This is rehearsed and Watt picks up on the cue: he turns stiffly to the jury.
‘I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO,’ he says. Then turns and smiles at M.G. Gillies as if to say, See? I can take a prompt, sometimes. ‘It made perfect sense at the time. I felt I had to meet him.’
Grieve gets up for the defence. He makes Watt go over the night with Manuel again and again. Grieve knows it is the oddest thing this very odd man has done. Chunks of the night are missing: they meet at Whitehall’s, they go to Jackson’s, they stop briefly in the Steps Bar, they meet Watt’s brother, John, at the bakery in Bridgeton and wait in the Gleniffer Bar for John to finish work. Then they go to John’s house in Dennistoun and eat bacon and eggs and drink for over an hour and a bit. Watt and Manuel leave there towards four in the morning and two hours later arrive in Birkenshaw, which is a ten-minute drive from John’s house. No, Watt doesn’t remember what happened during that time. It does seem like a long time for a short drive. Well, maybe they left later then, he doesn’t know. It was a long night.
What did they talk about during the night? Well, Manuel said he had the gun and then told Watt that the people who committed the murders had made a mistake. They actually meant to kill and rob the Valentes next door. But Manuel knew practically every stick of furniture in the Fennsbank Avenue house, he knew where all the rooms were and what the bedspread felt like. He even knew what sort of gin they had in the house. Watt and Manuel were together for eleven hours. The reported conversation between them would have taken half an hour.
Abruptly, Grieve asks Watt if he has bad feet?
Yes, Watt admits that he does have rather bad feet.
‘You suffer from corns?’
‘Yes,’ Watt says warily. He admits to having three corns, though he fails to see how this is relevant.
‘Did you tell DS Mitchell that you had been cutting your corns in the hotel room in Cairnbaan before you came to Glasgow that day?’
‘Yes, I did tell him that.’
‘And this was to explain why you had blood on your hands, under your fingernails?’
‘Yes.’ Watt dabs his forehead. ‘From cutting my corns.’
‘But you had been fishing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you cut your corns before or after you had been fishing?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘Fish generally swim in water, do they not? One might assume your hands would have been washed clean of blood if you cut them before?’
‘Well, it must have been after then.’
‘You were brought back to the hotel on an urgent matter, you were told that your family had been all been shot dead and you must go immediately to Glasgow to identify their bodies yet then you went off to cut your corns? That’s how you got blood all over your hands?’
‘I don’t recall!’
Grieve finishes Watt’s torment with a final flick of the whip. ‘Did you kill your family, Mr Watt?’
Watt waves a hand in the air and announces: ‘What a profession! What a profession!’
Does he mean lawyering is an odd profession or that Grieve is wrong when he professes that Watt killed his family? No one knows but the statement is widely reported as an example of how odd Mr Watt sounded on the stand.
The last thing he says before getting down is an unprompted announcement. ‘I would never hurt my girls,’ he says. But the jury aren’t making notes. They aren’t listening. They have too much to take in already, about the blood and the witnesses and the apparent confessions to Mitchell. The press don’t care because they already have a character for Watt and this doesn’t fit.
As he is helped down from the witness box and climbs effortlessly onto the stretcher, Watt thinks his part in this case is over.
It isn’t.
Peter Manuel will sack his lawyers and represent himself in the case. Arguing that important matters were not aired at this time, Manuel will recall William Watt as a witness. He will question him about their night together himself.
5
Monday 2 December 1957
WILLIAM WATT IS FAR too drunk to drive. Normally he wouldn’t have more than eight or nine drinks before getting behind the wheel but tonight he has had a good deal more than that. So he is driving very slowly, for safety purposes. There’s another reason he is going slowly: he hasn’t quite worked out what to do yet. There are a number of possibilities but he’s befuddled with the drink: he can’t think them through to the final play. One wrong move could be catastrophic.
Watt has money. The bakery business is a cash business and Watt makes full use of that fact. He has cash stashed all over the place, in his house, in each of his five bakery shops. He has a five-pound note rolled up and tucked into his sock right now. He has money hidden in his girlfriend’s flat. He can pay Manuel but Manuel is a career criminal. If he does give Manuel money he has to be careful. Watt doesn’t want him to know where his money is.
He’s not sure how to handle the gun. He can’t simply get it from Manuel and take it to the police. They already suspect him so if he turns up with the gun they could use it against him. He needs to get Manuel to tell him where it is, needs a witness to him saying it, and then he needs to get the police to go and get it from there themselves. Unless Manuel has it on him now, in which case he mustn’t touch it.
It’s all too complicated for someone as drunk as he is, and he is trying to drive as well. Briefly, he considers getting money from his girlfriend, Phamie. He has two hundred pounds on top of a cupboard in her flat, but if he went there Manuel might go back later and attack her. Watt drives slowly and imagines Phamie being sex-attacked by Manuel. He knows Manuel’s history, about the girls he has forced himself on. William Watt can’t really conceive of rape. He imagines such an encounter as essentially consensual but perhaps more than gently insistent on the gentleman’s behalf. He doesn’t imagine a middle-aged woman, just off the bus, being hit in the face with a brick. He imagines Phamie, shocked and surprised as Manuel looms over her, being more than gently insistent. Watt wonders whether he finds this erotic but realises that no, he finds it very alarming. Phamie’s shock makes Watt realise how much he cares for her. He wants to protect her from such surprises. He imagines dear, young Phamie’s cheeks streaked with surprised tears and her face morphs into Vivienne’s dead and bruised face, splattered with blood. Watt feels that like a punch in the colon. He needs to shit very suddenly.
Abruptly a horn blares and lights flash in his rear-view mirror.
‘What in blazes!’
Manuel laughs at him. ‘You’ve stopped the bloody car!’
Watt has stopped in the middle of the Albert Bridge. He hadn’t noticed because he was driving so slowly in the first place. The engine has stalled.
‘You’re too drunk to drive.’ Manuel waves the driver past. Watt is proud of his ability to drive drunk. ‘I’ll have you know I’m a famously good driver.’