The Long Drop

by Denise Mina

‘I’m going to help the police solve some mysteries that have been happening in Lanarkshire recently.’

  He directs everything else he says to his father but she doesn’t hear it because she knows. Her son is not coming back. He’s never coming home again. She’s grateful and ashamed of her gratitude in equal measure. The answer to my prayers may require a miracle. A miracle has been granted but not for Peter. She realises that Peter wasn’t the lost person. He’s not coming home ever again.

  The next day the newspapers report that a man and a woman were driven away from Hamilton Police Station at three thirty in the morning in the back of a police car. The woman held her face in her hands and seemed to be crying uncontrollably.

  Standing in the dock now, with all the eyes of the world boring into her, Brigit relates the cold facts of who was where and when. She only adds one bit of illuminating dialogue:

  ‘You said that you didn’t know what made you do these terrible things.’

  Peter freezes, one hand on his notes. ‘Are you sure?’

  Yes, she says, she is.

  He nods as if he understands and forgives her mistake. ‘Is it possible that you misheard me say that?’

  No, she doesn’t think so.

  He half smiles. ‘Yes, I see. But the room was full of policeman, was it not?’

  She agrees it was.

  He sighs indulgently, giving her an out. ‘It was the middle of the night, you were in a room full of policemen: is it not possible that you heard me say something like that, or were told I’d said that or that Brown told you I’d said it before you arrived or something?’

  ‘No, Peter,’ she says, her voice unwavering, ‘I heard you say that.’

  No one else ever mentions this comment. Is Brigit misremembering? Is she more honest than anyone else or more emotionally engaged with the comment? Or is she lying, breaking her sworn oath to God to tell the truth, committing a terrible sin that may hang her son and save the world from more carnage?

  Later, M.G. Gillies gets up to cross-examine her. He knows what the jury are thinking about.

  ‘Just to be clear, Mrs Manuel: earlier you said you heard Peter say he didn’t know why he did these terrible things?’

  ‘Yes. I did say that.’ Brigit is very sure. ‘Peter told me he didn’t know what made him do these terrible things. That’s what he said.’

  ‘Did you hear him talk about the charges against him? The charges on the warrant?’

  ‘No. But at some point he said, “There is no hope for me”.’

  Gillies is very uncomfortable about having to cross-examine Mrs Manuel. She was called to the witness stand by her son but it doesn’t make her presence here any less soiling. He can see why she was called: she is a decent woman, Manuel is showing the jury that he comes from good people, but it doesn’t mitigate Gillies’ feeling that she is being publicly identified to no real purpose. Gillies bows slightly and thanks Mrs Manuel very much. He hasn’t thanked any of the witnesses very much.

  Peter gets back up. He is very obviously annoyed and Brigit cowers. They are all afraid of Peter’s temper. A domestic terrorist, he controls the house with his moods. They can all gauge his humour from the sound of his footsteps, from the way he turns a door handle or pours himself a drink from the tap in the kitchen.

  He can’t let it go. ‘Why do you think I said “I don’t know why I do these things”?’

  Brigit is confused by the question and hesitates. ‘Um, do you mean what do I suppose was in your mind when you said it?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean “why do you think I said it”.’

  The question is no clearer but Brigit knows better than to ask him twice when his eyes are narrow like that and his jaw is set. She answers simply, ‘I heard you say it.’

  He pauses. He nods at his papers. He gives a bitter little smile. If they were in the house Brigit would be looking for the doors out of the room. They are not in the house and she needn’t be afraid but she is. Her stomach is churning. She feels beads of sweat ping in her underarms. She wants to run away so much her knees are tingling.

  ‘Did you hear me say it’–his voice is very loud now–‘plainly and clearly, or is it just an instance where you think you heard me saying it?’

  Her voice is quiet. ‘I heard it, Peter.’

  My prayers may require a miracle.

  He nods heavily. ‘You heard it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His raises a threatening eyebrow. He huffs a bitter laugh. He shakes his head. She has a desperate need to calm him down, offer tea, give him money to go out, put the wireless on to distract him, but they’re in court. It occurs to her that maybe she doesn’t need to calm him down any more. He isn’t coming home. As if he can feel her slipping the leash, he raises his voice and tries again.

  ‘Then can I put it like this: did you definitely and plainly hear me saying “I don’t know what makes me do these things”?’

  Brigit’s panic rises to a pitch. She is lost in a sea of pitying Protestants and her son is shouting at her to recant. And still she says, ‘I did.’

  Peter glares at her. Brigit sees the darkness there, worse than ever. If he gets out he will kill her.

  They’ve all finished with her.

  Brigit gets down, stiff-kneed with tension. She tiptoes across the wooden floor, keeping her eyes down as she passes her son. He doesn’t glance at her. He picks up a sheet of paper to examine it and the tip of the page trembles, amplifying his fury. Brigit drops her head and hurries out.

  Samuel is standing inside the door of the witness hall and the Macer calls him to give evidence before they can speak to each other. She passes him and Samuel sees her sorry face. He knows the look. It hasn’t gone well. He bristles a reproach.

  Samuel takes the stand and denies everything. Those confessions are definitely forged by Muncie, who hates Peter and drags him in for questioning every time a pin is dropped in South Lanarkshire. Peter never left the house when any of the crimes were committed, he remembers perfectly. Muncie has been harassing Peter non-stop. Peter was at home on the night when Anne Kneilands was murdered and on the night of the Watts’ deaths. The police have been trying to arrest him for ages. DI Goodall from the city is a nutcase. After each of those murders William Muncie came to the house and searched it incompetently. South Lanarkshire cops routinely confide in Samuel: they know Peter is innocent. They’re only here to please their boss. Old man Muncie has a thing about Peter because he’s so clever.

  He says one of the search warrants specified the Watt murders. Lord Cameron interjects to ask: did that particular warrant, the one concerning the Watt murders, not also mention the murder of Anne Kneilands?

  Samuel cannot remember.

  Lord Cameron doesn’t believe him. ‘I should have thought it would rather stick in your mind if you had police coming along with warrants for murders.’

  Well, Samuel just can’t quite recall. Prompted by Peter, he remembers that he didn’t have his glasses on when the warrant was shown to him and he ‘read it kind of hastily’.

  Lord Cameron asks him why he claimed the sheepskin gloves came from a cousin in America when they actually came from Peter? Samuel says he was excited and doesn’t know why he lied. Lord Cameron points out that he isn’t excited now, is he? No, I’m not excited now. Well, says Cameron, perhaps Samuel could now furnish the court with his reasons? Samuel still doesn’t know. He just doesn’t know.

  He is asked if he has ever been arrested and again he lies: no, he has not.

  Asked about the statement ‘I don’t know what makes me do these terrible things’, Samuel tells Peter: ‘You NEVER made any such statement.’

  But everyone knows Samuel is a liar now. No one is really listening, except Peter who is hearing what he wants. He nods and smiles and nods and smiles and thanks his father very much.

  18

  Tuesday 14 January 1958

  IT IS A MONTH and a half since Watt and Manuel spent the night carousing together. It’s eigh
t days since the Smarts’ bodies were discovered. Peter Manuel has been in Hamilton Police Station for fourteen hours. No one is allowed to speak to him. He knows they are following orders because he has asked for tea, for smokes, for a lawyer, he has goaded and teased and threatened and he is not getting back as much as a muttered curse. It is torturous for him. They know it is.

  At nine in the evening he is taken from his cell in complete silence, led downstairs to a long basement room lined with raw concrete. It is damp and cold. Manuel is made to stand in an identity parade of five men. The room is so cold that their breath hangs in front of them, moist and dense. It’s unfriendly as line-ups go. No one looks at each other which means at least one of them is a cop or working for the cops. The five men wait, ignoring each other, huffing cloudy puffs, shuffling from foot to foot to keep warm.

  A door opens at the far end of the room. A wee guy of about eighteen, in a drape jacket with a velvet collar and wide-neck shirt comes in. He’s a Teddy boy. His hair is slicked back. Manuel knows him from somewhere. The guy keeps giggling but his eyes look frightened.

  Prompted by the cops he walks along the line of men, looking at them and then giggles over to the cops: hee tee hee.

  DI Goodall speaks and it sounds like a bark because of the reverberation from the concrete: does he see the man who was spending the sequentially numbered notes in the Oak Hotel lounge bar on New Year’s Day?

  Tee hee: the man touches Peter on the arm and then jerks his hand away as if he has been burnt.

  ‘Him?’ asks Goodall.

  Hee tee hee, yes. It’s him.

  Manuel recognises the guy now. He works behind the bar at the Oak Hotel. He was working the bar on the New Year’s Day after the Smart murders. Peter was in there but the guy doesn’t dress as a Teddy when he’s working. He just looks normal then. Manuel remembers being very drunk that day. He remembers reading out the numbers to the barman. He was showing off, showing that he had money but pretending that he was just noticing the notes because the numbers followed on from each other and that was unusual. He tipped the boy five bob.

  As if acknowledging this, the barman mutters a sorry as he is taken back out of the door.

  Manuel steps out of the identity parade but Goodall tells him to stay where he is. All of you just stay where you are.

  Another witness comes in. This one is a small angry man. He’s been wound up by the buzzies and storms straight over to Peter.

  ‘This one,’ he shouts, staring in Peter’s face. ‘It’s this one.’

  ‘This is one of the men you saw driving down from Sheepburn Road on New Year’s Eve?’

  ‘Yes!’ shouts the angry man. ‘This is one of the two men.’

  One of two men. Peter hears that. He’s taken back to the cell. Again, no one will speak to him. Finally, after another two hours alone, in silence, he is taken to an interview room.

  DI Goodall and William Muncie come in.

  They sit down opposite him. Goodall is CID: a city cop. Muncie is country, local to Lanarkshire. They are having to work together and neither one is pleased about it. Goodall and his bosses think the Lanarkshire cops are a bit Home Guard, basically a Masonic Lodge with truncheons.

  DI Goodall acts calm and neutral. He is a watcher. He is tall and sallow-skinned.

  Chief Inspector Muncie is a beefy, square-jawed man. He has a military bearing and speaks like an angry sergeant major. He hates chaos and disorder and things not going the way he wants. But most of all he hates Manuel. His men call it ‘Manuelitis’. He tries to arrest Manuel for every major crime that happens on his patch. In fairness he hates all the little scrotal criminals of South Lanarkshire, but Manuel is a special obsession of his. Muncie first arrested Manuel on a domestic burglary charge when Manuel was just nineteen. Muncie hates Manuel because he stubs cigarettes out on the arms of chairs, he eats his victims’ food and grinds it into the carpet, he climbs into clean linen beds wearing muddy boots. He desecrates the houses he has broken into.

  Muncie is here as a courtesy but he is not in charge. Goodall is calling the shots here. Muncie is made to sit and listen.

  Peter asks after his father. Samuel was taken away by the cops this morning during the search of the house. He kept threatening the cops with his MP, with the papers, disrupting the search until they found the gloves and used it as a pretext to huckle him out to the car. Manuel doesn’t know what happened then. They ignore his questions and confront him with the eyewitness statements.

  You were seen driving away from the home.

  Mr Smart was paid his wages on New Year’s Eve. He was paid in sequentially numbered notes. We have a list of the numbers. You spent those very notes in the Oak. We have a witness.

  Peter says nothing to that. He asks after his family.

  Peter, says Goodall, we’ve arrested your father for going housebreaking with you. He’s in Barlinnie. Imagine how your poor mother feels about that? She’s in the house there, without your daddy.

  Muncie smiles. Goodall smiles. They love the effect that has on Peter.

  ‘Poor lady,’ smirks Muncie, relishing being in charge.

  Goodall says, ‘You were seen driving away from Sheepburn Road on New Year’s morning by an eyewitness.’

  ‘I wasn’t alone.’

  Goodall sits up. Muncie clears his throat. His cheek twitches, as if he wasn’t supposed to speak but he has swallowed the bait and can’t stop himself. ‘Who was with you?’

  Now Peter is in charge and they are listening to him.

  ‘I was with someone. He asked me to help him scout the area for houses to break into. I live there. I know the area. He was with me in the car. On New Year’s Day he paid me those sequential notes for doing that.’

  ‘Who is this man?’

  ‘Someone you know,’ he tells them and Goodall and Muncie look at each other. Muncie is excited. Goodall’s top lip is beaded with sweat. They drop their voices confidentially.

  Goodall asks, ‘Peter, d’you think you could pick him out of a line-up?’

  It is ten thirty at night. Peter Manuel is behind the door, having the identification process explained to him. You have to touch his arm, do you understand? He understands perfectly well. It’s almost a joke, them explaining it to him. Muncie is breathing funny, as if he’s going to laugh any minute. Goodall is smirking and even DS Brown, the CID high heidyin, has come down to watch from the corridor. Manuel doesn’t understand why they think his accusation is funny. The door opens and Peter walks into the concrete basement.

  Five men standing in a row, a drunk, a cop and three other people. Manuel walks sombrely along the line and stops at the flurry of colour and patterns. He puts his hand on Dandy McKay’s shoulder.

  Muncie, eyes shining, barks: ‘Are you alleging that this man asked you to show him the bungalow in Sheepburn Road for the purposes of housebreaking?’

  ‘I am,’ says Manuel.

  Muncie steps away, giving off a little nervous gasping titter. It’s as if he’s tricked a naive classmate into swearing in front of a teacher.

  Dandy is angry. ‘YOU SPASTIC BASTARD SON OF A CUNT. WHO THE BUGGERING SHITE ARE YOU TO FINGER ME?’

  Dandy’s shouting is painfully loud in the small concrete room. It booms so loud it doesn’t just hurt the ears but the eyes. The cop and the drunk in the identity parade scurry out of the open door, their shoulders at their ears. Outside the door DS Brown leaves, laughing. A press of uniforms gather around the door to watch. The two spare men in the line-up linger for a moment, neither police officer nor habitual drunk, unsure whether they can leave. Goodall nods them out.

  Muncie tries to disguise his glee by speaking with excessive formality. ‘Mr McKay, Mr Manuel is alleging that he drove you around Uddingston scoping for houses to rob on Ne’erday last.’

  ‘THE FUCK I DID. I’m Dandy McFuckingKay. The fuck am I doing stealing jewellery from fucking bungalows?’

  ‘Do you own a gun, Mr McKay? Say, for example a Beretta automatic?’

&
nbsp; It’s an incendiary question. A Beretta has been mentioned in the papers with regard to the Smart murders. Dandy understands the implication.

  ‘ME?’ His voice rises to a roar. ‘ME OWN A BERETTA?’

  Muncie smiles at Manuel, his voice calm and creamy. ‘Is that a “no” from yourself, Mr McKay?’

  ‘COURSE IT’S A FUCKING “NO”. What is this? I was never in Uddingston.’

  ‘Would you know anyone who does own a Beretta?’

  Dandy reads Muncie’s expression. It takes a minute for him to get the prompt but then–‘Aye. I do. This cunt owns a fucking Beretta.’

  ‘Are you indicating Mr Manuel?’

  ‘Aye, he owns a fucking Beretta.’

  Goodall is smirking at Manuel. ‘Do you have any idea where Mr Manuel might have got that gun from?’

  Dandy looks Manuel in the eye and shouts, ‘FROM ME. HE’S BOUGHT A BERETTA FROM ME.’

  Muncie is loving this. He has been after Manuel for twelve years and only ever gets him for minor offences. He doesn’t care what the charge is, he just wants Manuel in jail for a good, long time.

  ‘Would you be willing to testify to that fact, Mr McKay?’

  Dandy leans into Manuel as if he’s going to nut him.

  ‘AYE, I fucking would. And anything else you’re worried about, Muncie, any evidence yees are needing, let me know. I’ll get it sorted.’

  Muncie looks Manuel in the eye and sneers, ‘Legally we can’t do that, Mr McKay, but I greatly appreciate the spirit in which that offer is made.’

  Goodall is worried by the public nature of this conversation. There are witnesses in the room. He frowns at smirking Muncie and offers McKay the exit door.

  But Dandy is fixed on Manuel. He’s muttering swear words, a jumble of cut-up curses–youfuckcuntfuckingbastcunt. Dandy goes for Manuel. With animal annoyance the back of his hand swats Manuel on the ear. The other hand comes up and a fist hits Manuel’s throat. Dandy turns to Manuel, widening his legs into a boxing stance.

  Goodall shouts ‘NO!’ and lunges in to stop it. But then he pulls back. He’s a Glasgow cop, he can’t touch Dandy McKay. He shouts, ‘NOT THE FACE, MR McKAY!’