He gives himself all the good lines and even stops to chortle at his own quips.
The jury hate him.
He sees them listening, puzzled by his lumpy edits, his grandiosity, his circular arguments.
The jury hate him, not just because he has killed lots of people, but for telling them such a stupid story. A bad story is annoying but a very bad story is insulting. Does he think they are stupid? Is he stupid? He clearly isn’t stupid. He is very something but they don’t know what it is. There’s something really wrong with him.
Manuel feels none of this. He is Other Possible Peter and thinks the jury are as entranced by him as he is by himself. Other Peter is having a lovely time, talking, talking, talking. For the first time in his life he feels heard.
He doesn’t feel what other people are feeling.
Other people are feeling insulted and bored and revolted. Other people are wishing he would stop talking about those poor girls that way. Other people are wishing they hadn’t come here today. Half of the public leave during the break. They expected a dazzling monster, a Dracula, a shaman beast. This man is vulgar and commonplace and making mistakes all day. This man is ordinary. He doesn’t know anything they don’t know.
After six hours of Other Possible Peter everyone in the court wants him dead.
The jury have no qualms.
The lawyers feel he has tried himself.
This is his first capital case but Lord Cameron knows that if it comes to donning the black tricorn, it will cause him no sleepless nights.
Peter Manuel doesn’t feel what they feel. Manuel thinks that went quite well.
21
Thursday 29 May 1958
‘WHO SPEAKS FOR YOU?’ asks the clerk of the judiciary.
The foreman of the jury stands up. ‘Have you reached your verdict?’
He nods, takes out his glasses, curling the wire frames around his ears. He reads out the verdict.
Guilty.
Guilty.
Guilty.
Not guilty.
This is a shortened version. The actual verdict is very long; there are fifteen separate charges. It will be published in full in all of tomorrow’s papers, reported verbatim in special pullout sections.
The foreman reads out the full verdict with details: this decision was unanimous, this one by majority. The murder of Anne Kneilands we found not proven, the murders of the Watts, the Smarts and Isabelle Cooke we found pursuant to theft.
The clerk writes in a large book, jotting it down in shorthand as the verdict is read out. When it is finished the clerk sits down at his desk and rewrites the verdict in longhand, leaving the foreman on his feet, clutching the rail in front of him. Transcription takes a full four minutes. While he writes no one in the room speaks.
The rustle and snap of the clerk’s silk gown is heard clearly.
Up in the public gallery a woman struggles to muffle her cough. The panes of glass in the high windows buzz as a bus rumbles past in the street.
The city outside freezes. No one is waiting for the verdict, they’re waiting for the sentence.
The audience in court is reverent but discipline breaks down in the street.
The mob heckle the building, chat cheerfully among themselves, laugh. Someone sings a baritone line of a song. The police are already annoyed at the crowd for blocking the road. Worried they’ll be dispersed, the mob start to police themselves. Inside the frozen court they can hear the high hiss of distant hushing.
William Watt and Peter Manuel sit there awaiting their fate. Both stare straight ahead, aware of being watched.
As they await the sentence of the court Watt’s beige suit darkens under the arms. Sweat drips down his back. He is trembling and cannot draw more than a shallow breath. He wants to loosen his tie but knows how guilty the cartoonish gesture would seem. He is not entirely without insight.
Manuel is calm. His heart rate is a lazy bump at his temple. It’s easier for him: he has done this many times before.
They wait.
The clerk is finished transcribing the verdict. He rises to his feet, holds up the sheet he has been writing on and reads it back to the foreman of the jury. Is this record of your verdict correct?
The foreman says it is.
The clerk nods his permission to the foreman to sit. At the sudden release from duty the foreman’s knee buckles and he drops awkwardly onto the oak bench. The loud crack clatters around the still room.
The clerk hands the longhand verdict up to Lord Cameron and turns back to face the public as he heads for his desk. When he is seated Lord Cameron whispers down to him. The clerk whispers back and Cameron, his patrician eyebrows unmoving, nods at Mr Gillies.
M.G. Gillies stands up and asks the court to pass sentence on charges four, six and seven. The murder verdicts.
Lord Cameron nods. Then he speaks to the room but his eyes are on Manuel, standing in the dock.
‘It is the sentence of this court that you be taken from this place to the prison of Barlinnie, Glasgow, there to be detained until the 19th of June next and upon that day, within the said prison of Barlinnie, Glasgow, between the hours of eight and ten o’clock, you suffer death by hanging.’
The room is ready to spring but Lord Cameron was a commando in the war. He knows that swiftness is essential in the execution of brutal tasks. He reaches down to a special shelf below his desk, smoothly lifts a black tricorn hat with two hands, holds it over his head and recites the legal formulation that makes the sentence binding:
‘This is pronounced for doom.’
He lifts the hat away from his head, a coronation in reverse. As he does there is a scurry in the dock. The manoeuvre is so nimble that the public, puzzled by the donning of the strange hat and the archaic grammar, don’t look down until it is almost too late.
As if a plug has been pulled, the dock empties down the spiral staircase that leads to the cells below. The public leap to their feet and look down. All they see is an empty dock and the last police officer vanishing underground. All they hear is feet running on stone stairs.
It is a klaxon.
Suddenly everyone is moving, shouting, leaning over one another. William Watt covers his face to hide his shame. He is crying. In the shadow of the public gallery, standing flat to the wall, Laurence Dowdall sees his big, bald, bowed head nodding. Dowdall rolls his eyes up, turns his face into the shadows and says a silent prayer of thanks. The press benches empty round the two men. Above, the public bray with fury at the empty dock, robbed of their chance to heckle. From the balcony the women’s voices are high and the resonance instantly unbearable.
The Macer leaps to his feet. ‘SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET.’
They freeze. The rankling silence is cut through with a sharp metal click that ricochets from wall to wall. It is the sound of the door closing at the back of the lower tier. Journalists have gone to call in the news for the late editions. In the sudden silence called by the Macer the court can hear a stampede in the stone hall outside, thunder echoing in a high stone cupola as fifty journalists race for the four public phones by the door.