Dowdall is here to tell the court how Watt and Manuel came to meet. Telling stories is his job. He’s a lawyer.
Good storytelling is all about what’s left in, what’s left out and the order in which the facts are presented. Dowdall knows how to shape a narrative, calling witnesses in the right order, emphasising the favourable through repeated questioning, skim-skim-skimming over the accused’s habit of beating his widowed mother. Dowdall is a master storyteller, better than other lawyers. He has an innate sense of narrative and he is disciplined. Dowdall can find just the right trajectory to pin his tale to and he can stop before the end. It’s the jury’s job to write the ending. Dowdall will tell them about the penitent street fighter who has a good job waiting for him, an ailing, dependent mother and helpless young children. Dowdall knows how a jury will want this story to go. He knows a story has more power if they feel that they are choosing that ending themselves.
But today’s story is complex. Dowdall is in this story and he has been tricked. By sleight of hand and word Manuel manoeuvred Dowdall into breaking the law. Dowdall cannot excise himself from the story because none of the subsequent events make sense if he leaves his own misdemeanours out. He has been up half the night playing narrative chess.
Sitting alone in the witness hall, he worries about this. He feels instinctively that there is a loose thread in this Gordian narrative that he is failing to grasp. This is out of character. He usually can. He smokes and strokes his neat rectangular moustache, first one side, then the other, and wonders if he is becoming ill.
It’s a shock when the doors open and the noise of the packed courtroom billows in at him. He leaps to his feet.
The Macer asks him to come, please, Mr Dowdall.
In court the public are taking the change of witness as an opportunity to move or cough or nip out for a smoke. Wood creaks, throats are cleared, doors shut and open, until the Macer has seen Dowdall into the warm room and closed the witness hall doors behind them. Then the Macer looks at the lower benches, at the public on the balcony above. A sudden silence falls. Dowdall knows that they will have been warned that they will be made to leave if they don’t keep quiet.
On the balcony a woman is having a coughing fit. She sounds like a heavy smoker and struggles to shift the sticky mucus. Everyone is aware that she will be put out if she can’t stop. As Dowdall takes a step into the court her staccato cough machine-guns over his head. He takes another step, glad of the covering fire.
He is halfway across the room when her smoker’s cough snaps and she clears her throat. The room drops its shoulders.
He climbs the four steps up to the witness box, turns and gives Lord Cameron a small respectful bow, sans eye contact, because that would be inappropriately chummy in these circumstances. Cameron and Dowdall know each other socially. Dowdall knows every lawyer in this room, personally and professionally. They golf together, dine together at various clubs, they raise money for spastics, Dowdall’s own favoured charity, but he oughtn’t to bring those connections in here, where he is a prosecution witness.
He is sworn in. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Dowdall is a storyteller. He knows how slippery truth is. The only part of the oath that Dowdall sincerely means is ‘so help me God’. He really means that part.
The advocate-depute, Mr M.G. Gillies, stands up. He does a couple of theatrical postures to take control of the moment: touching his papers, standing tall, grasping the lapel of his gown. Somewhat stagy, thinks Dowdall. Dowdall is a solicitor, not an advocate, and doesn’t have a right of audience before the court. He instructs advocates to represent his clients so he finds it hard to watch them work without giving a critical appraisal. He thinks M.G. Gillies’ manoeuvres are a little grubby even if they are effective.
M.G. Gillies, projecting his clipped voice very nicely, asks Mr Dowdall if he can please tell the court how he came to meet Mr Manuel in connection with the murders at Burnside?
It is an ideal introduction to the story Dowdall wants to tell. And so he begins.
Dowdall began representing Mr William Watt while he was remanded in Barlinnie for the murders of his wife, his daughter and his sister-in-law, Mrs Margaret Brown. Mr Watt was–Dowdall hesitates over this word but uses it–disconsolate.
M.G. Gillies doesn’t like that word. He doesn’t think the jury will understand it. He asks Dowdall to clarify.
‘Very upset,’ says Dowdall. ‘Mr Watt had been charged with appalling crimes. He had been in all of the newspapers, day after day, and now he found himself in prison. The police were convinced of his guilt.’
‘Were you?’
All of the lawyers in the room shift uncomfortably at that question. It is not appropriate. Dowdall’s opinion may shift the view of the court but hearsay and opinion could be cause for an appeal, for heaven’s sake.
Oddly, Lord Cameron lets Dowdall answer. ‘For me to express an opinion would, I think, be potentially misleading.’
Dowdall now feels gratitude radiating towards him from all the other lawyers in the room. He has nimbly saved them all. Then he adds, ‘Of course, legally, I wouldn’t be able to represent anyone as innocent if I knew they were guilty.’
He has pushed the point to the very edge of legal. Now the lawyers love him. Lord Cameron’s heavy eyebrows twitch with understated admiration. Lawyers love the tiptoe across the land-mine, the brilliant navigation of the grey area. Standing in the witness box Dowdall experiences the respect of his peers as a warm hand drawing a comforting circle on his back.
Half smiling, M.G. Gillies prompts a return to the story and Dowdall continues.
‘Mr Watt knew that the police were not looking for anyone else. He knew that whoever killed his family was still out there and might strike again. So he began his own inquiries. He became a “detective”, if you will.’
‘How did he go about that?’
‘He let it be known, through me, that he was investigating the Burnside Affair and would be receptive to anyone with information.’
‘Did people come forward with information?’
‘They did. Whatever information we gleaned we immediately took to the police. Mr Watt began to ask questions while in Barlinnie Prison and one name was a refrain in all of our inquiries: Peter Manuel.’
M.G. Gillies frowns, feigning confusion. ‘A “refrain” ?’ Gillies really thinks the jury are stupid. He knows them better than Dowdall does. He might be right.
‘Mr Manuel was mentioned by several people in connection with the incident.’ Now, this is hearsay so Dowdall tempers it. ‘But prisons are full of rumours. It wasn’t until I received a letter from Mr Manuel that we took those rumours seriously…’
Dowdall must not mention that Manuel wrote to him from prison where he was serving a sentence for housebreaking. That would be prejudicial. Dowdall went to see Manuel because he was visiting Watt in Barlinnie anyway, so, what the hell.