatened someone.

  ‘Mr Manuel expressed his hostility to the police…’ Dowdall hesitates over the wording, ‘in an inelegant, three-word, copulative sentence.’

  It takes a moment for the room to hear the three-word phrase. A sudden tidal wave of HAHAHA tension-breaking laughter sweeps through the court. Later, those present will relate this dialogue to others but no one else will find it just as funny. To them it is hilarious because they’ve heard ‘fuck the police’ in their heads in this formal setting, because of the bloody clothes and guns and the brassiere on the evidence table, because they’ve been on the edge of their seat.

  The tide of laughter ebbs out, leaving everyone refreshed. Dowdall continues. ‘I told Mr Manuel that the lack of details made me conclude that his story was not credible. Then I left.’

  ‘Did you see Mr Manuel again?’

  ‘Yes. I received yet another letter from him. He said he had additional information.’

  ‘What did this letter say?’

  ‘It hinted that he was willing to give me details this time. So I went to see him for a second time. It was a more productive encounter.’

  Dowdall remembers this meeting as he recounts the story of it. He doesn’t have to be en guarde because he didn’t go as Manuel’s lawyer this time.

  Peter Manuel sits at a table in a dark grey prison interview room that smells of Lysol and desperation. Hands clasped in front of him, smartly turned out even in his rough prison uniform, looking up at Dowdall through thick eyebrows.

  They deal with the preliminaries. Then Manuel leans towards him and in a low growl says, ‘I know who done it, the Watt murders, and it wasn’t William Watt.’

  Dowdall draws him out by affecting disinterest. ‘Yes, you said that before. I’ve been hearing all sorts from all quarters.’

  Manuel smirks. ‘Is it details you want?’

  Dowdall will never forget the look on Manuel’s face as he murmurs the story. Eyes hooded, mouth loose, his cheeks pink in an almost girlish flush. He looks over Dowdall’s shoulder as he speaks and his hands tell the story too.

  ‘The man crept along the dark street to the house. He walked up the path to the front door. He’s broke the glass panel at the left-hand side of the door. He’s reached in–’

  Manuel slides and curls his flat hand towards Dowdall as if he is in the dark street, breaking in right now.

  ‘–He’s reached in and unlocked the door. He’s let hisself into the narrow hall with the chiffonier on the left and a picture of a yellow dog hanging above it. He’s slid into the dark hallway, onto the red carpet. He’s shut the door after himself. On the wall–’

  He lifts his right hand, thumb and forefinger pinched.

  ‘–A key rack. But he doesn’t take any keys, there’s no keys hanging there. He’s walked on through the dark, into the still house, surprised that no one’s come out or heard him. He pushes open the bedroom door and there’s two beds, twin beds, and two women in them. He’s took out his gun, and he’s shot both the women in the head. Just there–’

  He screws the tip of his forefinger into his temple. ‘–And he stood looking at them for a bit. But then he’s heard the girl.’

  In the grey prison interview room Dowdall finds he has chewed his cheek so hard that he has broken the skin. He keeps chewing. He is hurting himself. Manuel’s voice has dropped to a growl, a whisper, and Dowdall sees a spark of glee in his eyes. Not because of Dowdall’s reaction. He doesn’t seem to care about that, not much. He’s reliving the story through the telling and he’s enjoying it.

  ‘But then he’s heard the girl. She’s in another room. So he’s left the two women bleeding and gone down the hall to the girl’s bedroom door. She’s opened the door and his face is just there and–“Oh!” She’s jumped back into the room. Must have been asleep. Her eyes are all puffy, like. Now–now, he is not a cruel man, this man I’m talking about. This man. He is not a cruel man. He doesn’t want to hurt a young girl.’

  As Dowdall listens to this he rubs the ripped inside of his cheek against his teeth again and again, feeling the dull throb of raw skin. Dowdall knows about Manuel’s rape charges. The rapes stretch back to the age of fourteen. He broke out of Catholic approved school and attacked a staff member’s wife in her home. Manuel has a thing about the women’s heads. He goes for the head. Always for their head. He bludgeons, punches the head, threatens the head. I will cut your fucking head off and bury it out here, he told one victim, ten years into his career as a rapist, Your kids will be walking out here, walking across your head on their way to school and they’ll not even know. She promised not to report him if he let her go but she went straight to the police. Manuel wasn’t convicted of that rape. He defended himself in court and the jury found the case Not Proven. Manuel thinks he did a good job in court but, really, Dowdall knows it was just a jury of women. Glasgow juries, especially women jurors, don’t believe that rape really happens. They think slutty girls get raped, claim rape, cry rape to cover their own sins. The lady he threatened to decapitate had taken the bus home from work and crossed a dark lane. He grabbed her hair and dragged her down a railway embankment, broke her dentures with a punch. The jury found the case Not Proven. They weren’t told about Manuel’s other conviction, a rape on the same embankment seven years before, a three-year-old boy left screaming on the path, watching his mother dragged away down the same slope into dark fields. Manuel got six years in Peterhead for that one. Dowdall is thinking about these women as Manuel continues the story of the man who is not him.

  ‘He didn’t want to hurt a young girl so he gives her a knockout punch on the jaw. She fell on the floor. KO. Now he didn’t know what to do, but he’s hungry so he’s went into the kitchen, a wee galley kitchen, yellow Formica worktops and cupboards along the wall and he fixed hisself a wee something to eat, just a wee sandwich with gammon. Good gammon too, off the bone, not in jelly from a tin. He’s in a fix, see? Because the kid, she’s seen his face. So, he’s in the front room, eating his wee sandwich, when he hears a noise from the first bedroom, the one with the two women in it.’

  Manuel’s story speeds from a trot to a gallop. Faster and faster he tells it. ‘The woman in the first
bed wasn’t dead. She was kinda gurgling, like a wet cough sort of a thing, so he shot her again. He’d no sooner done that and went back and nearly finished eating the sandwich when he heard the girl again. She’s woke up. She’s cried out. He went back in there and he shot her too and she fell in a corner. Then he stood there and smoked a couple of fags. He went into the front room and he took a swig of gin from the bottle on the dresser. Mascaró Dry Gin.’

  Dowdall is damp with sweat and his cheek is swelling on the inside.

  ‘One might wonder though,’ says Dowdall quietly, ‘if it was this other man, and not you, how it is that you know so many details?’

  Manuel reaches across to him and it is all Dowdall can do not to slap his hand away.

  ‘Oh, see, this man?’ breezes Manuel. ‘He’s came to me, just after, the morning after and–’

  Manuel stops. He stops for too long, staring at the tabletop. Neither happy nor sad. He just stares at the tabletop. And then he’s back.

  ‘–He’s destroyed by what he’s done. He’s like this–’ Manuel trembles his hands at Dowdall.

  ‘–In the horrors. “Hide this gun for me,” he says. So I took it. And I hid it. And I can get it again.’

  The gun has never been found. Manuel is offering a piece of concrete, physical evidence that could prove Mr Watt is innocent. Dowdall stands in the mouth of a trap. Manuel sees it.

  Manuel sits back in his chair and slowly trails his hands along the tabletop, damp palms making a scumbled shriek that fills the room.

  ‘Can you describe this gun?’

  Manuel smirks. ‘I’ll go one better, I’ll draw it.’

  Dowdall gives him paper and a pencil and he does draw it. The trap springs tight around Dowdall. The teeth are so sharp he doesn’t even feel them sinking in.

  It is quite a good drawing of a Webley revolver. Manuel is proud of his drawing. Dowdall senses this and compliments him. ‘You’re a very able artist.’

  Manuel shrugs. He already knows that.

  ‘May I take this drawing?’

  Manuel seems flattered. ‘Sure, why not.’

  Dowdall slips the drawing in among his papers. He can’t legally take away any communications by a prisoner unless he is their lawyer.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Manuel.’

  Dowdall stands up to leave.

  ‘Did you put in my bail application, then?’ Manuel’s eyes slide from the papers to Dowdall and a sly smile creeps across his face.

  Dowdall freezes. He is not here about the hopeless bail application Manuel raised at their previous meeting. They both know Manuel isn’t getting bail. The break-ins he is convicted of had his signature all over them: food half eaten and dropped, ground into rugs with his heel, liquor drunk from bottles. The bail application was pointless and Manuel is familiar enough with the law to know that. But if Dowdall answers Manuel’s question this becomes a client/lawyer interview. Legally, Dowdall will not be able to repeat what Manuel has just told him. However, he will be able to take the drawing of the gun out of the prison perfectly legally.

  Dowdall senses that Manuel fully understands the position he has put him in. The point of the bail application was never the bail itself but putting Dowdall in this quandary. Manuel has done this deliberately.

  Thrown, for possibly the first time in his life, Dowdall picks up his papers. He means to say ‘I am not here about that’. He thinks to say ‘We will discuss this another time’. But his mouth disobeys him.

  ‘Yes.’

  Shocked at himself, he turns and walks out.

  Dowdall doesn’t tell this part in court. This part makes all of his testimony invalid. This part makes him a bad lawyer who betrays his clients and should not be allowed to practise. Instead, he tells the court that he left the meeting and immediately endeavoured to confirm the veracity of the information imparted by Mr Manuel at that second meeting.

  ‘And is this the drawing of the gun Mr Manuel gave you at that interview?’

  M.G. Gillies hands a sheet of paper labelled ‘Crown Production 41’ up to the witness dock.

  Dowdall looks at it. ‘Yes. That is the drawing of the Webley that Peter Manuel gave to me.’

  ‘And is this the type of gun that was used to kill Mrs Watt, Vivienne Watt and Mrs Brown?’

  They all know it is. The actual Webley is sitting right there, in front of them, on the evidence table.

  ‘So I understand,’ says Dowdall, adding, ‘And it has a particularity. You will notice that the lanyard ring is missing in the sketch and on the actual gun.’

  ‘The lanyard ring at the bottom of the handle?’

  ‘Yes, the one customarily used to attach it to the belt.’

  The Webley was favoured during the Great War. Officers and soldiers tied the revolver to their Sam Browne belts with cord so that they didn’t lose them, even if they dropped them in the heat and horror of battle.

  ‘Did you go to the police with this information, Mr Dowdall?’

  ‘I did.’

  I went straight to the police, Dowdall doesn’t say. He doesn’t tell the court that, reckless of his professional peril, he had to tell them because he left Manuel’s company and got into his Bentley and drove to a quiet corner of a small field and found himself crying. Panicked and frightened and crying. Dowdall was furious that the filthy creeping man should know how to trick him with the law. The law was his defence against such men. Dowdall believed it was his weapon, not his weakness.

  But all the court hears Dowdall say is ‘I did’.

  Those closer to Dowdall notice him blinking rapidly, see the rims of his eyes reddening. They know there is more to it than I did but no one asks him about it. Gillies moves swiftly on.

  ‘And what did the police do with this information?’ ‘They went to the Manuel family home in Birkenshaw and they searched the garden.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They were looking for the gun he had drawn. Or the missing lanyard ring.’

  Later Dowdall heard that Manuel boasted about it in prison. He told another client of Dowdall’s that he could get the polis to dig his mother’s garden for her while he lay on his bunk in Barlinnie. Ha ha. Be sure and tell Laurence, won’t you? Manuel was telling Dowdall that he knows his confidentiality had been breached, that Dowdall had committed a crime. He’s the only one who knows. From the corner of his eye Dowdall can see Manuel leaning forward in the dock to whisper to his lawyer. He is smirking and whispering. He could have used these facts to exclude Dowdall’s testimony or the drawing. Dowdall doesn’t understand why Manuel hasn’t instructed his lawyers to do that. He set up this complicated play and then forgot, or neglected, to use it to his advantage. Or maybe he means to use it to ruin Dowdall, rather than save his own neck from the noose. Even with eight murder charges hanging over him, six of which are for the murder of women, one for a ten-year-old child, even with the nastiness of them known, Dowdall feels that he alone has any understanding of how profoundly malevolent Peter Manuel is.

  Gillies interrupts his train of thought. ‘So the police must have found his story quite credible then, if they searched for the gun?’

  ‘They seemed to.’

  Dowdall showed the police the drawing and they said yes, that could be the gun. Then Dowdall told them that Manuel had given him a lot of detailed information about the Watt house. Dowdall hasn’t been there yet, might he go and have a look? They took Dowdall to the Watt house, still cordoned off, still guarded by a police officer, DS Mitchell.

  Muncie, a senior officer from Lanarkshire, is waiting outside for Dowdall. He came because he heard Manuel mentioned in the request. Manuel lives on Muncie’s patch. Muncie hates Manuel. He accosts Dowdall in the street outside the Watt bungalow. Peter Manuel’s probably lying, Mr Dowdall. That filthy criminal is a serial confessor to high-profile cases. He plays games. He confessed to a big bank robbery in London and then produced an alibi. He claims he was a gangster in New York but the family moved back from New York when he was five and the Depression
hit. He tells people his daddy died in the electric chair in America, but he lives with his daddy. His daddy works for the Gas Board. Manuel says he’s an artist, he’s a writer, he’s a spy for the Yanks. Peter Manuel talks utter shite. He is known for lies. His lies are so crazy you sometimes wonder if he even knows he’s lying. He’s a sex fiend. A maniac.

  The Watt house is in Fennsbank Avenue in Burnside on the Southside. It is a long road of sturdy detached villas with large gardens and driveways for cars. Dowdall walks up the path to the door and sees the broken glass on the window, sees Manuel’s hand slide in through the broken glass, curl to the side and open the door, in the dark.

  DS Mitchell opens the door for him. Dowdall steps in. Mitchell says not to touch anything and leaves, shutting the door behind him.

  Dowdall is alone in the Watt bungalow. He sees a chiffonier on his left and a picture of a golden Labrador hanging on the wall. On his right hangs a key rack. It is empty. Surprised that no one has come out or heard him, he pushes open the bedroom door. Bloody splatter is fanned across the wall behind the headboards and the floor is smeared and stained with dried gore. The twin beds are stripped, mattresses and sheets and blankets gone, taken for evidence. Dowdall is glad he parked at the field because he couldn’t cry if he tried now. He doesn’t know if he will ever cry or eat again.

  In the front room a bottle of Mascaró Dry Gin sits on the dresser. Balanced on the arm of the settee, on a linen antimacassar, the crust of a sandwich. The sliver of gammon between the bread is as dry and cracked as a dead cat’s tongue. The police didn’t know it was significant. They’ve just left it there.

  In the galley kitchen, wall cupboards and yellow Formica.

  In the dead girl’s room the bed is stripped. Chalk marks are drawn around cigarette stubs found ground into the carpet. Vivienne was left slumped in the corner, half covered over, lying on top of the bedding. It’s a bloody mess. A seventeen-year-old girl, dead and bruised, her bosom exposed, badly bruised down there, interfered with. ‘Before or after?’ Dowdall had asked at the time. ‘Both,’ said the medical examiner frowning at his feet. ‘Both before and after.’