The Knives (29 page)

As Blaylock rose from seated Mark was already switching on the BBC News channel.

‘What do we know?’

Ben gestured hopelessly to the screen.

‘… what is already being described on the scene as a suspected terror incident, a huge blast felt half a mile away, from an incendiary device we think planted in a car, we’ve seen police helicopters over Wellesley Street where the mosque is located and which
is now cordoned, debris has been thrown wide and I myself have spotted nails strewn across a pretty wide area …’

‘Catherine, has anyone been hurt?’

‘Ambulances have attended, James, and what I’m hearing is that a father and his two daughters have been taken to hospital having suffered injuries …’

Blaylock swallowed, and felt a shiver wrack through him.

For the car ride up to Dudley Blaylock was joined by Paul Payne, Ben Cotesworth and Becky Maynard, though Becky’s eyes stayed fixed throughout on the refreshing screen of her phone. Reports from the scene had levelled out, at least, in their sense of panic. The situation, though lamentable, was under control – no one had died, shrapnel injuries were few, the blast zone and surrounding streets had been evacuated, fears of further explosions had receded and forensic examination had begun.

Nodding at each improved assessment, Blaylock remained subdued, badly wanting good news on the situation of the children reported injured.

‘
Gaffer, I think you should get up there.
’ More than simple duty, Blaylock had thought he heard some element of reproof in Ben’s advice, something he might not have accepted from another party. Ben now sat with a ring-bound pad on his knee, scribbling the outline of a statement for his gaffer. Digesting the outrage, weighing some of his past statements and positions, and how these might have been perceived – in all, Blaylock wanted Ben to find the words for him today.

Paul Payne’s presence was a gesture Blaylock had known he would make within moments of deciding to go, and yet he knew Payne was someone he could bring himself neither to like nor to trust, a feeling he took to be mutual if unvoiced, and unlikely to be relieved until one or other of them sought alternative employment.

As they edged toward Wellesley Street, a drab residential area, the foreboding marks of police presence were everywhere, plastic barriers and tape strung across roads, human traffic being managed, officers still doing a job of ‘Get back, stay back!’ In the course of some hours, though, shock and alarm looked to have turned largely into curiosity and unrest. Most onlookers stood pensively, arms folded, starved of news.

Blaylock’s group parked and approached police lines, past which the locus of concern was clear: a foursquare redbrick building topped by rotund grey minarets against a grey sky. By the mosque’s iron gates forensics officers in all-over whites huddled near to the torn and blackened back-end of a saloon car. Windows down the street were boarded up, an acrid smell hung in the air. Glancing upward Blaylock noticed – was gladdened – by a CCTV camera set high on a lamppost pasted with a sign declaring ALCOHOL-FREE ZONE.

A constable took charge of them – ‘Sir, the mosque has just had the all-clear by Counter-Terror, we can debrief in there.’ Blaylock followed where he was led, removed his shoes and placed them in the orderly row, padded across an emerald-green shag carpet and was introduced to Assistant Chief Constable Gavin Ball.

‘Without doubt the intent was to cause serious harm to the patrons of the mosque. The blessing is that the bomber seems to have gone by an outdated calendar – he didn’t clock that mid-morning prayers were an hour earlier as of last week. The other good news is, I expect we’ll have good CCTV.’

Blaylock nodded. ‘I thought so.’

‘But, we’re treating it as a terrorist incident, no question.’

‘Tell me about the little girls who got hurt.’

‘A man and his daughters, the only people on the street, about a hundred yards from the blast? The fact none of them were very tall was a big help, but … one of the little girls got a nail lodged in her head.’

‘Aw god,’ Blaylock winced.

‘God willing it’ll come out clean and, well … we’ll see.’

They agreed to speak to the media jointly, then Blaylock let himself be led and introduced to one of the mosque’s trustees and its imam, solemn in
kurta
and
topi
and flanked by a translator, plus a younger Asian man in jeans and windcheater who looked at Blaylock – or so he felt it – distinctly critically.

‘Thank you for coming,’ said the trustee.

‘I wanted to show my support, on behalf of the government, and let you know we abhor this outrage, and we’ll find the perpetrator.’

‘We are lucky, so lucky,’ sighed the trustee. ‘So many people we have here usually, two hundred maybe? If the hour had been different …’

The imam, nodding, unleashed a stream of words from which Blaylock made out ‘
Al-
ḥ
amdu lill
ā
h.’

‘May Almighty Allah protect us,’ offered the translator.

The trustee introduced the younger man as ‘Haroon, from our association of shopkeepers on the street, he saw it all.’

Haroon shrugged off the introduction. ‘I heard a bang, felt the heat, but all I saw was my windows going in.’

‘The police got here quickly?’

‘Could have been quicker. How serious they take it, I dunno …’

Blaylock was oddly relieved to find Gavin Ball was at his side. ‘The light’s going outside, we should do this.’

In the street Blaylock checked his script discreetly, memorised what he had to, and took his turn before the assembled media.

‘This was a mindless and vicious act … Mercifully, injuries are fewer than they might have been, but our prayers are with those who were hurt … We will not allow thugs and terrorists to hide among us and inflict these cowardly acts upon innocents … I urge all mosques to be vigilant, and to contact the police with any suspicion. Those who seek to inflict terror on peaceful communities
in this country are despicable criminals, and they will be caught, they will be prosecuted, they will be defeated.’

As he delivered the words to shoulder-mounted cameras, flashing lens and thrusting recorders, Blaylock did wonder whom he was truly addressing, or who, indeed, was listening. The ‘community’, the desired audience, were behind him, behind cordons. Before him he mainly saw Paul Payne, his lip slightly curled, and Ben, contemplating his shoes.

Afterward Blaylock moved directly to the Jaguar, feeling that no connection had been made – that he had blown in and now was blowing out. Police were clearing the street for Martin to reverse, and Blaylock observed a big pasty-faced bloke with a boy hugging his side as he remonstrated immovably with police blocking his path.

‘Sir, I’m afraid I can’t say exactly when but some streets may have to stay shut, you can get a tea over there—’

‘We don’t
need
tea, we need to get
home
.’

Blaylock couldn’t stop himself from pacing round the vehicle to where the disputants stood. ‘Sir, what you need to do is to listen to the police? And do what you need to do to keep your kids safe.’

He regretted it even as he said it, yet the bloke gaped at him long enough for Ben to take Blaylock’s arm and urge him back to the car.

Blaylock was sitting restless and dissatisfied, the Jaguar hardly back on the M1, when he took a call from Geraldine in which she referred bewilderingly to ‘disturbances in central London’.
Hell’s teeth
, he thought as she patched him through to Sir James Bannerman.

‘First off, you needn’t panic, David, it’s nothing we can’t handle. However, it’s needed a range of deployments. We’ve mustered some armed officers and dogs and there are kettling manoeuvres going on in the shopping streets.’

‘Sorry, what the blue blazes is going on?’

‘What we seem to have on our hands is a co-ordinated action in the centre of town, on quite a scale – maybe ten thousand bodies or so, mainly students, young crowd, that’s the profile.’

‘No warning? Unannounced?’

‘Correct. It’s clear there was some kind of plan enacted, so around two this afternoon students just walked off campuses around London and began heading to the centre on foot, a few cohorts of sixth-formers bunking off, too. A lot converged on St James’s Park but then they fanned out in umpteen directions, some to Oxford Street, some to Westminster. We moved directly to get some lines established round Parliament, but it’s the shopping precincts where we’ve had trouble – shop windows smashed, attacks on CCTVs, a bit of bother in an Audi showroom. Our lines are holding, but a few likely lads have had a go at pushing through.’

‘Has it got any kind of leadership to it?’

‘There’s an anarchist element, I’d say, a few balaclavas. But it doesn’t look like it has any centre. More as if it started from a shout in the street.’

‘How’s it looking round Parliament?’

‘Peaceable. Odd sort of atmosphere, like a carnival. Banners and chants. It’s all being broadcast simultaneously online, that outfit calling themselves The Correctors are claiming credit.’

Blaylock felt a twinge of disquiet. ‘Any criminal damage?’

‘Other than that someone’s had a go at Tory HQ, I’m afraid, a bit of spray-paint damage, graffiti …’

‘What did they spray?’

‘Well, “Lying Tory Scum” was the phrase, I believe …’

As they headed down the darkening motorway, zipping under concrete flyovers, Blaylock slumped into the gloom of the backseat and tapped out a text to Jennie:
Hi J, do you know is Alex at home? D

Nearing London on the A4, for all that Martin sucked his teeth and exhaled displeasure, Blaylock insisted that they press on toward the centre of town rather than to Westminster.

London had always seemed to Blaylock a tough place to sow disorder, so well did it organise its chaos; but in the thick of the commuter hours it was eerily clear to him that pandemonium had indeed occurred and left marks. Past Grosvenor Square and marooned in traffic, Blaylock found himself, perforce, staring through his window at PAY YOUR TAX! sprayed across a smoked-glass storefront; a shattered window three doors down; and a banner strung high across the office of Citibank, proclaiming WE THE PEOPLE ARE EVERYWHERE. At length, feeling intolerably caged, Blaylock decided he had stared long enough.

‘Martin? Pull over. Andy, howay, we’re walking.’

‘Aw boss …’

Blaylock got out on Brook Street into a November dark that felt uncommonly heady. As Andy moved swiftly to his side, Blaylock saw, twenty feet ahead of him, a metal canister arcing and falling to the pavement then skittering across the concrete.

Even as Andy seized his arm, Blaylock for one instant felt the world’s motion slow to a crawl before his eyes. Then the canister disgorged a great jetting plume of red smoke, fast-blooming clouds of which began to billow into Hanover Square.

The two of them hustled and dodged down Regent Street, against a tide of bodies, amid an air of directionless flurry, proof that misrule had been declared. Glancing down a side street Blaylock saw a gaggle of agile youthful figures hopping over some
now abandoned plastic barriers, walking with a swagger as though they might roam as they pleased, chanting, ‘
We! The People! Everywhere! Now!’
He could tell from their vigour – this, too, was ‘politics’, of a sort, nothing he had known personally and yet at close quarters its appeal seemed clear.

By the time he and Andy paced down Whitehall Blaylock could hear vuvuzelas, thumping drums, the bass signature of sound-system reggae – the curious carnival feel over which Bannerman had puzzled. Then Parliament Square opened up to his view, densely crowded with vociferous youths in jackets and jeans, some holding placards aloft, floodlit by the face of Big Ben. Stopping at a safe remove behind police lines Blaylock clocked the parked paddy wagons and the perimeters of yellow-jacketed cops, their preoccupied stares sending out from under their visors. But there were no riot shields, no batons – it was, even now, a peaceable demonstration.

A stocky young man, bespectacled and with a bobbing ponytail, paced back and forth in a narrow strip five yards before one cordon of officers, speechifying confidently through a loudhailer.

‘…’cos what this government wants is to turn us all into little Americans, yeah? Load us all up with mountains of debt before we’re even voting age, man! So we spend our whole lives like indentured slaves in their dirty fucking neoliberal system!’

Finishing with this roundly cheered flourish, the speaker fell to leading a chant, rousingly adopted. ‘
We! The People! Everywhere! Now!’

A police constable stepped forward, with a loudhailer of his own. ‘
Okay, you’ve been warned, so understand, you have five more minutes to leave the square in an orderly fashion, otherwise you will be liable to arrest …’

This was met by raucous jeers and boos. Nonetheless Blaylock noticed a few individuals drifting off, perhaps having made an early withdrawal to the periphery for just that purpose.

And then his eye was grabbed by one young retreating couple who turned back briefly, raising their clasped hands together in defiance. Both wore white masks, but what sang out to him was the long lick of reddened hair drooping down the left of the girl’s mask, and the sculpted crown of jet-black atop the boy’s. Blaylock knew as sure as the back of his hand that he was looking at his son – and the boy’s lately acquired, slightly older love interest.

He started to press forward, only to feel Andy’s cautionary grip.

‘Boss, please, you’ve gotta keep clear of this.’

Blaylock, frustrated, knew Andy was right – for the police cordon now began to advance upon the remaining demonstrators in shuffling formation from all four sides, a slow and steady pressure. The demonstrators stuck doggedly to their own formation of linked arms, but the kettle was soon closing and pressing, forcing the decision to stand or retreat.

Hoarse cries drew Blaylock’s eyes to a full-blown altercation, two officers engaged in push, pull and shove with one demonstrator – bearded, muscular but outmanned – whose comrades jostled in for support as if they might free him from his inevitable arrest. His long hair lashed the air as he struggled.

‘
Everybody mind yourselves, people!’
Blaylock heard a youthful shout. ‘
The cops are wearing cameras! Just remember your rights!’

But in the next instant the long-haired demonstrator was on the ground – Blaylock winced to hear the clash of head against pavement – then officers were dragging protesters aside while phones were held aloft in witness. Blaylock watched a tearful copper-headed girl remonstrating with the officers who crowded round the fallen man.

‘Shame on you! Shame on you!’

The strangest image had formed in Blaylock’s head – a deposition scene, a battered Christ, the solemn hoods of John and Nicodemus, a grievous redhead Magdalene. Again he felt Andy’s
urging grip, and at length he turned away and headed for sanctuary through the carriage gates of New Palace Yard.

‘I’m sorry I missed your text …’

To Blaylock’s impatient eye Jennie appeared fully briefed, as ever – unfazed by this surprise appearance, but clearly fatigued by another day’s work and disinclined to offer him a chair, much less a drink. He stood in silence in her living room, watching her drape her black silken jacket over a chair before launching into her case for the defence.

‘I’ve talked to Radka and, yes, Alex did go down to Westminster after school finished so, yes, he was at the demo.’

‘I know, Jennie. I saw him there. Him and the girl. Esther?’

She pursed her lips at the prosecution’s springing of surprise evidence. When she resumed, her tone had acquired measure.

‘That’s right. Alex told me they met up and went together, and then left together, and he walked Esther home.’

‘That’s my boy. Where is he now?’

‘Upstairs.’ She must have detected his urge to go directly, for she added, ‘Nick’s up there too.’

Blaylock fought the urge to check his watch. Coming here had been risky. He had heard radio rumours of a West End theatre blackout given the day’s disturbances, but it seemed his own show was going ahead, and Abby even now would be awaiting him at the National Theatre.

‘So do I take it all this is okay with you then?’

‘David, I don’t see that Alex did anything wrong. He didn’t break any law. He attended a peaceful demo.’

‘An unauthorised demo, in Parliament Square, where the cops had to kettle the crowd to clear it.’

‘What tactics the police stoop to isn’t really the issue, is it?’

‘C’mon, what are the coppers supposed to do? They had bloody mayhem to contend with round Oxford Street and all.’

‘Don’t tar everyone with the same brush, David. I knew what Alex was protesting, they all are, it’s the cost of education, low pay, public spending cuts—’

‘Protesting against my government, yes.’

Jennie shrugged as if to say this was a corollary, be it as it may. ‘He feels passionately. On principle. I know you remember what that’s like.’

‘Look, I don’t have a quarrel with his rights or his passions, but I do need to know he understands that actions have consequences. I’m concerned for his welfare, I’m his father, I’m saying he needs to cut this out.’

‘David, you can’t march into this house and lay down the law like that.’

‘My voice is superseded now, is it? Other voices count more?’

Jennie’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s my house, David. My rules. Since you ask, as a matter of fact, Nick agrees with me. Why you have to bring him into it … though I should have known it was coming.’

‘That’s a cheap shot, isn’t it? The point is Alex. I don’t dispute you’re with who you want to be with. So am I. We’re grown-ups, right? The point is Alex.’

He had seen a flicker in her eye, and he held her gaze, but when she spoke she sounded nothing but impatient. ‘Obviously the point is Alex. But also, your usual view that you always know best.’

‘C’mon, can you not see he needs to pack it in, Jennie? He can engage with politics without ruining his future before he’s even got going. You know what’ll happen down this road, he’ll end up with a criminal record, and for what?’

‘Alex is sensible.’ Jennie sighed deeply. ‘Are you sure it’s not your own future you’re fretting about, David?’

Blaylock felt the blow as only this woman knew how to land them. ‘That’s a rotten thing to say, Jennie. How can you say that?’

‘Because it’s a wicked world, as you’ve never tired of saying.’

‘Well, it is that. And I tell you what, if Alex gets dragged into the spotlight – arrested or whatever? Yeah, the press will love having a big old stick to beat me with, but do you not think I’m fucking well used to that by now? And it’ll not hurt me nearly as much as it will him, Jennie. So don’t act like you can just turn a blind eye.’

‘David, there’s no “blind eye” here.
Please
don’t try and raise the spectre of neglect, okay? Because there will never, ever be a right time for that, not from you.’

‘I want to speak to Alex,’ he said firmly.

‘I’m here …’ The voice issued from behind the wall of the arch between front and rear living rooms. Now Alex stepped into sight, still in the dark garb of the demonstration, his features clenched but exuding a clear resolve.

Blaylock recovered himself. ‘Son … you know what? Smashing windows, graffiti … it might get you an easy cheer off of certain types but you need to realise all you’re helping is the status quo. You’ll not change a damn thing like that – not in a democracy, no chance.’

Alex was shaking his head. ‘I didn’t smash anything, Dad. I didn’t do anything wrong.’

‘Why wear a mask, then? What are you afraid of?’

‘I’m not afraid of anything.’

You can say it
, Blaylock thought instantly.
You’re afraid of me
. He shook his head, looked to Jennie, felt the hopelessness, the distance in the silence between them.

Finally, quietly, he said, ‘Well, son. This road you’re on? Be sure you understand where it’s headed. Don’t start what you can’t finish. Because there are some things, you know … a late apology won’t cut it.’

Alex stared back at him. ‘I hear you,’ he said, insouciant.

Blaylock looked again at Jennie – who looked aside – then at his watch, a gesture he regretted in an instant.

He reached the National in the nick of time, having fired off a text to assure Abby as much, but as he bolted from the car his temples were still pulsing, he thirsted for a strong drink, and wondered scratchily how long he could endure an evening of unfamiliar Shakespeare without medication. Still he pressed on through the Olivier Theatre’s doors at 7.29 into a darkening auditorium of murmurs and coughs, and he and Andy performed their merry dance as pre-arranged, Abby rising from the last seat of the back row to let Andy in, then bumping along one such that Blaylock could slump in on the end beside her. He took a moment to survey the crowd – an ageing, well-tended lot, it seemed, an inherited audience propping up a moribund form. But as the stage lights sprang up across the great Olivier stage he felt Abby’s cool hand slip into his, and his spirits lifted.

Minutes later he was vexed anew – thirst returning, head newly sore – as the stage was thronged by a thespian approximation of an angry placard-waving mob, their querulous voices damning some hateful politician. Soon enough a smooth-talker was trying to calm them down, but Blaylock sensed what was coming. Presently the object of their opprobrium marched into the fray in a matt-black breastplate, evidently a soldier–statesman, just as vividly a blowhard, beet-red in the face, veins bulging in his neck, hair tossing about his forehead.

Blaylock felt Abby stroke his arm lightly, sensing something meant in the gesture. The play, after all, had been her choice.

Unengaged, unable to recline or relax, Blaylock let his mind slip into work matters, and his attention to the play was fitful. He gleaned, though, that the fortunes of the black-clad Coriolanus constituted the whole of the piece, the drama arising from the degree of the warrior’s willingness to address popular grievances and grease his way past politicians more facile than he. The odd bit of fluent verse-speaking pulled Blaylock in – but he groaned
as Coriolanus feigned to capture a city single-handed with a great deal of silly choreographed sword-waving.

Still, when the mob reappeared to pontificate on their victorious general’s virtues, Blaylock felt the sore temptation to stand up and berate them for a shower of cowards – and chastened himself for the degree that he knew he was being manipulated. Abby, he felt sure, had known all of this was coming. And by now, having steeled himself not to glance her way admiringly too often, he found himself not greatly caring to.

They made their separate ways back to her apartment under cover of dark. He exited the Jaguar lugging his red box, knowing Andy would keep watch outside until around midnight, by which time he expected to be curled around Abigail beneath her cool bed-sheets, his face pressed into the bergamot-scented softness of her hair.

First, though, came what he felt to be a curious mime of domesticity, as he sat on a tall stool in her tiny but immaculate kitchen, perusing papers from the red box and nursing a large glass of white wine that she poured for him before turning to the griddling of scallops and the mixing of a dressing for salad leaves. Mark Tallis had drafted some remarks for him to deliver at the
Criterion
Westminster Awards tomorrow night, and he read them with growing dismay. A forced jocularity was the spirit of the thing, and gags were not Mark’s forte.