reading

More thanks are due for this book than I can possibly recall because of its unusually long gestation.

David MacLennan, Graham Eatough, Alison Hennessey, John Wood, Jemima Forrester, Peter Robinson, Ford Keirnan have all contributed. Some added significant ideas on this story, some gave me a simple shove on the back. To the National Archive of Scotland for their help accessing materials and court records. Thank you to the ladies of the Girl Guides main office in Elmbank Street for giving me access to blueprints of their office floor plan from 1957 and then pointing out that I was in the wrong street. The office moved from Gordon Street in the 1960s. To Steve, Fergus and Ownie for patiently stepping around huge maps, photos of Berettas and creepy site photos for two years.

More especially Hector and Malcolm MacLeod for their excellent book Peter Manuel, Serial Killer (Penguin, 2010), which inspired the night portions of this book, and Allan Nicol’s book Manuel: Scotland’s First Serial Killer (Abe Books, 2008) for an astute legal breakdown of the case.

At its most joyous, writing a book is living a parallel life, part-time. There were times when I could stand and feel the blackened old city growing up around me. Thank you to everyone who shared in this obsession, generously sharing glimpses of the dead and bringing the dirty old town to life.

Also by Denise Mina

About the Author

After a peripatetic childhood in Glasgow, Paris, London, Invergordon, Bergen and Perth, Denise Mina left school at 16 before doing her law degree at Glasgow University. She subsequently studied for a PhD at Strathclyde. Her first novel, Garnethill, was published in 1998 and won the CWA John Creasey Dagger for Best First Crime Novel.

She has published 12 novels including the Garnethill series, Paddy Meehan and Alex Morrow series’. She has been nominated for many prizes including the CWA Gold Dagger and has won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award twice. In addition to novels, Denise has also written plays and graphic novels including the graphic novel adaptation of The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo. In 2014, she was inducted into the Crime Writers’ Association Hall of Fame and was a judge for the Bailey’s Prize. She has also presented TV and radio programmes as well as appearing regularly in the media. She lives and works in Glasgow.

About the Book

William Watt wants answers about his family’s murder. Peter Manuel has them. But Peter Manuel is a liar.

Peter Manuel is a famous liar, a rapist, a criminal. He claims he can get hold of the gun used to murder Watt’s family.

One December night in 1957, Watt meets Manuel in a Glasgow bar to find out what he knows.

Based on true events, The Long Drop is an extraordinarily unsettling, evocative and compelling novel from a writer at the height of her powers.

Monday 2 December 1957

HE KNOWS TOO much to be an honest man but says he wants to help. He says he can get the gun for them. William Watt is keen to meet him. Laurence Dowdall has already met Peter Manuel several times. He never wants to see him again.

Dowdall parks his beige Bentley on a dark city street and gets out. Watt is waiting on the pavement, next to his maroon Vauxhall Velox.

It is early evening in early December. Glasgow is wet and dark but still warm, the bitterness of winter has yet to bite.

Above the roofs every chimney belches black smoke. Rain drags smut down over the city like a mourning mantilla. Soon a Clean Air Act will outlaw coal-burning in town. Five square miles of the Victorian city will be ruled unfit for human habitation and torn down, redeveloped in concrete and glass and steel. The population will be moved to the periphery, thinned to a quarter of its current density. One hundred and thirty thousand homes will be demolished in the biggest urban redevelopment project in post-war Europe. Later, the black, bedraggled survivors of this architectural cull will be sandblasted, their hard skin scoured off to reveal glittering yellow and burgundy sandstone. The exposed stone is porous though, it sucks in rain and splits when it freezes in the winter.

But this story is before all of that. This story happens in the old boom city, crowded, wild west, chaotic. This city is commerce unfettered. It centres around the docks and the river, and it is all function. It dresses like the Irishwomen: head to toe in black, hair covered, eyes down.

In the street Dowdall falls into step with Watt, walking towards a doorway below by a red neon sign: Whitehall’s Restaurant/Lounge.

Watt is tall and stout and bald, dressed in bourgeois yellow tweeds and a heavy wool overcoat. Dowdall is slim, dark, mustachioed. He’s Watt’s lawyer. He wears a sharp dark suit under an exquisitely cut camel hair.

They go through the door to Whitehall’s and take a steep set of narrow stairs up. Watt can see the stitching on the back of Dowdall’s shoes. Handmade, Watt thinks. Italian.

Watt wants a Bentley too, and Italian shoes, but he needs to put this Burnside Affair behind him first. This is why they are going to meet a man who was released from prison three days ago. They are going to find the gun and solve the crime.

Peter Manuel wrote to Dowdall saying he had information about the Burnside murders. A lot of prisoners did, but Manuel’s letters were different. Most came from chancers who wanted money, some were from creeps who wanted details. Manuel didn’t ask for anything except the chance to meet William Watt face-to-face. Odd.

Dowdall arranged this meeting before Manuel was released but vacillates. Sometimes he wants to cancel, sometimes he insists they should go. In negative mood he says it’s pointless. Manuel is a professional criminal, a famous liar, you can’t trust a word he says. Then he thinks they can outflank him, use Manuel to solve the mystery, he might give away a useful detail or two. Watt senses something other than a concern about the outcome: it feels as if Dowdall is afraid of Peter Manuel. Dowdall is Glasgow’s foremost criminal lawyer. He has seen a lot of life, met a lot of characters. It seems strange to Watt that Dowdall should be scared, but then, Watt hasn’t met Manuel yet. He doesn’t know what there is to be afraid of.

Dowdall stops three steps from the top, holding onto the handrails and leans back, whispering over his shoulder.

Dowdall already warned him about this back at the office. Any evidence they get from Manuel will be useless if money changes hands. But Watt is desperate and he’s a businessman. He knows you don’t get something for nothing.

Watt grunts again. He is irritated by these warnings. Dowdall is treating him like a child, as if he knows nothing about these people, this world. Watt knows more than Dowdall gives him credit for.

Dowdall walks up the remaining stairs, into a dim lobby that smells of pork fat and stale cigarette smoke. The walls are panelled with yellow burled walnut. The cloakroom window is a dark slit, it’s Monday, hardly worth opening. Against the opposite wall a chaise longue is flanked by two onyx ashtrays on spindly brass legs. They are empty but still radiate the pungent odour of burnt offerings. Dowdall walks over to the facing wall hung with a velvet curtain. He uses his forearm to sweep it out of their path.

The restaurant is crammed with tables set with linen and cutlery but short of customers. Behind the bar a tinny wireless plays the Light Programme. It’s the Semprini Serenade: overwrought symphonic reproductions of popular tunes.

Whitehall’s Restaurant isn’t a fancy joint. It’s a second-best-suit, affair-with-your-secretary type of place. Near the door, a big blonde and a small man are hunched over grey pork chops. At another table a trio of tipsy dishevelled salesmen chat quietly.

The only customer who didn’t look up when they came in is reading a newspaper in the lounge bar. He’s the man who knows too much. He’s alone.

Freshly shaven, Peter Manuel looks smart in his sports jacket, shirt and tie. His thick hair is combed back from his face. William Watt is surprised by how respectable he looks. He knows all about Manuel’s record from Dowdall, the rapes, the prison terms, the incessant housebreaking. He understands now that meeting in Whitehall’s was Manuel’s idea, not Dowdall’s. To Dowdall the place is downmarket. To Manuel a restaurant/lounge is aspirational. He aspires to be in places that are better than he is. Watt likes that about him.

On the table in front of Manuel sit an empty whisky glass and a half-pint with a finger of beer left in it. A half and half: the drouthy gent’s refreshment. Watt is pleased when he sees that because he really, really wants a good drink, he wants it quickly and, in truth, he wants it all the time.

The maître d’-boy-of-all-works is polishing forks by the dumb waiter, his back to them. A tendril of fresh air has followed them in from the street and stirs the stagnant cigarette smoke hanging in the room, alerting him to their presence. He turns, nods an acknowledgement, abandons the cutlery and begins a tortuous, snaking journey towards them through tightly packed tables.

The blonde with the pork chops recognises Laurence Dowdall. Dowdall is a celebrity, often in the papers. She whispers to her companion and he turns for a gawp. The man mutters and they both smile down at their dinners. Dowdall’s catchphrase.

‘Get me Dowdall!’ says the apprentice boy, chinned for an unscheduled fag break.

Dowdall is a punchline, a softener in an awkward situation, but he’s also a legal genius; he can get you out of anything. It might irritate him but the catchphrase is good for business and Laurence Dowdall is all business.

Watt knows that having Dowdall for a lawyer makes him look guilty but Dowdall Houdini’d him out of prison. He wouldn’t have anyone else now.

The maître d’ makes it over to them and Dowdall explains that they are here to see that gentleman. He points and Peter Manuel looks back at them.

Led by the maître d’, the two men tack their way across the room. Manuel does not stand up to meet them but sits belligerently as they dock at his table. Dowdall effects the introductions. No one attempts to shake hands.

Watt and Manuel are in no way similar. They look as if they are in different stories altogether.

If this were a movie William Watt would be in an Ealing comedy. Watt is an inherently funny man. Six foot two in an age of small men, he is ungainly, rotund, especially in the middle where he wears his suit trousers belted. He is balding too, his thin hair smeared back on his big baby head. He has preposterously large hands. He is fifty and looks like an actor playing a bumbling authority figure in a gentle comedy of manners. In some ways he is. He was a police reservist during the war and his duties were essentially walking around while being taller than other people. It meant a lot to him, that time. Mr Watt likes power and being near powerful people. He likes respectability and being near respectable people. But most of all he likes being near powerful, respectable people.

Peter Manuel is in a very different film. His would be European, black and white, directed by Clouzot or Melville, printed on poor stock and shown in art-house cinemas to an adults-only audience. There wouldn’t be violence or gore in the movie, this is not the era of squibs or guts-on-screen, but the implication of threat is always there. Short and solidly built, at five foot six Manuel has the rough-hewn good looks of Robert Mitchum. He is thirty. His eyebrows are heavy, his lips quite broad and sensual. He wears his black hair Brylcreemed back from his square face, combed into thick glistening strips like oily liquorice. He glowers through his heavy brows. His sudden smile is rare and always welcome, a reassuring signal, perhaps, that nothing bad will happen after all. The smartness of his dress is often remarked upon and he is confident of the impression he makes on women. He always insists they be allowed to serve on the juries at his trials.

They pull back chairs to sit down. To Watt’s dismay, Dowdall takes his overcoat off. He means to stay, but Watt was clear back in Dowdall’s office, he said he wants to talk to Manuel alone. He thought it was agreed but realises now that the answer Dowdall gave him wasn’t definitive. Dowdall smiled. You may have been in prison, Bill, but you don’t know these people, not really. Dowdall became almost tearful. Some of these people, he said, they’re not even trying to be bad. They just are bad, everything they do is bad, and if it doesn’t start bad with them, they’ll turn it bad. Watt is a man of the world and said so but Dowdall smiled gently and told him, Bill, some of these men don’t seem to be of this world. These people are stained, their very souls are tainted. Then he patted Watt’s hand as if he regretted having to tell a child these dreadful things.

Dowdall is blatantly Roman Catholic. Most Catholics have the manners to disguise their leanings when they are in mixed company but Dowdall doesn’t. He doesn’t have a crucifix up in his office or ostentatiously name-drop priests or monsignors the way some aggressive Catholics do, but his everyday conversation makes oblique references to souls and stains and good and bad. Watt finds it rather outré. Unusually for the time, Watt is not a religious bigot but he doesn’t know why a man as sophisticated as Dowdall would keep bringing up something so controversial all the time.

Standing by Manuel’s table, Dowdall turns his expensive camel-hair overcoat inside out, showing off the shimmering orange silk lining. He folds it in half and lays it over the back of the fourth chair. He is trembling a little. It is unlike him. Watt doesn’t need Dowdall to stay and look after him. Watt isn’t the one who is trembling.

The maître d’ takes their order. Dowdall orders a Johnnie Walker and soda. Watt orders a half and half for himself and another for Mr Manuel. He does it graciously. Manuel doesn’t thank him but nods lightly, as if to say yes, that’s something he will allow. His insouciance borders on insolence. This impresses Watt who has more money than almost everyone else he meets and knows how corrosive gratitude is to a person’s dignity. He’s impressed that Manuel has countered the gift with a gesture both regal and slightly belittling. He wonders how much money it will take to get the gun.

As Watt is thinking this he looks up. He finds Peter Manuel watching him, a cigarette dangling from his lips, eyes narrowed against the thin plume of smoke snaking across his face. Manuel draws on his cigarette and a smile creeps into his eyes. Watt wonders if they’ve met before but doesn’t think so. He doesn’t recognise the face but feels that he already knows him, somehow.

The salesmen are tittering, they’ve realised that the great Laurence Dowdall is here. But then they spot William Watt, recognise him from the papers too. Their grins fall sour. They whisper, serious things, sad things, nasty rumours about Watt and his daughter.

Watt needs a drink. He looks for the maître d’ and spots him, behind the bar, looking away.

Dowdall and Manuel light cigarettes, one a Turkish hand-rolled from a wooden box, one a stubby Piccadilly from a crumpled paper packet. Dowdall smokes quickly, nervously. They avoid eye contact.

Watt sees this and wonders, fleetingly, if he is the mark, if they are working him together. But no. Dowdall would never jeopardise his reputation. Watt is Dowdall’s latest calling card, the Burnside Affair is high-profile and Dowdall has come out of it well.

Watt draws a breath to speak but Dowdall stills him with a shake of his head. The maître d’ is near enough to hear them talk and the restaurant is quiet, despite the hissing wireless.

So they all three sit and wait in silence for their drinks. The symphony soars and the couple whisper to each other. The salesmen laugh and snort at what seems to be an off-colour joke. The waiter takes his time, laying the tray with napkins and ashtrays.

‘D’ye take a smoke, Mr Watt?’ His accent is Lanarkshire, his face unmoving. The question feels like a test.

Watt thinks before answering. He actually smokes a lot but doesn’t want to say so. ‘On occasion.’

Manuel pushes his scrawny packet of smokes across the table with his fingertips and Watt looks at it. They are cheap but not the cheapest and quite an unusual brand. He doesn’t say yes or no but takes a cigarette from the packet of Piccadilly. Manuel offers him a light from a matchbook. It is red and yellow, a promotional matchbook from Jackson’s Bar.

Jackson’s Bar is a gangster pub in the Gorbals. It has a very specific clientele of suited men on the make. It is not for whorish women or clapped-out hard men. Fights happen outside, not in the glass-glinting bar. No one wants the cops in there, with jobs being arranged, deals getting done and connections being made.

Manuel sees Watt read the matchbook. Their eyes meet and they both understand. That part of the city is as small as a midgie’s oxter. They probably know a lot of the same people. Watt is sure he can do good business with Manuel, if they could only get rid of Dowdall.

They both look at Dowdall, tapping his cigarette nervously on the edge of the ashtray. Watt sees Manuel’s lip curling resentfully, wishing Dowdall away so they can speak to each other, unguarded. He sees that they have a common aim.

The waiter arrives with the tray of drinks. They all watch in silence as he puts them on the table and takes the money from Watt. He has charged Watt for the drinks Manuel had before they arrived. Manuel must have said he would pay. Manuel looks at Watt steadily. It’s cheeky but Manuel doesn’t seem embarrassed. He is so unembarrassed that Watt is confused. He searches his face for twitches of defiance but has the strange sensation that Manuel isn’t feeling anything at all.

As the waiter saunters away, Dowdall concerns himself with his Scotch. Manuel widens his eyes at Watt. Watt frowns. Manuel juts his chin, telling Watt to begin but Watt doesn’t know what to begin.

Manuel looks at the salesmen, the couple, the passing maître d’ and then eyes Dowdall. He smirks at Watt. Dowdall is a public man. They all recognise him. He has a reputation to lose. Neither Watt nor Manuel have any reputation worth defending.

Watt understands what Manuel means. He nearly smiles but Manuel warns him not to with a little shake of his head, no, don’t smile, just begin.

So Watt says loudly: ‘MANUEL! If I find out that you had ANYTHING to do with the Burnside Affair, why, I will TEAR YOUR ARMS OFF, sir!’

Now no one in the restaurant is speaking. The couple stare at their plates, thrilled. The salesmen have drawn in tight around their table. The maître d’ is watching, frightened, because it’s down to him to break it up if they start throwing punches. And Dowdall, respectable, well-kent Dowdall, has suddenly got a very itchy arse. He’s writhing in his chair but resists the urge to run.

Watt is delighted by how clever they have been, spotting this weakness in Dowdall’s resolve. He leans across the table. Watt is massive. His giant hands are twice as big as Manuel’s. His huge head, his wide face, his shoulders, they dwarf Manuel. By leaning forward an inch he has colonised the entire table.

‘Manuel!’ Watt’s voice is sharp. ‘See here! Before we begin, let me make myself abundantly clear on one issue, right from the off –’

‘KNOW YE TALK TOO MUCH, PAL?’ Manuel’s tone is a prison-promise of a fight coming. He leans slowly in to meet Watt. Watt has to drop back or they’d be pressing their faces together like a couple of pansies.

Manuel exhales a stream of smoke from one side of his mouth and gives a bitter smile. Watt turns his whisky glass around and around on the spot. They smoke at each other.

Dowdall puts his hand on the table, calling an end to the round by tapping a finger on the tabletop. Tap tap tap. He asks Manuel if he has information for Mr Watt?

‘Aye.’ Manuel gives a careless shrug. ‘Sure,’ he says, as if it’s nothing, as if it’s not the murder of three members of Watt’s family and the sex attack of his seventeen-year-old daughter.

Dowdall reaches for his coat, drawing it onto his knee. He’s planning to escape the moment the information is imparted and he means to take William Watt with him. He nods for Manuel to begin but Manuel doesn’t speak.

Watt raises his eyebrows, interested to see how Manuel will stop this happening.

Manuel has a stubby pencil in his hand. He scribbles something in the margin of his newspaper and pushes it across to Watt.

Watt doesn’t understand so Manuel nods at the table of salesmen who are now watching plates of gammon steak and potatoes being delivered by the waiter.

Manuel sits back, staring at Watt, and slides his hand across the tabletop to the newspaper. His finger rests on the scribble in the margin: Newspapermen. He taps it.

It’s bullshit, and bad bullshit at that. Those men are not journalists. Anyway, Manuel and Watt have been shouting at each other. Now they can’t talk quietly for fear of it being in the newspapers? Dowdall draws a breath, his face sceptical, he’s about to say it’s nonsense but suddenly Manuel snarls a loud animal growl at Watt.

Dowdall is on his feet. His coat is over his arm, the Bentley key is in his hand. He empties his glass of whisky and soda in one smooth move, stepping away from the table with a little bow.

‘Gentlemen,’ he says, meaning quite the reverse. He squeezes Watt’s shoulder as he passes. A warning: be careful.

The greasy velvet curtain drops behind him. His relief billows back at them in a draught.

Watt means to begin by sounding friendly, hoping the evening will remain collegiate in tone.

‘Well, Chief,’ he says. ‘You handled that scenario very nicely. I must say, I am agreeably surprised to meet you.’

Manuel blows a thick stream of cigarette smoke at the tabletop and narrows his eyes, ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about.’

Wednesday 14 May 1958

IT IS NEARLY six months later and Peter Manuel is on trial for eight murders. These include the three Watt women. Seven of the murders are ‘in pursuit of theft’: if he is found guilty of any one of them he will be hanged. The eighth, the murder of Anne Kneilands back in December 1956, is not in pursuit of theft. It’s a lesser charge.

Laurence Dowdall is a prosecution witness. He is in the witness hall, waiting to be called. In the court, through the wall, every single seat is taken. People are lined along the walls.

A mob gathers outside the court every day, sometimes a hundred, sometimes a thousand. For the entire three-week trial they stand in the rain, swapping morsels of information. The city has been terrorised by the frenzy of murders, families have been murdered in their beds, blameless teenage girls bludgeoned to death in fields and left lying in the rain and the snow.

There are two tiers of people watching. On the ground floor are the press benches, print journalists and reporters for the wireless. Such is the public interest that some newspapers have sent five or six journalists to cover various aspects of the trial. Any leftover seats downstairs are reserved for witnesses who have already given evidence and those awarded priority by the court: legal personnel with an interest, nabobs and notaries. Dotted among the journalists today are councilmen, identifiable by a sprig of seasonal flowers on their lapels. Glasgow Corporation gives them out to attendees at its meetings.

Manuel is in the dock right in front of these seats, separated by a low wooden wall. Journalists and lawyers are trusted not to physically attack him but the public are kept away, upstairs on the balcony.

There are sixty balcony seats, all taken by women, watching a court staffed entirely by men.

The women queue overnight, every night for three weeks. They start at six in the evening, settling down on the pavement with thin blankets on their knees, chunks of bread in their pockets to stave off hunger. The queue runs halfway up the Saltmarket. A beat policeman passes every few hours, monitoring them, checking all is well. He counts the people in the queue and warns anyone over the sixtieth person that they probably won’t get in. Might as well go home, dear. The papers print photographs of smiling gangs of chirpy gal-pals, toasting the reader with tea from flasks.

For the entire trial the viewing public have been almost exclusively women. No one knows why.

At first the newspapers speculate: are the women here for love? Manuel is handsome. Are they here for blood? The crimes are horrific. Is it because Manuel seems powerful to them? It is a proven scientific fact that women are attracted to power, to being dominated. It is 1958 and a husband has the legal right to rape and beat his wife. That’s a private matter, a matter for the home.

The journalists ask the women why they’re here. The women say they seek justice, they seek truth, they feel for the victims, hollow phrases that might well be lifted from the papers. But in the queue they don’t seem very serious or justice-seeking. They’re all excited and giggly.

As the brutal trial draws on the gendered pattern is so consistent and jarring that the newspapers stop struggling to make it chime with clichés about womanhood. The case says enough that is troubling.

At night, all night, another Glasgow is awake and breathing. This shadow city is full of dark, clever men climbing through suburban windows with guns in their hands, creeping around the homes of the law-abiding. They will hide in your attic for days. They will kill you and then make themselves a sandwich. They will drag young girls down railway embankments, chase them across dark fields, rip and rape them, leave them stuck on barbed wire, shoeless in snow, to bleed to death. They have guns and fancy social clubs in prestigious addresses. They drive an Avis Grey Lady, a car that costs the same as a modest house.

Whatever the queuing ladies are here for they are good-tempered. Friends have been made. Some have found celebrity.

Miss Helen McElroy is a regular in all of the newspapers. She is always first in the queue and is emphatic, if not eloquent, about her thirst for justice. Then, abruptly, on the eleventh night, she is missing. There is concern for her safety. She is elderly, wears thick glasses and lives in the Clyde Street Home, a model-lodging house in the Calton for homeless people. On the thirteenth evening she is back. Her absence is explained in a subheading –

MISS MCELROY TOLD …

‘IF YOU CAN QUEUE

YOU CAN WORK.’

Miss McElroy is interviewed once again. She is quite indignant: ‘Somehow,’ she says, ‘the Assistance have found out I was in the queue.’ But her determination to attend is undimmed. They will not stop her.

Young people are not admitted. A sixteen-year-old boy sleeps out on the first night only to be turned away at the door. The officer warns that the nature of the crimes is too unsettling for impressionable minds. Photographs will be shown. Fifty-nine waiting women appeal on the boy’s behalf but the officer has his orders and the boy is sent away. The women think it is a shame until they file into court and see all the evidence laid out on the productions table. Blood-sodden bedclothes, both of the guns, a mangled brassiere on a tray, the angle iron that was used to bludgeon the girl in East Kilbride. Then they’re glad the boy isn’t here to see this. After all the fun of a night on the pavement the reality of what they are about to witness stuns them dumb.

The court is crammed. The only empty seats are on the bench, next to Lord Cameron. As on the Elizabethan stage, there are VIP seats, looking out into the audience. These places are reserved for people so important that mingling in the general company would compromise their status. On the first day of the trial Myer Galpern, wearing his Chain of Office as Lord Provost of Glasgow, is seated next to Lord Cameron. He comes back for the first day of the defence case but leaves at lunchtime. He is not squeamish but, new in the post, is concerned about the seemliness of appearing either underemployed or too interested.

Dowdall is in the silent witness hall. Sturdy chairs line the walls. Water is provided for witnesses, as are cigarettes, matches and ashtrays. The court is just through the double doors but he can’t hear any of the proceedings. This is by design. The room is soundproofed so that waiting witnesses can’t hear one another’s evidence before they give their own.

Dowdall is here to tell the court how Watt and Manuel came to meet. Telling stories is his job. He’s a lawyer.

Good storytelling is all about what’s left in, what’s left out and the order in which the facts are presented. Dowdall knows how to shape a narrative, calling witnesses in the right order, emphasising the favourable through repeated questioning, skim-skim-skimming over the accused’s habit of beating his widowed mother. Dowdall is a master storyteller, better than other lawyers. He has an innate sense of narrative and he is disciplined. Dowdall can find just the right trajectory to pin his tale to and he can stop before the end. It’s the jury’s job to write the ending. Dowdall will tell them about the penitent street fighter who has a good job waiting for him, an ailing, dependent mother and helpless young children. Dowdall knows how a jury will want this story to go. He knows a story has more power if they feel that they are choosing that ending themselves.

But today’s story is complex. Dowdall is in this story and he has been tricked. By sleight of hand and word Manuel manoeuvred Dowdall into breaking the law. Dowdall cannot excise himself from the story because none of the subsequent events make sense if he leaves his own misdemeanours out. He has been up half the night playing narrative chess.

Sitting alone in the witness hall, he worries about this. He feels instinctively that there is a loose thread in this Gordian narrative that he is failing to grasp. This is out of character. He usually can. He smokes and strokes his neat rectangular moustache, first one side, then the other, and wonders if he is becoming ill.

It’s a shock when the doors open and the noise of the packed courtroom billows in at him. He leaps to his feet.

In court the public are taking the change of witness as an opportunity to move or cough or nip out for a smoke. Wood creaks, throats are cleared, doors shut and open, until the Macer has seen Dowdall into the warm room and closed the witness hall doors behind them. Then the Macer looks at the lower benches, at the public on the balcony above. A sudden silence falls. Dowdall knows that they will have been warned that they will be made to leave if they don’t keep quiet.

On the balcony a woman is having a coughing fit. She sounds like a heavy smoker and struggles to shift the sticky mucus. Everyone is aware that she will be put out if she can’t stop. As Dowdall takes a step into the court her staccato cough machine-guns over his head. He takes another step, glad of the covering fire.

He is halfway across the room when her smoker’s cough snaps and she clears her throat. The room drops its shoulders.

He climbs the four steps up to the witness box, turns and gives Lord Cameron a small respectful bow, sans eye contact, because that would be inappropriately chummy in these circumstances. Cameron and Dowdall know each other socially. Dowdall knows every lawyer in this room, personally and professionally. They golf together, dine together at various clubs, they raise money for spastics, Dowdall’s own favoured charity, but he oughtn’t to bring those connections in here, where he is a prosecution witness.

He is sworn in. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Dowdall is a storyteller. He knows how slippery truth is. The only part of the oath that Dowdall sincerely means is ‘so help me God’. He really means that part.

The advocate-depute, Mr M.G. Gillies, stands up. He does a couple of theatrical postures to take control of the moment: touching his papers, standing tall, grasping the lapel of his gown. Somewhat stagy, thinks Dowdall. Dowdall is a solicitor, not an advocate, and doesn’t have a right of audience before the court. He instructs advocates to represent his clients so he finds it hard to watch them work without giving a critical appraisal. He thinks M.G. Gillies’ manoeuvres are a little grubby even if they are effective.

M.G. Gillies, projecting his clipped voice very nicely, asks Mr Dowdall if he can please tell the court how he came to meet Mr Manuel in connection with the murders at Burnside?

It is an ideal introduction to the story Dowdall wants to tell. And so he begins.

Dowdall began representing Mr William Watt while he was remanded in Barlinnie for the murders of his wife, his daughter and his sister-in-law, Mrs Margaret Brown. Mr Watt was – Dowdall hesitates over this word but uses it – disconsolate.

M.G. Gillies doesn’t like that word. He doesn’t think the jury will understand it. He asks Dowdall to clarify.

‘Very upset,’ says Dowdall. ‘Mr Watt had been charged with appalling crimes. He had been in all of the newspapers, day after day, and now he found himself in prison. The police were convinced of his guilt.’

All of the lawyers in the room shift uncomfortably at that question. It is not appropriate. Dowdall’s opinion may shift the view of the court but hearsay and opinion could be cause for an appeal, for heaven’s sake.

Oddly, Lord Cameron lets Dowdall answer. ‘For me to express an opinion would, I think, be potentially misleading.’

Dowdall now feels gratitude radiating towards him from all the other lawyers in the room. He has nimbly saved them all. Then he adds, ‘Of course, legally, I wouldn’t be able to represent anyone as innocent if I knew they were guilty.’

He has pushed the point to the very edge of legal. Now the lawyers love him. Lord Cameron’s heavy eyebrows twitch with understated admiration. Lawyers love the tiptoe across the landmine, the brilliant navigation of the grey area. Standing in the witness box Dowdall experiences the respect of his peers as a warm hand drawing a comforting circle on his back.

‘Mr Watt knew that the police were not looking for anyone else. He knew that whoever killed his family was still out there and might strike again. So he began his own inquiries. He became a “detective”, if you will.’

‘He let it be known, through me, that he was investigating the Burnside Affair and would be receptive to anyone with information.’

‘They did. Whatever information we gleaned we immediately took to the police. Mr Watt began to ask questions while in Barlinnie Prison and one name was a refrain in all of our inquiries: Peter Manuel.’

M.G. Gillies frowns, feigning confusion. ‘A “refrain”?’ Gillies really thinks the jury are stupid. He knows them better than Dowdall does. He might be right.

‘Mr Manuel was mentioned by several people in connection with the incident.’ Now, this is hearsay so Dowdall tempers it. ‘But prisons are full of rumours. It wasn’t until I received a letter from Mr Manuel that we took those rumours seriously …’

Dowdall must not mention that Manuel wrote to him from prison where he was serving a sentence for housebreaking. That would be prejudicial. Dowdall went to see Manuel because he was visiting Watt in Barlinnie anyway, so, what the hell.

Acknowledgments

Also by Denise Mina

About the Author

About the Book

1

Monday 2 December 1957

2

Wednesday 14 May 1958