‘Are you indicating Mr Manuel?’
‘Aye, he owns a fucking Beretta.’
Goodall is smirking at Manuel. ‘Do you have any idea where Mr Manuel might have got that gun from?’
Dandy looks Manuel in the eye and shouts, ‘FROM ME. HE’S BOUGHT A BERETTA FROM ME.’
Muncie is loving this. He has been after Manuel for twelve years and only ever gets him for minor offences. He doesn’t care what the charge is, he just wants Manuel in jail for a good, long time.
‘Would you be willing to testify to that fact, Mr McKay?’
Dandy leans into Manuel as if he’s going to nut him.
‘AYE, I fucking would. And anything else you’re worried about, Muncie, any evidence yees are needing, let me know. I’ll get it sorted.’
Muncie looks Manuel in the eye and sneers, ‘Legally we can’t do that, Mr McKay, but I greatly appreciate the spirit in which that offer is made.’
Goodall is worried by the public nature of this conversation. There are witnesses in the room. He frowns at smirking Muncie and offers McKay the exit door.
But Dandy is fixed on Manuel. He’s muttering swear words, a jumble of cut-up curses–youfuckcuntfuckingbastcunt. Dandy goes for Manuel. With animal annoyance the back of his hand swats Manuel on the ear. The other hand comes up and a fist hits Manuel’s throat. Dandy turns to Manuel, widening his legs into a boxing stance.
Goodall shouts ‘NO!’ and lunges in to stop it. But then he pulls back. He’s a Glasgow cop, he can’t touch Dandy McKay. He shouts, ‘NOT THE FACE, MR McKAY!’
The cops who were leaving come back to watch Dandy punch Manuel’s side, his chest, his side, his throat, cursing all the time.
Goodall is holding his hands out like a referee, watching nothing happens to the face. They can’t appear in court with an accused with a sore face, not on a case this big. SMACK to the side and Manuel’s lungs empty. SMACK in the gut. Manuel is bent double, struggling to get air back into his chest, drawing shallow, squeaky little breaths. Dandy stands tall. This is the beating he meant to give him at the Gordon Club.
Suddenly, Dandy straightens his jacket and spits on the floor. He tips his chin at Manuel who is bent double, huffing. Dandy is scared. Manuel will do anything. He’ll finger-point and make up lies and tell stories until one sticks. Dandy shoulders his way out through the throng of open-mouthed cops at the door. Muncie follows him to take his statement about the Beretta.
Goodall and four uniformed cops take Peter back to the cell.
He is left alone in the cold stone.
No one will speak to him. He can hear other prisoners, sounds echoing, but no one will answer him or speak. He tries goading the officers outside the door but gets nothing back.
Finally at midnight he says he wants to confess. He wants to talk to McNeill. Someone goes away but he doesn’t know if they are going to get McNeill because they won’t speak to him.
They leave him waiting, in this hellish silence, until 2.15 a.m.
The door opens abruptly. He is taken to a bleak interview room. The walls are grey. He is shoved into a lone chair in the middle of the room. Five uniformed cops line the wall. Peter speaks to them. I know you, don’t I? Nothing. Or is it your sister I know? Not a flicker. It’s as if he isn’t there. They don’t even look at him. Two stand by the door. One sits against the wall reading the Daily Record. Two more stand guard by the window. Manuel sits there for an hour, thinking.
DI Goodall and DI Robert McNeill come in.
‘Hello again, Peter,’ says McNeill. ‘Would you like some tea?’
They give him tea. They give him cigarettes.
‘What did you want to see us about, then, Peter?’
He knows before he says it that this will get a reaction: ‘I want to see my parents. I want you to let my father go.’
‘Hm,’ says Goodall. ‘Why would we do that?’
‘I’ll confess.’
‘To what?’
‘To certain matters.’
They all look at each other, mapping the cracks in one another’s psyche. They appreciate that, together, this group of three very different men are going to try and navigate these rapids, come to a negotiated settlement. Goodall breaks the gorgeous, promising pause. ‘Be specific.’
‘Certain mysteries,’ says Manuel carefully, ‘that have been happening in Lanarkshire recently.’
They all smirk. They all know it isn’t enough.
‘Namely…?’
‘Let my dad go.’
‘We can’t let your dad go. The sheriff will have to decide that in the morning. However, obviously, if you confess and take responsibility for the charges brought against him–’
‘Which is it?’
‘Smarts.’
Manuel reels at this. ‘You’re charging my dad with the Smart murders?’
‘Well, Peter, he had gloves from their house in his dresser. He can’t explain how they got there.’
In fact, Peter gave them to his father as a present. They were sheepskin and still had the label on them. Samuel can’t bring himself to tell the cops something so damning about his son and they know that.
‘So, it all depends on what you confess to.’
It’s a clever manoeuvre. Manuel is a famous talker. Silence is intensely uncomfortable for him, he can’t sit in silence for another moment.
The three men look at each other. Manuel wants something, a concession of some kind, a win. He doesn’t really care what it is.
‘I’ll confess to everything if you bring my parents here.’
Everyone is slightly stunned.
‘“Everything”?’
Manuel lists them quietly: Smarts. Watts. Isabelle Cooke. Anne Kneilands.
‘What about Moira Anderson?’
She is an eleven-year-old girl who has gone missing.
‘No.’
Even Manuel draws the line at little girls.
‘Not Moira?’
‘Not her. But I’ll need to see my mother and father.’
‘Are you sure not Moira?’ The girl went missing in Coatbridge, not too far from Manuel’s home. It would be good to get a proper mop-up.
‘Not her, not the kiddie.’
‘OK. The rest though?’
‘Yeah, but I want to see my parents now.’
‘Now?’ asks Goodall. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’
‘Now,’ says Manuel, pleased with the effect of his request.
Before they arrive Manuel gives a vague confession, referring to certain matters. He signs it. It’s not detailed enough to be of any legal use. It mentions no names or places or times. Goodall points this out so Manuel gives a second confession, addressed to McNeill, numbering the crimes he will solve:
1. Anne Kneilands
2. The Watt murders
3. Isabelle Cooke
4. The Smart murders
He signs it and McNeill reads it. No. They need details, for God’s sake, Manuel, a general statement simply won’t do. Manuel talks to Muncie and then signs a detailed narrative confession. They bring his father from Barlinnie. They get his mother from the family home in Birkenshaw. He sees them in the company of a room full of policemen.
Afterwards his mother cannot stop crying. She has to be helped down the stairs but resents being touched, even by her own husband.