The Knives

by Richard T. Kelly

  ‘Rocky!’ Jason Malahide, passing by, slapped Blaylock’s arm with a big phoney bonhomie. ‘That eye of the tiger of yours, I don’t know. Look alive, here comes the Captain.’

  Malahide’s ears had been the first alerted to the sound of the Prime Minister and his entourage from down the hall. ‘The Captain’ now appeared, patiently at the centre of that buzzing retinue, and the ministers made their show of snapping to order. Patrick Vaughan dismissed his retainers and cocked his head as if to lead the officers into Cabinet. They filed in, took their places round the long table with much shuffling of the Gladstone chairs – the Captain in centre place under the gaze of the portrait of Walpole, Ruthven assuming his inviolable perch on the Captain’s right, Blaylock to the left.

  Glancing right Blaylock appraised Vaughan’s familiar profile – the prominent nose, the well-tended fleshiness of his features, the hair stiff-brushed off the temples – like a top-order England batsman retired early to well-paid TV work and a newspaper column on wine.

  Caroline Tennant sat composedly opposite Vaughan, as if to mirror him. It always seemed to Blaylock that they were symbiotic, complicit, sharing in the true loneliness of executive leadership, their fates entwined. The rest of us are expendable, thought Blaylock, glancing around the table. We happy few, gathered in this seventeenth-century townhouse to turn our minds to the nation’s ills.

  There was an apparent ease to the table, it being largely a gathering of university contemporaries and schoolmates, Vaughan the primus inter pares. Though no class warrior, Blaylock had by far the humblest background of them all – his father a colliery mechanic, later a repairman running a hardware shop, but always a Conservative voter. ‘Don’t rely on the state to put food on your table, son. Elseways you’ll starve.’ Back when he had gifted Blaylock his first promotion, to shadow Defence Minister, Vaughan had praised him as ‘a tough character, plain-speaking, with a common touch’. What you mean, Blaylock had mulled on leaving the room, is ‘You’re from the north, you’re working class, you were in the army, and we could never, ever have too many of your sort.’

  But now the Captain was calling the table to order with a sidelong look in Blaylock’s direction. ‘Okay, so first, we’re relieved to have the Home Secretary with us today, and not in Accident and Emergency. As I always say, it goes to show they shouldn’t get you angry …’

  A rumble of perfunctory chuckles from heads bowed over paperwork. Vaughan sat back, never cheerier as leader – so it seemed to Blaylock – than when chairing a meeting. Yet it was Ruthven, relishing his role as lieutenant on deck, who now took over the running.

  ‘The Chancellor, Prime Minister.’

  Caroline Tennant murmured her way through just-published and not-especially-terrible GDP figures, her expression one of mild satisfaction, though she cautioned fellow ministers with the continued need for all departments to practise ‘self-restraint’. For most of them, Blaylock included, this had meant cuts of a quarter or more to their annual departmental spending in the last twelve months.

  The Captain chuckled, running a hand over one gleaming temple. ‘Well, the nation can be assured at least that the grown-ups are in charge …’

  Minor guffaws. Vaughan sought Caroline’s cool smile in return. Blaylock glanced round. Is that us? The grown-ups? On the issue of spending he more often felt that he and his colleagues were like errant children, inasmuch as whenever they were insufficiently abstemious then Caroline Tennant did the job for them, wielding an axe of veto to policies that bore too high a price tag. She did so very gracefully: not gratuitously, nearly apologetically. But axe them she surely did. Blaylock was never sure of her true motives. To save the taxpayers money, or massage some headline figures toward the higher calling of re-electing the Captain? Something in her style was unreadable.

  ‘The Foreign Secretary, Prime Minister?’

  Ruthven now invited Dominic Moorhouse – an ageless boffin in black-rimmed specs, his thick hair in meringue-like waves – to brief the table on the state of the game of nations. France had been pressed into a military operation in a former colony: the Palais de l’Elysée had politely asked after the possibility of British boots on the ground and, instead, had been politely offered advice from the counterinsurgency manual. US Special Forces, meanwhile, were conducting targeted drone strikes against alleged Islamist groupuscules in the Horn of Africa and northern Nigeria, in which direction the UK had gestured its support.

  Any minister was welcome to dip a finger in the blood of the Foreign Secretary’s position, or else to demur. But the Defence Secretary Susan Rivers, who had entered politics from management consultancy, had no military expertise to offer. Blaylock had long ceased to imagine his own ex-services opinion carried any special weight: nobody in Westminster valued any sort of life anyone had before politics. In any case, his view here was as everyone’s. Penetrating the arid centre of Somalia was a risky errand. Drone strikes, remote-controlled death from above, were perturbing, but met the need to injure and disrupt the enemy. The likelihood that they worsened the purported grievances of said enemy was not a matter one could afford to countenance, any more than one could really afford to address those purported grievances.

  Cabinet was clicking along with customary briskness, a handful of agenda headings despatched per the Captain’s wish to be done in forty-five minutes. Vaughan retook charge of proceedings.

  ‘So, the headline figures on net migration will be known today and, Home Secretary, we hope the good work will continue and the target for reductions kept on course, just in time for party conference?’

  ‘I am hopeful also,’ Blaylock nodded.

  ‘The Business Secretary, Prime Minister?’

  Jason Malahide, by dint of his black beard, always seemed somehow piratical when he bared his teeth. ‘I feel, again, I must point out that any reduction in immigration to this country shouldn’t be cheered from the rafters if the figures show we continue to deter the best business people from overseas, and foreign students, damn, sorry—’

  Malahide had been interrupted by the ringtone of a phone – his own, the bleeping notes of ‘Why Was He Born So Beautiful?’ The table made noises off and Vaughan his patented ‘Give me strength’ face, until Malahide had fumbled into his jacket and silenced the offender.

  ‘Sorry – yes, overseas students are the wealth creators of the future but our policy is driving them elsewhere and, frankly, hurting our economy. We are seriously inconveniencing the Chinese by forever taking their fingerprints, and wasting the time of our top banks on endless visa applications for overseas hires. I mean, old colleagues of mine in Zurich and Frankfurt are laughing at us.’

  Malahide, Blaylock knew, was not so much of a European, having made his money with a company that mined iron ore in Brazil and copper in Chile, was headquartered in Zurich and registered in Jersey. What did seem noteworthy to him was Caroline Tennant’s firm approving nod to the bit about ‘hurting our economy’.

  ‘Home Secretary?’ Ruthven tossed Blaylock the ball.

  ‘Obviously I share the Business Secretary’s desire that this country be a mecca for entrepreneurial talent—’

  Obviously we prefer wealthier foreigners, we’ve plenty homegrown poor.

  ‘However, he knows as well as I do what are the parameters within which we are obliged to make our decisions—’

  We swore we’d keep immigration low, so since we can’t do a hand’s turn about movement within Europe we have to hit the rest of the globe instead.

  Ruthven, to Blaylock’s annoyance, was busy as a racetrack bookie taking note of ministers now wishing to speak. Whenever Caroline Tennant or Dom Moorhouse addressed the table it was to give mere briefings on decisions already made – courtesy calls, letting colleagues know roughly what they were up to. Blaylock’s share of government business, though, seemed forever an invitation for all-comers to jump in with boots on.

  Valerie Laing, petite and flame-haired Communities Minister, tapped her folder vexedly with a biro.
‘Whatever happened to that idea of reserving job vacancies for our people? That we only let in an EU candidate where a UK national had first dibs?’

  Ruthven made a show of turning pages before him. ‘Those discussions were had, but never without the caveat that any such policy would require us to prepare for legal challenge, at some cost.’

  Malahide scoffed. ‘Our voters will say, “We’ve got a Tory government, so what’s it for?” Why don’t we just do what we think is right and let Europe sue us?’

  ‘Whatever any of us may think,’ Vaughan sighed theatrically, ‘we are bound by law.’

  Blaylock checked his watch – thirty-three minutes gone – and fell to gazing through the window at the rose garden. They had had this argument, fruitlessly, so many times. What he knew, what they all knew as grown-ups, was that it was folly to lump together all who migrated to Britain – from within Europe or without, for whatever reason – and, worse, to then subtract the numbers who left and consider the difference a target to be assailed and reduced. Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

  He was called back to proceedings by the irascible Malahide. ‘David, come on, how hard is it to ensure proper immigration checks get done on people before they can rent a flat, or use the health service, or get a driver’s licence?’

  ‘The legal advice my department received’, said Blaylock, bridging his fingers in a style he thought judicial, ‘was that if identity checks were made compulsory in that way then they would have to be applied to everybody. Including “our people”.’

  ‘So they’d have to lug their passports around while EU citizens get to pony up any of a hundred IDs they use on the Continent?’

  ‘Quite. That’s why we’re scrapping all that rubbish and just having one.’ Blaylock was cheered that the obvious rejoinder had fallen so easily into his lap. But not one nervous laugh was raised. He pushed on into the silence. ‘It’s why we want one biometric identity card, to get in and out of the country, to access state services, et cetera.’

  Ruthven’s pen was poised, the clock on the mantle ticked.

  Finally, Malahide chuckled. ‘Well, yes, over to you on that one, David.’

  Blaylock rubbed his jaw-line, looking from face to solemn face of his colleagues, feeling a cramped wrathfulness in his chest. ID cards had been a manifesto pledge, and yet the very mention of them, he knew, remained venomous to a whole swathe of people – some of whom were supposedly working with him to legislate the idea into existence, others of whom were sitting quietly with him around this Cabinet table.

  ‘The Leader of the Commons, Prime Minister.’

  Francis Vernon, Vaughan’s dependable right hand for all unpleasant business, fixed Blaylock with his usual restive frown. ‘On that point – the prospects for the Identity Documents Bill are a concern for all of us. MPs are unsure what’s going on. There’s a raft of legislation before the House, Home Secretary, and you were given your slot some time ago. So what’s the big hold-up?’

  Blaylock felt tension through his still-linked fingers as he gave a gritted response. ‘I have said, more than once, that regrettably there has been political briefing against this bill from within our own ranks. So I’m not surprised backbenchers are confused. However, it is quite true that the bill carries special complexities with regard to human rights, data, cost, security, privacy—’

  ‘Yes, and yet, amazingly, we press on.’

  Blaylock looked sharply at the interjector – Arts Secretary Belinda Ryder, in her former life a popular historian oft seen on television hiking up Greek hillsides, now the most conspicuous Cabinet rebel on civil liberties issues. Ruthven and Vaughan, however, were also glaring reproof at Ryder.

  ‘Belinda, with respect,’ said Blaylock, intending none, ‘these risks have never been taken lightly. We work to ensure the right solutions.’

  ‘David,’ Ryder rejoined, with the condescension she might show a layabout student, ‘those risks will never be resolved. To get the bill through is one thing, to live with it as law is a risk far greater.’

  ‘The Business Secretary, Prime Minister.’

  Jason Malahide grinned. ‘David, it’s your baby, I’m sure you know all too well how much work needs doing to sort the mess out. And if your department’s mutinous I’m sure you can rough them up.’

  Blaylock gave Malahide a long look, irritated by this show of support clearly meant to undermine, and by how much Malahide seemed to know about his department.

  ‘We will resolve the difficulties, and this bill will move forward.’

  ‘You say that, Home Secretary,’ Francis Vernon persisted, ‘but the perception is that it’s being put off and off while we struggle to work out how to do it. Meaning there’s a case we should just pull it.’

  Now Blaylock was lost for words. The silence extended. The room then looked to the Prime Minister, the only man who could ‘pull’ a bill, and thus banish it to the boneyard forever – the only man from whom ‘Sort the mess out!’ was truly an imperative.

  Finally, the Captain pronounced. ‘Let’s be clear. We know the Home Secretary is doing what he believes in. I believe in it, too. If it were just the two of us who believed, that would be enough.’ With that he shut his folder, seeking no further comment. ‘So, I expect to see you all at the Carlton on Thursday night, a big gathering of our clan, show of strength, all that.’

  Blaylock checked his watch – forty-four minutes. It was remarkable. To be precise, it was leadership.

  4

  Andy Grieve stood waiting by the Downing Street gates, where Blaylock advised they would walk back to Shovell Street. Andy conferred with police, the route was briskly agreed and Blaylock strode out, stiff from the morning’s exertion and his cramped seat at the Cabinet table. He was irked, too, by some of what he had heard.

  Malahide was right: it was ‘a Tory government’, but by a gnat’s whisker and no more, propped up by deals cut with Ulstermen, and it was silly to pretend such a thin mandate permitted high ideological posturing from commanding heights. The party was comforted and emboldened overmuch by Labour having elected a new leader from its most pharisaical wind-bagging tradition. Still, the odds of Vaughan losing the next election to such a figure could not be discounted. The Captain, for all his wiles, had earned no laurels on which to rest. The pollsters said he was not seen as ‘popular in the country’, nor as ‘tough and no-nonsense’, nor even as ‘basically decent’ – much less ‘the choice of a new generation’. But the job, if thankless, had been keenly sought, and to Blaylock’s mind there was no use moaning about it.

  Reaching into his jacket for his phone, Blaylock felt instead the envelope he had snatched from his hall table, and he seized the moment to part the seal and read. The letter was from Tamara Sahbaz, his old interpreter in Bosnia: she sent news that her son had begun college.

  Tamara had informed him shyly of her pregnancy on the day Blaylock’s company departed Bosnia. Nine months later, in the week he resigned his commission, she had written to say she and her husband had named the boy Davilo. ‘And that is from gratitude to you, David.’ A photo was enclosed. Davilo was dark-haired and dark-eyed like his mother, though he towered over her. Blaylock felt something in his chest, some offshoot of the pride in one’s own, and a gladness that the boy was growing up with such promise.

  It disturbed him, still, to think of how easily this might never have happened – by a hair’s breadth, a hair-trigger. Stari Vitez had been a vulnerable outpost. If the Croats felt they were losing ground elsewhere in the war, it was simple redress for their snipers to take it out on the villagers of Stari Vitez, who tended to stay indoors lest they offer a target. Tamara, though, had to be always on the move, and gradually Blaylock realised – from the bullet-holes pocking every bricked surface – that the snipers considered her a prime scalp. Each time he had watched her go warily on her toes across the duckboards over the mud he had felt a special dread, fearing the sudden crack and thump of sniper fire.

  Even now, under a milky
sun in Westminster, Blaylock had to shake his head sharply to dispel things he wished never to think of again, things that squatted there daily and nightly and reproached him.

  He folded and re-pocketed Tamara’s letter as he turned into Shovell Street. Outside, the morning’s protesters had grown a shade more populous and louder still, and some of the reporters who hadn’t got him earlier had remained, doggedly. But Andy cleared his path.

  As the lift doors were closing upon Blaylock Becky Maynard stuck a hand through the gap and pressed in beside him. ‘Oops!’ she sang, as if she hadn’t meant to intrude. ‘George Morley from the Sun called to ask if he could send one of his reporters on a jog with you tomorrow?’

  ‘Aw, not in a million years, Becky. I mean, howay.’

  ‘O-kay. So you know, there’s been some malicious editing of your Wikipedia entry this morning but we’re onto it.’

  ‘Sorry, my what?’

  She passed him an online print-out, a potted biography of himself with a passage ringed in red ink.

  Blaylock, a British Army captain in his twenties, is known for his commitment to ex-services charities, also for his ugly temper and acts of thuggish aggression toward people smaller than himself. Colleagues refer to him, without affection, as ‘Rocky’.

  ‘We’re on it, as I say,’ Becky said to Blaylock’s frown. ‘Also, the Correspondent have a new politics person, her name’s Abigail Hassall and she’s been on about wanting the big interview with you? It would be one sit-down, maybe a day’s shadowing?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘She said you’re “a fascinating character”.’