The Knives (22 page)

At last Sadaqat spoke. ‘I don’t believe … that the mosques are so significant? Or that the problem you see is so much down to imams? But I think you’re right, Mr Blaylock, that only Muslims can make the argument you want made. And that Muslims have to want to make it. As for what you, the state, should do? More regulation, more law enforcement …? I can see why you talk about that. And – by your logic, if what you say is true – maybe that is the road you should go down …’

Sadaqat had not endeared himself to the room, and this only made Blaylock admire him more. He held up a hand as the silence left by Sadaqat now began to fill up with forceful disputation.

Though Adam Villiers and Brian Shoulder of the Yard awaited him for the regular Thursday session – itself to be truncated on account of his appointment in Cogwich – Blaylock was required to beg their patience, Roger Quarmby having finally trapped him on a phone line to vent his displeasure over the delayed publication of his report.

‘What exactly do you mean by “not yet ready for public announcement”? What part of the work I’ve done is in any sense unsuitable for consumption?’

Quarmby had a high-in-the-nose Lancastrian accent that, together with his narrow hooded eyes and pursed lips, gave him a schoolmasterly aspect now being exacerbated by his obvious belief that he was being fed a load of dog-ate-my-homework excuses.

‘We have queries and comments, Roger; these will be compiled and returned to you for your attention so that your final version is wholly accurate.’

‘Home Secretary, my
submission
was wholly accurate. You asked me to do what I took to be important work, for which I surveyed all the evidence. I do not draft “political” documents to endorse a preordained view, wishing things to be other than what they are – that is of no help to anyone, in fact it’s harmful. If that’s what you have in mind to engineer here, be assured it is not acceptable to me.’

‘Roger, I’m sure when you see our queries you will appreciate this is a fuss over nothing …’ Having attained what felt to him like the height of disingenuousness, Blaylock pressed on.

Entering his sequestered session with Villiers and Shoulder, Blaylock knew at once, by Villiers’s lowered solemn head, that there was bad news to be broken. Indeed, he was advised that one of the ‘persons of interest’ under risk certification had absconded from surveillance: a Pakistani baker’s son from Birmingham named Haseeb Muthana, married father of two with a third on the way, believed to have studied bomb-making during an excursion to the Afghan borders.

Blaylock felt a prickling between his clothing and skin, knowing what he could be subjected to in the House for such sloppiness.

‘The hopeful news, arguably, is that we strongly suspect Muthana has left the country.’

‘How did he get out? Surely we were holding his passport?’

‘We have formed the view that he got across the Channel Tunnel in the back of a lorry and picked up false documents in Belgium.’

‘So, should I be relieved?’

‘Muthana’s a fairly shrewd individual. We’ve suspected him not of any driving urge to martyrdom but, rather, of playing an advisory, directorial role in the bomb-making ambitions of various small cells. That’s a role he can continue to play so long as he has means of communication. So we must keep our ears open, and hope to pick up his voice somewhere out in the ether …’

Since conversation with Alex was proving fitful while they waited, Blaylock got out of the car, also to take the air and check his messages. He was booked on the evening’s political TV talk-show, and he now learned that Madolyn Redpath had been drafted onto the panel at short notice. The thought of his inaction over her lobbying on behalf of Eve Mewengera was a splinter in his conscience. He preferred to focus on delivering Alex back home by 7 p.m. following a day of good filial relations that would pile up further credit for him in Jennie’s eyes.

Peering through the car’s smoky glass window he watched the boy cleaning his camera lens diligently with a soft cloth, unwinding tangled black leads, and methodically replacing items within the folds of a small black leather carry-case. It seemed a notable investment of effort in such a teensy piece of gear. Blaylock realised that Andy, too, was watching the boy. They exchanged looks.

‘The passion of it, eh?’ Andy remarked. ‘Reminds me of my boy when he plays his American football on Sundays. All the padding and taping and putting on the war-paint. He goes into another world.’

The world Andy was describing was one in which Blaylock rather wished Alex would spend more time. Finally the boy slid out of the Jaguar, camera in fist, soft black bag of odds and ends over his shoulder.

‘Okay, Spielberg,’ Blaylock ventured, ‘we’re ready for our close-ups.’ A withering look, though, told him he’d name-checked the wrong sort of film director.

They were in a car park tucked behind the redbrick high-rise of Cogwich Shopping City, and passers-by beyond the wall evinced no interest in the ministerial visit. But then barrelling toward them came their host for the afternoon, Bob Gaines of Panoptic Answers Ltd, a big enthused side of beef, red-faced under fair hair, who pointed up to CCTV cameras on the car park’s nearest lamppost.

‘Smile, you’re on telly.’

Mr Gaines led them into the rear of Shopping City and to a lift in a stairwell, proselytising for his business every step of the way.

‘These shops were dead for years, the rate-payers just couldn’t see how to revive it when there was so much thieving and dossing about. The council knew what retailers wanted, they just couldn’t afford to give it to them. Until we stepped in and made a viable offer.’

He bade them enter the CCTV control room, a plush suite where staff peered fixedly at a wall of real-time monitors offering
angles on the streets outside, surrounding roads and the interiors of various shops.

‘So, all the premises signed up with us have no bother letting us know if there’s trouble. You see our rangers in the orange hi-vis jackets? They’re discreet but everyone knows they’re there. And they’re in radio contact with us, and to the cop shop if it comes to it.’

Gazing at the grid of screens, its unblinking relay of mid-afternoon human traffic, Blaylock started to feel a throb between his eyes – perhaps just fatigue, or the want of some caffeine in the absence of adrenalin. He blinked and refocused on one particular screen, where a man was glancing up at the camera and seeming to glare. Blaylock looked aside to an image of two women ambling along with shopping bags. Weirdly, even they too seemed to risk a furtive look to the lens.

‘Oh blimey, oh now that is just naughty …’

Blaylock looked now to where everyone else was looking, Camera Seven, a screen that captured a swaying man in an alleyway urinating a fulsome arc between two skips.

‘Watch this,’ muttered Bob Gaines. ‘The great thing about our cameras is they talk …’

An operative killed all audio but for Camera Seven, and the room heard a nerve-straining klaxon followed by a calm clear automated female voice. ‘
Urinating in public is an offence. Please desist
.’ The offender was already shambling away without having tucked himself in.

‘SR-Six?’ said Gaines into a fixed bendable mic. ‘This is Control, will you have a wander over to Gowan Lane, we’ve an offender leaving a scene … Vectra, can you get a cleaners’ team to Gower for wet-down?’

Gaines looked to Blaylock with quiet pride. Blaylock was momentarily lost for words.

‘Your team must see all sorts.’

‘Oh, that’s a rarity these days. Anyone who’s not half-cut knows the cameras are there. Some might say they don’t want Big Brother on their shoulder but my view is, what are you hiding? Who’s going to fight for anyone’s right to piss in an alley after five pints …? Sorry, I’m afraid you’ll have to knock that off in here, young sir.’

Blaylock, aware that Gaines was frowning past his shoulder, turned and saw that Alex, camera in hand, had retreated to the furthest wall and crouched as if to obtain a floor-to-ceiling angle on proceedings. Gaines stepped past Blaylock and put his bulk fully before Alex’s lens.

‘Howay, maestro,’ said Blaylock, seeking to leaven the mood. But Alex returned the camera to his bag and came forward to the control desk as if obediently. Then he turned to Gaines.

‘All this footage you’re generating – what happens to it?’

‘Technical, eh? There’s a cupboard full of drives in the back, it all goes down the pipe into storage.’

‘And how long do you keep it for?’

Gaines looked newly serious. ‘We’ve a strict retention and erasure policy. Six weeks tops.’

‘Who’s allowed to look at it apart from in this room?’

‘Well, we’ll share it with the police, if they make a request, or if we think there’s something they need to see.’

‘You’ll have got me and my dad in the car park earlier, right? Can we see that?’

Gaines stiffened. ‘We’ve a strict disclosure policy, too. Requests have to be put in writing.’

‘The cameras record sound, too, right? What we were talking about?’

‘Alex,’ Blaylock eased in. ‘Bob here is not under oath.’

‘He’s fine, Home Secretary. No, the sound recording is only triggered by volume level. So unless you were having a right go at your dad—’

‘Not today, at least,’ Blaylock butted in, with a faked laugh.

‘You okay, Alex?’ Blaylock enquired of his silent son in the car back to London.

‘I’m fine. I was thinking you were narked with me.’

‘No, no. You asked very pertinent questions. I was proud. Did you find it interesting?’

The boy let out a short laugh. ‘I suppose the word I’d use is “appalling”? How, like, normal everyone was being. How we’ve sleepwalked into
that
being normal.’

‘Give it some credit. Shopkeepers running their own businesses, responsible for their own bills and livelihoods – they like having that extra security. Where’s the harm? In their shoes you’d be glad of it.’

‘I pay my own bills, Dad,’ Alex groaned.

‘That’s not what I mean, Alex, but obviously it’s your mother and I who support you and your sisters while you’re under our roof—’

‘It’s not “your” roof any more, is it, Dad?’

‘What I mean is your mum and I made an arrangement, as is right and proper, so, howay, don’t throw it in my face, eh?’

‘Yeah well, things change, people move on.’

‘I’m not going anywhere, Alex.’

‘Don’t feel obstructed on my account.’

‘Alex,’ Blaylock sighed, ‘try as you might, you won’t keep me from caring about you.’

‘There are other people who care about us.’

‘“Us” meaning?’

‘Me, Cora, Molly, Mum.’

‘Right. And that’s supposed to mean …?’

‘Forget it.’

‘No, why not say what you’re insinuating?’

‘You know, you talk like you still run the show, when you’re
a drop-in, you’re not interested in what we do, in our lives, you just want to give us what for. So, y’know, don’t confuse that with caring …’

Incensed by the steep descent into this miserable bickering, highly apprehensive that the boy owned some intelligence he wasn’t sharing, Blaylock glared at the back of his hands for some moments.

‘Is there something you want to tell me, Alex?’

‘Just what I said.’

He had been half-minded to take the boy with him to the television studio for the evening, but now his only intent was to see Jennie. When they reached the door of the Islington house, however, it was the ill-humoured Radka who welcomed Alex over the threshold.

At the studios Deborah Kerner met and took charge of him, insisting that he sit properly for the hair-and-make-up girl. ‘Don’t be touchy, David. Under those freaking lights everyone’s skin looks like shit without a good base.’

Thus caked and coiffeured he was led to the green room, where he was immediately face to face with Madolyn Redpath who looked as weary as he was feeling.

‘No restraining devices this time?’

‘I wouldn’t waste a handshake on you,’ she shot back. ‘Did you not think you owed me some sort of response about Eve?’

‘I looked at the file … all I can say is it’s complicated.’

‘So you’ll do nothing? I’d just wait for you to get the boot if it weren’t so dire for Eve. I see the papers are after you on domestic violence. I’m not surprised, frankly, given what you’re prepared to tolerate in the places where you lock up innocent women.’

He took the lashes, feeling he more or less deserved them, and could accept them from her to the extent that she seemed to have cast herself in the role of his private mortifier. He fully intended
to give a better account of himself, however, once they had an audience.

Half an hour later they were seated side by side and peering out past the hot lights toward a selection of the public that seemed to frown in unison. Madolyn had quickly found a questioner to agree with.

‘This government seems committed to a steady assault on our freedoms – whether it’s ID cards or cameras on every street or snooping on people’s emails or giving the security services whatever powers they want in the name of national security. We are a big, brave, free country, we don’t give in to people who want to attack our liberties, so why would we accept it from our government?’

Hearing the applause, weighing his reply, Blaylock considered saying that he wished he was in charge of anything so airtight as the surveillance state Madolyn imagined, given how many strays the system missed. But he thought better.

‘Well, the work of the security services is shadowy, because the shadows are where the threats live. Threats to our security are launched in secret, so the means to fight have to be secret too. CCTV? I think the public get what it’s for – deterring crime, solving crime – and they know it works. Emails? I mean, ours is a world where billions get sent every hour … Does anyone really imagine I want to read them all? But even where we collect bulk data, it hardly seems to me an invasion of privacy, if that word retains any meaning. The speed of our lives now, the convenience we expect, it depends on data flashing round the globe. And I think democratic societies are agreed on this, the world over. We say to retailers and big tech companies, “I want it now, so here’s my data.” And those companies are loved and trusted for the services they sell us, even if they retain and sell our data, even if they don’t pay their taxes, even if they’re not madly bothered what
sort of bad guys are abusing those services, too. But if someone becomes a person of interest to our security services? You can be sure there’s a reason, there’s hard intelligence strongly suggesting they’re a threat to public safety. In which case, I want to know who that person’s talking to.’