Knife Edge : A Novel (2020)

by Mayo, Simon

  Famie checked the envelope. ‘That is most definitely it,’ she said. ‘I admit to some disappointment. I was hoping for another riddle, not the phone number of some dodgy helpline.’

  ‘But it’s an 0800 number,’ said Sam. ‘That’s usually sales of some kind. I told you it was a pizza company.’

  Jo returned with tea. ‘Is that your mystery typist again?’ she said.

  Sam showed her the paper.

  ‘Well you’d better dial it then,’ she said. ‘Use the house phone, we’re ex-directory. Here.’ She handed Famie a cordless handset. ‘If it’s a Busty Belinda-type number will you be relieved or disappointed?’

  It was a good question. Famie paused, her finger hovering above the digits.

  ‘Disappointed,’ she said.

  ‘Relieved,’ said Sam.

  ‘Right then,’ Famie said.

  Heart racing, she dialled the number, hit the speaker button. The phone rang twice, then a recorded message kicked in. No one breathed. Then a woman’s voice: ‘Thank you for calling the Daily Telegraph Classifieds. Here’s how you can leave your message …’

  Famie cut her off, dropped the phone on the sofa.

  ‘Really?’ she said, glancing from Sam to Jo. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘Well either it’s a scam or someone has left you a message,’ said Sam. ‘And no, we haven’t got a Daily Telegraph to hand. The corner shop might still have one.’

  Sam checked his pockets and ran from the room. ‘Two minutes,’ he shouted before the front door slammed.

  Jo smiled at Famie. She oozed reassurance and comfort. No wonder Sam was so loyal. ‘You OK?’ she said. ‘Been a crappy time, eh?’

  ‘You could say that.’ Famie tried to return a smile of equal warmth.

  ‘Has Sam told you he’s going to quit?’ said Jo. Famie’s startled look told her everything she needed to know. ‘Oh, OK. Well.’ She sat down opposite Famie. ‘He’s going to quit. Had enough. We both have. And when you bailed out, that was the final straw.’

  Number fourteen, thought Famie.

  Rapid and sustained use of the doorbell took Jo from the room. Seconds later Tommi appeared, jogging Lycra and sweatband competing for attention.

  ‘How very 1985,’ said Famie. ‘For a moment I thought it was Huey Lewis and the News running in. How are you, Tommi?’

  Tommi grunted a reply, snatched up the typed note, then grunted again. ‘Is this it? Is this what I ran round for?’

  Famie shrugged. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘A phone number?’

  ‘The Daily Telegraph Classifieds number. And to save you asking, Sam’s gone to get one.’

  He slumped down next to Famie. He smelt ripe.

  ‘Shower needed, by the way. Just saying.’

  Tommi ignored her. ‘Envelope?’ She handed it to him. He inspected it. ‘You should report this. Who knows who this crazy is, but in the space of a couple of days they’ve found out where you live. Maybe they followed us back from the funeral, who knows. But you should tell the office.’

  ‘Don’t have one,’ said Famie.

  ‘Oh yeah. Forgot.’

  ‘Plus, Lewis couldn’t have been more dismissive if he’d tried.’

  ‘You showed him the note?’

  Famie nodded. ‘Said he’d put it in the crazy file.’

  Tommi read the number again. ‘There must be another message. I didn’t even know the Classifieds were still a thing.’

  The front door burst open and a breathless Sam appeared, throwing a newspaper to Famie. ‘Their last one. I told them it was for research.’

  Tommi laughed. ‘It’s not porn, you know, you don’t need an excuse to buy it.’

  Famie was turning the pages rapidly. ‘Anyone know where the Classifieds actually are?’ She found them a few pages from the back. Four columns of small messages. She guessed about a hundred. She ran her finger down the first column. Nothing. The second column. Nothing. The third and fourth, nothing. ‘Huh,’ she said, and repeated the search. ‘Plenty of weirdos but not our weirdo.’

  ‘Did we get the wrong day?’ said Sam. ‘Maybe it’s tomorrow?’

  ‘Or never, because he’s just weird?’ said Tommi.

  ‘Why is this a “he” by the way?’ said Sam. ‘Plenty of weird women out there.’

  Famie glanced again at the note with the number. ‘Unless …’ she said, then stopped. Her mind was racing.

  ‘Unless what?’ Sam and Tommi said together.

  ‘Unless we’re not supposed to be looking for an ad, we’re supposed to be placing one.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Tommi.

  ‘Maybe our weatherman wants to talk. He, or she, wants us to place an ad.’ She looked at three sceptical faces. Shrugged. ‘Just a theory.’

  Jo was reading the even smaller print. ‘You have to place an ad by four p.m. We’ve got fifteen minutes if we’re doing this.’

  ‘We’re doing this,’ said Famie.

  She retrieved her laptop from the carrier bag. She posted her ad with three minutes to spare.

  20

  5 p.m.

  JANE HILTON SAT quietly in the corner of Andrew Lewis’s office. Legs crossed, hands held together on her lap. She watched the bureau chief leaf through her report. Four pages, closely typed. He read the first page slowly then sped up as he got to the last page.

  ‘Yeah yeah, got all that,’ he said as he skimmed the last paragraph. As much to himself as Hilton. ‘What’s your point, Jane?’ he added. ‘As brief as you like. As blunt as you like.’ He flipped his glasses to his forehead, sat back in his chair. His face twitched, then settled in neutral.

  Hilton looked taken aback. She hooked a strand of hair behind each ear, brushed imaginary creases from her skirt. ‘Well I’d have thought that was obvious, Andrew.’ She leant in to make it more obvious, forearms resting on her knees, hands still together. ‘Famie and I crossed over in Pakistan by nine months. Your high opinion of her is valid. But during that time she seemed to make a point of working with, and reporting on, the most extreme Islamists she could find.’ She gestured at the sheets of A4 on his desk. ‘I’ve outlined five cases where maybe what was seen at the time as bravery was, in my judgement, borderline reckless. The first is the 2006 attack on the Mumbai local trains. Seven bombs in eleven minutes. Two hundred and nine dead. An outrage, condemned across the world.’

  Lewis raised both his hands, palms out. ‘I remember, Jane,’ he said, ‘I remember. Please. You’re not on air. Talk to me like I’m normal. See how that goes.’

  Hilton regrouped. Pursed her lips, glanced at the floor. More hair, more creases. ‘I think the right response would have been to have gone first to the mainstream parties. PTI, PAT, Pakistan Muslim League, for example. Ask them for comment. But Famie went straight to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the so-called “Army of the Righteous”—’

  ‘Who carried out the attack,’ interrupted Lewis. ‘Again, I remember. Go on.’

  Hilton took a beat. ‘You incorporate the crazies in your reporting of course. You get to them. But if you ignore the mainstream then our audience get a skewed view of what’s happening. The point I’m making is Famie goes to the extremes. Always has. She distorts and twists. Why talk to the moderates when there’s a guy with a gun to talk to?’

  Lewis flicked back to the report. ‘And then the Mumbai attacks in 2008? The Taj Palace and so on.’

  ‘Same again,’ said Hilton. ‘She was in Berlin by then but knew all the numbers to call. The quotes she got from Lashkar-e-Taiba were pretty inflammatory. They’re just not the first call you make. If there’s an outrage here, is the first person you call someone who’ll justify that outrage? Or maybe you’d call the victims’ families, the police and the ambulance service. I know how I would run it. I think I know how you would run it too, Andrew. When you were in Chechnya you knew who to speak to. You knew how to balance the horror without giving a justification for it.’ She sat back, case made. Point proven.

  ‘Fraternizing with
the enemy?’ said Lewis. ‘Is that what you’re suggesting?’

  Hilton tipped her head one way then the other. Sifting the words. Panning for gold. ‘Your choice of words, Andrew. But no, I wouldn’t say that. She was on a story. Always on a story. Working her leads. That’s what she does. Or did. It’s just that her leads were always thugs.’

  Lewis considered the point. ‘You debated this with her? When you were both in Pakistan?’

  Hilton nodded. ‘Many times. But she was my senior back then, so … she carried on doing it her way.’

  Lewis lowered his glasses, picked at the pages in front of him. Reread a few paragraphs. ‘And did these … thugs, these extreme groups, ever contact her?’ he said. ‘As far as you know.’ He studied her carefully. Hilton’s face was impassive. Her camera face.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they did,’ she said. ‘That’s often how it goes. But I don’t know that for certain.’

  ‘I see.’ He let the silence run. Hilton shifted in her seat. ‘And when she started dating Seth Hussain,’ Lewis said, ‘what was your reaction?’

  She shrugged. ‘I didn’t have one really. He seemed a decent enough journalist. That’s it really. They both thought it was some big secret of course. Played it like they were undercover for some reason. And no one knew about Amal then, so … that’s it.’ She shrugged again, this time accompanying it with open palms.

  ‘And now you know about Amal,’ prompted Lewis, ‘that he is a wanted, known Islamist terrorist … what do you think?’

  Hilton took a while to collect her thoughts. Eventually she said, ‘I don’t get surprised any more, Andrew. You said to be as blunt as I liked?’

  Lewis gestured a ‘carry on’ to her.

  ‘Did she date Amal too? Do we know?’

  Lewis frowned, deep grooves running between his eyebrows. ‘She never met him, apparently,’ he said.

  Hilton did the head tilt again. ‘Oh. OK.’

  Lewis recognized her tone. ‘I take that to mean why shag a moderate when there’s a guy with a gun you can shag instead,’ he said.

  Hilton folded her arms. ‘I’m sure that isn’t the case,’ she said, her words weighted precisely to mean the opposite. ‘But it’s an interesting line of inquiry.’

  Lewis took a mint, offered Hilton one. She shook her head.

  21

  6.10 p.m.

  THE STUDENT LED that day’s interrogation. ‘Criticism and self-criticism’ was the official term used, CSC for short. The Weathermen had called it a weatherfry. The leader’s words were yelled endlessly, thrown in the face of a man who believed in them already.

  Wade in filth. Embrace the butcher. Change the world.

  There would, the student realized, be plenty of filth to wade in.

  The main bedroom of the house was also the largest room in the house, so it doubled as a meeting room. Its windows and sagging, heavy curtains were closed, the temperature oppressive. Two spartan single beds had been pushed into a corner, four wooden kitchen chairs placed around a fifth, like a five of clubs. When the student entered, just behind the leader, a heavily perspiring man was already on a chair, sitting in the centre of the room. His shoulder-length sandy-brown hair was tied up in a messy ponytail, his small black eyes darting between them.

  ‘Can we, maybe, get this done?’ he said. ‘I’m sure we all have more important things to do here.’ He wore running shorts and a tired-looking yellow LA Lakers top with the number 23 stamped on it. One leg bounced nervously.

  The student and the leader sat facing him.

  ‘We need to begin.’ The leader’s voice was light, almost reedy, heavily accented. He wore black browline glasses on a sallow, thin face. A fresh buzz cut, clean-shaven. He placed a small grey box about the size of a remote control on the floor in front of him. Two buttons, one small meter under a clear plastic cover. The leader’s own Geiger counter. To warn, he explained, of the inevitable security service attacks.

  The man fidgeted some more. ‘You tell us that these sessions work, yes? You say you learnt their importance back in Turkey and that they’re in use in all citizen groups here.’ He scratched his scalp vigorously with both hands. Now he glanced between the student and the leader. ‘But aren’t we just talking to ourselves? Who cares what I’ve thought in the past. We all know this country is available to us. All of the pillars that prop it up are hollow. If there’s a war to be fought, let’s get on and start it!’

  The student held up both hands. ‘We know, we agree. It’s why we’re here. But you know how we work.’

  They all looked up as a woman entered the room, sliding into one of the remaining seats. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. She was late twenties, tall, slightly stooped. A face of sharp features – pointed nose and chin, small ears. ‘How was the exam?’ she said to the student.

  ‘This isn’t a fucking social,’ interrupted the leader. ‘This is work. Hard work. The cell will only become stronger by purging itself. Begin.’

  The student dragged his chair so he could sit facing the sweating man. Their knees were touching.

  ‘How long were you a fascist?’ asked the student.

  The sweating man sighed. ‘This shit again? You know it.’ He took a breath. ‘When I was at school I joined the British Movement. There was this guy in the year above me and he seemed to know what was happening in the world. So I followed him for a while.’

  ‘Answer the question,’ said the student. ‘How long were you a fascist?’

  ‘About five years, give or take.’

  ‘That’s a long time to be working with criminals,’ said the student. ‘You must have made many good friends. Do they stay in touch?’ He leant closer. ‘Do you stay in touch?’

  The sweating man shook his head. ‘Stay in touch? Is this a joke? The rules – your rules – say no computers, no phones, no website, no online presence at all. We’re off the grid. Invisible. Even if I wanted to stay in touch with the fash, I’d have to write them fucking letters!’

  ‘And do you?’ said the student, his tone still conversational.

  The sweating man glanced around the room. ‘What is the point of all this? Honestly? You know I don’t. I spend all my fucking time here with you guys. We’re all just waiting to be useful, to link up, to cause some damage. To bring the war home. It’s what we’re training for, isn’t it?’

  ‘When did you realize your crimes? Say it out loud.’ The student placed a curled finger under the sweating man’s dropped chin, pushed it back up again. ‘Tell us.’

  The man bristled, leant forward. He turned his head and spoke his words to the leader. ‘My crime,’ he said, speaking with a controlled emphasis, ‘was not to see that globalization had made slaves of us all, that the corrupt oppressor class had control of the so-called left as well as the right, that human rights are an imperialist vanity and that elections don’t mean shit.’ He sat back.

  The student leant in again. ‘What doubts do you have about our project?’

  ‘None. I have no doubts. This country is weak now. It is not how it was. Everyone knows this. Our analysis – your analysis – is the right one. It is ready for insurrection. The institutions are discredited, dysfunctional. All of them. Christ, even the ruling class attack their own Parliament and judges. The country is weak but our cells are strong. Some well-aimed blows and it all could crumble. So no, I have no doubts.’

  The student kept his eyes on him. ‘That’s not quite right, is it?’ he said.

  The sweating man’s eyes flashed with irritation. ‘OK, sure, well I found the whole secrecy thing difficult for a while. That’s not a secret. It’s the twenty-first century. Using old tech seemed weird to me. But I get it now. The best way to avoid detection is to have no digital footprint. I honestly get it. Typewriters, letter drops, invisible ink, phone boxes, all of it.’

  The leader removed his glasses. He was getting restless. The student had to go for it now.

  ‘Are you a saboteur?’ the student said.

  The
question caught the man off guard and he looked startled. ‘Am I a what?’

  ‘Are you a saboteur?’ the student repeated, the words sticky in his mouth. ‘A class traitor. An informant.’

  The sweating man’s face had changed from sneering aggression to extreme discomfort in a moment. His mouth fell open, his eyes darted between the student and the leader. ‘Sweet Jesus, you’re serious.’

  The student punched him in the face. The leader took out a knife. Wooden handle, long blade.

  Wade in filth. Embrace the butcher. Change the world.

  22

  Saturday, 9 June, 4.35 a.m.

  THE STUDENT COULDN’T stop the leader’s words rattling around his head. He might as well have ‘embrace the butcher’ tattooed on his eyelids. And yesterday they had all learnt the longer version. Just before the leader performed the cut. He had closed his eyes, as though making an ecstatic religious utterance. Said the words came from a play. His voice was controlled, soft, but his eyes had been wild. He had glowed with pleasure as he spoke.

  If you could at last change the world, would you step up and do it? Wade in filth. Embrace the butcher. Change the world.

  Then he had taken the sweating man’s ear, stretching it out. The knife he rested on the top, the helix, its outer fold. He was ready to slice. He had addressed his words to the student and the woman. The jury.

  ‘The operation is close. Very close. Soon, all the citizens will strike. We will get our chance to make our mark. To strike against the enfeebled imperialists that devastate the lives of so many. But the closer we get to the enemy, the more likely their attacks on us. We must be watchful. Always watchful.’ He had stood on tiptoes. ‘We too have a traitor. Yes? And who else than the fascist?’

  The leader had cut. The sweating man had screamed.

  Now the student lay on his bed, staring at the small red bulb of a smoke alarm high above his head. He had done his best with the salve and the bandages. The sweating man had slept, but his breathing was shallow, troubled.