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 suggested 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.