The Knives (26 page)

He managed a chuckle, and joined her by the door to take receipt of the citation as contained in an email she had printed out.

Perusing what struck him as claptrap he wandered out into the corridor, feeling the familiar sense of desertion about the place – until he nearly collided with a security guard who nodded to him, somewhat fretful, in the manner of a new start.

‘Where’s Fusi got to?’ Blaylock asked. ‘You know Fusi?’

‘
Przepraszam
, I, sorry …’ The guard shrugged, sounded Polish.

‘Never mind. At ease …’

On Thursday afternoon he was driven in full convoy out of Westminster and down the M4 to Heathrow, where red-suited and glossily made-up ladies conducted him to the VIP suite. Offered a glass of champagne, he requested water. Something about the superfluity of European excursions inclined Blaylock to frugality; but he had to concede his usual defeat once a limo was bearing him and his party a hundred yards across the tarmac to British Airways Flight 397.

Three hours later he was ensconced at the Brussels Plaza, splashing water on his face over a marble basin in which he felt a man could conceivably drown. There was a sumptuous beige-bronze blankness to the décor of the room; his emperor-sized bed struck him as pointlessly expansive.

After texting an update on his arrival to Sir Michael Roebuck, the UK’s chief civil servant in these parts, he lay back atop the bedcovers, clicked on the television, and surfed idly through the hotel orientation package, CNN, News 24 and the global stations.

He dallied for a little over some breathless coverage of a film awards ceremony from London’s South Bank: handsome types in evening wear parading down a red carpet lit up by camera flashes. Mildly diverted by the effort to recognise any of the talent, he then sat up from the bed as if shot, seeing Jennie – in the sheer dress he had so admired – standing at the side of Nick Gilchrist, he in black tie, nodding and absorbing the attention as though it had to be ruefully expected. Jennie looked lovely, and mildly abashed, then she was gone.

So it’s official
, he thought, feeling a coldness in his chest cavity.
Moments later he was in the grip of burning resentment, of hatred for a rival, of bewilderment over what in god’s name Jennie saw in such a man over himself. The whole situation was demeaning, unmanning, infuriating. He pressed a hard palm to his temple and exhaled.

Watch yourself, pal. Just … watch it.

He shut off the TV and spent some dour moments staring at the big rococo gold-leaf mirror that showed him, marooned and morose, amid the redundant splendour. A sense of futility suffused him by a little and a little. He felt no relish for his work come the morning, and miserably little appetite for anything else besides.

His phone pulsed. His first instinct was to chuck it at the velveteen wastepaper basket. He lifted it and saw a text from Abigail Hassall.
Are you in Brussels? Me too. Might we meet? AH

After considering for some minutes his options, his duties and his sense of what was prudent, he tapped out a reply.
Lovely idea. Let me get through tomorrow’s hostilities and we’ll see what can be done. DB

‘Our expectations are modest, of course,’ Sir Michael murmured to Blaylock in his unreconstructed smoker’s gravel. ‘But who knows how the chips will fall when honest Lithuania’s in the chair?’

Roebuck sat by him in the concentric charmed circle of the conference room, the multiple advisors and attachés confined to the outer ringside seats. Yet there was no position that struck Blaylock as one of executive authority – not even Lithuania’s – for everything in the great Europa was pre-fixed and made frictionless, a sequence of scripted roundtables and conveyor-belt photo opportunities, a train, nonetheless, that some parties seemed never to want to get off.

He endured it by the company of Roebuck, ex-investment banker, and to Blaylock’s eyes as effective an operator as any Cabinet
Minister he had known, rightly renowned for a pawky effectiveness in negotiating and horse-trading, above all for keeping up the desirable closeness with the Germans on a number of key policies. Alas for Blaylock, said policies were all about tight budgets and liberal markets, and nothing to do with borders, bodies or security.

Karl Giesler, Blaylock’s German counterpart, at least offered his view with the grace of a sorrowful smile. ‘The UK is not alone in wanting its welfare systems unmolested. But we must respect what we have made here by consensus, yes? No two-tier Europe.’

Lydia Schmit of Luxembourg was more waspish. ‘Our rules are good rules. Yet Britain pleads exception, as if the rest of us are inadequate somehow …’

In the chair, Lithuania pondered. Wordings were tried out, typed and passed around. Ultimately all member states agreed that free movement was a ‘core value’ of their Europa, but that at some point in the next year a working party might report on how the rules, so very good, so very agreed, came to be abused. With that, the parade went by.

Blaylock’s ‘off-line’, ‘bilateral’ conversations had a degree of candour, at least. The Spanish Minister, Gonzalez, balding and pugnacious, seemed as vexed as he by security in major transport hubs. Karl Giesler privately shared his woes about campus recruitment and radicalisation among German-born Muslims of foreign descent. ‘Our great problem’, Giesler sighed, ‘is a conflict of systems from state to state, data not shared. If we had a total-system solution …’

‘That’s what I think ID cards can do,’ Blaylock nodded fiercely.

But Giesler shook his head, with a look suggestive of wisdom dearly bought. ‘In Germany? That notion is … no. Not acceptable.’

Before he could return to the hotel he was ushered toward a small gaggle of bored journalists to give a compulsory briefing. But he
saw Abigail among them and felt his heart lift. She stood tall in strappy high-heeled sandals, svelte in a wrap-round red dress, her golden bob lustrous under light and her green eyes sending out their darkly amused allure. He sensed her eyes on him as he delivered boilerplate remarks.

‘We are not alone in Europe. Anyone with eyes can see the shared concerns. Of course there are differences, but compromise is doable …’

He was meant to have dinner with Roebuck and the team. Excuses were unconscionable, and he made it through two of four courses, before affecting a look so profoundly dark in pleading the pressure of work that he managed to secure an ‘early night’. Once inside his room he texted her again, telling himself that he was only flesh and blood, however aged and non-vintage.

Would you like to meet for a drink?

I suppose we could get round to that:) Where do I find you!?

Room 237, just knock. Is 10 p.m. okay?

There remained a ticklish matter to negotiate, and so he rapped on the partition door. Andy Grieve admitted him to the adjoining bedroom. On previous excursions they had shared a late whisky around this hour, and Blaylock felt a vague embarrassment in explaining that he would shortly have a social visitor.

‘Happy to stand down, boss,’ said Andy with a little mischief in his grin. ‘I reckon you’ll be in safe hands.’

‘Here we are again,’ she said, slipping out of her smart jacket and setting her bag down on the table. ‘We must stop meeting in fancy hotel rooms.’

‘Slightly more illustrious than Birmingham,’ he said, pouring wine for her and whisky for him, sitting opposite her. ‘Though, as ever, be aware there’s a man with a gun next door.’

‘Yes, I do find that strangely heightening.’

They exchanged looks and took sips.

‘What should we talk about?’ she said finally.

‘There’s not a great deal to bite on here, I admit. Sir Michael grinds the organ, I’m just the monkey. Do you absolutely need a story?’

‘It’s not really why I came.’ She put her face in her hand and gave him a sending look. ‘Cards on the table, I’ve been thinking about you.’

He returned her gaze with what he thought to be gravitas and raised his whisky to his lips, but somehow missed them, thus spattering his chin and shirtfront.

‘Christ, forgive me,’ he muttered as he dabbed at himself with his tie. ‘I must just be feeling a little … over-stimulated.’

Her look hardly changed, only softened by amusement. ‘I knew you weren’t the usual politician, but I am starting to wonder if you’re actually some kind of a monk?’

This did feel to him, gallingly, like one more cap that fitted, albeit at this given moment more regrettably than ever. ‘You’d be amazed’, he managed, ‘the things you can conquer by not thinking about them.’

‘Yes, they call it denial.’ She straightened and set down her glass. ‘Look, I will probably find it a little … awkward, if I have to extend myself too much further in your direction? Maybe I should withdraw – sensible girl that I am. If I hurry out now I might still get a decent look at the statue of the Peeing Boy.’

She picked up her bag and stood. He stood too, quickly, and moved to intercept her, then, anxious that he was showing all the delicacy of a nightclub doorman, took some care in gently prising her bag from her hands and returning it to the table. Then he put his hands round her waist and bent to kiss her mouth and saw her mirroring him, lips parting, eyes closing.

Though their kiss had urgency, he sensed that she felt as he did – still somehow constricted by something other than mere clothing, as though they were actually clad in opposing armours. He led her
by the hand to the bed then hastened to whisk the long curtains together, though the pulley system fought him for some vexing moments. When he turned back she had sat herself on the bed and begun to undress, efficiently. He turned aside to strip off himself, struggling only to think of where to put his trousers.

Turning back he saw her laughing lightly, already down to bra and knickers, and then, rising, she unclasped the bra and threw it lightly to the floor, a gesture he found hugely helpful to his mood. He realised now how stylishly she adorned herself in what she wore since, unclad, her broad hips, curved biceps and shallow breasts had an athletic, gym-honed solidity. Still, the aureate flush on her from head to toe was heavily arousing as she swayed across the parquet toward him.

‘The undies are all new, just so you know …’

This, said in a girlish murmur, also went straight to his blood, likewise her light touch of his chest and the longing brush of her cheek against his. As they made love he felt sure the urgency on her face mirrored his own, echoed his urge to make good, that their coupling would prove the flirtation had been worth the candle. She crossed her ankles at his back and he exulted in the sensation of being high inside her, snugly sheathed, welcomed home again.

They must have drifted off together, and such was the expanse of the bed that when Blaylock stirred with a start just after 2 a.m. he needed some moments to locate her shape more than a body’s length away from him beneath the cotton sheets. But he had no intention of sending her out into the night, whatever was her preference. Fumblingly he set the bedside alarm for 5 a.m.

Waking first, he shifted up onto a crooked elbow and studied her honeyed shoulders, the nape of her neck, her hair on the pillow. Abruptly, oddly, he remembered times when Cora had crept into his and Jennie’s bed, Jennie quite often clearing out to fall onto
Cora’s narrow cot. He had always loved to watch his daughter awaken – innocent, in a way it seemed to him that no one could be so innocent again. He peered closely now at Abigail’s auburn roots, until she rolled over, wincing slightly, stirring. Blaylock was keenly aware he would keep the memory to himself, since he also divined what Abigail was about to say before she opened her mouth.

‘What are you thinking?’

‘Just how lovely you are.’

She dressed while he shaved, and as she made to go he looked at her fondly from head to toe, superbly assembled, if just a tad more tousled than usual.
Will I see you again?
was what he thought he might say, but he judged it unwise. He stepped forward, embraced her strongly, kissed the top of her head, stepped back and smiled.

‘Will I see you again?’ she said.

‘I’d like that. If you like, this weekend, I could show you Teesside.’

The humdrum assignations of Blaylock’s constituency Friday had a fresh appeal to him in anticipation of what the evening promised. After lunch he busied approvingly through a local school, previously under special measures, now sorted out by a new head. He chatted freely with A-level history students, listened to a brass instrument recital, posed with a school football shirt.

By dusk he was in his constituency office being taken through the order of the next day’s surgery by Chloe, the intern, who seemed to be slowly mastering the rudiments of the job. Bob Cropper, plotting his larger media grid, impressed on him the need to accept an invitation to an upcoming ‘citizenship ceremony’ at Thornfield Town Hall, where he would present certificates to newly confirmed British citizens.

‘They’ll all have passed their language test’, said Bob, ‘plus their little history exam on what it means to be British. And I’m not sure all our constituents could do the same. Not always certain I could, frankly.’

Blaylock didn’t think twice. He knew he ought to be there, though he could imagine not everyone would be pleased to see him.

‘We done?’ he asked, slapping his thighs.

On the way back to Maryburn he mulled over the hopeful stir he felt inside, uniquely odd to him given the time of year – the true autumn of All Hallows and Bonfire Night, in its fecundity and decay, its slow-stripped branches and slatternly leaves. Usually these put him in mind of the sand in the hourglass. Now the quickening possibilities of a new relationship had changed the picture.

The Maryburn house had come to feel like a lair, the dwelling of a private creature with rough manners. In the time he had before Abigail’s arrival Blaylock tried some remedial work. He raked wet leaves, slashed the hedges into shape, changed his bedsheets and mopped his bathroom floor, then called on the grocer and the butcher and filled a box with best silverside, aromatic herbs and spicy Syrah.

Not long after 9 p.m. he saw headlights flare on the driveway and she purred up in her purplish Lexus cabriolet. He padded out into the dark to steer her into a berth within his garage and as he drew down the door he had the feeling of a mission accomplished.

Their hello kiss was long; he felt the soft impress of her tongue, and the warmth of her body through her black trouser suit. He finished off the meal while she read an old paperback entitled
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness
, her legs curled cosily beneath her. To his delight she ate red meat with brio, mopped bleeding juices with bread, and knocked back red wine without a jot of demurral.

Over coffee, his red box open between them on the low table, he took care to say little of its contents, considering her not yet fully cleared for such confidences. Still, he found himself describing at length his unsettling encounter with Diane Cleeve. Abigail listened intently, with a studious tilt of her head and the odd thoughtful pull on her earring.

He felt easier drawing some family background out of her. She referred to a younger sister, married to some charmless hedge funder and raising twins in a Twickenham house ‘like a vicarage’. Her college contemporaries, as she evoked them, were increasingly married with children, ‘boring on about school catchments and house prices’. She assured him that she, conversely, had a driving need to meet new people and new ideas, to play in larger playgrounds.

He asked her politely what she was working on. She described
a longish piece in the works about predictive science. ‘That’s more interesting to me than trying to tap MPs for quotes.’

She rises above it
, he thought,
she can take it or leave it, she knows there’s more to this world.

‘Someday soon you’ll have to tell me who told you all these mean things in the piece you did on me.’

‘Nuh-uh,’ she smiled. ‘Impossible. Then I’d have to kill you. Or, sorry, have you killed.’

When his phone pulsed on the table he meant to give it only the most cursory look in light of the hour. But it was Adam Villiers. He excused himself and went into the kitchen.

‘David, it’s a matter of some urgency. Haseeb Muthana’s wife gave birth this morning, an hour ago he spoke to her by a satellite phone, and we have a fix on his whereabouts. We have it thanks to Washington. Where Muthana is, whether by coincidence or design, is in a compound in Babur Ghar being used by a leading Pakistani Taliban commander whose name is Gul Sayid. It’s clear from what I understand that the Americans are not about to hesitate now they have such a high-value target in sight.’

‘They’re planning to hit the compound from the air?’

‘That’s right.’

Blaylock stared out into the darkness beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass of his kitchen. He thought about Haseeb Muthana, his wife and newborn child, the revolving eye in the sky now trained dispassionately upon him, the power to kill in the joystick-grasping hand of an operative somewhere in the Nevada desert.

‘David …?’

‘I mean, there’s nothing to be done at our side, is there, Adam?’

‘That’s my view. But I wanted you to be aware, David. Also I believe Caleb Aldrich may call you shortly.’

Sure enough, Blaylock was still tapping his phone ruminatively when it pulsed again.

‘David, you’re briefed on Sayid? I’m aware you got a passport
holder in the mix of this, but the window’s closing on these co-ordinates and I gotta say we can’t guarantee anyone in the vicinity’s gonna be walking out of there …’

It seemed a long way back to the room. In the event Abigail came down the hallway toward him.

‘David …? Are you okay?’

He thought for some moments, abruptly recalling that she had once been keen to know if he had ever killed a man.

‘Sorry, it’s not really discussable.’

She nodded, seeming to understand. He was comparing her to Jennie, without wishing to. And Jennie was a sort of living reprimand. With Abigail, though, he chose to believe there was a shared sense of the world’s moral murk.

They embraced under the cool clean sheets and he could have settled for that, troubled as he was and with wine taken, but she clambered on top of him, made the running, and he was carried along and energetically worked. Finally she fell on him, and he stroked her head and let her fine hair pour through his fingers.

In the night he awoke sharply and in fright from an obscurely menacing dream, feeling as though the bed were shaking violently beneath him. He slammed back against the mattress as if to evade his fate; but in an instant the silence and darkness all around him reasserted their sway.

Saturday morning surgery was at the office, and as his last-but-one appointment failed to show he slipped out to the caff to stretch his legs and wolf down a bacon roll. On his return young Chloe advised that his 11 a.m., Mr Peter Ayrton, was already seated in the meeting room.

The gentleman at the scuffed round table was fiftyish, in a smart tweedy coat, blue jeans, scarf and flat cap, like a veteran rock ’n’ roller turned country squire. He stood as Blaylock entered, hand outstretched.

‘Mr Ayrton?’

‘Pete’s my mate, actually, David. Forgive me, I gave his name. But I’m Duncan Scarth, pleased to meet you, we very nearly met before?’

Blaylock, digesting this information, elected not to take Scarth’s hand, debating instead how badly he should react.

‘I take it, but, that you know who I am? My job’s in bricks and mortar but I’m also the co-executive director of the Free Briton Brigade.’

‘It’s not on, this. Coming in here under false pretences.’

‘Well, I doubt you’d have seen me otherwise, would you, David? For all that you’re my MP.’

‘Come off it, round here’s not home to you.’

‘I bounce about a bit, but this is where I’m from, and I’ve a place in Maryburn just like you. Now look, I’m not here to cause you bother. Otherwise I’d have gate-crashed one of your little sessions at the shopping centre. I’ve got some concerns, but. About how the policies of your government are affecting ordinary folk round these parts.’

‘You’re a spokesman for them, are you?’

‘I’ve a little bit of a following behind me, yes, David. I know we’re easily scorned. I’m aware it gets said we’re a racist party? Point of fact, we judge no man on the colour of his skin. What we want is a decent democratic society, everyone respecting its laws and its freedoms. They say we’re anti-Muslim? Not a bit of it. But we oppose Islamism, because it’s anti-democratic. Now, is that so bad? Does that mean ye and me can’t have us a civil conversation, as MP and constituent?’

Blaylock lowered himself into a seat. Scarth did likewise, loosening his scarf, his cap jauntily in place.

‘Go on then. You’ve got fifteen minutes.’

Scarth sniffed. ‘Fair do’s. So, I listen closely to all what you say, David. I don’t see we’re so far apart.’

‘Your FBB leaflets say different.’

‘Eh, I don’t sign off every draft. There’s a range of opinion in our group. Listen, I cheered every word you said at Tory Conference. And on the telly the other week, with that daft little girl, the civil liberties gasbag? Trying to make out like you’re a relic in your own country … I get that, too. It baffles me. I don’t want the bloody 1950s back, I wasn’t around, man. It’s the future what bothers me. How do we live together? Make things fair? So we happily pay wor taxes for all what we need?’

Blaylock listened fretfully, wanting not common ground but clear blue water between himself and this man. He saw, though, as Scarth leaned forward, that a ‘but’ was on its way.

‘Thing is, David, then we see them immigration figures, rising all the time, and we have to ask, is it not just talk? When nothing ever changes? Answer me this, how did you get on in Brussels this week? Did you do anything to stop the flow of foreigners into this country?’

‘I had good exchanges with our European counterparts. My commitment is clear, they agree we need to work together to—’

‘Howay man, spare us that politician’s talk. Did you or did you not get owt out of them?’

‘My sense, Mr Scarth, is that nothing would be adequate for you. I don’t get the feeling you want us to have anything to do with Europe?’

‘You’re such a big fan of it, are you?’

‘I believe this country has a place in Europe, whatever the shortcomings of the arrangement. And you?’

‘Free Briton Brigade’s not anti-Europe, David. We’re a pan-European organisation, we’ve good comrades in Holland, Austria, the Baltics, in France. They don’t mess about, the French. They know they’re a nation, proud of their identity, their heritage, their culture. What we have in common is, one, we’s believe in our own sovereignty and, two, we’re not buying any fake idea of a greater
Europe. As you well know, Europe is only the start of the bloody problem … Why have you got all the African lads piling up at Calais to cross into us, not stopping in Germany and Norway? Plenty jobs there, decent wages …’ Scarth had been patting his pockets a while and now produced a tobacco pouch.

‘No smoking in here,’ Blaylock snapped.

‘Fair do’s. But you’ll not mind me rolling one for when I’m outside … Where was I?’

‘You were telling me what a problem immigration is round these parts? When we’ve got maybe two thousand immigrants, in a population of a quarter-million?’

‘Those numbers are on the up, and you pretend you’ve a grip on them, and you don’t. Makes a difference up here, David. Don’t tell me you’ve not had people in your surgery saying they can’t see a doctor, can’t find a place to rent, nursery for their kids.’

‘That’s not on account of two thousand immigrants, Mr Scarth.’

‘They see how it is in the waiting rooms. They see the ethnic shops. They’re on the bus and they can’t hear English spoken. Or they’ve lost work on the building site because some blow-in has quoted cheaper. You’re telling them not to believe their lying eyes?’

Blaylock could not take Scarth for an affable man, and yet his features were perpetually contorting into the look of patient amiability.

‘I know the facts don’t support that analysis. What I accept is people are having to deal with certain changes in the society.’

‘Changes, yes. Change can be disturbing. We’re not London, see, not got that exciting diversity you like down there, the Ethiopian food and the Polish brickies and Mary Poppins from Budapest. In my view it’s not a badness that’s in people, we just know what it means to be native British. You know what it means.’

‘Do I?’

‘Howay. You know. A like-minded sort of people, living in the same place, talking the same language, believing the same things,
respectful of the laws and traditions of the land. As I heard you at your conference, them who were here first have first claim, and them what come later, as guests, need to be good guests. Right? And if they’ve come to claim benefits ’cos here’s nicer than wherever they’ve been? Nah, forget it. If they’ve come to take jobs where we’ve got wor own people? Not needed, thank you. If they’ve come to wreak havoc on the streets of our cities? Howay, either respect the law or hop off to some Muslim country, right? I mean, what’s the United Kingdom for, David? To safeguard our island nation, isn’t it? We’re a bloody island and we can’t nail down who gets to cross our borders?’

It had not taken much, Blaylock observed, for the canny veneer to wear thin. Having had the pleased demeanour of a man with a lunchtime pint set up before him, Scarth now wore the glare of one who had six beers under his belt already.

‘I’m sure you think you sound very reasonable. But what me and the public see of your group is hordes of young men, full of drink in the middle of the day, swarming into areas where Muslims live without bother, chanting a lot of hateful things and challenging the police when they’re told off. Or are you not aware of that impression you make?’

Scarth raised two palms in concession. ‘Fair play, some of our members are lads who’ve been asked to leave football grounds in their time. Some, I’d admit, never even got through the turnstiles, right? And, god forbid, one or two of ’em might have thrown a punch at a man. But then so have you, haven’t you, David?’