by Denise Mina
Well, she feels like a fool.
Never mind, he says, don’t take it so serious. What age are you?
Seventeen, she says.
You’re young, he says. Don’t take it so serious.
When her bus comes he gets on too, though it’s going a different way than the 70. They don’t sit together, he sits a few seats behind her, but four stops later he gets off when she does.
Oh, are you getting off here too?
Yes.
They’re pals by then.
Well, I’m off this way, she says, and remembers her manners–Nice to meet you.
He looks over the golf course.
It’s a bit dark for a girl alone, he says, I’ll walk you over.
There’s no need, says Anne, I go this way all the time, it’s quite safe.
He flattens a hand to his chest, stands tall and formal, mocking himself a little. I couldn’t possibly let you.
So he walks her across the fields towards her house. They climb a stile and walk onto the dark golf course. Anne screams and claws at his face, scratching three long welts in his left cheek. No, he doesn’t know why she did that, it sort of came out of nowhere. Then she runs away from him. He runs after her, across mud, across grass, following her panicking shadow. She is swallowed by the earth.
He catches up to where she disappeared. She has fallen down the dyke, the one by the burn. It’s very steep, about a seven-foot drop, and he can see the slide marks in the muddy banks where she went down. She’s lost a kitten-heel shoe. The heel is stuck in the muddy bank. He looks down the dyke and sees her running along it. She gets out the other side and runs to a wooded area. He gets down the dyke and follows, climbs out and sees a copse of woods. She is gone but not gone. She is hiding. He knows she is. He slides behind a tree and stills. He waits, breathless, listening.
Two small animals hide in the dark. They wait for five minutes. It’s a long time to stand still in the cold, alert to only one other person in the world, listening for a breath or a step or a shift of weight. It’s intimate.
A branch moves somewhere nearby. He can hear her stand up. A step, a twig snapping, she creeps out of a bush. She looks around, shoulders hunched, scanning the open ground, looking for him.
He lets her take a few steps into the open. He lets her shoulders drop, lets her look to the lights of the road. He lets her hope. Then he runs out.
She is screaming quite loud and runs through the under-growth and doesn’t see the discarded barbed wire until she is stuck on it. She is pulling and he watches. She sees him watching and screams. He wants her to stop screaming but she doesn’t. He picks up a bit of metal from the ground and hits her head with it. Yes, it was a few times. By the tree in the undergrowth. Quite a few times. He had to hit hard to stop the screaming.
She stops screaming. She is stuck on the rusty roll of barbed wire. He looks at her for a while. The metal thing is heavy in his hand, dragging his shoulder down, making his neck ache, but he doesn’t let go. It gets too much for him and he drops it to the ground and it rolls down the bank and into the burn. He realises what he has done and where they are. He smokes some cigarettes.
He turns away and walks the mile across raw December fields to a Gas Board work shed. He knew it was there because he was working for the Gas Board then, up at East Kilbride. He changed his boots in the shed, they had blood all over them. Then he walked the eight miles home to Birkenshaw.
Manuel has made three different confessions, on the same night in Hamilton Police Station, just after Dandy McKay beat him up in front of eight officers. The confessions are typed by cops and then signed by Peter Manuel. The confessions are given to Detective Inspector Robert McNeill of Glasgow, and to Chief Inspector William Muncie, the South Lanarkshire cop who hates Manuel more than anyone else in the world. Muncie has been pursuing Manuel for twelve years, since he first arrested him for housebreaking and sexual assault. Muncie always gets his man. His career covers fifty-four murder inquiries. ‘Incredibly, every one was solved,’ it says in his own memoir. That is incredible.
Manuel’s first confession is a promise to help with certain matters.
His second confession is a promise to help them solve the murders of Anne Kneilands, Isabelle Cooke, the Watts and the Smarts.
His third is many pages long. It is a detailed narrative account of the things he has done.
Isabelle Cooke: Just over the bridge at Burntbroom I met a girl walking. I dragged her into a field. I made her watch as I put stones in her handbag and threw it into a burn. I walked her into the dark. She started to scream. I tore off her clothes and tied something round her neck and choked her. I picked her up and took her to a field. I started to dig a hole but a man cycled past on the path and he stopped to see what I was doing. I waited until he was gone and then moved her over to a darker place and I buried her.
The description of the Watt murders tells how Manuel crept along the dark street and approached the house. How he smashed the window and slid his hand in to open the door. How quiet it was and about the picture of the dog and chiffonnier and the Mascaró Dry Gin and the sandwich. And the women: pop pop. Pop. Pop.
He tells them how he broke into the Smarts’ house on New Year’s morning and found the family in their beds, how he shot the boy first. He didn’t know it was a child. He thought it was a small man.
How he took Mr Smart’s car and drove it around for a few days, leaving it in a factory car park and going to get it again, leaving it in Florence Street, outside Dandy McKay’s house. He confesses to returning to the Smarts’ house and hanging around it for days. Hanging around in there, being peaceful, being in control of everything. He opened and shut the curtains in the front rooms to throw the neighbours off. He fed the cat a tin
of salmon, because he’s got the Kitekat out of the cupboard, but then he’s looked at the tin of salmon and he’s went, you know what, no one else is going to eat that, are they? Not now.
In the confession he tells them how he got the Webley and the Beretta and from who. He admits wrapping up both the Webley and the Beretta and dropping them in the Clyde by the suspension bridge. It takes a team of divers two weeks of raking through sludge in the freezing brown water to find them. Finally, when they bring them up, the guns are wrapped just as Manuel described: the Webley in a pair of his own sister’s gloves, the Beretta in a scrap of cloth from the Smarts’ house.
Manuel gave these confessions but now refutes them. He instructs his counsel to argue against their admission in court on the grounds of police fraud: they typed things he did not say and then signed on his behalf. As evidence for this he points out that each confession is signed by a different hand and the name varies. The first is signed ‘Peter Manuel’, the second ‘Peter Anthony Manuel’, the third one is signed ‘P.T. Manuel’.
Harald Leslie refuses to present this argument in court because it is stupid. If they argue that the police signed the confessions then the Crown will simply call the police officers who witnessed Peter Manuel signing the confessions. Any cop who was attempting fraud would be careful to keep their signature consistent over three documents signed in a six-hour period.
Relations between Manuel and his counsel, already strained, get worse when they also refuse to plead ‘intolerable pressure’ to the confessions. ‘Intolerable pressure’ is a technical term for blameless children who have confessed to crimes without first being cautioned. Manuel was under caution and has been drawing convictions for rapes and robbery with violence since he was twelve. He is now a hardened criminal of thirty-one with a string of charges.
Harald Leslie does argue against them being admitted but only on the grounds that his client had no access to a solicitor for forty-eight hours after his arrest and hadn’t slept for two days. His father was arrested when they came for Peter, a pair of gloves from a burglary were found in his dresser and he refused to say they came from his son. The arrest of Samuel was solely for the purpose of putting pressure on his son. When a writer sugges
ted this to Muncie years later the old cop smirked and accused him of having a ‘nasty mind’.
Lord Cameron hears Leslie’s arguments, but rules that the confessions be admitted into evidence. They are shown to the jury.
The morning after the debate over the confessions the court reassembles. Peter Manuel waits until the jury are in, Lord Cameron is seated and the public are all there and settled. He likes an audience. Then he asks to confer with his counsel.
The discussions are intense but inaudible. Grieve is smiling excitedly, quite out of character. Leslie nods solemnly and seems to ask Manuel for confirmation again and again. Manuel gives it.
Harald Leslie asks permission to approach the bench and, in a whisper, informs Lord Cameron that Manuel has just sacked Mr Grieve and himself. Mr Leslie’s final act as counsel is to inform the court that Mr Manuel wants to represent himself in the case from now on.
The stakes are raised. Representing himself on a capital charge is risky for everyone. Manuel risks messing up the evidence and being hung. It is Lord Cameron’s first capital murder case, he doesn’t want an appeal on the grounds of the wrong evidence being admitted. M.G. Gillies, prosecuting the case, has no idea where the defence case is going now. Nothing is predictable. The press are beside themselves with glee. They have bought interviews with just about everyone in the case, ready to run when
the verdict comes in, but Manuel is who everyone wants to hear from and now they’re going to get it for free.
As his first action, Manuel moves to recall several witnesses. Harald Leslie and William Grieve failed to question them according to Manuel’s specific instructions. The first witness he wants to recall is William Watt. He also wants to call both of his parents to the stand.
In the next morning’s editions Harald Leslie is pictured arriving home at his house in Edinburgh’s Morningside after being sacked. His young son meets him at the gate and takes his daddy’s hat and briefcase. Leslie looks younger and relaxed. He is smiling. Many years later Leslie is interviewed about the Manuel trial. All he will say is that it was a difficult case, principally because of the way his client’s story had changed and kept changing.
16
Tuesday 3 December 1957
WATT AND MANUEL SIT in the Vauhall Velox, looking at the wall of black night at the end of the road. This spur of Fourth Street is a stubby dead end, leading straight out into country fields.
Birkenshaw housing scheme is based on geometric utilitarian principles: First Street, Second Street, Third Street. The houses are terraced up-and-down, with small windows to keep the heat in. Each roof has four chimneys, one to serve each of the principal rooms. The hour at which a house’s chimney starts to belch is a signifier: decent houses rise early and prosperous houses have coal. The Manuels’ chimney is awake. His mother is up already, warming the kitchen, making the breakfast, ready for the workers.
It is 6 a.m., December dark, and the inside of the car is so cold that condensation settles on the dashboard chrome. The wooden floor of the car feels soggy and soft under the carpet, damp radiates from the metal chassis. Yet Watt and Manuel linger. Neither wants the astounding night to be over. They are both nostalgic for it already, here on the threshold of the end.
Watt wipes condensation from the window glass with the side of his hand and looks at the Fourth Street house. The Manuels have the upstairs and downstairs, one window on each floor. The front door is around the side, facing the dark fields. A concrete bracket shields the door from view, supporting a flat portico. A man could come and go without being seen.
Manuel’s chin is swollen. His eye is bruised. He has a cut on his lip, not deep but swollen, red and angry. The real damage is to his ribs, which are cracked. He keeps his arm tucked into his side and his breathing is shallow.
To waste time, Manuel takes his cigarettes out of his inside pocket and taps the packet on his knee, knocking a single cigarette up. It’s a good trick. It impresses people. He saw it in a movie and practised and practised until he perfected it. He sees Watt watch the gravity-defying miracle from the corner of his eye and give a fond, drunken smile at the trick.
Manuel puts the cigarette between his lips and pulls the packet away, flicking his lighter and holding the flame to the tip. The paper crackles as it takes the flame. He inhales but doesn’t reach for the door handle and now they both understand that he’ll stay in the car until he has finished smoking it. They are both pleased at the reprieve.
Orange halogen street light catches thick cables of white smoke exhaled through his nostrils. The smoke flattens on his knees. Oily smoke rolls across his lap and lifts slowly into the air.
For no good reason Watt titters, remembering something of the night and Manuel echoes the sentiment, puffing a laughing sound out of his mouth. Watt nods and smiles and Manuel realises for the first time that Watt thinks they are the same. That makes Manuel laugh properly, and Watt laughs along with him. Watt is the only one laughing together. Manuel is just laughing. They’re tired and drunk and they sit in the car laughing.
They hear the tramp of work boots behind them, coming up the quiet street. Manuel watches in the side mirror. An older man in a jacket and bunnet, a muffler and overalls, carrying his lunch tin under his arm.
The man reads the car, the not-work-jackets, the smoke curling in the cabin and knows the men have been out carousing all night. He tuts and sparking ash blows from the stubby Woodbine hanging from his lip. Manuel watches the sparks die in the wind. Manuel reads that the man makes a virtue of hard graft. He thinks he is a good man because he works hard for no money. He sees suddenly that Manuel is looking at him and drops his gaze, masking his judgement, passing the car. He speeds up and is swallowed by the blackness at the end of the road.
Manuel works out where that man lives. He is coming from the back of the estate, is about fifty and wearing clothes fit for heavy, dirty work. He has a piece tin with him, which means he isn’t coming home for lunch. The jacket is pressed though, so he has a wife. He must work far away. He is walking over the fields, not down to the main road for the bus to either Hamilton or a works in Glasgow. He’s going over to the Edinburgh bus stop. His gait suggests he has been walking for a block or more, he’s into the stride of it. It’s the father Connelly. Three daughters. The oldest daughter married two weeks ago. Manuel remembers seeing the scramble outside the house. His mother will know them from the chapel.
The bride’s scramble is a tradition. As she leaves her parents’ house for her wedding the bride casts handfuls of loose change into the street as a last gesture. Children scramble for the money. The bride throws money away because she won’t need her own money any more, once she’s married. It’s a tradition that will die as cars become more common and the shortcomings of inviting small children to reach under moving vehicles becomes more obvious. Good scramblers can get a lot of money on a Saturday, if they know to listen out for news of weddings and manage to get to more than one.
Manuel tried to marry once. She was decent.
Watt titters again, his belly shaking on his thighs. He is now trying to revive the moment when they were both laughing, two minutes ago. The night is puttering to a stop like a car with no petrol.
Manuel takes another draw on his cigarette and gets back to his train of thought.
She was decent and clean. Manuel didn’t know if he loved her but he felt something strong about her. She reminded him of his mother. Peter wrote anonymous poison pen letters to her, warning her off Peter Manuel. He is a beast and has a dark past. You can do better. Peter still doesn’t know why he did that. It bothers him.
‘We going in for a cup of tea?’
Watt turns to Manuel, smiling drunkenly. He is drawling badly and his blinking is uncoordinated. Manuel imagines his mother’s face if she saw Watt. He imagines her heavy silence hanging in the house over the next few days. He imagines her, bowed in the dark at the kitchen table, reciting her rosary for him when he happens in for a drink of water. He imagines her naked and
raped and stabbed and lying in the neat front garden.
‘No.’
Watt doesn’t know what to say about that. He shuts his eyes and shakes his head.
‘Wee cup of tea?’
Manuel looks across the garden to the window into his parents’ front room.
It’s dark behind the glass but light glimmers from the kitchen. On the inside sill of the front room is a small plaster statue of St Anthony. A beacon. A priest gave it to his mother.
Watt slurs, ‘I’m too tired to drive back without a cuppa. Come on, let’s just go in.’
‘No.’
‘Come on, Peter, I need a cup of tea.’
‘Wish we’d got in the cellar.’
Watt follows the misdirect, laughs and nods and gives a low whoop, a half-laugh, and looks away. They are both glad they didn’t get through the door. The erotic frisson of that part of the night is distant and confusing now.
‘You been in there?’
‘No,’ said Watt, ‘but I’d certainly like to!’
Manuel breathes an affirmative ‘Ha!’
‘Ha! Come on.’ Watt has the car door open, leans back in the seat to lever himself out.
‘No!’ Manuel grabs his arm. ‘No!’
Their eyes meet. They are both surprised that Manuel expressed an emotion. He is breaking character.
‘No,’ Manuel corrects his tone. ‘I’ll bring tea out here.’
Watt looks sad. ‘You won’t have me in your home.’
Manuel glances at the dark front-room window. His mother’s face bobs to the surface. Brigit steps back, swallowed by the shadows again, but she has seen the car and knows he is there.
‘I can’t bring you in.’
Watt is looking at the window too and saw Brigit’s face. ‘Was that your mother?’
Manuel stubs his cigarette out in the car’s brimming ashtray.
‘Why can’t I come in?’ ‘She’s seen you in the papers…’
Watt looks at the window, as if all of the rejection he has been subjected to is there, behind the glass, denying him tea.
