The Long Drop

by Denise Mina

  M.G. Gillies asks, ‘What happened then, Mr Dowdall?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Well, I had told the police, so…’

  ‘Did you meet Mr Manuel again?’

  Dowdall never wanted to see him again. But another letter, with more teasers. Whatever his feelings, Dowdall had to inform poor Mr Watt that Manuel was getting out of prison, having served ten months for housebreaking, and wanted to meet him.

  ‘Manuel wrote that he was being released and he could get the gun back but he wanted to meet Mr Watt first.’

  Lord Cameron asks, ‘Is that letter available to the court, Mr Dowdall?’

  No. I burned it so you would never see it. Manuel wanted money for the gun and if you, My Lord, knew that, you might rule this testimony inadmissible. So I burned that letter in the ashtray on my desk. And then I sat and looked at it for a while. I felt so uneasy that I called my secretary in and asked her to take the ashtray away. And actually, Miss McLaren, just throw that ashtray away, will you? Because it has a crack it in. Yes, it does. There. You can’t see it? Well, I can see it, so just get it out of here. Miss McLaren shuts the door on her way out and Dowdall knows that she will wash the glass ashtray and take it home, probably give it to her father. And he’s afraid for her.

  ‘No, My Lord, I’m afraid that particular letter has been misplaced.’

  The lawyers find this a wee bit odd. Lawyers like Dowdall don’t misplace letters like that. But no one knows what to ask. They just blame a careless secretary and carry on with the questioning.

  ‘So, yourself and Mr Watt went to meet Mr Manuel?’

  ‘Yes. We met him at Whitehall’s Restaurant in Renfield Street but I left after just ten minutes.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  Innocent question. Leading nowhere.

  ‘I had somewhere to be.’

  ‘But Watt and Manuel stayed there, together?’

  ‘I believe they were together all night, until six o’clock the next morning.’

  ‘What happened that night, Mr Dowdall?’

  ‘I really don’t know. We never discussed it.’

  ‘Mr Watt never told you what happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ask him?’

  ‘No.’

  There is a pause. This seems implausible but Dowdall is obviously telling the truth. William Watt will be asked his version of events when he is on the stand tomorrow. M.G. Gillies flounders and says, ‘Thank you, Mr Dowdall.’

  And now Manuel’s defence counsel stands up. William Grieve. Grieve indeed. His hair is very orange, his complexion unattractively rosy, and he looks half annoyed all the time. Grieve only took silk last year. Harald Leslie is the senior QC in Manuel’s team and he should have cross-examined Dowdall. He is the more able by far. But this is a small world. Harald was representing William Watt when he was charged with these murders, Dowdall had instructed him, so there is a conflict of interest which requires him to step aside in favour of Grieve when Watt and Dowdall are giving evidence.

  Dowdall watches Grieve lift his papers, cock his head at them and put them down. He pretends to be wondering. He’s new to this and his act is not polished. Dowdall says a silent prayer of thanks, half to Harald Leslie and half to God, who has, after all, so-helped-him.

  Grieve considers his first question. He purses and unpurses his lips and Dowdall notices that the jury already dislike him. He glances at Manuel, sitting in the dock with four policemen, two behind him and one on either side. He sees Manuel frown at the back of Grieve’s head. Manuel has also noticed that the jury don’t like Grieve. If Dowdall was defending this case he would think they had lost it already.

  ‘Might I ask–’ Grieve looks up, flashes a joyless smile–‘About this “other matter” on which you initially went to visit Mr Manuel?’

  Manuel smirks. This is what he was whispering about.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What was this “other matter”?’ Grieve’s eyebrows rise slowly.

  Dowdall has decided to argue this as a point of law, knowing that the jury will stop listening if he makes it sound complicated enough. He must not say that Manuel was in prison or mention any of his previous convictions and this gives him wriggle room.

  ‘Mr Manuel had requested an interview with a view to a minor revision of the conditions of a legal application.’

  He makes it sounds like a dog licence. Grieve nods five times. One nod too many for anyone to care what he means.

  ‘He had, in short, sought your legal expertise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it was in the course of that first interview, when you were in effect acting as his lawyer, that he sketched the gun for you?’

  ‘No.’

  Grieve looks up. ‘No?’

  ‘No. That was at the second meeting. At the first meeting he told me that William Watt was an innocent man and he knew the man who had actually committed the murders. He described the house in the second meeting. The events of the night. And drew the gun.’

  Grieve consults his papers and sees that he is indeed wrong. Harald Leslie, sitting next to him, raises an eyebrow at his papers. It’s a rudimentary mistake: Grieve hasn’t done a time line.

  ‘Ah, yes, I see, thank you for that correction, Mr Dowdall. But in the first interview you were acting as his lawyer?’

  ‘No. I was giving him advice in the first half of that interview and in the second half of the first interview he was giving me information about a pre-existing client of mine.’

  Manuel is crossing and uncrossing his legs, he is sitting forward and back. He wants certain things asked in certain ways and Grieve is busy getting dates wrong.

  ‘I put it to you that this was quite improper, Mr Dowdall, you going to the police with confidential information passed by a client–’

  ‘No.’

  Grieve can’t quite believe his gall.

  ‘No, it was not improper. He was my client for the first half of the interview. In the second half of the first interview I was there in my capacity as Mr Watt’s representative, as I was at all subsequent meetings. I accompanied Mr Watt to meet him. He was there when we arrived. Given the presence of both gentlemen, it was both explicate and implicate that Mr Watt was my client in that interview.’

  ‘That is arguable,’ says Grieve but he seems to have given up.

  The small mistake of fact over the time line has thrown him. Very able defence lawyers will make unlikely mistakes time and again in this case, all of them to Manuel’s detriment.

  As a closer Grieve asks: ‘Mr Dowdall, was any money exchanged between Mr Watt and Mr Manuel for this information?’

  Dowdall has rehearsed this. ‘I told Peter Manuel he would not get any money for the information.’

  Grieve tries, valiant but half-hearted, because he knows what Dowdall is doing. ‘But did any money change hands for this information?’

  ‘Well, I left after ten minutes but I do know this: I told Mr Watt not to give Peter Manuel any money for the information.’

  All it will take is one more move. Did William Watt ever talk about giving Manuel money? And Dowdall will have to say Yes. He did. We discussed it.

  But Dowdall looks up and he sees relief shimmer across Grieve’s face. He sees Manuel glare at the back of Grieve’s head. And he sees a field through a windscreen and a veil of his own tears and a letter burning in an ashtray and he knows that, deep down, Grieve and Leslie, they loathe Peter Manuel too. They want him dead too.

  ‘That will be all, Mr Dowdall. Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Grieve. Thank you.’

  3

  Monday 2 December 1957

  ‘I KILLED MY WIFE,’ William Watt is murmuring in Peter Manuel’s ear. Then the door opens, he looks up and shouts, ‘Scout O’BloodyNeil!’

  They’re in Jackson’s Bar. They have been there for a while.

  Watt is very drunk. His moods are shifting like a breeze over op
en water. Manuel has matched him drink for drink but he isn’t very drunk. He thinks that either Watt was drinking before they met in Whitehall’s or he is acting drunk to disarm him.

  Manuel doesn’t get drunk, not in the usual way. His body becomes uncoordinated, he may feel sleepy, but his basic mood doesn’t change. He still has an eye for a weakness or a half-opened window or a chance. Maybe he will file it away for later, when he isn’t as uncoordinated, but he still sees it and feels the same about it.

  They are standing together in the prime spot in Jackson’s, at the corner of the long bar. The corner calls the night in Jackson’s.

  Bar positioning in Jackson’s is a complex language, a poem about power. The men who drink here are powerless. Some are fatherless sons, motherless sons, Barnardo’s Boys gone bad. Some would have done better without the hapless parents fate has foisted on them. These are clever men though, some are brilliant, but none of them has the legitimate means to exploit it. They’re prison fodder. If polis see these men coming out of somewhere nice they’ll lift them on suspicion. Powerless, but within that powerlessness there are still grades to be measured and weighed. These men gather night after night, dressed in new duds, flashing wads of readies, determined to prove to other members of the underclass that they’re not down yet.

  From the corner of the bar Watt and Manuel can see the whole room and both doors. They see who comes in with hungry eyes, who is here on the scrounge, who swans in with a brand-new suit and a dame on each arm. Everyone coming through the doors sees them first and picks up on their mood.

  Because of the power of the corner, it’s a fight to keep it. Shows of weakness or impecunity, or a slight against you, witnessed but unavenged, will see you bumped around the corner. The least ambivalence and you’ll be hustled off the spot.

  Holding the corner is a first for Manuel. He has washed up here by accident a few times but has always been pushed off, not by one person but by the consensus of the crowd. Watt has had the corner before but he has never held it this long. It’s because they are together and they don’t belong together. It throws everyone.

  The reckless threat that Manuel exudes adds to Watt’s wealth and height. Eyes flick between them, confused by their conjoining and therefore disadvantaged. As with all unexpectedly powerful unions, they will eventually have to decide what to do with it, but for now they are just intoxicated by it, euphoric, drinking quickly, talking fast and loose. Watt is saying things to Manuel he wouldn’t otherwise–I killed my wife–when they are interrupted by the sight of Scout O’Neil staggering in through the door.

  Watt is trying to call him over to buy him a drink. Watt wouldn’t have done that if he wasn’t blootered because O’Neil shouldn’t even be in here. He’s a ridiculous mess tonight.

  Scout stands at the door, two black eyes and the bridge of his nose swollen and split, his suit jacket ripped on the shoulder. He has partially wiped the blood from his chin with his sleeve. His cheeks are crusty with salt white. The broken nose must have made his eyes water. Even O’Neil knows he’s not getting served tonight. He’s just looking for someone, probably someone that owes him money from the Gordon Club.

  Watt calls his name: ‘Scout O’BloodyNeil!’ Scout hears it and raises a hand while he scans the bar for the debtor’s face. He shoots Watt a preoccupied smile. His front tooth is freshly missing.

  Watt and Manuel both see this and laugh, though it must still be very sore. The gummy gap is ragged, his remaining teeth framed with bloody saliva. It’s only funny because it’s O’Neil.

  Scout O’Neil is crazy. Wherever, whenever, Scout has always just had an adventure, usually involving money, a dame and a fist fight. At the end of most nights Scout will try to fight whoever is around, if he hasn’t already had a fight. Everybody loves Scout O’Neil. He always has money and is honest about his proclivities–I love fighting, he says. When anyone says they don’t like Scout it’s just because they owe him money. They come around again when the debt is settled.

  Scout O’Neil scans the bar but can’t see who he’s after. Walking backwards towards Watt, he catches the manager’s eye.

  Brady, a surly big bastard, is drying ashtrays at the gantry but has stopped still, staring at O’Neil.

  ‘Sorry,’ says Scout, raising a hand in surrender and ducking behind it as if to hide.

  Brady watches him sidle to the corner, eyebrows rising slowly, asking if O’Neil’s really going to make him put him out? Really? They both know Scout can’t be in here with that face, in that suit, with blood on it. Scout brasses it out and sidesteps to Watt.

  Brady moves towards Watt, ‘Ho! O’Neil!’

  ‘Couple o’minutes, Brady?’

  Brady shakes his head and mutters a warning, the conditions of which are lost in the burble of the bar–ye better fucking fucking fucking, son. Something like that, not happy anyway, but O’Neil has two minutes’ grace. He accepts the conditions with a nod.

  ‘Hey, Watt, you seen Dandy the night?’

  Scout is scanning the faces for his boss, Dandy McKay, so he doesn’t see the reaction to his question. All he feels is the frost and stillness seeping back at him. He looks round to see if Watt has heard him. And then he sees Peter Manuel standing next to William Watt.

  Scout is aghast. ‘The fuck yees doing?’

  Smirking, Manuel shifts his weight so that he is obscured behind Watt’s massive frame. Watt stands tall though. He’s loyal because they have the corner and he’s enjoying that. Scout runs his eye between them, sees that they are, indeed, together.

  For a man who looked like he had been run over by a tram when he came in, O’Neil suddenly looks very much worse. He pales as he looks between them, from Watt up high and Manuel down low, to the dirty glasses in front of them that show they’ve been tanning it, matching each other for half and halfs, holding the prime position at the bar. He sees that Watt and Manuel are not just together, they’re making a show of being together and they’re doing it in Jackson’s, of all fucking places.

  ‘The fuck yees pulling?’ O’Neil backs away. He shakes his head at Manuel. ‘You better fucking run, boy. If I was you, I’d fucking run.’

  Manuel bends back to call around the massive wall of Watt. ‘Hey, Scout. Gonnae not say?’

  William Watt is oblivious. He has picked up on none of this. ‘A drink for O’Neil! Let us have drink!’

  He doesn’t clock Scout O’Neil’s horror or hear his warning. He doesn’t see Brady’s annoyance. He doesn’t sense the shift in O’Neil, from a man trying to get into Jackson’s to look for Dandy, to a man who now wants to get out, get out, get out and away from whatever the fuck is unfolding between himself and Manuel.

  ‘A whisky for Scout O’Neil!’

  Scout holds both hands up again, higher this time, not in surrender this time. He’s washing his hands of them.

  The door flaps open to the night. Watt tries to blink away a sudden sting of cigarette smoke. The door flaps shut. Watt’s eyes open and Scout O’Neil is gone.

  Watt barely remembers that O’Neil was even there. All that remains is the shape of the name in his mouth, like a memory of a flavour. He goes back to what he was saying before.

  ‘I killed my wife, they say. I suppose anyone might kill their wife, but her sister? Why would I? Who would? And my daughter?’

  Watt frowns at his drink. Something has changed in the mood of the evening but he doesn’t know what. He frowns. Maybe more drink will help. He drains his glass and hopes.

  ‘Thing is,’ he whispers in Manuel’s ear, ‘if I did that to my daughter, I would certainly have turned the gun on myself. But I didn’t, you know, I was fishing.’

  The ‘sh’ tickles Manuel’s eardrum. He brings his shoulder up defensively and catches Brady’s eye.

  Brady has seen that there is something very wrong with them being together. They’ve been here for two hours, necking it on Watt’s dime, but Brady doesn’t want them there any more. They are about to lose the corner. Manuel draws on his
cigarette, refusing to look back at Brady as Watt finishes what he is saying.

  ‘Fishing is waiting. All waiting. And it’s while you’re waiting for the bite, you know, your mind just–’ He can’t think of the words for what he means so he shuts his eyes and waves vaguely. ‘You know? Things. You know?’

  He looks at Manuel to see if he understands.

  Manuel nods impatiently, stubbing his cigarette out. Soon Dandy McKay will know that he is with William Watt.

  ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Watt is astonished. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just go somewhere else.’ Manuel finishes his beer chaser.

  Brady steps towards them, wiping the ashtray, about to put it down and tell them, fuck off yous two.

  Watt can’t believe what is being proposed. ‘Why go somewhere else? I like it here.’

  ‘Come on.’

  Manuel is at the door, yanking it open. Watt watches him, puzzled, because it isn’t closing time. Watt still has money. They’re winning! They have a corner to hold. But Manuel is leaving, quite definitely. Watt hurries out after him into the December night.

  Back in Jackson’s the power vacuum at the corner is filled by the man who was drinking next to them. He slides over to the space, puts his hands on the still warm bar. He is small, no one knows him and Brady has seen his money. It’s all shrapnel. Brady glares and the man giggles as if he has just tried on his daddy’s hat. ‘Fuck off out of it,’ says Brady and the man slides back to where he came from, uncomplaining.

  Outside, Manuel is walking down Crown Street. He has drunk a lot and his legs are moving faster than he means them to. He is falling forwards, catching his weight with the next step, falling towards the river. He feels as if he is running but he isn’t. His strides are long, is all.

  Big tall Watt catches up effortlessly and asks him where’s he going?

  Manuel finds he can’t speak. He says ‘fooof’ and staggers off down the pavement.

  They are in the Gorbals, on a main road with churches and shops and ramshackle, crumbling tenements built around and above. A huge private school, Hutchesons’, is set back from the road.