The Long Drop by Denise Mina
After the two Harrys killed him
a rumour started among the children
that Peter Manuel
could see in the dark.
1
Monday 2 December 1957
HE KNOWS TOO MUCH to be an honest man but says he wants to help. He says he can get the gun for them. William Watt is keen to meet him. Laurence Dowdall has already met Peter Manuel several times. He never wants to see him again.
Dowdall parks his beige Bentley on a dark city street and gets out. Watt is waiting on the pavement, next to his maroon Vauxhall Velox.
It is early evening in early December. Glasgow is wet and dark but still warm, the bitterness of winter has yet to bite.
Above the roofs every chimney belches black smoke. Rain drags smut down over the city like a mourning mantilla. Soon a Clean Air Act will outlaw coal-burning in town. Five square miles of the Victorian city will be ruled unfit for human habitation and torn down, redeveloped in concrete and glass and steel. The population will be moved to the periphery, thinned to a quarter of its current density. One hundred and thirty thousand homes will be demolished in the biggest urban redevelopment project in post-war Europe. Later, the black, bedraggled survivors of this architectural cull will be sandblasted, their hard skin scoured off to reveal glittering yellow and burgundy sandstone. The exposed stone is porous though, it sucks in rain and splits when it freezes in the winter.
But this story is before all of that. This story happens in the old boom city, crowded, wild west, chaotic. This city is commerce unfettered. It centres around the docks and the river, and it is all function. It dresses like the Irishwomen: head to toe in black, hair covered, eyes down.
In the street Dowdall falls into step with Watt, walking towards a doorway below by a red neon sign: Whitehall’s Restaurant/Lounge.
Watt is tall and stout and bald, dressed in bourgeois yellow tweeds and a heavy wool overcoat. Dowdall is slim, dark, mus tachioed. He’s Watt’s lawyer. He wears a sharp dark suit under an exquisitely cut camel hair.
They go through the door to Whitehall’s and take a steep set of narrow stairs up. Watt can see the stitching on the back of Dowdall’s shoes. Handmade, Watt thinks. Italian.
Watt wants a Bentley too, and Italian shoes, but he needs to put this Burnside Affair behind him first. This is why they are going to meet a man who was released from prison three days ago. They are going to find the gun and solve the crime.
Peter Manuel wrote to Dowdall saying he had information about the Burnside murders. A lot of prisoners did, but Manuel’s letters were different. Most came from chancers who wanted money, some were from creeps who wanted details. Manuel didn’t ask for anything except the chance to meet William Watt face-to-face. Odd.
Dowdall arranged this meeting before Manuel was released but vacillates. Sometimes he wants to cancel, sometimes he insists they should go. In negative mood he says it’s pointless. Manuel is a professional criminal, a famous liar, you can’t trust a word he says. Then he thinks they can outflank him, use Manuel to solve the mystery, he might give away a useful detail or two. Watt senses something other than a concern about the outcome: it feels as if Dowdall is afraid of Peter Manuel. Dowdall is Glasgow’s foremost criminal lawyer. He has seen a lot of life, met a lot of characters. It seems strange to Watt that Dowdall should be scared, but then, Watt hasn’t met Manuel yet. He doesn’t know what there is to be afraid of.
Dowdall stops three steps from the top, holding onto the handrails and leans back, whispering over his shoulder.
‘If he asks you for money, William, refuse, point-blank.’
Watt grunts.
Dowdall already warned him about this back at the office. Any evidence they get from Manuel will be useless if money changes hands. But Watt is desperate and he’s a businessman. He knows you don’t get something for nothing.
‘And don’t offer him any information about yourself.’
Watt grunts again. He is irritated by these warnings. Dowdall is treating him like a child, as if he knows nothing about these people, this world. Watt knows more than Dowdall gives him credit for.
Dowdall walks up the remaining stairs, into a dim lobby that smells of pork fat and stale cigarette smoke. The walls are panelled with yellow burled walnut. The cloakroom window is a dark slit, it’s Monday, hardly worth opening. Against the opposite wall a chaise longue is flanked by two onyx ashtrays on spindly brass legs. They are empty but still radiate the pungent odour of burnt offerings. Dowdall walks over to the facing wall hung with a velvet curtain. He uses his forearm to sweep it out of their path.
The restaurant is crammed with tables set with linen and cutlery but short of customers. Behind the bar a tinny wireless plays the Light Programme. It’s the Semprini Serenade: overwrought symphonic reproductions of popular tunes.
Whitehall’s Restaurant isn’t a fancy joint. It’s a second-best-suit, affair-with-your-secretary type of place. Near the door, a big blonde and a small man are hunched over grey pork chops. At another table a trio of tipsy dishevelled salesmen chat quietly.
The only customer who didn’t look up when they came in is reading a newspaper in the lounge bar. He’s the man who knows too much. He’s alone.
Freshly shaven, Peter Manuel looks smart in his sports jacket, shirt and tie. His thick hair is combed back from his face. William Watt is surprised by how respectable he looks. He knows all about Manuel’s record from Dowdall, the rapes, the prison terms, the incessant housebreaking. He understands now that meeting in Whitehall’s was Manuel’s idea, not Dowdall’s. To Dowdall the place is downmarket. To Manuel a restaurant/lounge is aspirational. He aspires to be in places that are better than he is. Watt likes that about him.
On the table in front of Manuel sit an empty whisky glass and a half-pint with a finger of beer left in it. A half and half: the drouthy gent’s refreshment. Watt is pleased when he sees that because he really, really wants a good drink, he wants it quickly and, in truth, he wants it all the time.
The ma?tre d’-boy-of-all-works is polishing forks by the dumb waiter, his back to them. A tendril of fresh air has followed them in from the street and stirs the stagnant cigarette smoke hanging in the room, alerting him to their presence. He turns, nods an acknowledgement, abandons the cutlery and begins a tortuous, snaking journey towards them through tightly packed tables.
The blonde with the pork chops recognises Laurence Dowdall. Dowdall is a celebrity, often in the papers. She whispers to her companion and he turns for a gawp. The man mutters and they both smile down at their dinners. Dowdall’s catchphrase.
For a decade, any Glaswegian caught red-handed has conjured Dowdall’s name.
‘Get me Dowdall!’ shouts every drunk caught pissing up a close.