Gillies is very uncomfortable about having to cross-examine Mrs Manuel. She was called to the witness stand by her son but it doesn’t make her presence here any less soiling. He can see why she was called: she is a decent woman, Manuel is showing the jury that he comes from good people, but it doesn’t mitigate Gillies’ feeling that she is being publicly identified to no real purpose. Gillies bows slightly and thanks Mrs Manuel very much. He hasn’t thanked any of the witnesses very much.
Peter gets back up. He is very obviously annoyed and Brigit cowers. They are all afraid of Peter’s temper. A domestic terrorist, he controls the house with his moods. They can all gauge his humour from the sound of his footsteps, from the way he turns a door handle or pours himself a drink from the tap in the kitchen.
He can’t let it go. ‘Why do you think I said “I don’t know why I do these things”?’
Brigit is confused by the question and hesitates. ‘Um, do you mean what do I suppose was in your mind when you said it?’
‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean “why do you think I said it”.’
The question is no clearer but Brigit knows better than to ask him twice when his eyes are narrow like that and his jaw is set. She answers simply, ‘I heard you say it.’
He pauses. He nods at his papers. He gives a bitter little smile. If they were in the house Brigit would be looking for the doors out of the room. They are not in the house and she needn’t be afraid but she is. Her stomach is churning. She feels beads of sweat ping in her underarms. She wants to run away so much her knees are tingling.
‘Did you hear me say it’–his voice is very loud now–‘plainly and clearly, or is it just an instance where you think you heard me saying it?’
Her voice is quiet. ‘I heard it, Peter.’
My prayers may require a miracle.
He nods heavily. ‘You heard it?’
‘Yes.’
His raises a threatening eyebrow. He huffs a bitter laugh. He shakes his head. She has a desperate need to calm him down, offer tea, give him money to go out, put the wireless on to distract him, but they’re in court. It occurs to her that maybe she doesn’t need to calm him down any more. He isn’t coming home. As if he can feel her slipping the leash, he raises his voice and tries again.
‘Then can I put it like this: did you definitely and plainly hear me saying “I don’t know what makes me do these things”?’
Brigit’s panic rises to a pitch. She is lost in a sea of pitying Protestants and her son is shouting at her to recant. And still she says, ‘I did.’
Peter glares at her. Brigit sees the darkness there, worse than ever. If he gets out he will kill her.
They’ve all finished with her.
Brigit gets down, stiff-kneed with tension. She tiptoes across the wooden floor, keeping her eyes down as she passes her son. He doesn’t glance at her. He picks up a sheet of paper to examine it and the tip of the page trembles, amplifying his fury. Brigit drops her head and hurries out.
Samuel is standing inside the door of the witness hall and the Macer calls him to give evidence before they can speak to each other. She passes him and Samuel sees her sorry face. He knows the look. It hasn’t gone well. He bristles a reproach.
Samuel takes the stand and denies everything. Those confessions are definitely forged by Muncie, who hates Peter and drags him in for questioning every time a pin is dropped in South Lanarkshire. Peter never left the house when any of the crimes were committed, he remembers perfectly. Muncie has been harassing Peter non-stop. Peter was at home on the night when Anne Kneilands was murdered and on the night of the Watts’ deaths. The police have been trying to arrest him for ages. DI Goodall from the city is a nutcase. After each of those murders William Muncie came to the house and searched it incompetently. South Lanarkshire cops routinely confide in Samuel: they know Peter is innocent. They’re only here to please their boss. Old man Muncie has a thing about Peter because he’s so clever.
He says one of the search warrants specified the Watt murders. Lord Cameron interjects to ask: did that particular warrant, the one concerning the Watt murders, not also mention the murder of Anne Kneilands?
Samuel cannot remember.
Lord Cameron doesn’t believe him. ‘I should have thought it would rather stick in your mind if you had police coming along with warrants for murders.’
Well, Samuel just can’t quite recall. Prompted by Peter, he remembers that he didn’t have his glasses on when the warrant was shown to him and he ‘read it kind of hastily’.
Lord Cameron asks him why he claimed the sheepskin gloves came from a cousin in America when they actually came from Peter? Samuel says he was excited and doesn’t know why he lied. Lord Cameron points out that he isn’t excited now, is he? No, I’m not excited now. Well, says Cameron, perhaps Samuel could now furnish the court with his reasons? Samuel still doesn’t know. He just doesn’t know.
He is asked if he has ever been arrested and again he lies: no, he has not.
Asked about the statement ‘I don’t know what makes me do these terrible things’, Samuel tells Peter: ‘You NEVER made any such statement.’
But everyone knows Samuel is a liar now. No one is really listening, except Peter who is hearing what he wants. He nods and smiles and nods and smiles and thanks his father very much.
18
Tuesday 14 January 1958
IT IS A MONTH and a half since Watt and Manuel spent the night carousing together. It’s eight days since the Smarts’ bodies were discovered. Peter Manuel has been in Hamilton Police Station for fourteen hours. No one is allowed to speak to him. He knows they are following orders because he has asked for tea, for smokes, for a lawyer, he has goaded and teased and threatened and he is not getting back as much as a muttered curse. It is torturous for him. They know it is.
At nine in the evening he is taken from his cell in complete silence, led downstairs to a long basement room lined with raw concrete. It is damp and cold. Manuel is made to stand in an identity parade of five men. The room is so cold that their breath hangs in front of them, moist and dense. It’s unfriendly as line-ups go. No one looks at each other which means at least one of them is a cop or working for the cops. The five men wait, ignoring each other, huffing cloudy puffs, shuffling from foot to foot to keep warm.
A door opens at the far end of the room. A wee guy of about eighteen, in a drape jacket with a velvet collar and wide-neck shirt comes in. He’s a Teddy boy. His hair is slicked back. Manuel knows him from somewhere. The guy keeps giggling but his eyes look frightened.
Prompted by the cops he walks along the line of men, looking at them and then giggles over to the cops: hee tee hee.
DI Goodall speaks and it sounds like a bark because of the reverberation from the concrete: does he see the man who was spending the sequentially numbered notes in the Oak Hotel lounge bar on New Year’s Day?
Tee hee: the man touches Peter on the arm and then jerks his hand away as if he has been burnt.
‘Him?’ asks Goodall.