The Long Drop

by Denise Mina

  Everyone is asleep.

  They can hear the breathing in the house, the in-out of breathing, as they stand in the silent hallway, on the red hall carpet, next to the chiffonier with the picture of the yellow dog above it and the empty key rack on the other wall.

  ‘Empty?’ asks John, puzzled.

  ‘There’s no keys on the key rack,’ says Manuel ‘All the wee hooks is empty.’

  ‘Hooks?’

  ‘Five wee hooks. For keys. Nothing on it.’

  John says, ‘Wha’?’ He sounds confused.

  From the kitchen, Nettie hears either John or William sit back, a faint creak of a wooden chair. She feels their puzzlement at him knowing that about a house he’s never been in.

  Manuel tells them: Tallis opens the door to the first bedroom, the one on the right-hand side. There are twin beds and a table in between, two women sleeping in those beds. Tallis goes in and stands between the two beds and he looks down at the soft-sleeping women. He draws the gun and shoots the woman nearest the door, shoots her in the temple, then he shoots the woman furthest away. One bullet in each.

  ‘Pop,’ he says. ‘Pop.’

  Out in the hall Hart and Bowes get a fright and scramble for the front door, run out into the street and go back to hide in number 18. They leave Tallis alone in number 5.

  William’s voice: ‘Why did they run? Tallis had told them his intentions, hadn’t he?’

  Manuel snorts. ‘Ever heard a revolver go off in a small bedroom? Pretty goddamned loud…’

  No one in the kitchen says anything for a moment but Nettie stands tall: Manuel did it. He’s describing what he did. Nettie knows that for sure now.

  Does John know? Has William realised? William is very drunk, he can’t know. If he had realised that he is sitting with the very man who murdered his wife and his daughter and Margaret Brown then William would be beating him, slapping him, hitting him and chasing that man from John and Nettie’s home.

  Nettie feels that she alone knows a murderer is among them. A man who shot three people in their own home. Nettie and John and William are three people. This is their home.

  Stiff with terror, she tiptoes silently to the front door and slips out into the close. She stands at the top of the stairs, panting.

  Good Lord, what is she doing? She can’t leave John in there. But she can’t call the police, either. If they find William with the actual murderer they’ll just arrest William again, they hate him so. She looks at the front door across the landing: she could wake the neighbours but what use is that? He’d just murder them too.

  She looks back at her front door. She has to warn John but she doesn’t know how. She slips into the toilet on the landing to think.

  This outside toilet has an open window cut high up on the wall, a godsend in summer but freezing now in the December air. Wind blows in, swaying the strip of flypaper uncurling from the light bulb, threatening to shower her with frozen dead flies. She only has her slippers on and the floor feels tacky, as if a child has missed the pan. It’s cold and horrible but Nettie would stay here for a year to be out of the house.

  She wants to run. She has some money of her own scurried away, change saved from groceries. She keeps it wrapped in paper and tucked into the toe of her Sunday shoes. She would have to go back in, but then she could hide in the train station until morning and get on the first train to Aberdeen where her sister lives. But she can’t run. There is a murderer in her house and her John is in there. She can’t run or call the police or a neighbour. There is no one to call for help.

  The combination of biting cold and terror make her need a tinkle. Exposing as little flesh as possible to the frosty air, she pulls her underskirt up and her underpants down, hovers on the pan and does her dirty business. She positions herself so that her wee hits the side of the bowl noiselessly. Outside toilets are very public, everyone has their own technique. Nettie’s mind is on the money wrapped in a paper in her Sunday shoes as she reaches for the newspaper, cut into strips and hung on the nail, to wipe herself. She freezes. That’s it! The newspapers!

  Hurriedly cleaning herself, she pulls her clothes down, up and unlocks the door. She slips back into the house, trembling. Silently she shuts the door and, for as long as a shiver, she stands listening.

  Manuel is still talking in a low tone, as if he is describing a dream.

  John’s voice cuts through the dreamlike murmur: ‘What did he see in there?’

  Manuel’s rhythm is thrown off by the question. ‘Um, in the room?’

  ‘Yes, did he describe the girl’s room?’

  ‘Well, just a bedroom. A bed. A torch on the bedside table. She had a radiogram in there. An old-fashioned one, a big, like, wooden cabinet. And a pink chenille bedspread, fluffy.’

  ‘Fluffy?’ John asks as if he’s misheard the word.

  ‘Aye.’ Manuel is confused by why this is being discussed. ‘Kind of puffy, fluffy, you know, like you could run your hand over the top of it? Fluffy.’

  There is a pause. Nettie feels sure that John knows now.

  ‘Kind of chenille,’ says Manuel. Then he moves straight on to tell them that the girl sees his face there, at the door, and jumps back into the room. Tallis follows her in. There’s a struggle. He wants her to get onto the bed and she won’t do it. It annoys him, Tallis. He gets… he gets annoyed with her. Tallis socks her one and she goes down. Then he’s hungry so he goes and makes a sandwich. Gammon. And he drinks from the bottle of Mascaró Dry Gin.

  ‘The bottle in the front room?’ From the high pitch of William’s voice, Nettie can hear that he knows too.

  ‘The one on the drinks cabinet, next to the Whyte & Mackay. But he doesn’t get to finish his sandwich because the girl wakes up and screams.’ There is a pause. It sounds as if he is drinking.

  John shouts: ‘WIFE? WIFE!’

  Nettie hurries in. John looks up at her imploringly. He knows. He can see that Nettie does too. In a strained voice he says, ‘Might we have some tea, Nettie?’

  Nettie fills the kettle and puts it on the range. Would the other two like a cup of tea? Her own voice sounds strange to her. Breathy. Last-words-y.

  William would like a cup of tea, thank you, dear. Peter Manuel doesn’t answer but announces that he is off to use the cludgie.

  He goes out to the close, leaving the front door ajar. He bangs the toilet door loud enough to wake the whole close. They hear him urinating.

  Nettie keeps an eye on the door and she whispers: ‘Get him out of here or, so help me, I will call the papers.’

  It’s an awful threat. They’ll be here faster than the police and they’ll make a month’s worth of stories out of it. They love this story and Watt.

  John is livid but nods, his eyes are brimming. He turns to his brother. ‘Get that b. out of my home.’

  William is not shocked by any of this. He is drunk and not the best liar anyway. Nettie can see that he knew all along. She has never entertained this thought before but now she wonders if the police are right and William did have a hand in killing his family.

  The lavatory flushes and Manuel opens the toilet door before it is finished. The sound of sucking reverberates around the stone walls of the close.

  He comes in, slams the front door behind him and sits back down. John confronts him: ‘How do you know all these details about the house?’

  ‘Well… people tell me things. What details?’

  ‘The key rack? The feel of the bedspread? How do you know that if it wasn’t you?’

  Manuel isn’t thrown. He says, ‘Listen, the next morning Tallis, he came to me–going mad, he was, he tells me everything, in detail like. He says hide this gun.’

  William jumps in. ‘Did you? Where?’

  ‘In the Clyde at a special bit, a bit only I know. I can get it back.’

  Nettie delivers the tea. William nods at John. But John won’t look at him. Nettie pours two teas, carefully cupping the strainer with her shaking hand. William keeps talking, as if he has
forgotten that the man is a murderer.

  ‘Listen: this story is no use to me,’ slurs William. ‘Even if you have the gun and take it to the police, it fails to clear me of anything, much less in the public imagination. My business is still affected.’

  Hot tea drips into Nettie’s palm as she carries the strainer back to the sink. Manuel’s voice is a low murmur behind her. ‘Prove something if Charles Tallis was found shot dead, holding the gun used to kill your family, though, wouldn’t it? Clear everything up nicely, that would.’

  Nettie freezes.

  John gathers a breath to shout but he is cut off by William scraping his chair back and standing up. ‘Let’s go, Chief!’

  Manuel stays in his seat. He’s confused by the change in atmosphere. ‘What?’

  Nettie stands at the sink with the burning tea dripping into her palm.

  ‘Come on, Chief! Time to go!’

  ‘But nothing’s open… we’ve still got drink here. Nah, let’s stay here.’

  Watt sidles clumsily out of the recess, muttering, ‘Well, maybe, we can just… there’s a club, a wee club, the cellar under the Cot Bar.’

  Manuel suddenly stands up. Nettie hears him pull his jacket off the back of the chair, the chair leg clunks on the floor. Then he stops. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘but what about Dandy?’

  William’s voice is smiling. ‘The Cot cellar is famously discreet. He won’t find us in there.’

  John whispers, ‘Dandy McKay?’

  Nettie watches their reflections in the window above the sink. Manuel and William are pulling their coats on. John stands too, hands out, eyes wide with panic. ‘Dandy McKay is looking for you? And you’re hiding from McKay? William, are you bloody mad?’

  William doesn’t answer, he is smiling awkwardly as he backs away from John. Manuel is at the front door already.

  John shoves the full whisky bottle at his brother. ‘Take it.’

  ‘John, this is for you,’ says William, by habit high-handed. ‘You keep it.’

  ‘I don’t want this in my house.’

  The door closes behind them. Their steps recede on the stone stairs. Nettie turns to see John slump into his seat. She is still holding the burning drips of tea in the cup of her hand.

  ‘Husband,’ she hisses, ‘I don’t want that filthy man in my house ever again.’

  ‘I know,’ says John, ‘I know.’

  Neither of them is talking about Peter Manuel.

  10

  Tuesday 3 December 1957

  WATT AND MANUEL DRIVE away from John and Nettie’s house and into the night city. It is three thirty in the morning and the streets are empty. They pass the high hedges of a bowling green and head uphill, through tall tenements with dark windows. Frozen mist clings to the pavement and the chimneys are all dead.

  It is a time of night Manuel is familiar with. Watt isn’t and he doesn’t like it. He is sick with tiredness and drink and finds the empty, misty streets creepy. It feels as if everyone in the city has died. This is when Manuel loves Glasgow, when it’s defenceless and the people are still.

  But they are both excited by the prospect of the Cot Bar cellar. The cellar under the Cot Bar is a place of legend. Naked women serve you drink? Women in their underwear serve you drink? Women dance naked or become naked? Men who will never go to the cellar have heard rumours about it from other men who will never go there. It is a small dark room and costs a pound a head just to get in.

  Manuel remembers what just happened and sounds annoyed when he says, ‘You wanted me out of that house sharpish.’

  William is contemplative. ‘They know, I think.’

  Manuel is surprised. ‘Did they say?’

  ‘No, I’m guessing.’

  ‘How could you guess that?’

  ‘Just… from the way they looked at you.’

  Watt turns onto the Alexandra Parade, a long broad road running between huge Victorian factory buildings. It is a place of industry and is usually mobbed with workers as the vast tobacco factories change shifts. Lights shine in the windows but the streets are deserted. Newspapers and litter tumble softly along the pavement, following the stream of wind down from Townhead.

  Manuel clears his throat. He seems troubled. ‘D’you tell them? When I was in the lavvy?’

  ‘No. They just knew, they guessed.’ Watt can feel the alcohol ebb in his veins. He needs a top-up. He pulls the car over to the kerb, takes the Gleniffer whisky bottle out of the footwell and uncorks the lid. A lorry rumbles past them.

  Watt takes a glug. He offers it to Manuel but Manuel says no. Watt pushes it at him again. Manuel shakes his head, irritated by how much Watt thinks about drink. He mutters, ‘Fucking hell.’ He seems upset by something. He looks away, out of the window, at the tobacco factory. He gets his cigarettes out and lights up. Watt takes the opportunity to have another sneaky drink.

  Manuel’s voice cracks as he whispers: ‘It’s a fuck of a lot to just guess, is what I’m saying.’

  Watt shrugs, feeling better. ‘They won’t know the details, Peter, just the general… you know.’

  ‘Is that what they said?’

  Watt feels the whisky dull his nerves, salve the sense of bristling panic that worsens when the drink wears off. ‘They never said anything, Peter. I’m just supposing from the way they looked at you.’

  Manuel smokes and shakes his head. Watt drinks again. Liquid confidence. He feels normal now. He looks at Manuel. ‘You don’t see it, do you?’

  Manuel looks at him with the blank expression he saw in Whitehall’s when the bill came: he doesn’t know what William is talking about.

  ‘You don’t see what other people think. You can’t tell. You can’t see.’

  Manuel tuts, ‘Shut your fat fucking gub, Watt.’

  Watt shrugs. He wants to add–and that’s why you can’t make a plan and stick to it, you can’t anticipate what other people will be thinking about or expecting. He has noticed over the course of the night that Manuel’s plan of action changes constantly: I’ll give you the gun, I’ll give you a suspect, I’ll give you a story. In the business world sticking to a course of action is the key to winning. Even if Manuel’s ideas are brilliant, which they are sometimes, he hasn’t got the self-control to see them through. As soon as a new thing occurs to him he goes off and does that. This fellow is all over the shop. So much the better for Watt. He starts the car again and pulls out but then realises the whisky bottle is open.

  He pulls over again and struggles to fit the cork into the bottle held upright between his thighs. It won’t seem to go in. Manuel watches him. Watt tries again and misses badly and giggles and a bit of spit shoots from his mouth, landing on his suited leg.

  Manuel laughs at him. He laughs so much he bangs his foot on the floor of the car for emphasis.

  Watt laughs along with him. Laughing makes him shift his chubby legs and the bottle nearly falls and he grabs it and laughs more and more.

  They look up at the empty street, laughing, remembering the spit and the falling bottle and the cork that won’t go in. Watt laughs loud and hands the cork and the bottle to Manuel but Manuel drops the cork onto the floor of the car.

  ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ laughs Manuel, ‘we are fucking ruined.’

  And Watt laughs more.

  Finally, Manuel manages to get the cork in the bottle. He looks at Watt and says, ‘You want a–?’ He offers him the bottle.

  Then they laugh at that one too. Watt gets out his own cigarettes and they both smoke and calm down.

  Watt exhales as Manuel says, ‘Really, how do you know they know?’

  ‘I don’t know really… from their faces? The faces they made.’

  ‘Oh.’ Manuel titters, remembering. He looks at his cigarette. ‘You think I read the faces wrong?’

  Watt doesn’t really want to have a conversation about what is wrong with Peter Manuel. He shrugs.

  ‘Oh!’ Manuel pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. He is staring at Watt. ‘Did you put that
in there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This. A pound note. In my pocket. Did you put that in there?’

  Watt doesn’t get it immediately. ‘No.’

  ‘Huh.’ Manuel smiles on one side of his face. ‘It wasn’t there before I went to the cludgie. Maybe you put it in there when I was out the room?’

  It dawns on Watt: this is a threat. I’ll say you gave me money. I’ll renege on everything. So he says a mean thing back:

  ‘You’re so obviously guilty, Peter. Anyone could tell it was you.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ says Manuel dismissively.

  ‘You can’t tell a story,’ says Watt, not knowing that this is cutting Manuel to the bone.

  Manuel is so hurt that he can’t speak for a minute. He looks out of the window and covers his face with his hand, as if he is tired.

  ‘You going to take the joe?’

  ‘Tallis?’

  ‘Aye, Charles Tallis.’

  ‘Not if it’s a phoney-baloney suicide scenario.’

  ‘Just take him. I’ll get the gun and put it on him. Cops’ll want him for it.’

  Watt breathes and sits up slowly. He looks out of the side window, away from Manuel. He doesn’t think Manuel knows what the cops want or anyone wants. He thinks meeting Peter was a mistake after all. Now John and Nettie are suspicious, Dowdall is annoyed, Dandy McKay will be angry with him and he is no further forward. But still, the night needn’t be a complete washout.

  ‘Let’s go to the Cot cellar and see what we can see.’

  11

  Friday 16 May 1958

  EVERYONE IS LYING.

  Day five of the trial is a whistle-stop tour of Glasgow’s underbelly. There are two handguns on the productions table in the middle of the court: the Webley used to kill the Watts and the Beretta used to murder the Smart family. Sworn witnesses tell the court that these guns have tumbled from hand to hand, unbidden. They have dropped themselves into paper bags, hidden themselves away on the top shelves in cupboards. No one ever buys them, no one ever sells them, though, it is admitted, unrelated fivers have passed from hand to hand, always in the opposite direction from the guns, during approximately the same time frame. Buying guns is illegal and has a steep sentencing tariff. This deception is understandable.