‘No, My Lord, I’m afraid that particular letter has been misplaced.’
The lawyers find this a wee bit odd. Lawyers like Dowdall don’t misplace letters like that. But no one knows what to ask. They just blame a careless secretary and carry on with the questioning.
‘So, yourself and Mr Watt went to meet Mr Manuel?’
‘Yes. We met him at Whitehall’s Restaurant in Renfield Street but I left after just ten minutes.’
‘Why did you leave?’
Innocent question. Leading nowhere.
‘I had somewhere to be.’
‘But Watt and Manuel stayed there, together?’
‘I believe they were together all night, until six o’clock the next morning.’
‘What happened that night, Mr Dowdall?’
‘I really don’t know. We never discussed it.’
‘Mr Watt never told you what happened?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ask him?’
‘No.’
There is a pause. This seems implausible but Dowdall is obviously telling the truth. William Watt will be asked his version of events when he is on the stand tomorrow. M.G. Gillies flounders and says, ‘Thank you, Mr Dowdall.’
And now Manuel’s defence counsel stands up. William Grieve. Grieve indeed. His hair is very orange, his complexion unattractively rosy, and he looks half annoyed all the time. Grieve only took silk last year. Harald Leslie is the senior QC in Manuel’s team and he should have cross-examined Dowdall. He is the more able by far. But this is a small world. Harald was representing William Watt when he was charged with these murders, Dowdall had instructed him, so there is a conflict of interest which requires him to step aside in favour of Grieve when Watt and Dowdall are giving evidence.
Dowdall watches Grieve lift his papers, cock his head at them and put them down. He pretends to be wondering. He’s new to this and his act is not polished. Dowdall says a silent prayer of thanks, half to Harald Leslie and half to God, who has, after all, so-helped-him.
Grieve considers his first question. He purses and unpurses his lips and Dowdall notices that the jury already dislike him. He glances at Manuel, sitting in the dock with four policemen, two behind him and one on either side. He sees Manuel frown at the back of Grieve’s head. Manuel has also noticed that the jury don’t like Grieve. If Dowdall was defending this case he would think they had lost it already.
‘Might I ask–’ Grieve looks up, flashes a joyless smile–‘About this “other matter” on which you initially went to visit Mr Manuel?’
Manuel smirks. This is what he was whispering about.
‘Of course.’
‘What was this “other matter”?’ Grieve’s eyebrows rise slowly.
Dowdall has decided to argue this as a point of law, knowing that the jury will stop listening if he makes it sound complicated enough. He must not say that Manuel was in prison or mention any of his previous convictions and this gives him wriggle room.
‘Mr Manuel had requested an interview with a view to a minor revision of the conditions of a legal application.’
He makes it sounds like a dog licence. Grieve nods five times. One nod too many for anyone to care what he means.
‘He had, in short, sought your legal expertise?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it was in the course of that first interview, when you were in effect acting as his lawyer, that he sketched the gun for you?’
‘No.’
Grieve looks up. ‘No?’
‘No. That was at the second meeting. At the first meeting he told me that William Watt was an innocent man and he knew the man who had actually committed the murders. He described the house in the second meeting. The events of the night. And drew the gun.’
Grieve consults his papers and sees that he is indeed wrong. Harald Leslie, sitting next to him, raises an eyebrow at his papers. It’s a rudimentary mistake: Grieve hasn’t done a time line.
‘Ah, yes, I see, thank you for that correction, Mr Dowdall. But in the first interview you were acting as his lawyer?’
‘No. I was giving him advice in the first half of that interview and in the second half of the first interview he was giving me information about a pre-existing client of mine.’
Manuel is crossing and uncrossing his legs, he is sitting forward and back. He wants certain things asked in certain ways and Grieve is busy getting dates wrong.
‘I put it to you that this was quite improper, Mr Dowdall, you going to the police with confidential information passed by a client–’
‘No.’
Grieve can’t quite believe his gall.
‘No, it was not improper. He was my client for the first half of the interview. In the second half of the first interview I was there in my capacity as Mr Watt’s representative, as I was at all subsequent meetings. I accompanied Mr Watt to meet him. He was there when we arrived. Given the presence of both gentlemen, it was both explicate and implicate that Mr Watt was my client in that interview.’
‘That is arguable,’ says Grieve but he seems to have given up.
The small mistake of fact over the time line has thrown him. Very able defence lawyers will make unlikely mistakes time and again in this case, all of them to Manuel’s detriment.
As a closer Grieve asks: ‘Mr Dowdall, was any money exchanged between Mr Watt and Mr Manuel for this information?’
Dowdall has rehearsed this. ‘I told Peter Manuel he would not get any money for the information.’
Grieve tries, valiant but half-hearted, because he knows what Dowdall is doing. ‘But did any money change hands for this information?’
‘Well, I left after ten minutes but I do know this: I told Mr Watt not to give Peter Manuel any money for the information.’
All it will take is one more move. Did William Watt ever talk about giving Manuel money? And Dowdall will have to say Yes. He did. We discussed it.
But Dowdall looks up and he sees relief shimmer across Grieve’s face. He sees Manuel glare at the back of Grieve’s head. And he sees a field through a windscreen and a veil of his own tears and a letter burning in an ashtray and he knows that, deep down, Grieve and Leslie, they loathe Peter Manuel too. They want him dead too.
‘That will be all, Mr Dowdall. Thank you.’
‘Thank you, Mr Grieve. Thank you.’
3
Monday 2 December 1957
‘I KILLED MY WIFE,’ William Watt is murmuring in Peter Manuel’s ear. Then the door opens, he looks up and shouts, ‘Scout O’BloodyNeil!’
They’re in Jackson’s Bar. They have been there for a while.
Watt is very drunk. His moods are shifting like a breeze over open water. Manuel has matched him drink for drink but he isn’t very drunk. He thinks that either Watt was drinking before they met in Whitehall’s or he is acting drunk to disarm him.
Manuel doesn’t get drunk, not in the usual way. His body becomes uncoordinated, he may feel sleepy, but his basic mood doesn’t change. He still has an eye for a weakness or a half-opened window or a chance. Maybe he will file it away for later, when he isn’t as uncoordinated, but he still sees it and feels the same about it.