Fatigue darkened his eyes in the bathroom mirror, his spine felt as heavily knotted as vines round a listing tree. Undressing for bed he was dog-tired, bruised blue in patches down both arms, unable to raise either above his head. He wondered now if he would really keep his appointment with Dr Scott-Stokes in just over a week’s time. Some part of him resisted it still, refused to see the need of it. What did he really need? It seemed obvious – a respite, a holiday, to which he was not entitled. As he tugged off his socks wincingly and saw dried blood between his toes, he was reminded that Christmas, at least – his least favourite time of year – was in reach. He began to murmur an old Sinatra tune, his voice so risibly croaky that he cackled.
*
He was awakened in evening darkness by the phone, and realised he had slept atop the covers. It was Mark Tallis calling, and given the hour Blaylock knew instantly it could only be trouble.
‘Patrón, I’m sorry, you’re going to need to get your eye onto this because the papers are all over it and it’s heavy.’
‘Go on.’
‘A woman called Sally Duffett was found murdered yesterday in Harlow. Essex Police have a witness, they’ve let it out that their only suspect is her ex-partner, he’s an ex-con, ex-illegal immigrant and they’re saying he flew into the UK first thing yesterday, went to this woman’s place, killed her, then flew straight back to Latvia out of Stansted.’
‘Hold on, what – what about his immigration status?’
‘I know, how did he get in and out of the UK? When he’s done prison time here and, the word is, he had form in fucking Latvia, too.’
‘Was he on a fake passport?’
‘We wish. The papers already got the nod it was his own legit passport, he just got waved through. The theory they’ve got their teeth into is that some new joiner at border control, one of our temps who’d just had a day’s training, didn’t know any better and waved him through.’
‘Aw fuck it, fuck it.’ Blaylock stood, feeling a powerful urge to dash his handset to bits against the wall.
‘This is what I had read down the line at me, allegedly a regular border guy at Heathrow, “A proper Borders officer would have had this guy’s number, that’s what happens when the Home Secretary lays off a thousand passport control workers.” Et cetera …’
Blaylock rubbed his face, feeling cold beneath his feet and, creeping up his back, the flush of calamity.
‘Okay. Okay. I’ll have to put my paws up. Statement to the House on Monday.’
‘Number Ten are asking what’s the line? We’ve got to be clear.’
Blaylock stared ahead at the wall, conscious of his brain still trying to engage with his mouth through the fug. But it wasn’t clear. Nothing was clear other than that he would sleep no more for the night.
6
The first train to King’s Cross gave Blaylock ample time in which to review the story’s utter misery. In black and white it was perfectly grim and run by all outlets: ‘UK LET IN FOREIGN FLY-BY KILLER’.
As ever, the photographs said too much and not enough. The victim, Sally Duffett – a florist’s assistant, lively, outgoing, said to do a good turn for anyone – surely could not have been involved with such a violent man. But the suspect, Viktor Karlov, was a figure of mystery: Latvian passport, resident in Poland when he received a British work permit, believed to be Russian on the building sites where he had laboured. Burly in cement-caked jeans and tee-shirt he grinned from his photo like one far too friendly to ever be found in a police line-up. Yet in Latvia, unknown to UK authorities, he had been imprisoned for causing a man’s death in a bar fight. And at Snaresbrook Crown Court he had been sentenced to three years for assaulting Sally Duffett, a year of which he served before release on the condition that he left the UK never to return. Such was his hatred of Sally that he had risked just such a return to attack her and beat her until she died.
That Karlov had not been stopped pointed to a tiny yet acute flaw in oversight, and there were innumerable reasons why that chink had opened – but Blaylock knew that none of this mattered, for he was alive and Sally Duffett was dead, and the gloom in which he had gone to bed the previous night now seemed to him a culpable puddle of self-pity.
Sally Duffett’s parents had given a lancing statement to the papers through a lawyer. ‘It is very hard to accept that a dangerous criminal could come and go unbeknown to authorities. The system has failed us.’ There was no answer to it, though Blaylock knew he had to send his condolences, in what form he could not say. For the part of the account that was causing a true ache between his eyes was the family’s allegation that a threatening letter from Karlov to Sally had been passed by her to police, who forwarded it to the Home Office, Shovell Street.
The existence of such a letter – and whether it was received and logged and replied to – and if so, whether it was replied to adequately – were questions nearly sufficient to make Blaylock hope Monday would not come. His Sunday was already determined for him. He was resisting all media requests but he needed working hours to prepare his defence in light of the week ahead. Nearing London he called Jennie with an apology to say he would be unable to take the children for the afternoon.
‘No, I understand, you’ll have a day on your hands,’ she replied, sounding uncommonly low. He asked if she was okay. She admitted that her mother was in worsening health, due to undergo a bone marrow biopsy. He felt the cold hand of his news: Bea, he knew, had made plain that if cancer returned she would have no stomach for a second ordeal. Offering his felt sympathy, he knew Jennie would be wracked, that the children would be loving and supportive, and that he needed to press on alone with his own share of woes.
*
Sunday afternoon, as he worked behind drawn blinds with media loitering across the road, was wretched. Taking a break to check through a pile of recent correspondence, he was further dispirited to find a letter from Diane Cleeve, rebuking him as the source of her recent troubles in the press – as well she might, in Blaylock’s opinion.
On Sunday night Mark Tallis called and things worsened immeasurably.
‘This is bad, patrón. Someone’s leaked Quarmby’s immigration report to the Correspondent.’
‘His draft? Or the one with our redactions?’
‘His. They seem to know all the internal arguments. I said we don’t comment on leaks, but, this, Jesus … This is the lead: “The Home Office has been sitting on and censoring an independent report that shows a damning record of failure and neglect in immigration services.” Obviously they’re going to town on the delays and the dumping grounds and all the limbos and the legal failures but – this whole thing of foreign offenders we haven’t deported and people refused who we’ve lost track of, it just—’
‘Yeah,’ Blaylock filled in, quietly. ‘It would be bad any week. This week it’s murder.’ His mind still reeled uselessly at the implications.
‘Thing is, patrón, I have to say, it’s your girlfriend’s paper, it’s the fucking Correspondent.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend. Abby and I are done.’
If thrown momentarily, Tallis pressed on regardless. ‘Well, she must have known, she must, it can’t be an accident, David.’
Blaylock knew Abby had known of the report – of its suppressed status, too. She could have had no sense of its contents unless she had snaffled it from his red box. Was it possible she had crept from their bed to carry out espionage while he slept? The image was too awful.
‘So, we’re in for a week of fucking misery, a week if it goes well, we need to get ramped up for it … David? David, are you there? Have I lost you?’
Blaylock had shut his eyes and the blackness in his head was suddenly so huge and suffocating he thought he would be overwhelmed by it – even wished it might be so.
‘Mark, this is not the greatest time for clarity in my mind …’
‘I know, patrón, but you’re got to hear the signal on this. Someone’s out to get you. I don’t mean a conspiracy. But you k
now the media, there has to be one politician in the stocks at any given time, and all of a sudden you fit a lot of descriptions. So, someone’s had a push, and given you a knock, and now they’re all queuing up to give you a shove that’ll knock you right off.’
Blaylock listened, conscious at the end of a hard weekend notably short on collegiate phone calls that Tallis was probably the truest ally he had. He rang off with the assurance that he would act.
First, he called Roger Quarmby.
‘Roger, I have to ask if you knew your report was going to reach the public in the way it has?’
‘Obviously, I don’t know the full range of tactics you consider respectable for your ends, Home Secretary, but I would never resort to such a thing as you imply. So, no, I am not your leaker. May I now suggest you put your own house in order? I have been saying something similar for a while now, have I not? And for the future – if we can speak of futures – my further advice would be that when you ask for a report, then just publish the report you asked for.’
Having taken a scratch sufficient to get his back up, Blaylock then dialled Abby’s number. She answered sounding breathless, like some parody of their former close relations.
‘David, I guess you heard.’
‘You couldn’t have given me some warning of this?’
‘Truly, I had no idea. It’s just happened very fast, it was all fixed up between one journalist, and the editor and the news editor, and … I heard about it probably when you did.’
‘That’s bullshit, Abby.’
‘David, come on. Don’t act now like you don’t know how it works. Look, I’m sorry, obviously, I realise it’s trouble for you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But … I mean, you knew it would be trouble, yes? You must have seen this coming. It’s not like the story’s wrong—’
‘It’s a leak of a draft containing errors and information that oughtn’t to be in the public domain, so don’t rush to the high ground, okay? There’s sensitive information there, are you the judge of that?’
‘It’s not my story, David.’
‘Right, you just work there. Who leaked it to you?’
‘To the paper? Come on. I just told you, I’ve no idea.’
‘Not convincing, Abby.’
‘Sorry, are you actually asking was it me, David?’
‘Yes.’
The long exhale down the line was also oddly reminiscent to Blaylock of time shared. ‘Surely you see, there is someone in your operation who’s done this, and … I’m trying to understand why you’ve got on the line to grind your teeth at me about it. The problem is in your own ranks, David. Forgive me but I’d have thought that’s where you need to go shout at people.’
‘Thanks for your advice.’
The silence was searing to him, and again familiar, and he realised he should have known it would come.
‘Do you have any interest in helping me out on this? For old time’s sake?’
‘I’d be in an impossible position.’
‘Fair enough. The position’s always been impossible, hasn’t it, Abby?’
It was a dead rejoinder. He hung up, shaking his head slowly at the pure dismay of it – the connection he had briefly imagined between them, one that had wound up as entirely of the lower sort.
‘You’re unusual.’ Hadn’t she said that? He had certainly believed it, and that credulity seemed now the most damning thing he had to accept as his crime. In fact – certainly in this case – he was nothing of the sort. It was indeed stunning to him just how much he had turned out to be like all the rest; and how much so – a blow of its own to the spirit – had she.
November 15
Dear Mr Blaylock
I felt I had to write to you, though Pastor Ruddock was less keen on the idea, and he and I have discussed for some time now what is the proper Christian thing to do in a situation like this.
The first thing to say is that of course I know very well that it was you and your office that tried to plant stories in the press concerning me and the Pastor. That was of course a very cowardly thing, that you could not face me to make your own point, and instead connived and schemed to try to undermine mine. I suppose some will say ‘that is politics’!
But if the plan was that I should be belittled by all of that, then you should just know that I feel nothing of the sort. The fact is I feel great kinship on this with Saint Paul when he said, ‘For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.’
With tricks of your sort you really do injure yourself more than you do me. And you would be amazed how much the stronger I feel by my faith and how it allows me to see these things such as you engage in as basically low, small and not worth bothering with.
For all that, I would like you to know that you are forgiven by me.
I do believe there is a better person inside you, as God knows of all of us. I have spoken to you on this matter and I know you choose not to listen, but I hope and trust that you will, finally, see reason.
Yours sincerely,
Diane Cleeve
PART VI
1
First light on Monday required the call to the Captain. Vaughan offered Blaylock no surprises: just the grave, not wholly unsympathetic manner of a headmaster who expected him to do better forthwith, and would cast only dark looks his way until Blaylock proposed a viable solution to the trouble he had caused.
An hour after that sobering discussion Blaylock was then required to speak to Al Ramsay, and to hold his tongue throughout.
‘David, you’ll not be shocked to know you were the hot topic of the PM’s morning meeting. You and your department have got a pincer movement coming down on it – what are we supposed to say?’
‘As I told the Prime Minister, I take responsibility, we will get to the bottom of all of this, and it will not happen again.’
Ramsay – from whom Blaylock had never heard a single word that he took for the honest truth – only grunted as if to suggest he put no great faith in Blaylock’s current efforts either.
*
At 8.30 a.m. he closed his office door, as he expected he would be doing for the foreseeable, and huddled at the table with his spads.
‘Okay, as of now no one says anything on my behalf but Mark. This room is my golden circle.’
‘David, you can trust us, and the private office, you’ve got that much,’ said Tallis, so much the company second-in-command that Blaylock was touched.
‘Thanks. As for the rest, though, we have a serious mole here,’ he said, then added, despite himself, ‘a major fucking rat.’
‘We need to look at who’s resentful,’ offered Deborah, looking relatively dishevelled for once in a shirt and trousers, also more pensive than usual. Blaylock wondered if she and indeed the other two were suddenly mulling the possible loss of their jobs, too. ‘I just wonder, has someone done this alone or are they being worked by the other side?’
‘I’ve not got time to call in Sherlock Holmes,’ said Blaylock. ‘We need to do our own digging. Ben, any ideas?’
Ben seemed as subdued as Deborah. ‘I’ve a few thoughts. One or two ministers’ private secretaries. They might have been up to this.’
‘Paul Payne’s gone on air this morning and said something not terribly helpful,’ Tallis offered moodily. ‘Some bollocks about accountability being clear, going to the top?’
‘The trouble is, that’s not bollocks,’ Blaylock groaned.
‘Who’s your biggest enemy in the building?’ Deborah was abruptly reanimated. ‘Who’s given you the absolute biggest grief?’
Blaylock thought for a moment, then nearly laughed. ‘Phyllida. I mean, if I had to name one …’
*
The morning’s regular departmental meeting was devoted entirely to crisis management, though Blaylock didn’t detect a crushing sense of criticality
in the air.
‘In respect of the Quarmby leak I have spoken to the Cabinet Secretary,’ Phyllida Cox announced assuredly. ‘The Cabinet Office’s investigative panel will convene and look into it forthwith.’
That’s going nowhere, Blaylock thought. ‘My main concern today’, he spoke with care, ‘is that Sally Duffett’s family say she passed a letter along to us, via police – a threatening letter. What are our records? Have we established that we got the letter? Did we reply?’
He watched pens scribble all around the table. When the room emptied Phyllida Cox remained in her seat, studying him, scarf sharply pinned at her throat, and what he read as a gleam in her eye.
‘You’re remarkably serene, Phyllida,’ he said finally.
‘These things happen. I gave my view at the time, you might recall, on the wisdom of cover-ups? I don’t see government as a game, David, but if others persist in doing so then they will be played in turn.’
He settled his elbows in the table, as if to tighten himself against raising his voice. ‘Someone in this building has leaked a classified document. Someone we hired failed to correctly check a passport … I always like how responsibility falls here. There is a mountain of things in this department where I was assured that action would be taken—’
‘How odd,’ she butted in with uncommon boldness. ‘To hear you resort to the passive voice? I appreciate decisions are lonely in leadership, but you have taken them, very firmly, and let people know it was your view. The fact that miracles can’t be worked—’
‘I’ve never asked for miracles,’ he butted back. ‘Only that we all be judged. Now, the calm round here is stunning to me. Is that because no one feels their position is remotely compromised?’
The Knives Page 33