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.
Other deceptions are just as obvious but incomprehensible. Three of the independent witnesses to Manuel buying the guns work together at the Gordon Club. Shifty Thomson, Scout O’Neil and Dandy McKay. Another deception is this happenstance: Peter Manuel obtained both of these revolvers from completely unrelated apartments in the same street in the Gorbals, Florence Street. Florence Street is where Dandy McKay lives. It is where Mr Smart’s car was found abandoned and where Mr Watt will have his car accident the night before he gives evidence. The street is famously unpoliceable because of the clear sight lines and the belligerence of its inhabitants.
Some underworld witnesses saw only damning evidence against Manuel. Some saw nothing significant, though they were looking directly at significant things as they occurred and were the only other person present at the time.
In among the smog of lies and cheap theatre, ever-present on the table, sit the two black handguns. The Webley is a cowboy revolver with a barrel for the bullets and a long round shaft. It has a wooden handle. The Beretta is an Italian pistol. It is sleek and ergonomic. It has a square barrel and is an automatic, the bullets are held in the handle. The Webley is older but more reliable. The Beretta jams all the time.
Each of these guns has been on a journey to get here.
This is the Webley’s story.
A fat, pockmarked guy called Henry Campbell tells the court that he was doing his national service in the RAF. He stole the Webley from an officers’ barracks and went AWOL in Glasgow where he gave it to a man he’d just met in a pub. That man was called Dick Hamilton. He made this gift to Hamilton because they stood next to each other and Hamilton mentioned that he was in a bit of trouble. Yes, Hamilton did give Campbell money afterwards. He wasn’t selling the gun to him though. He just gave it to him. He doesn’t know why, he just did.
Campbell is shown the Webley that was used to murder three women in the Watt house. It is the same gun, Campbell says, apart from the fact that the lanyard ring at the bottom is now missing and it wasn’t when he gave it to Dick Hamilton, as a gift, like, because he seemed kinda worried.
Dick Hamilton gets up. He has a shock of black hair so thick his pomade can barely tame it. He takes the oath solemnly, then he smiles and waves up to the public gallery as if he has been pulled out of the audience at a variety show. Hamilton does this every single time he is in court, to make it look as if he has never been in a court before. None of the lawyers are fooled, they know he always does this, but the public and the jury are in the palm of his hand.
The bones of Hamilton’s story are these: he got the gun from Henry Campbell and took it home. He left it on a shelf in his house. Then, eight days before the Watt murders, on a Saturday, 8 September 1956, at around 5 p.m., he popped into Meldrum’s Bar for a quick one. There he found Peter Manuel and Scout O’Neil drinking together. Oh, they were very, very drunk. He says this as if he has never witnessed public drunkenness before and was saddened by the sight. Anyone fooled by the waving to the crowd might now be slightly sceptical. If Hamilton is upset by the sight of drunkenness then he’s living in the wrong city. Between lunchtime closing and the pubs reopening for the evening Glasgow is carpeted with drunk men. They loll on pavements, piss themselves at bus stops, fight invisible foes in the streets. Hamilton doesn’t notice that he has lost his audience and carries on: Oh! They were so drunk he didn’t want anything to do with them, but he stayed drinking with them for two hours. At some point Manuel mentioned he needed a gun for a hold-up job in Liverpool. Hamilton said he had a Webley and Manuel could have that.
So, by arrangement the next day, a Sunday, Hamilton met Manuel and Scout O’Neil outside the Gordon Club. O’Neil had a loan of a car and drove them to Florence Street in the Gorbals, where Hamilton happened to be living. The street is only ten minutes’ walk from the Gordon Club so Scout O’Neil has no reason to be in this story at all. But he is and he’s an important corroborating witness. Anyway, they got out of the car and Hamilton took Manuel up the close to his flat. There, on a high shelf in the lobby, was the gun in a paper bag with seven or eight bullets in a matchbox. He gave the gun to Manuel for no consideration and then Mr Manuel spontaneously gave him a fiver. They left the close together but Hamilton went off to get a shave and Scout O’Neil drove Manuel off in the car.