‘Yes, the one customarily used to attach it to the belt.’
The Webley was favoured during the Great War. Officers and soldiers tied the revolver to their Sam Browne belts with cord so that they didn’t lose them, even if they dropped them in the heat and horror of battle.
‘Did you go to the police with this information, Mr Dowdall?’
‘I did.’
I went straight to the police, Dowdall doesn’t say. He doesn’t tell the court that, reckless of his professional peril, he had to tell them because he left Manuel’s company and got into his Bentley and drove to a quiet corner of a small field and found himself crying. Panicked and frightened and crying. Dowdall was furious that the filthy creeping man should know how to trick him with the law. The law was his defence against such men. Dowdall believed it was his weapon, not his weakness.
But all the court hears Dowdall say is ‘I did’.
Those closer to Dowdall notice him blinking rapidly, see the rims of his eyes reddening. They know there is more to it than I did but no one asks him about it. Gillies moves swiftly on.
‘And what did the police do with this information?’ ‘They went to the Manuel family home in Birkenshaw and they searched the garden.’
‘Why?’
‘They were looking for the gun he had drawn. Or the missing lanyard ring.’
Later Dowdall heard that Manuel boasted about it in prison. He told another client of Dowdall’s that he could get the polis to dig his mother’s garden for her while he lay on his bunk in Barlinnie. Ha ha. Be sure and tell Laurence, won’t you? Manuel was telling Dowdall that he knows his confidentiality had been breached, that Dowdall had committed a crime. He’s the only one who knows. From the corner of his eye Dowdall can see Manuel leaning forward in the dock to whisper to his lawyer. He is smirking and whispering. He could have used these facts to exclude Dowdall’s testimony or the drawing. Dowdall doesn’t understand why Manuel hasn’t instructed his lawyers to do that. He set up this complicated play and then forgot, or neglected, to use it to his advantage. Or maybe he means to use it to ruin Dowdall, rather than save his own neck from the noose. Even with eight murder charges hanging over him, six of which are for the murder of women, one for a ten-year-old child, even with the nastiness of them known, Dowdall feels that he alone has any understanding of how profoundly malevolent Peter Manuel is.
Gillies interrupts his train of thought. ‘So the police must have found his story quite credible then, if they searched for the gun?’
‘They seemed to.’
Dowdall showed the police the drawing and they said yes, that could be the gun. Then Dowdall told them that Manuel had given him a lot of detailed information about the Watt house. Dowdall hasn’t been there yet, might he go and have a look? They took Dowdall to the Watt house, still cordoned off, still guarded by a police officer, DS Mitchell.
Muncie, a senior officer from Lanarkshire, is waiting outside for Dowdall. He came because he heard Manuel mentioned in the request. Manuel lives on Muncie’s patch. Muncie hates Manuel. He accosts Dowdall in the street outside the Watt bungalow. Peter Manuel’s probably lying, Mr Dowdall. That filthy criminal is a serial confessor to high-profile cases. He plays games. He confessed to a big bank robbery in London and then produced an alibi. He claims he was a gangster in New York but the family moved back from New York when he was five and the Depression hit. He tells people his daddy died in the electric chair in America, but he lives with his daddy. His daddy works for the Gas Board. Manuel says he’s an artist, he’s a writer, he’s a spy for the Yanks. Peter Manuel talks utter shite. He is known for lies. His lies are so crazy you sometimes wonder if he even knows he’s lying. He’s a sex fiend. A maniac.
The Watt house is in Fennsbank Avenue in Burnside on the Southside. It is a long road of sturdy detached villas with large gardens and driveways for cars. Dowdall walks up the path to the door and sees the broken glass on the window, sees Manuel’s hand slide in through the broken glass, curl to the side and open the door, in the dark.
DS Mitchell opens the door for him. Dowdall steps in. Mitchell says not to touch anything and leaves, shutting the door behind him.
Dowdall is alone in the Watt bungalow. He sees a chiffonier on his left and a picture of a golden Labrador hanging on the wall. On his right hangs a key rack. It is empty. Surprised that no one has come out or heard him, he pushes open the bedroom door. Bloody splatter is fanned across the wall behind the headboards and the floor is smeared and stained with dried gore. The twin beds are stripped, mattresses and sheets and blankets gone, taken for evidence. Dowdall is glad he parked at the field because he couldn’t cry if he tried now. He doesn’t know if he will ever cry or eat again.
In the front room a bottle of Mascaró Dry Gin sits on the dresser. Balanced on the arm of the settee, on a linen antimacassar, the crust of a sandwich. The sliver of gammon between the bread is as dry and cracked as a dead cat’s tongue. The police didn’t know it was significant. They’ve just left it there.
In the galley kitchen, wall cupboards and yellow Formica.
In the dead girl’s room the bed is stripped. Chalk marks are drawn around cigarette stubs found ground into the carpet. Vivienne was left slumped in the corner, half covered over, lying on top of the bedding. It’s a bloody mess. A seventeen-year-old girl, dead and bruised, her bosom exposed, badly bruised down there, interfered with. ‘Before or after?’ Dowdall had asked at the time. ‘Both,’ said the medical examiner frowning at his feet. ‘Both before and after.’
M.G. Gillies asks, ‘What happened then, Mr Dowdall?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What happened then?’
‘Well, I had told the police, so…’
‘Did you meet Mr Manuel again?’
Dowdall never wanted to see him again. But another letter, with more teasers. Whatever his feelings, Dowdall had to inform poor Mr Watt that Manuel was getting out of prison, having served ten months for housebreaking, and wanted to meet him.
‘Manuel wrote that he was being released and he could get the gun back but he wanted to meet Mr Watt first.’
Lord Cameron asks, ‘Is that letter available to the court, Mr Dowdall?’
No. I burned it so you would never see it. Manuel wanted money for the gun and if you, My Lord, knew that, you might rule this testimony inadmissible. So I burned that letter in the ashtray on my desk. And then I sat and looked at it for a while. I felt so uneasy that I called my secretary in and asked her to take the ashtray away. And actually, Miss McLaren, just throw that ashtray away, will you? Because it has a crack it in. Yes, it does. There. You can’t see it? Well, I can see it, so just get it out of here. Miss McLaren shuts the door on her way out and Dowdall knows that she will wash the glass ashtray and take it home, probably give it to her father. And he’s afraid for her.