The Knives (19 page)

‘Home Secretaries don’t get to be leader any more. It’s the job, there’s always something turns up to cut their reputation to shreds.’

‘Oh, stop bloody whining. The knives are out for you, always. But that is the mission you accepted, David. So you have to face the knives, with fortitude. Just as we ask of the great British public.’

The waiter was offering complimentary Courvoisiers. Blaylock demurred, and saw that Orchard looked at him disapprovingly, then clear past him altogether.

‘Well I never, who’s the Jane?’

Blaylock saw Andy half-rise from his neighbouring perch, a hand on his jacket, and he turned to see a woman arrive purposefully by their table – a woman with height and figure, a swishy blonde bob and a boxy black jacket over a cinched red dress, a woman of a sort to make Blaylock sit up straight and hope his brow wasn’t gleaming with sweat.

‘Home Secretary? I’m Abigail Hassall. You were meant to be on my panel earlier today? Please, no need to get up—’

But Blaylock stood anyway, discarding his lividly turmeric-stained napkin, for he was feeling towered over by this woman in her high-heeled leather boots. Standing, he found himself distracted by the course of her long pendant necklace and made himself meet her eye.

‘I’m so sorry you were ill. But glad you’ve made such a recovery.’

‘Oh, you know, the capsaicin in chilli, it’s medicinal … I trust you managed without me.’

‘It was all a bit
Hamlet
without the prince. But, anyhow, I’ve got the message you’re averse to talking to me. Your prerogative, of course.’

‘No aversion. I just don’t do interviews of the sort you have in mind.’

‘How do you know what I have in mind? There are some things I’m keen to ask you but I wouldn’t say they’re for publication.’

‘Oh, if you’re just after an off-the-record chat I’ll talk to you any time anywhere.’

She laughed, one short ‘Ha’, and gestured around the busy restaurant.

‘Look, I’ll buy you a drink, somewhere quiet, if you can wait for me and Lord Orchard to settle up.’

Orchard, though, was studying him closely from seated, his rheumy eyes alight with amusement. ‘The bill? Never you mind, a mere bagatelle, dear boy. A mere bagatelle …’

They walked abreast down the hotel corridor, Andy five paces behind. One glance through the smoky glass front of the upper floor lounge was enough to tell him they’d get no privacy. And so they repaired to Blaylock’s suite; she arranged herself on one of two facing sofas while he, sitting opposite, upended two little bottles of Chilean Shiraz into two long-stemmed glasses.

‘OK, are you wearing a wire or any sort of recording device?’

‘No.’

‘If you’re lying I’d have to kill you. Have you killed, rather.’

She rolled her eyes and made an empty-handed gesture.

‘To be clear, this is not an interview, not a profile, not any kind of “piece”. You wanted a conversation?’

‘Well, we can try …’ Looking mirthful, sceptical, and very attractive, she crossed her legs and brushed an imagined speck from her dress as it rode up.

‘I did see what you wrote on me in the
Corresondent
. I guess you dug around a bit, persuaded a few people to sing?’

‘Not so much. I haven’t been on the Westminster beat that long.’

‘No? So who are you? How did you get to this esteemed perch?’

‘I’ve, ah, bounced around a bit, I suppose. Started out with Reuters. Was in Tokyo for a bit, then Bhutan, Turkmenistan. I was a financial journalist, really, until quite recently.’

‘You wanted to write about people instead of money?’

She sipped her wine and considered. ‘Personae are interesting. But not vastly more than money. Money dictates behaviour to such a degree. Yes, though – the actors in the game have come to interest me more. Plus, it’s good to keep changing, I think. Too much of the world is people sticking to their own square yard of experience.’

‘What did you study at college?’

‘Anthropology.’

‘Right, makes sense.’

‘Do you mind if I ask the questions for a bit?’

‘Shoot.’

‘Your having this military background – have you found it useful to you in politics?’

‘No. There aren’t any transferable skills. The whole methodical thing about recognising you’re in a hole and figuring how to get out of it – that ought to be a help, but it’s not. The army is all about the team, loyalty, shared responsibility. Basically I’ve learned in politics to never, ever expect the same standards of behaviour. Politics is just about the individual – the black arts, the slippery pole. You are doomed to failure if you imagine otherwise.’

‘How long was your army career?’

‘Short. Sandhurst, commissioned, joined my regiment in Westphalia, holding back the Russian hordes a while. Six months in Northern Ireland, the long war, a bit livelier.’

‘How lively?’

He liked the manner of her invigilation, and had further decided that her right was her best side.
She’s studying me. I may as well perform, the beast in the jungle.

‘A few running gun battles. One time I was stuck in a Saracen that got pretty well perforated. An IED went off under my feet. After that was Bosnia, lively in places. Then my regiment got put out to pasture as a training unit in Canada, and I decided three years had been enough.’

‘It wasn’t because the army was facing cutbacks?’

‘The army is always facing cutbacks. No, I just didn’t see it as an environment in which I could function, long term. I went back to Bosnia, first for Oxfam, then Feed the Children. Then home, I took an MBA at Durham, joined a company an old mate of mine had started, stone importing, got to be a director.’

‘You wanted to earn some money.’

‘I didn’t succeed. But, yeah, I tried to be responsible for a profit-and-loss account in the real world. The Tory way, you know?’

‘You were married with a son by then?’

‘I don’t discuss my family. The stone business was short-lived, then I slipped into journalism. Just like you.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘It had occurred to me in Bosnia, actually. Where my regiment were, in Vitez, the press were close by. I’d watch them and think it was a better gig. Just to shake my head over things, act like someone should do something? I mean, they were capable guys, and girls – one or two of them caught a stray bullet. But it was a comfier position for sure.’

She tapped the rim of her glass. ‘As a soldier – did you ever kill anyone?’

He coughed. ‘Not that I know of. I used reasonable force to incapacitate. There were times I fired a ton of ammo in the enemy’s general direction and didn’t have the chance to assess the damage afterward.’

‘Do you think the army made you an aggressive person?’

He set down the glass he had been nursing. ‘The Colour Sergeant tells you, “If the time comes, you’ve got to bayonet the baby.” That’s the deal, you have to do things no civilian would. Your training puts an unnatural level of aggression into you for that purpose. But there are also means by which it’s suppressed in you, too. I mean, I’m not an aggressive person, not now.’

‘I’ve heard it said you can be.’

‘What, I seem that way to you?’

‘You’re probably different off-duty.’

‘I am never off-duty, Abigail.’

She laughed. ‘Listen, I wouldn’t blame you. But you’re saying everyone’s got you all wrong?’

‘Me and a hundred others. Listen, I know one or two MPs who are pretty awful, talentless, slack bastards. But more often the way politics is reported … I don’t recognise the story, and I’m a character in it.’

‘What’s wrong with the story?’

‘A narrowness of focus … People being tribal, they’d rather report their kneejerk perception of an issue than the actual information that might make the thing intelligible to debate.’

‘So what’s to be done?’

‘That’s why we’re talking now. You can change it, Abigail. Start with the bathroom mirror.’

She looked at him from under sceptical eyebrows. Was she offended? She hadn’t touched her wine for some time.

‘I mean, don’t you think you come at things with biases?’

‘I don’t have any particular politics, if that’s what you mean. That would seem to me … backward. If you see the big picture
then the problems are the same, the differences in approach are quite marginal. That’s why one looks to find the interest in individuals …’

His phone vibrated. He ignored it but to his dismay she stood up.

‘Look, thank you for this. I’m sorry if I seemed … testy.’

‘No problem. Some recompense for my bad manners. I hope it was worth your time.’

‘Well, I still need something to write about for tomorrow. Maybe I should have gone out dancing instead …’ Indeed she shimmied and twirled lightly on her toes as she stooped to retrieve her bag from the sofa. He felt leaden by comparison.

‘Why don’t you take a closer look at Jason Malahide? And his head for business? You’re interested in money. So is he, but it’s quite a short CV for all what comes out of his mouth.’

‘I see. Where would I start? With what?’

‘Ask what business has he really ever run? He’s wheeled and dealed, sure, I don’t say he would sell his own grandmother but he wouldn’t think twice about selling yours.’

She smiled. ‘Why would you want to—?’

‘I don’t like people who talk big.’

‘From the man who said, “The buck stops with me”?’

‘I take that back – I don’t like people who don’t really believe what they say they believe in. Because it’s a game to them. It’s not a game.’

‘Okay. Can I call you?’

‘I don’t give my number to journalists. Mark Tallis does that stuff.’

‘How about you take mine?’ She fished and handed him a card.

‘Good to meet you, Abigail.’ He extended a hand and she took it lightly, slung her bag over her shoulder and was off. He was sorry to see her go. It had been an amusing dance – a minuet, of sorts. Had he been shooting his mouth off, packaging his past again?
Those qualms were creeping over him. But her presence had challenged him, incited him, put him in a curious mood. It was almost too much excitement for one day.

Later, before he drifted off to sleep, he was thinking of her still – the quizzical tilted jaw-line, the violet eyes and the golden bob, the necklace draped languidly between her clavicles, the way she had said ‘I wouldn’t blame you’ that seemed to betoken a tough-minded customer – the sort of woman he had always tended to admire. But while he still felt riled by Jennie’s hard verdict on his speech, the pert appraising glances of this Abigail Hassall had rubbed him more the right way.

‘All around the world Muslims are targeted, their lives are held dirt-cheap. They live in the crosshairs of
drones,
man. And them crosshairs are a symbol, of how the Muslim man is forced to be in this world. A target. And why? For what crime? For the crime of standing up and fighting for his brothers
…
’

The unit of display was Villiers’s slim black tablet. The video showed a young Asian man, London-accented, clad like a ninja in front of a shoddily slung khaki backdrop. It occurred to Blaylock that a surveillance operative would find the MI5 chief’s browsing history to be quite a horror show. Villiers himself was impassive, bridging his fingers as he studied Blaylock’s response.

‘Your brothers are suffering, paying with their lives. We need to get off our knees, get the boot of the West off our necks. “An eye for an eye, a life for a life”, like it says in the Holy Koran …’

‘So, yes, Mehdi Ahmad,’ murmured Villiers. ‘We’ve had him on the watch list three or four months. It was just after five this morning when Brian’s boys moved in to nab him at his address in Ruislip.’

‘My brothers in Britain, I call on you to join me in jihad. This is war and I am taking up arms, for I am a soldier!’

You’re a shit-house
, was Blaylock’s overriding thought as he tossed his pen onto his notepad.

‘The patterns of Mr Ahmad’s web use became alarmingly transparent – hate preachers, suicide videos, instructions in explosives. A friend gave him the run of a garage and he tried out a few crude compounds – HMTD, hydrogen peroxide, camping shop blocks of hexamine, supermarket lemon juice. He had made a recce or two
on public transport. However, when it came to recording his last will and testament he got somewhat ahead of himself.’

‘This Britain, this filthy island, is a sewer …’

‘What do we know of his family background?’

‘Bangladeshi. The father owns several takeaways. They claim to be “shocked”, though possibly less than some we’ve come across.’

‘All it requires is a purpose, a plan, to take leave of this world, and then you can be redeemed. Your life, your death, belongs to the master.’

Brian Shoulder of the Yard leaned in. ‘Up to maybe a year ago this was a lad who just liked his tunes and his clobber and chasing young ladies. Then he got pumped up on steroids. Told his folks he fancied going to the Yemen to study. Winds up at Russell College.’

‘Not exactly the wretched of the earth,’ Blaylock murmured.

‘By no means,’ offered Villiers. ‘And yet his sense of grievance is fairly virulent. At Russell he seemed to take charge of the Islamic Society, favoured the prayer room to classes, started telling his friends they were fools and young women that they were whores.’

‘That’, said Blaylock, ‘is a story I’m familiar with.’

‘Politicians? Not
one
of them is a man of honour, not one of them is even a man, these cowards …’

‘Okay, that’s enough of the great orator. Well done on picking him up before he did anything awful.’

Blaylock was pensive once Villiers and Shoulder left him. In a few days’ time he would convene his monthly gathering of selected Muslim community representatives for the ‘Counter-Extremism meeting’. It had been on his mind already that some hard words would have to be spoken there. Now he had the notion they might have to be harder still.

The shame of it was that he had been looking forward to renewing his acquaintance with Sadaqat Osman, the young man from Essex having indicated willingness to attend in return for Blaylock’s honouring of the offer to join the Goresford Centre’s November
excursion to North Yorkshire. Blaylock had personally approved a discretionary grant that made the trip possible, and thought it money well spent. Other monies in the Counter-Extremism budget, though, he increasingly felt to be of lesser merit.

‘You’re looking sombre,
patrón
,’ observed Mark Tallis once Blaylock had shut himself and his spads into his office.

‘Churchgoing,’ muttered Blaylock. His dark suit and tie were for the purpose of a special service he would be attending, an annual memorial for young victims of violent crime. But he was, more generally, in a riled state, and over more than just the dismal rhetoric of the apprehended Mehdi Ahmad.

His post-conference return to work had proved a familiar disappointment. It seemed to Blaylock that in those rare stretches of time when he felt charged and fighting fit, the disposition of his department declined – in a manner somehow reciprocal – to its most listless, mulish and glum. He was further haunted by the possibility that some of his Shovell Street colleagues shared Jennie’s critique of how he had carried himself in Birmingham – namely, that he had been posturing, showboating, writing cheques with his mouth – and, worse, that the critique perhaps carried weight.

Now courtesy of Mark he had to mull over the front page of the
Post
, whose editor had made good his conference threat to launch a sort of crusade. ‘TAKE BACK THE HOME: NO MORE WOMEN MUST DIE OF NEGLECT’ was the headline, illustrated by a collage of snapshots of women wreathed in heedless, heartbreaking smiles. Blaylock recognised only a few of the faces, but knew with a sinking heart that all of these women must have met their deaths by violence. Pages two and three were largely given over to an editorial letter addressed to him, crying special outrage over abusive partners – murderers – who had been foreign nationals illegally resident in Britain at the time of their offence.

‘So, we understand it’s a campaign, and it’ll run all this week, maybe next,’ said Tallis. ‘Obviously they put it out cold to get us on the back foot. But we need a response.’

‘We make clear we take it seriously, recap what we already do, tell them I am currently reviewing a number of options.’

‘What are those options?’ enquired Deborah.

Blaylock gestured vaguely. He had no intention of consenting to set up some talking-shop inquiry; yet ever since his disconcerting encounter with Mrs Marjorie Michaels he had borne it in mind to seek some emergency funding for refuges. He still shrank, however, from the discussion he would need to have with Caroline Tennant.

They moved on with other pressing matters. Roger Quarmby, the Inspector of Immigration and Border Services, was due to deliver his draft report on the Home Office’s performance on Wednesday morning. Blaylock was hopeful that all systems and procedures under his watch would be judged competent. He could not quite bear to contemplate the alternative. Monday week, meanwhile, would bring quarterly crime figures. Here, Blaylock felt the hopes for a favourable outcome were on firmer ground, and he intended to make a fuss about it.

‘Ben, I want you to fix me up a visit to Richard Colls’s patch in Gravesend for that Monday. I want to get out and about, take a look at every policing and crime prevention project we’ve got a stake in, right?’

Ben reminded him he was already booked to visit an innovative community policing project in Cogwich, Essex, in three days’ time. Blaylock remembered this was the day he had assured Jennie that he would find some work activity to which he could escort Alex. After a hasty call to Cogwich his party secured a plus-one.

As much as the occasion filled Blaylock with unease, some kind of respectful solemnity suffused him as he had climbed the steps
to the Corinthian portico and entered the church. The worshipful symmetry of the nave, the chestnut pews, the ribbed and vaulted ceiling – all served to persuade him he had a place in a larger piety.

The house was full, up to the galleries. Blaylock was escorted to a front seat and so brought face to face with the weight of the occasion – for beyond the altar rail was a careful stepped arrangement of treasured photographs, a mosaic of faces, candles lit beneath each, so humanising a sight Blaylock would otherwise have thought akin to the wall of a police incident room. The shrine marked the aggregate of pain in the room, people who soldiered on with unanswerable losses.

Choristers proceeded down the aisle, the vicar stepped into the pulpit and welcomed the congregation to ‘our annual memorial, for which we are proud to collaborate with Mrs Diane Cleeve and Remember the Victims’.

Blaylock glanced across the aisle to see Mrs Cleeve nod slightly from sedentary, as was her way. Her bearing spoke of a dignity that was fiercely prized and wanted few words to support it. Fifty-ish, white-blonde, black-suited, her glasses darkly tinted, Mrs Cleeve seemed herself an emblem of a kind of chastening, upright remembrance.

Seven years ago her twenty-year-old daughter Mandy had been raped and killed by a man she had been seeing for some months, a Slovakian named Jakub Reznik with a previous conviction, who fled back to Slovakia but left his DNA at the scene. Captured three weeks later he had pled not guilty. Mrs Cleeve had told a reporter that Reznik was ‘a filthy coward without the guts even to confess’. He was now serving a minimum-term life sentence, and would be deported on release. Mrs Cleeve had meantime become founder and linchpin of Remember the Victims, her particular stress being an opposition to what she regarded as the unacceptable porosity of Europe’s borders. She had stood shoulder to shoulder with three previous Home Secretaries, and Blaylock knew he had to occupy
the same ground. He could not afford to have Mrs Cleeve think he was going soft.

When the service was done he went to pay his respects, deterred just a little by the hulking shaven-headed man, unfamiliar to him, who stood by Mrs Cleeve’s side. She wasted no time on niceties.

‘I want to come and see you, Mr Blaylock, if that’s alright by you. There’s a matter I’d like to discuss.’

‘Of course. Next week perhaps? You’ll contact Geraldine?’

She was curt, but Blaylock knew better than to take it personally. In an instant she was shepherded away by her imposing chaperone.

The afternoon brought a fillip, anticipated but no less welcome for that. Blaylock learned from Griff Sedgley that Lord Waugh had pronounced himself satisfied by Caleb Aldrich’s assurances and thus supported the ‘immediate removal’ to the United States of the terror suspect Vinayak Khan. Cheered that he had something in the bag with which to please the government benches in the Commons, at the close of the day he called Jennie, armed with the excuse of relaying that he would take Alex with him to Cogwich on Thursday.

Jennie, though, was still cloistered at her chambers, fretting over a speech she was due to deliver in a few hours’ time to a room full of fellow human rights barristers. Touched by the nervy distraction in her voice – however polished in performance, Jennie always fretted over every bout of public speaking – Blaylock idly scribbled a note of the venue she mentioned, a fashionable set of chambers in Bloomsbury.

He reached Alex at home, the nanny putting the boy on the line.

‘Sure you don’t fancy the Arsenal tomorrow night, son?’

‘
Nope. I’m going to see
Battleship Potemkin.’

‘I thought you’d missed your chance?’

‘Naw. I lied about that.’

‘Right. Hope it’s all you hoped for. Are you taking a date?’

‘Nope, going with a mate.’

‘Cultured mates you have.’

Alex laughed brashly.
‘This guy? Yeah, he’s pretty cultured …’

Blaylock hung up in haste for he had seen a familiar silhouette pass his door. He darted out, saw Fusi the football-mad security guard heading down the hall, and hailed him.

‘Fusi! Fancy seeing your beloved Chelsea at the Emirates tomorrow night? You’ll get your dinner, too.’

As the dark came down he called into Downing Street for the ‘Line of Duty’ Police Awards honouring acts of major bravery by warranted officers. He had resolved to keep his appearance brief, and then see if he might surprise Jennie by turning up to her speech. But noticing Commissioner Bannerman at the threshold of the upstairs reception room, unattended by
consiglieri
, Blaylock sought a quiet word.

‘Can we talk about domestic violence?’

‘Ah yes, you’re having your turn in the tabloid hot seat? So the wheel turns.’

‘You can be assured I’ve had nothing but praise for the police response. But in your view is there any way it could be improved?’

‘Oh, I’m quite sure if constabularies had the funding and the numbers they’d want dedicated units. But that’s not going to happen soon, is it? The biggest problem still is when the victim doesn’t support the prosecution. Your lapel cameras, they might help with that. But not quickly. Cheer up, though.’ Bannerman patted Blaylock’s shoulder. ‘It could be something for your “restorative justice” wheeze. Where, say, you have a man who wants to spend all the benefit on strong lager, and his wife who’d have him spend half at most? Maybe some negotiated settlement is doable …’

‘It doesn’t seem to me a laughing matter.’

‘Nor to me, but as you know, Home Secretary, the way you do your sums is something I find hard to take seriously. So, in answer to your question, on our current resources, no, we will not be able to make a great difference in the matter of domestic violence. I understand if the politics of that are … problematic for you?’

Seeing that further exchanges would be fruitless Blaylock went inside, just in time to hear Patrick Vaughan address the gathering.

‘This evening is always, for me, a powerful reminder of the purpose and valour that police officers bring to their job, protecting the public, often risking their lives in order to save lives. We could not ask for more. The Home Secretary does his bit, but I know he would admit that his best efforts are only a drop in a bucket …’

Blaylock knew the room had zero savour for this line of humour. Even as he winced he caught sight, through the navy-uniformed throng, of Abigail Hassall mingling among press at the rear of the room. They exchanged cordial nods.

Vaughan called on Blaylock to distribute trophies to a procession of constables who had braved house fires or deep waters, or persuaded the vulnerable away from high ledges, or confronted armed men despite having no weapon of their own. While posing for photos he had his hand gripped rather crushingly by one officer who held a vodka-tonic in the other hand, his diminutive wife at his side. This man did not let go, and though the noise in the room was not excessive he addressed his remarks close to Blaylock’s earlobe, as if he might bite it.