The Knives (24 page)

Gracie emitted a great shaking sob then was quiet, as if crushed.
Her friend got back to her feet, looking sorrowful and angry. Blaylock made eye contact and she shot him a hard look. Because he was nosy, he wondered? Or because he was a man? Or because she felt guilty over leaving? At any rate, with another swish of the doors she was gone.

It wasn’t long before a black mother with a bag of mints sidled over. She sat for some moments before Gracie took a mint and uttered thanks in a voice thick with phlegm and embedded distress. But she only held the mint in her fist.

By 6 p.m. they were back to Islington with a clean bill of health and a sheet of instructions on monitoring head injuries. He carried his daughter to the door, where Jennie nodded at the sight of how deeply Molly had burrowed into her father’s neck. Her sympathetic look seemed to encompass them both. She leaned in to nuzzle Molly, near enough for Blaylock to breathe the scent of her long hair.

‘Is it okay if I take her up?’ he asked. Jennie nodded.

Molly stirred. ‘Can I go in your bed, Mummy?’

‘Of course, sweetheart.’

Upstairs he held her steady as she undressed to vest and pants then slid under her mother’s heavy down-filled duvet. Blaylock stroked her forehead, whispered his affections, and lay down next to her at a suitable remove, careful to keep his muddy-soled Oxfords over the edge of the bed.

In the dark his head swam somewhat – from the daze of the day, and the soothing maritime shades of the room, such that he could have believed they were alone together in a cabin on the ocean.

The room was an affable mess, an inversion of his own. Papers were piled on every flat space, not just the roll-top bureau but Jennie’s vanity table and the long trunk at the foot of the iron bed-frame. A clutch of dry-cleaning bags hung from her Scandinavian wardrobe, though already removed was a sheer silvery
dress that he thought stunning, evidently tried on and ready for use. He glanced to the bedside clock, to find his view obscured by a screwdriver atop a bag of metal screws. Then he heard a light rap on the door and eased himself off the bed.

Downstairs in the half-light of the hall he wanted to tell her about what he had seen and how well they had been seen to at the hospital; and yet he struggled for words.

‘It was a … god, you know … you see some things. Misery.’

‘God bless the NHS, eh? Listen, next week? I’ve a plan to maybe take the children off for the weekend. I wondered if we could shift things?’

‘What you up to?’

‘Just a couple of nights away. Camping.’

‘You’re kidding me?’

‘There’s a first time for everything, David. The site’s just inside the M25 but it could mean we’re back later on Sunday. Might you want to see them Friday day instead? Or have all the following weekend?’

‘It’s not the easiest. I’m in Brussels Thursday and Friday. Let’s say sometime Sunday and I’ll take what I get, eh?’

For the first time all weekend she seemed less pleased with him, but not, he hoped, vitally so. As she showed him to the door he hoped for some gesture of physical closeness, but he could read from her eyes that her mind was elsewhere.

Back home in his study he sat for some time staring at Eve Mewengera’s letter, aware that the hour was getting late and that something in his heart was already resolved, such that to deny it would be the worst karma: the low repudiation of what one knew to be true, and at another’s expense.

He made two phone calls, the first to Eric Manning, with apologies for the lateness of the hour, asking Eric to contact Immigration Control immediately. The second was to Madolyn Redpath.

‘Madolyn, it’s David Blaylock. I thought you should know, I’ve revoked the deportation order on Eve Mewengera. The concerns for her health and wellbeing, I believe, are correct, despite the assurances we’ve had. So she won’t fly from Heathrow tonight, she’ll be released from Blackwood, and her appeal can restart.’

‘I, god … I’m amazed. Thank you … My god, Eve will thank you.’

‘I’ll consider it a favour if you don’t look to make great hay out of this or tell the world I’ve belatedly seen sense. It’s a delicate matter and I’ve weighed it carefully on its terms.’

‘You mean you’re afraid you’ll have to do it again?’

‘Just in this case, I saw sufficient grounds to reconsider.’

‘Well, listen … I can’t say all that will follow but “just in this case” you can be assured I think you’re brilliant and I could kiss you.’

After the call ended he felt an overpowering oddness, as if he was himself newly discharged from hospital and taking tentative steps.

His regular Monday morning gatherings of the troops were bumped, for he had to prepare to head to Gravesend before 11 a.m. and first had some urgent business he hoped to transact. Thus he went to 11 Downing Street to see Caroline Tennant.

‘I’ve been lobbied for some time about the grave situation of refuge services for women fleeing domestic violence? A shortage of beds and skilled people, the numbers turned away getting to be concerning … I sourced figures on what it would cost to protect the beds we have, ensure they stay open. It’s ten million. My view is we have to do it.’

Caroline was giving him a look he thought worryingly polite – pitying, even. ‘How long have you been considering this, David?’

‘Too long. A month or more.’

‘You’ve not just buckled to pressure from the
Post
?’

‘I believe that “pressure” is rightly applied. I think it was an oversight of mine that I want to remedy. Because it’s an emergency.’

‘Wouldn’t you say the
Post
campaign, from what I’ve seen, has presented rather a uniform vision of the problem?’

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘The women on the front pages – the case studies? White, working women in the main, aren’t they? Don’t the services tend to deal with more … intractable problems? Women without income, or drug and alcohol issues that they share with their abusers? Women with lots of children who speak no English? Obviously I can see how one could fill every bed, I just wonder what you do next to remedy the problem?’

‘An emergency is an emergency, Caroline.’

‘Yes, but there must be more than one way to tackle it? I’m just surprised, David, you’re not more focused on a law enforcement solution – cracking down on the men, getting them out of the home and into custody. Whereupon, it surely follows, the refuges face less pressure?’

‘As you know, Caroline, I’m not in a position to ask the police to do more than they’re already doing.’

‘So you want to stick a bandage on the problem?’

‘To stop the bleeding. Yes.’

‘For ten million – where would you propose to make the corresponding budget cuts?’

‘Caroline,’ he scowled, ‘I’ve met my budget targets up to now, I’m cutting the police grant, counter-extremism monies … I came here to ask you for help from reserves.’

‘In entirety? Not possible. Have you looked again lately at your Borders and Immigration budget …?’

It was with a Pyrrhic sense of accomplishment that Blaylock returned to Shovell Street and summoned Mark Tallis.

‘Okay, I have a deal with Caroline; once it’s signed off we need to contact Marjorie Michaels and the
Post
. I’d like us to arrange some sort of meet-and-greet at a refuge, and the
Post
can be assured I’ve been happy to acknowledge the merits of their campaign and glad we share a view of this problem and what needs doing, et cetera.’

He noticed a text from Jennie –
David do you have a moment to speak? Jx
. – and he asked Mark for five minutes, hoping it might be more, their recent exchanges having offered so many moments that he had felt to be of real promise.

‘David, I wanted to talk, it should have been sooner, something I’ve been meaning to tell you … and I didn’t have the nerve in person, which is silly …’

Instantly Blaylock knew how this tune went, the mournful strains of
goodbye
and
so sorry
. He cursed himself for failing to see it, feeling abruptly like an adolescent in a hallway clutching the family’s Bakelite handset as his heart got filleted.

‘I’m seeing someone. For a while. I didn’t talk about it, didn’t assume it was serious, but … it’s gotten that way … . I mean … I’m part of a couple again, it seems. So I want to be straight about it with you.’

Taking the blow, Blaylock weighed his response, harder yet on account of her god-awful decorum that never faltered.

‘To be honest, Jennie … I mean, first of all, good for you, and second, you needn’t be so shy. It’s your life.’

‘That’s good of you to say, David. It’s because it’s about our kids, too. This is someone I think is going to be part of my life – part of their lives, too.’

‘Okay. That does sound – serious. But good, that you feel that way about someone.’

‘Yeah.’
He heard her exhale. ‘
It
is
good, I think, David.’

‘Should I know anything about him? Anything you want to tell me? Not that you have to.’

‘No, his name’s Nick. Nick Gilchrist? You might even have heard of him, he makes films, documentaries? He’s well respected.’

Blaylock thought for a moment, tugging on memory’s threads, for there was certainly something there at the far end. ‘I think … I do. I might have seen something … Sorry, how long has it been? That you’ve been seeing him?’

‘Four months, maybe, we’ve been dating? We took it slow. The last couple, we’ve spent more time, done some things all together.’

Since the summer, then: he thought anew about those months, his own emotional weather in that interim, and what Jennie’s had been, quite independent of his imagining.

‘Together as in with the children? They kept remarkably quiet.’

‘I didn’t instruct them. Just asked them to go easy on me. I think the message got through. They’re wiser than we think.’

‘Okay, well, what else can I say, Jen? It would be an odd thing, wouldn’t it, if I didn’t assume you were a grown woman? Yeah, maybe you could have told me sooner, since it’s pertinent to the kids.’

‘Like I say, I didn’t know myself for a while.’

‘Yes, but you just said, you wish it had been sooner. You can do that, you know. Tell me things, I won’t break. Better that than any sort of subterfuge. The kids knowing things I don’t.’

Her sigh travelled down the line. ‘
As you say, David, I’m a grown-up, we both are, we all need some kind of privacy. And in a house of children that’s not easy to come by. I mean, as if relationships weren’t hard enough, at our age – trying to make them, learning to trust someone and all of that. Trying to get over the inhibitions from the past …’

‘You mean inhibitions I put in you by the way I behaved, et cetera.’

‘No, David, honestly, I’m not talking about you, I’m just talking about me and this man. Nick … he has kids of his own from a marriage that failed. What I mean is, he gets that there’s a sensitivity to this situation. As do I. But, I dunno, you maybe think that’s all namby-pamby crap …’

‘Of course not, Jennie. Just, don’t think you ever have to handle me like porcelain … Look, thank you for telling me, and if this is a good thing for you, then great.’

‘Thank you, David, I appreciate that.’

‘The children – they get on with him okay?’

‘They’ve spent some time, enough, they get on. Yeah, he’s good with them. He’s a good man.’

‘Good. I suppose I’ll meet him.’

‘The camping trip I mentioned on Sunday. It’s … we’re all going together, so …’

‘Right, yeah, I knew there had to be a reason …’ And he laughed, extending the laugh to fill the space, so that nothing in his manner might sound hollowed, emptied, or otherwise impaired.

Well before his arrival in Gravesend Blaylock had lost all savour for the day’s business. En route he was advised that the National Statistics Office believed that the encouraging trends boasted by the day’s official police crime figures were ‘not credible’. Now he felt he was going through stage-managed motions. Even after collecting Richard Colls, who cheerily sported a lipstick-sized video camera affixed to his lapel – ‘I wore it for you, David’ – Blaylock’s mood was not improved.

They drove to a new-build garden estate of identical two-toned family homes, and on the street’s corner, in the estate community centre cum doctor’s surgery, Colls introduced him to a pillar of the community, a plump and silvery sixty-four-year-old named Deirdre.

‘When I was a girl this estate was a highly desirable address. Then it got so nobody wanted to be here. Oh, I tell you. It was bandit country. But the community decided they wouldn’t stand for it no more, they rallied round and organised to get something done.’

‘What made the difference?’ Blaylock eyed Chief Constable Colls.

‘Oh, the council deciding to knock the whole estate down. And build it back up good and proper. And, best of all, they didn’t let any of the bad families back in. Told ’em to sling it.’

This was a more drastic, expensive remedy than Blaylock had been planning to endorse.

Deirdre then accompanied him and Colls on a tour of the locale, dictating their pace as she walked with a stick. Blaylock was invited to peer very intently down a deserted pedestrian cut-through, at some fiercely chopped bushes around a church hall, and at a
shiny, deserted playground – all places where, according to Deirdre, ‘the druggies used to loiter’.

Colls offered a commentary: ‘We got CCTV on the playground, we lit up the alley, wherever the gangs hung around we moved them on.’

Moved them on where?
was the nagging question in Blaylock’s head.

Back at the centre they met Deirdre’s husband Maurice, stooped and bald as an egg, a cheery follower of current affairs. ‘You’re the bloke gave that car thief a clout? Good on you, son. I wish I could do that. But they’re not afraid of me …’

Patiently Blaylock began to extol his faith in restorative justice, keeping youths clear of the court system, offering offenders a way to repair misdeeds. Neither Maurice nor Deirdre were madly keen.

‘That won’t work for the real troublemakers, the hard nuts, the bad families. They can be very large families, see. And if you get into a quarrel with one then you’ve a quarrel with the lot of ’em.’

‘Their parents go round sticking up for them, saying it’s everyone else’s fault … No, soft touch is the problem, bad parenting and that. I mean, you’re a parent, aren’t you, Mr Blaylock?’

Blaylock nodded and made a serious face, deciding not to offer himself as the acme of child-rearing virtue.

He and Colls drove on to ‘The Avenues’, a shabbier older estate of two-storey houses and staunchly maintained older person’s bungalows, over the road from a stretch of barren gated parkland. They pulled up outside a squat whitewashed property hemmed by a low wall, metal grilles across its windows, and a hand-painted awning that announced AVENUES COMMUNITY HUB. A cherry-red mobility scooter was parked by a closed garage where a man stood vigorously whitewashing some aerosol graffiti from the expanse of the metal door. He was introduced to Blaylock as Terry Beggs, the administrator of the premises.

‘What did it say on the wall?’ Blaylock asked. ‘You can tell me.’

Terry Beggs winced. ‘Uh, “Fuck Paddy Vaughan”?’

‘Right. Someone knew we were coming?’

In the snug main shop-space computer workstations were arranged round the walls. Terry explained carefully that the hub was a place to help the ‘digitally underprivileged’ get assistance with their searches for work and entitlements to benefit in the interim.

Out the back door where a young man was steering a grass strimmer round a scruffy square of lawn, Blaylock was introduced to Scott, who hadn’t shaved and wore his baseball hat low, but had zipped up his tracksuit top.

‘Scott got in bother, he did his service,’ Terry explained. ‘Now he runs our repairs team, it gets the young people involved in gardening and decorating and handy jobs round the community.’

Next in line was Roy, a lean white-haired sexagenarian who leaned on a metal-topped cane and whose handshake was exquisitely limp. Terry shouted to the strimmer – ‘Chris!’ – to down tools and come over.

‘So, Chris, here? He got in bother, got himself under the influence, nicked Roy here’s mobility scooter and pranged it. He didn’t have form, there were … circumstances. He knew he’d offended. His parents came in, it was made clear it could be criminal proceedings or restorative justice. And he chose the latter. So, we talked to Roy here, as the victim, would the process work for him? And now this is where we are.’

After a cogitative moment Blaylock weighed in. ‘So, Chris, how are you feeling now about this system and how you’ve been treated?’

‘S’alright. S’good, yeah? Better than court. I know now, see, Roy had problems and stuff? If I’d known how things was for him – and he’d known how it was for me – reckon we’d have got on.’

‘But you think it’s a good system, a fair system?’

‘Worked for me, mate. Not much else I can say.’

‘Right. And how’s your experience been, Roy?’

‘Well, as a form of punishment I’m glad at least there’s some disciplining aspect to it at the outset, that police are present and it gets thrashed out over a table …’ The refined flow of Roy’s speaking voice was interrupted by a barking cough that came out of Chris and made the older man grimace. ‘Of course, it’s hardly the Bloody Assizes. But, you have to try to get on with people in life is my credo. For a while I thought Chris’s voice was being heard more loudly than mine, and even now I’m not sure …’

Ben Cotesworth appeared at Blaylock’s shoulder. ‘The press are all ready for you out front, David.’

They all trooped back out front where the media had gathered, Blaylock folding some notes away in his pocket before the cameras got a look. He took up a position cleared for him in front of the newly whitewashed garage door.

‘Thank you for coming. Recorded crime is down once again, news for which we should be thankful, but I came here today to see for myself the reality of the street—’

Abruptly a great rumbling sound – the booming bass of dub reggae as from a big amplified system – rose up from the street.

‘You can run but you can’t hide,

You can run but you can’t hide …’

Heads turned in great consternation seeking the source of the sound. Then came gasps and laughter, and Blaylock realised eyes and cameras were pointing behind him, his police team suddenly bothered. He turned and beheld the white door, upon which words were materialising from the air in the form of dripping paint, as if by magic: