The Knives

by Richard T. Kelly

  ‘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 governmen
t 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.’

  Madolyn looked at him askance. ‘Do you ever turn down an MI5 request for surveillance?’

  ‘Yeah. Of course I do. It’s a question of resources and sometimes my instinct is it’s not right. But mainly the security services are very meticulous in identifying a threat, and I take it seriously because the public expect me to, and you would take it seriously, too, if you were in my chair.’

  ‘Next he’ll tell us that he walks the walls at night so the rest of us can sleep in our beds … Every Home Secretary tries that line, that only he really understands how big the terror threat is, so all us little people should just take his word for it and shut up.’

  ‘It’s not so simple. With the wisdom of hindsight, sure, every decision is clear. But when you have to assess developing situations … quite often every option is equally unappealing. The point is, we are obliged to act, otherwise people will rightly suppose we couldn’t make a decision, didn’t have the nerve for it. And nerve is what’s expected of us. Now, I respect the integrity of civil liberties campaigners, but it seems to me that it leads by logic to a position where one can argue that the price of liberty could be a bomb going off on our streets. And let’s not kid ourselves about what a hard ask that is. Do we ask the general public to pay that price? Would you or I?’

  The room was subdued, a mere smattering of applause, but Blaylock was hopeful he had disconcerted at least a few among them.

  *

  Afterward, as they stood having their lapel mics unclipped, Madolyn showed every intention of extending the quarrel.

  ‘It’s tough for you, I see that, I don’t know how we can build your Jerusalem until we’ve all got chips implanted under our skin, right?’

  ‘Sure, that’s what I dream of, Madolyn, the UK as one big infra-red grid, like a web that twitches with every tremor.’

  ‘And you at the centre like a big fat spider. Do you never feel like a fraud?’

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘Do you ever just feel like you’re an actor on a stage? Do you actually understand what you say might have consequences? About more than just your career and keeping your party in power?’

  ‘Oh Christ, now you’re being offensive, you might as well have brought your bloody cuffs if you planned to dog me round all night.’

  She thrust a torn envelope at me. ‘Will you read this? It’s a letter Eve wrote to me. She’d be appalled to think I’d shown it to you but, really, I don’t know what else to do. She’s due to be put on a flight at Heathrow on Sunday night, leaving 8 p.m. If it makes any difference to you.’

  He shrugged resignedly. ‘You can be sure I’ll give it a look.’

  ‘Care or don’t care, just don’t pretend you care.’

  *

  Back at home he extracted from the envelope and unfolded a curled and blotted sheet of lined paper written in a careful hand. He sat on the edge of his bed and read.

  Dear Ms Redpath

  I want to thank you for your efforts on my part. I understand I may be sent back in days. I am preparing, as you ask, to tell my story, the facts of my case, for one last time, one last try, and I do appreciate your advice.

  It is true what they say of confinement – your senses get stronger, but you wish they were weaker, since what is around you denies all senses anyway. You are just living inside your head, and your head is a wretched place.

  But, be assured, this detention centre is still not the worst place I have been. There are women nearby me who cry out more. I am not diabetic, not pregnant, I am otherwise ‘healthy’. The worst for me, as you know, was in prison in my homeland. I could have died and for some time I was unsure if anyone would have known or if my captors would have cared – not the guard who violated me, or his colleague who taped my mouth and held my arms. But since in the end they let me be a hospital case, and because I took my chance and ran I am here! Luck … I crossed borders, and the gravity of that has hit me only now in trying to see through the eyes – into the mind? – of the British state. I see now that in the Home Office I have a powerful opponent.

  That my story was not quite believed by them? I have seen worse of human nature. Did I fail to tell my story well enough? I accept that I struggle to tell it clearly to myself, because it revives a pain in me that cuts like a knife.

  I have accepted my treatment – ‘the rules’ that have been applied to me as to everyone. I only question the sincerity of the process. I do not believe my case has really been considered on its own terms, justly. I think I am being locked up and sent back because it is easier to treat me this way.

  I suppose the guards think I would run. I might if I could. Some women are watched closer than me, for suicide risk. I have no such intention, life is all I have and it must be cherished, whatever. I know just beyond these walls is space and green and sunlight, something like the England I knew from books – at least I saw it from the vehicle that brought me here! But it seems I will not be so lucky as to know it better. And maybe, in any case, I was mistaken.

  Blaylock stood, enveloped by gloom, and set the letter down carefully on top of his bed. He went to his bedroom window and gazed out at the square below. Though the glass was armoured, Andy’s perennial advice was that Blaylock should not offer himself to the assassin’s sights. There were times when he wanted to dare as much.

  Rain streaked the pane, the square below was in darkness but for the halos of lamps, the streets sodden and deserted. The moon above was hopelessly muddied by the miserable night. He pressed his brow up against the chill glass, the bulletproof border separating him from the blackness.

  He was required to be overseer and defender of a system that sorted and processed individuals in this way. The charges thrown at him of indifference – he understood them, he felt the reproof. But the price of a change of heart weighed heavy – easier, for sure, to look away, to ‘hide behind procedure’, even if there was no place to hide from himself.

  5

  He was en route to his constituency by the early train when Jennie called him, sounding untypically helpless, and his heart lifted. Overnight an unkempt wisteria tree had buckled and half-fallen outside the front door of her mother Bea’s cottage in Barnard Castle, and Bea was struggling to cross her own doorstep, hoping the tree might yet be saved, but
having no luck in stirring up a local tree surgeon.

  Blaylock understood at once. Jennie’s father had passed away five years before, her sister now lived in New Zealand, Bea’s more helpful neighbours were ageing, too. The situation added up to a burden of guilt for Jennie, with her workload and the children. She needed someone with whom she could share it; and Blaylock was very content to be called upon. He anticipated an honest job of work that might amount to more than its own reward. He assured Jennie that he and Andy would call round to Bea’s in the late afternoon and do the business.

  *

  Per Vaughan’s demand, Blaylock gave the morning to escorting Jason Malahide round his patch. Together they visited the Port of Tees, donning high visibility jackets and hard-hats, peering respectfully around the premises of a maker of transoceanic fibre-optic cables, a biomass renewable energy producer and a colossal petrochemical cracker plant. Malahide was high-tempo, pointing and enquiring with the chief execs, managing both to speak quickly and ebulliently then to listen and nod with equal intensity. Amid the perpetual motion it was, Blaylock thought, quite impossible to guess what the man really thought.

  Their respective bag-carriers made a buffer of sorts, and Malahide had to be on his way before lunch, but as they zipped to the train station à deux in Blaylock’s car it was obvious they would have to converse, as much as Blaylock sought to distance himself by gazing out at the royal blue edifice of the Transporter Bridge over the Tees, rising above the drab industrial riverfront with a kind of penny-plain poetry.

  ‘The northeast … It doesn’t change, does it?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Blaylock turned to see Malahide affecting ruefulness.

  ‘I mean, that’s a lovely old port we just saw, but what’s it for? Shipping in bits of prefab kit to get screwed together. The trouble with this region, it’s still looking to the same old ways of making its living. I get no feel up here of any respect for entrepreneurs, risk-takers? Just people thinking their money’s in the taxpayer’s pocket, when it’s customers they need.’