The Knives

by Richard T. Kelly

  2

  Geraldine and Becky Maynard both stood by Blaylock’s door wearing matching looks of mournfulness as he strode toward them from the lift, still clutching Madolyn Redpath’s dossier.

  ‘Griff Sedgley just called,’ said Geraldine. ‘To say the Supreme Court granted the Bojan Bazelli appeal. Unanimously.’

  ‘Right. Great. Does Griff think we’re beaten, then?’

  ‘He said no further action would be in our interest.’

  Becky pressed in. ‘I’m afraid a few papers have been on at me about your ex-wife. Too late for the Post but we can expect the broadsheets to say something. What would be our statement …?’

  Blaylock exhaled his displeasure. ‘“We are disappointed with the court’s decision.”’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Obviously if they want to say my ex-missus has given me a kicking round the courts then they’re welcome, whatever.’

  Geraldine tried a soothing tone. ‘David, the Judicial Office says could you possibly see Lord Waugh at his squash club tomorrow morning? Eight thirty? It’s in Highgate.’

  ‘Jesus. Okay. Whatever. Am I meant to bring kit?’

  ‘I’ll check. Don’t forget you need to be at the Commons for seven?’

  Blaylock grunted, having managed to forget the three-line whip that required him to attend the evening vote in support of government amendments on a Schools Bill. Worse – he now recalled – he had agreed to meet a delegation of backbenchers afterward, at the behest of his Parliamentary Private Secretary Trevor Parry, a notably sharp-elbowed Member who had coupled his fortunes closely to Blaylock’s own.

  ‘Rory and Seema are waiting for you inside.’

  ‘Eh?’ Now Blaylock was vexed. He had not requested a delegation.

  *

  Rory Inglis, Director of Counter-Extremism Strategy, rocked gently backward in a chair at Blaylock’s meeting table, his fingers laced contemplatively across his white shirt. A Foreign Office veteran, still youthfully bright-eyed and pink-cheeked under a thinning flaxen fringe, when he was not notably deep in thought Inglis specialised in tossing pitying smiles in the direction of those who failed to think so deeply. It was with such a smile that he now greeted the Minister.

  Blaylock, though, was looking at Seema Hassanli, one of Inglis’s most diligent ‘community officers’, sober in her black suit and Calvin Klein spectacles, her grave face framed by a black hijab.

  ‘Hi David,’ Inglis chirped. ‘I asked Seema along because she has a good eye on what I guess might be bugging you.’

  ‘There’s a few things you and I need to discuss first. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Okey-doke. Seema, sorry, give us ten mins?’

  Lips pursed, Seema gathered her files and departed. Absently Blaylock walked to his desk and set the Redpath file atop his in-tray. Hearing his door click shut he turned back to Inglis.

  ‘I had Sheikh Hanifa in yesterday, all het up again about Islamic societies on campus again. With good reason. And, of course, with al-Kasser back in the media – I feel I need to get my head straight on our counter-extremism agenda. What we’re doing and why.’

  ‘Gosh. As drastic as that?’

  ‘I don’t understand what we spend and what we get back. For instance – the Council of Student Societies, we work with them, right? We fund institutes who go and put inflammatory speakers in front of students. Some of those students, we’ve got them on surveillance, I sign warrants on them. There are so many groups, and bloody acronyms, alphabet soup. Then I find one that we thought was fine is peddling anti-Western sentiments, and one I never trusted anyway has guys talking out of both sides of their mouths … And we get shot of one lot then they resurface under another bloody acronym …’

  Blaylock felt he had gone on too long yet was waiting for Inglis to nod, indicate some sympathy or at least un-bridge his gnomic fingers. He waited in vain.

  ‘My point, Rory, is that we pitch a big tent and some strange birds come in to shelter. Do you disagree? Or are you fine with it?’

  ‘Some of these groups … Remember, they’re not monolithic, not exclusive, some of them find it as hard to run their ship as we do ours, right? They can’t always get everyone on-message. But, on the whole, it’s better we know what they’re up to. And show them we’re listening.’

  ‘I don’t want tolerated snakes in our midst.’

  ‘I hear you, David, but ask yourself, who do we want? Some kindly dragoman to reassure us? A nice old-school guy like Hanifa? Sure, but there’s a limit to what he can do. Or we could just talk to all the bright young Muslim guys and girls who are into liberal democracy and separating church and state. But that’s just what we want to hear.’

  ‘The justification for this spend is to counter extremist views, Rory. What’s that for, if not precisely to say that liberal democracy is better?’

  ‘It’s a lovely aspiration. But a long, long game. You have to try not to get agitated, see this as an ongoing operation. I understand you got in a strop with the Beeb over, what’s-his-face, Abu Blah-Blah?’

  ‘Abou Jabirman – Desmond.’

  ‘Right. I just wouldn’t go there if I were you.’

  ‘That’s exactly what Phyllida said.’

  ‘Well, there you go. My point is, don’t imagine young Muslims are filled with radical fire whenever he opens his big mouth. Radicalisation is a far more complex process, it takes peer group approval—’

  ‘Listen, you don’t need to tell me these guys’ knowledge of Islamic theology is shallow. I don’t imagine they’re impressively devout. I get that their thing is violence.’

  ‘Well, again, I wouldn’t assume Desmond is the messenger. He’s just working at his own career. He’s not stupid, Desmond. You need to be at least as astute as him.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m stupid, Rory?’

  Inglis laughed, a little too long and loud. ‘My simple view, David, my sincere advice, is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’

  ‘I’ve never understood what that means. And you need to be aware, Rory, I’m still looking for cuts in our budget. What we’re spending in your area looks vulnerable to me.’

  At last Blaylock felt he had succeeded in yanking the rug out from under Inglis’s hauteur. ‘Before you do anything hasty I trust you’ll take on-board my view?’

  ‘I will hear you but my decision will be final. Do you want to get Seema back in?’

  Seema returned, seeming no cheerier. Join the club, thought Blaylock, drumming fingers on the table.

  ‘Seema,’ said Inglis, resuming his thinker’s posture, ‘the Minister’s been looking at some of the groups we work with and basically he doesn’t like all that he hears – fears we’re throwing good money after bad. Is that fair, David?’

  Seema jumped in with assurance. ‘With respect, Minister, it could be the cheapest money you’ll spend. In my view you maybe need to hear more of what’s being said for yourself, not have it mediated.’

  ‘A degree of mediation is necessary,’ Blaylock offered, ‘if what’s being said is in Arabic, or Punjabi, or Urdu.’

  A silence followed. Blaylock sensed he had set the room on edge. Even Inglis now sat up straight. Seema was looking closely at him.

  ‘Minister, how many Muslim friends would you say you have?’

  Blaylock stammered slightly. ‘Obviously I know any number of leaders, representatives … I have contacts from community visits.’

  ‘Which community do you think you’re visiting when you go? Pakistani, Bangladeshi? Somali? Arab, Kurdish? Sunni, Shia, Ahmadiyya? Or just, y’know, a load of Muslims?’

  ‘I concede, I’m no expert in the regional or theological variations of Islam. The point is, I go wherever I’m invited. I’ll always gladly spend time with good people who sincerely want to make a difference.’

  ‘With respect – you don’t go there as a man. You’re behind a shield. You think your audience doesn’t know that? They see you doing your duty on the big “Muslim problem�
� … and they’re made to feel like just functionaries, too. Try treating them as people for a change.’

  ‘Well, I …’ Blaylock swatted his knee in mild exasperation, for his day seemed to be acquiring a theme. ‘It’s not easy.’

  ‘Not for any of us. So much of what I have to do has this narrow focus on young men and their discontents. I mean, what about women? They are passionate about issues, they can be agents for change. I spoke to a Muslim women’s group today—’

  Blaylock pointed to her head. ‘Hence the hijab? You felt the need for a flag of convenience?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You don’t wear it to the office routinely, do you?’

  ‘It was appropriate for my audience today, yeah.’

  ‘So, is that not a shield of sorts for you?’

  ‘It’s not a hard thing for me to have honest exchanges with Muslims. For you, Minister, that’s maybe something to work on …’

  ‘I repeat, I’m always, always ready to have the argument.’

  ‘That’s been established, Minister. I put it to you that you might want to look like you want to understand, not just to have a punch-up.’

  Blaylock could feel the black umbrage steam up in him at Seema’s words; if Inglis had not been sitting nearby, seeming to study him very intently, he might have let it boil over. Yet Seema herself seemed undeterred – un-possessed – by any fear of how he might react.

  ‘If you wanted to meet some people who are honestly trying to do good, there’s two great guys I know running a project out in Stapletree in Essex. Sadaqat and Javed? Sadaqat’s a qualified youth worker, mentor; at his local mosque he set up a seminar and a bookshop, and now he’s set this place up with his mate Javed, and it’s really impressive. If you met them and heard them out about what they’ve done and why, I bet you—’

  ‘Stapletree? Fine. Seema, you set it up and I’ll be there.’

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’

  Blaylock looked to the ceiling. ‘Aw, come off it. Guess what, I have a prior engagement, as you can imagine …’

  ‘And is it really so important?’

  ‘Ha.’ Blaylock recalled the Captain’s insistence that his ministers all be present and correct in black tie at the Carlton Club.

  And then he thought again.

  ‘Actually, when you put it like that …’

  ‘So, come to Essex with me. It can be simple. Low-key.’

  Blaylock had to laugh even as he rubbed exasperation from his eyes. ‘“Low-key”, aye. I hope these lads will be happy with my security crawling all over their gaff tomorrow morning. But, yeah, consider me happy to take your advice, Seema. Don’t make me regret it.’

  Geraldine was at the door and gesturing. Blaylock rose.

  ‘Geraldine, sorry, there may just be a tweak to my schedule tomorrow night …’

  *

  With matronly precision, minutes in advance of Blaylock’s last engagement of the day, Geraldine packed up his ministerial box and Blaylock, belatedly remembering his pledge to Madolyn Redpath, shoved the black folder down into the red box’s maw. Finally Geraldine presented him with details of the squash club where he was due to meet with the Lord Chief Justice early the next morning.

  ‘He says he’ll happily hit with you if you’re up for it,’ Geraldine added as Blaylock peered perplexedly at the scribbled address.

  *

  Blaylock had never been much of a ‘House of Commons man’. On his arrival as a new Member seven or so years previously, pacing around outside committee rooms while he waited to be allotted a cupboard from which to represent Teesside South, he had found nothing instantly endearing. He was no Westminster anorak, and found the procedures of the place to be fustian, hidebound, irksome, utterly unimproved by the fulsome provision of subsidised dining and drinking. The quaint etiquette of Parliament being hardly more efficient than the manuals of the Civil Service, Blaylock felt himself further restrained from telling Phyllida Cox how much better he thought the machine could run.

  Still, at certain rare moments, he had felt Westminster exerting some large and poignant charm over him. On one evening during his drear weeks of orientation he had wandered the low-glowing corridors of the Palace alone, finishing up in the vastness of Westminster Hall where he looked up to the great hammer-beam roof and felt a kind of piety toward all that had been raised there in the name of representative democracy.

  Now, just in time, Blaylock strode from the Members’ Lobby into the Chamber, took the nod from the sergeant-at-arms and paced past the long and garrulous lines on the benches – Members anxious for their dinner, easily made miserable. Taking his frontbench berth he acknowledged his PPS Trevor Parry, keenly in the row behind him, and Government Chief Whip Tim Charlesworth perched hawk-like by the gangway, a black Moleskine notebook held ominously to his breast.

  ‘The Question is as on the order paper,’ bellowed the Speaker. ‘We will move to division. Clear the Lobby!’

  Back on his feet he moved with the throng out to the Aye lobby. Having given his name to the clerk Blaylock was shortly back out in the Members’ Lobby, whereupon Gervaise Hawley dallied over, smoothing his salmon-coloured tie between his finical fingers, a slight and acerbic smile pre-arranged on his face.

  ‘So, David, you’ll soon be prostrating your Identity Documents Bill before us?’

  ‘That’s right, Gervaise. Our day in court.’

  ‘I knew the day would come. Empires fall, great men come and go, tides rise and recede and yet, once again, as the deluge subsides, we see a lonely Home Secretary clutching an identity card and crying that everybody must have them …’

  The allusion, too, had clearly been prepared in advance and Blaylock shrugged his acceptance of Hawley’s mockery just as Trevor Parry appeared at his side. Together the two repaired to Blaylock’s office behind the Speaker’s chair, a poky, perennially musty room with green leather Pugin furniture and a sideboard at which Parry busily dusted wine glasses and uncorked a Saint-Émilion Grand Cru.

  Then they trooped in, the Honourable Members for Twining, Newhampton and Thanet, all bright new boys in the last parliamentary intake, keen to have their interests noticed, susceptible to blandishments. They paid their respects and took their glasses, and then Thanet stepped a few paces forward to make the demonstration to the Minister.

  ‘We want to reassure our constituents that the government hears the message from parts of the country that don’t shove themselves forward …’

  Thanet struck Blaylock as a good solid constituency man. He listened with care.

  ‘We must be seen to have the interests of the public first, the rights of innocent victims, not those of dangerous criminals. Our rights were won at Runnymede. They’re not a gift from Strasbourg judges with an overweening self-opinion.’

  ‘I share your concerns. It so happens I am meeting the Lord Chief Justice tomorrow.’

  ‘You cannot direct judges, you need to change the law.’ This was the contribution of Newhampton, a pale, porky, bespectacled chap, to Blaylock’s eyes the obstinate sort who might fancy himself as a rebel.

  ‘A British Bill of Rights is what we’d favour,’ purred Twining, a posh-sounding Scot. ‘The best of all possible worlds.’

  Blaylock nodded as to indicate he had heard, then switched, in the style of the questing journalist, to one last thing he might have said at the start. ‘As you’re aware, we expect in the next sitting to bring forward the Identity Documents Bill. I trust I have your support.’

  ‘You’ll hear some say, Minister, that it might do the government a greater service to vote against the bill?’ Thus spake bold Thanet.

  ‘Never, ever believe that,’ said Blaylock, tilting his brow in a show of veteran displeasure. ‘Loyalty, for me, is the only virtue.’

  ‘“To the country, always. To the government when merited.”’ Thus Twining, who, Blaylock decided, might have to be watched.

  But Thanet thrust his chin forward cheerfully. ‘We are dependabl
e freikorps, Kapitän. And we are ready to be led. Strongly.’

  Blaylock wanted to wince but thought it wiser to smile, aware that he sometimes used equally dubious allusions after half past six and half a glass of wine. They drained their glasses and exited the office in decent spirits, there to see the Chief Whip loitering watchfully in the corridor.

  ‘Tim. Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof?’

  ‘Well, quite, David. Quite.’

  Rapidly Blaylock strode out to New Palace Yard where his Jag awaited, fully expecting the Chief Whip to tell Patrick Vaughan that his Home Secretary was conducting secret manoeuvres among younger MPs, conspiring for a tilt at the throne – the standard power-paranoia of politics, in which Blaylock had not the slightest interest.

  *

  At home he was compelled to spend a good half-hour on wardrobe choices for the following day. What with a morning squash game, a community run-out in Stapletree and a black-tie do at the Carlton, he had the sense that the Jaguar might have to function for the day as a sort of four-wheeled changing room.

  With suit-bag and kit-bag packed, he sat and perused Madolyn Redpath’s file on Eve Mewengera. Documents from the Foreign Office and Habesha’s High Commissioner in the UK were both clear she had to go and rejected her complaints, asserting compliance with international conventions. Yet Blaylock found himself seeing the thing from the other side. What had befallen the woman was evidently grim, iniquitous. How could she expect anything to get better? The thought in his head was clear and chastening. It shouldn’t happen. And yet, to reverse this state of affairs would be a huge deal. He simply hadn’t the willpower to think about it, not tonight.

  He had begun to glance anxiously to his silent phone set on the desk by the file. Now it rang, and he jumped. But it was only Mark Tallis, with his customary briefing on the next day’s newly set headlines.

  ‘Your honeymoon in the papers didn’t last, patrón. The Mail’s gone big on the immigration figures, says you’re “presiding over failure”. And the Sun’s made a headline out of your ex-wife’s win in court.’