Is that so?
Manuel only ever tells the same story about himself: Manuel is doing clever things and other people are amazed by him. Manuel is always winning. He is never attacking women in the dark. He is never hiding in dusty attics, waiting for people to leave their homes so he can steal their mother’s engagement ring. He is never lying on pristine linen bedclothes with dirty boots on or dropping food on precious rugs and grinding it in with the heel of his shoe, spoiling a modest home for spite.
He is never dragging women down embankments, scattering their shopping in puddles, telling their three-year-old son to shut the fuck up or he’ll kill their mum.
Women are never screaming and running away in the stories he tells. Women are never weeping in dark fields, gathering their broken dentures or clasping ripped and bloody underwear to their chests. Women are never kneeling, heads bowed, hoping that if they are very, very quiet he will not kill them.
In his stories women are not sitting in court being stared at by the hard, accusing eyes of the jury as the foreman tells the judge that the rape charge against Peter Manuel is Not Proven by a unanimous decision.
Women are never being spat at by Samuel Manuel at the bus stop for going to the police about his son after swearing that she wouldn’t if he let her go, so she’s a liar. They’re never sitting on the bus with Samuel’s voice ringing in their ears, you dirty fucking lying cow, watching out of the window through a blur of tears and wondering: is breaking a promise not-to-tell worse than what he did to her?
Peter is never standing over dead families, eating a sandwich in the roaring silence. He is never looking at a dead girl’s tits and rubbing himself through his trousers. He is never hiding behind a tree, letting Anne Kneilands think herself saved before jumping out at her.
These are not the stories Manuel tells, but the POs know them. They have access to his records. Everyone knows everything he has ever done now, because he’s famous.
As he talks Peter sees them glancing at each other, like POs do. The thrill of all that attention dissipates and Manuel starts to realise that they’re laughing at him. This and their tepid, sceptical reception of his best stories make him angry. They don’t fucking know him. They don’t know anything about him. This is the mood in the condemned suite and why it goes so sour.
It becomes very acrimonious.
The trouble starts the day before his appeal against the death sentence. Peter begins frothing at the mouth and fitting. He is rushed to the infirmary and his stomach is pumped. They find nothing. For a week he twitches and is mute, froths and stares. He still eats though. He still smokes.
The Deathwatch Journal notes Prisoner doing his usual act.
Prisoner still away with the bees.
Despite mental condition, prisoner mysteriously managed to tune the wireless to Radio Luxembourg when I couldn’t find the station. Smoking incessantly.
Prisoner said nothing but the word ‘chips’ five times. Prisoner maintained act all through parents’ visit.
The day before his execution he stops the act.
That morning he wakes up. I feel better, he says. He has no memory of the past two weeks but remembers that the appeal was due to happen then. Did it happen? Yes, Peter, it did. You were at the court. In a side room. What happened? You lost by unanimous, son. It’s happening tomorrow.
No, see what happened was PO Sullivan hit me on the head a week ago. I’ve had a massive head injury. We’ll need to have the appeal reheard because I wasn’t fit to plead. We need a second appeal.
Manuel shows them a chip off the side of the chest of drawers. That is where PO Sullivan attacked him. He remembers listening to the radio and the attack and then nothing for two weeks. Unspoken in this is the fact that Sullivan had a similar accusation levelled against him ten years ago. He hit a prisoner with a nightstick during a riot in Peterhead. The man was in a coma for two months. He came out of it just before Sullivan was charged with assault. Peter Manuel was in Peterhead at the time.
Manuel is examined by two prison doctors. They find a mark on his scalp, but it’s healed. It looks as if he scratched it there himself.
This is the day before the execution date. Brigit Manuel has submitted a petition to the court to delay her son’s hanging. Peter never hears about this. Abolitionist groups have petitioned for a delay too. A group of teachers have formed a committee and made a submission to the court: they have analysed Manuel’s behaviour from the court case and reports in the papers and believe they have diagnosed a ‘mental illness’. Peter Manuel should be shown compassion because he is not one bit well.
But there will be no second appeal because the two Harrys are already in the prison.
Harry Allen and his assistant, Harry Smith. Professional hangmen, long-drop-method men.
That night Manuel doesn’t sleep. He stays awake all night, listening to the radio and smoking, chatting.
At 5 a.m. he eats chips and drinks a pint of strong tea. At 7.20 a.m. Father Smith comes in and asks to take his confession. Manuel says no but lets Father Smith pray for him.
The governor and two other officials join them in the cell, checking all is well.
At three seconds to eight the two Harrys come into his cell. In complete but companionable silence, they bind his wrists behind his back and lead him across the corridor. Harry Allen fits the noose and the hood while Harry Smith ensures the witnesses are standing clear. Smith pulls the lever.
The trap door swings and catches on the latch.
Second and third vertebrae are separated.
From the moment the Harrys walked into the condemned cell, it takes eight seconds.
Peter Manuel is dead.
Normally during a hanging in Barlinnie the prisoners down tools until it is over. There is a moment’s reverence, a comradely silence. Not prayers exactly, but an acknowledgement that it could be any one of them up there. A knife in the wrong place, a punch and a bad fall, it’s part of the life. But when Peter Manuel is hanged the prisoners pointedly carry on eating breakfast. Some slam cups down on tables or rattle their trays against walls. Even other criminals want to distance themselves from him.
Father Smith and the medical examiner, Dr D.A.R. Anderson, leave the other witnesses in the hanging cell and go downstairs. They take their time, dawdling down the corridor, lingering on the stairs. They pause behind the door to the corridor below. A lot can happen to a body after hanging. Twitching, effluvia, noises. Best to wait. Then they walk along the silent corridor to the cell below the trap. They listen at the door. They hear the occasional creak of the swinging rope and nothing else. They open the door and go in.