The Long Drop by Denise Mina

Author:Denise Mina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2017-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

12

Tuesday 3 December 1957

SITE OF BIRTHS, DEATHS and marriages, Townhead is the highest point in the old city. The Royal Infirmary looms across the road, black as the devil and ten storeys high. Squatting behind it is the medieval cathedral and then the sharp high hills of the Necropolis.

The Cot Bar is on a sharp corner at Townhead. It is a filthy place. By an unhappy accident of aerodynamics, litter and dust and ash are swept downhill, around corners, over streets, and deposited against the side wall. Gang slogans are scratched into the dirt. This is Cody gang territory so the tags are mostly theirs (CODY = Come On, Die Young).

The early-morning streets are dusted with a thin frost that melts underfoot, leaving black smears on the pavement. The re-sidual heat of the city, held in the ground, defies the season.

Watt and Manuel park and get out of the car. They walk round the back, exchanging excited glances. Their eyes are wide, they nod to each other over and over, exaggerating their sexual engagement to the brink of pantomime. Peter Manuel is impotent. He can ejaculate when a woman is frightened enough but he can’t have normal relations. When the police examine his clothes they will find all of his trousers have ejaculatory stains inside. It has been like this since he was in Hollesley Bay Borstal. Brendan Behan was in Hollesley Bay around the same time. He said of it that inmates engaged in sexual practices ‘the lowest ruffian in Ireland could be born, live and die and never even guess at’. Manuel was sent there when he was twelve. William Watt doesn’t like sexy shows or stripping, he wouldn’t go on his own. But they are prisoners of this macho convention and there is no room for either of them to express anything but increasingly intense interest. Still, both quite like the idea of being in a room where their satisfaction is the main focus. They suspect, as do many people, that there is some sexual practice that they don’t yet know about, something new that will pique their interest.

The cellar is round the back, by the bins and behind a high wall. It was once a coal cellar so the stairs down are narrow and plain, sliced out of the yard floor. When a man is standing on the bottom step he looks as if he has sunk into the ground up to his waist.

Manuel and Watt step carefully down into the well. There is hardly enough room for both sets of feet. Watt knocks on the steel door.

The eye slot slides opens and a puffy-eyed man looks at them critically. They try to see past him but his face blocks the view.

‘Wait,’ he says, and shuts it.

They wait, their annoyance tempered by sexual interest.

The slot opens again and the bouncer examines them as if he is looking for something. Watt holds up a five-pound note and smiles pleasantly.

‘We’re no buzzies!’ Manuel says, but the slit scrapes shut.

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