The Knives (41 page)

‘Will you ever try to see it from my side? You don’t even have to know, you just need to believe that my judgement of things is basically honourable. I know that’s hard, you disapprove of me that much, nothing I do could ever be really right.’

‘I know that’s
your
story, David, that I should just assume you’re on the side of the gods and I just labour under some permanent delusion. That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘Aw no, that’ll never happen, not when your instincts are so fucking fine on everything and mine are in the gutter like dog-shit.’

‘Will you
please
stop clenching your fists and talking to me through your teeth? For crying out loud, David, look at yourself!’

Nick Gilchrist now came forward from the porch. ‘David, look, are you—?’

Blaylock snarled. ‘Nobody’s
talking
to you, man.’

Jennie snapped. ‘Okay, just get the hell out of here, David, I’ve had enough. Enough!’

‘Aw yeah, that’s right, Jennie, you decide—’ But he was addressing her back now, and he saw enough of a look in Gilchrist’s eyes – a shaming look – before his rival put a consoling arm on her shoulder and the front door slammed.

In the cold, under the stars, he could hear himself mutter. ‘I knew it, I just knew it would be like this, I saw it before it happened.’

Miserably he kicked at a mound of stones, then turned, to see Andy standing by the car with his head in his hands – a dependable mirror still.

On a sullen Christmas morning beneath a grimy sky he trudged four hundred yards from his door down the road to Maryburn Parish Church, flanked by Andy and a back-up car full of police officers. The absurdity of the formality had never felt so mortifying or unmanning to him – the consciousness of his minders having Christmases of their own, families to be with, and yet here they were, shackled to his side, keeping watch over his forlorn ceremonials, for no good reason he could name.

Christmas Eve had required observance, too – another bloody carol service, another Toccata and Fugue, another juvenile organist and sheepish Year One nativity, one more lost hour gazing round panelled walls with their memorials to Victorian philanthropists and the Durham Light Infantry, worn and faded tributes – yet still more convinced and convincing to Blaylock than the lame testaments offered from the pulpit to the Lord Emmanuel.

That morning he had counted himself fortunate to be permitted to speak to his daughters when he called, though Alex would not come to the phone. Jennie spoke with a controlled antipathy.
‘I hope you’re satisfied with your handiwork, David, you’ve done your usual damage.’

Up ahead he saw the church vestibule where Bob Cropper waited for him loyally in car coat and driving gloves. Blaylock removed his cap, and stepped over another threshold.

When the service was done and he had shaken every hand he made the short walk down a gravel path to the Fellowship Hall where he had agreed to take lunch in the company of those for whom the church provided, lest they otherwise be alone and unserved at Christmas.
The elderly, the Mayor, the homeless and me
, thought Blaylock, surveying the huddled gathering from the doorway, hearing the same old seasonal pop tunes echoing round the sparsely appointed space.

He and Bob took their places in the queue to get served at the hot food counter where a row of volunteer ladlers stood over steaming metal vats. Having received his slice of turkey Blaylock glanced to the man beside him, unkempt of beard and woolly-hatted, with the battered look of someone sleeping rough. They made eye contact and the man smiled, showing ruined teeth that made Blaylock worry for him.

‘Good spread, eh?’ Blaylock offered.

‘Aw aye. Makes you feel a human being, like.’

Belatedly Blaylock realised the man was having his turkey dinner ladled not onto a plate but into a Styrofoam container.

‘You’re not stopping? It’s bloody freezing out, man’

‘Aw, I’m just, I’m not, I can’t always, like …’ The man stammered, gestured, his smile now looking stricken. Blaylock had to look down at his shoes, then focus anew on his choice of sprouts and parsnip.

At his Formica table of eight senior citizens Blaylock pulled crackers, passed salt, listened and did his best to hear, assisted by Bob, who gave a passable account of knowing everyone already. After the Queen’s Speech Blaylock did his duty by kicking off the singalong and leading all assembled, shakily, through ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’.

Back at home, with the dark closing in, Blaylock asked his police team politely to stand down, offering each a decent bottle of red
and wishing them a merrier Christmas than they had enjoyed to that point.

Finally it was just him and Andy Grieve. Taking a notion, he lit a fire in the hearth, the first of the winter. Then he switched off all the lights but for one standing lamp and watched the flames develop, until orange effulgence was flickering up the bland magnolia walls, and the room had assumed the pleasing snugness of a den.

He fetched an ashtray and invited Andy to smoke his red Marlboros freely, then went out to the garage, retrieved and uncapped a bottle of Glenlivet. He poured a tumbler for each of them and requested a smoke of his own. For a while, then, they sat and smoked and sipped.

‘Boss,’ said Andy eventually. ‘I wanted to say about the other day, the train – when I told you about my son and all that? I’m sorry, I was out of order – laying it on you, and you having, y’know, more than plenty on your plate.’

‘Howay, Andy,’ said Blaylock, bemused. ‘Don’t be daft. You can tell me whatever you like. Y’know? I consider you a mate.’

‘I wouldn’t just assume that much, boss.’

‘We’re not strangers, are we?’

‘Nah, nah. Just … I mean, you’re not the easiest fella to know. I just, I understand, all that you’ve got on … that it’s a tough job for you.’

‘Well … I asked for it.’

Blaylock watched the fire awhile, feeling that Andy, after his own fashion, could tolerate a silence as sociable. After a pull on the Glenlivet, though, he felt some impulsion to talk.

‘The thing of it is … you realise, you accept, you’re not able to do good? Not really, not by choice, anyhow – if you do then it’s by accident. Sometimes I think I can see it, “the right thing to do”, it’s so near I could touch it. But those are the times when I find out I was totally wrong. I mean, like a million miles off.’

‘That’s got to hurt,’ Andy nodded.

‘Oh, it’s the devil’s work.’

Blaylock took another gulp of the spirit and felt it make its burning way through his gullet.

‘And you think, “Could I just retreat and say, ‘Well, if nothing else, what I’ll do is, I will do no harm?’” But, I don’t even know what harm I’ve done when I’ve done it, most of the time …’

He glanced at Andy, who seemed so disquieted that Blaylock felt he ought to finish the maudlin and one-sided conversation he had begun, since it was he who now felt sure he had misspoken.

‘No, I’ve realised, I just have to live on the other side.’

‘What’s that, boss?’

‘From where I ought to be. Across the water.’

Blaylock stood to poke the fire. The first radiant warmth of the whisky had turned sour, the cigarette’s aftertaste was petrochemical, his throat dry and brackish. Excusing himself he went upstairs to the bathroom. There, rinsing his hands he made the mistake of looking at his reflection in the mirror too long, and suffered a jarring moment of self-alienation, seeing a blank-faced stranger. He had to grip the edges of the basin and grasp about in his head for some anchoring reality.

Thus he found himself imagining others in the house, busy life and real presence under its roof – his wife in the bedroom, idly brushing out her hair, his son playing music down the hall, his elder girl with her friends gossiping behind a closed door, his youngest humming a tune as she lay on the floor and drew pictures of her family.

This spectral arrangement felt so close to him and yet aeons away. Above all, he knew there was no place in the tableau for himself.

The house is haunted
, he thought.
No one here but me. Me. I’m the ghost
.

Blaylock had only just returned downstairs when his phone pulsed in the silence. For an instant he was obscurely hopeful. Then he saw the ident for Adam Villiers.

‘David, my apologies, I don’t mean to say Christmas is cancelled, but there’s a matter of some gravity.’

‘Yeah, I – knew it had to be.’

‘We’ve seen some alarming patterns in our surveillance, supported by a number of intercepts, plus some information that’s been volunteered to us. We have a sense of convergence, a plot – quite likely meant for Boxing Day? The evidence is sufficient, SO15 needs to move tonight. There’s one highly urgent additional warrant we need you to endorse, it’s coming through to you as we speak.’

Newly alert, phone cocked between ear and shoulder, Blaylock moved directly to the room he called his office and tore from the fax machine what Villiers had sent.

‘I never saw a warrant on this guy before?’

‘You did. You refused to sign. Your view at that time was that his web browsing habits weren’t such a concern.’

‘And you didn’t know the company he was keeping?’

‘That has since become all too clear.’

‘Right. Okay. I’m going to leave for London now.’

‘That I would not advise.’

‘I might as well be there – from what you’re saying we could be in COBRA tomorrow.’

‘That is a case of “Not if we can help it”. I would urge, David, that for the moment you are best where you are until this operation is completed.’

‘What are we talking about? The operation?’

‘There are a dozen men we need to lift, across five locations, three different constabularies. Birmingham, Grantham, Tooting, Wood Green and Stapletree.’

‘Adam, is Sadaqat Osman among these suspects?’

‘He is.’

‘Will you say what he’s suspected of?’

‘We suspect a plan for a number of co-ordinated attacks on a range of targets. In the case of Osman, we believe the target is you, David …’

Blaylock felt sobriety reclaim him, coldly and completely.

‘… another reason why you’re good where you are. Since we’re sure where he is. Your security team’s all in place?’

‘I’ll need to … summon a few of them back, actually.’

‘Maybe you need a back-up team?’

‘No, no, look – my protection is more than adequate.’

Within minutes the lights of police vehicles flared and whirred from the threshold of Blaylock’s drive through his drawn blinds. Andy returned from conference with the officers to find Blaylock back in the grasp of his armchair, disinclined to look out into the darkness.

‘What do you want to do, boss?’

‘Just sit here. Wait. See what occurs.’

Blaylock looked to the bottle, lifted his emptied whisky tumbler, then thought better and turned it upside down.

The streets of Stapletree were as he recalled them, but in the grey of early light they were sombre with a palpable sense of woundedness. At the junction giving onto the blocked road, officers redirected traffic and sought to stop onlookers from loitering near the cordon – most of them, clearly, journalists and TV crews. Across the way were men stood solemnly texting outside a pub that had opened early. Climbing from the car, Blaylock could feel a heavy aura of catastrophe narrowly averted, the urgent motion of a set of coping mechanisms all around.

Followed by Andy, he was bidden through the police tape to the cleared area – the blast zone. More police cars were parked forbiddingly across the far end of the road ahead.

Though his destination was clear – a tent of blue tarpaulin pitched across a big swathe of pavement – Blaylock stopped momentarily and surveyed the suburban scene in all its uncanny muted magnitude, turning three hundred and sixty degrees on his heels. He looked up and saw officers conferring on the roof of a nearby garage, and blinds and curtains flapping through blown-out windows of terraced houses. Across the way was the entrance to the communal park, where white-suited forensics teams steadily paced out their hunt for the terrible fragments of the explosion. Amid such a drab, unassuming environment it seemed all the clearer – the power of violence to shatter. Between him and the tarpaulin a car stood abandoned, its doors flung open, its windows spattered with blood and bone. Staring
at it Blaylock had a vision of ruination so intense that a shiver went through him.

He stepped under the tarpaulin and saw a stretch of pavement saturated dark red, over which stood a uniformed officer of the Essex Police and a face he knew, the shaven-headed Detective Neil Hill of SO15, who nodded to him gravely.

‘So, this is where he fell, sir. When our team raided his flat he got out over a roof at the back, tried to make an escape through the streets. He was carrying a knife, that was clear, and he didn’t heed any of the verbal warnings. The armed officer had a clear shot, and there was no other member of the public in view, so he took it – obviously, not to know the suspect had the suicide belt on under his coat. And, yeah, so the shot triggered the belt. Blew him right in half. He was still speaking when they got to him, as I understand, spoke a few words but, you can imagine, everything below the ribcage was …’ Neil Hill waved a hand levelly through the air to indicate annihilation.

Blaylock stared down at the bloodstain, broad and tall as a man. He wondered if this visit had been a wise choice, or a helpless gesture. It was a closing of accounts, perhaps, but one that brought no relief.

‘If he’s the sole casualty of the day’, Neil Hill intoned, ‘then we’ve been blessed. When you think what he might have gone and done.’

‘He wanted to be a doctor,’ Blaylock murmured.

‘This world, there’s nothing true in it – nothing honourable, nothing that’s truly held sacred. It’s a pretend culture, a plastic culture, but it demands our obedience, it demands we make ourselves dead inside.’

In Cabinet Office Briefing Room A the assembled – Blaylock, Patrick Vaughan, Adam Villiers, Brian Shoulder, James Bannerman, Rory Inglis – sat and watched Nasser’s last testament, projected
large across the master screen at the end of the room and on the touch-screens built into each seated place.

‘I just shudder, when I think that Islam might ever be as weak as the Christian faith – just accepting society’s depravity, powerless to change anything. So that this should never be, I am making my stand – taking my part in this action, this demonstration, against a corrupt society, its filthy politics, its evil economy that robs from the poor and slaughters the weak … I believe our action will be a cleansing action. My
shahadah
will be grievous, yes, but it will be repaid a hundredfold by wise and all-merciful Allah …’

Blaylock watched tensely, his hand clenched tight across his mouth. He felt certain in his bones that Nasser must have been, even to the last, trying to persuade himself.

Adam Villiers clicked the file closed. Patrick Vaughan nodded to him as if to say he still had the floor.

‘Mr Nasser Jakhrani represents, arguably, our one security failure today. That said, he is the reason we moved when we moved, owing to contact made with police yesterday evening by a female friend of his, a fellow medical student of Palestinian origin, whom he had asked to meet with him at a London hotel. She found the request uncharacteristic, and the meeting disconcerting – she formed the impression he was trying to say a sort of farewell. We must be thankful for her powers of intuition and the duty she felt to take her suspicions to the authorities.’

Blaylock found something so pitiable in Villiers’s account that he shook his head sharply, wanting to dispel the strange sympathy he felt for the wounded creature.

‘Though we failed to take Mr Jakhrani into custody, the search of his flat yielded not only incendiary materials but computer evidence of a plan to attack the branch of an Israeli bank near Liverpool Street.’

Villiers looked to Brian Shoulder, who took over. ‘To confirm, at the Birmingham address where West Midlands arrested three
men, they found chemicals and electrics for the making of explosive devices, also protective clothing and evidence of preparation. Same sort of materials were found in Tooting, where two arrests were made. In Grantham, where two men were picked up, they found plasticised acetone peroxide, cut pipe, electrics – same in Wood Green where there were three arrests. In Stapletree we also arrested a man in possession of a Baikal handgun with silencer and ammo. All suspects have now been handed over into the custody of the Met and we’re holding them at Paddington. We anticipate a range of charges under the Terrorism Act.’

Villiers nodded. ‘In summary we believe we have foiled a hydra-headed plan to carry out a range of outrages across a number of sites, within a narrow window of time so as to compound the chaos.’

The faces and names of the plotters appeared as a grid on the screen. Not wishing to look at those he recognised, Blaylock glanced down to his briefing papers.

‘There’s a broadly familiar subject profile here – home-grown, second generation South Asian males, the youngest, Mr al-Allam, just twenty, the oldest, Mr Rahman and Mr Osman, both thirty-two. Essentially clean skins, other than Mr Hamayoon and Mr Rahman. Several college-educated. Few trained abroad. Mr Ali is a married father of three, Mr bin Ara’s wife is five months pregnant. All the relatives claim “incomprehension”, though of course we’re questioning then closely. The plotters buried their exchanges well: instant messaging, peer-to-peer cloud email, non-standard operating systems. Still, co-ordination was clearly a challenge. As we know, the need for steel guts in a group situation like this is very strong. And this effort suffered a certain amount of … splintering. For instance, Mr Ali, perhaps the most vulnerable link in the chain, broke it so as to contact Mr Osman.’

Patrick Vaughan spoke up. ‘What do we know of the other targets, Adam?’

‘What we surmise is that the Tooting group were targeting Brimsdown Substation. The Grantham group would attack the sales at Greenlake Shopping Centre. The Birmingham group were looking at the Strathearn Hotel by Hyde Park. Wood Green, we think, had in mind an assault on several cafés in Golders Green. As for Stapletree, Mr Jakhrani had designs on the Israeli bank as mentioned. Mr Osman, we suspect, was contemplating an attack on the Home Secretary …’

All faces, sober and discomfited, turned toward Blaylock, who lowered his eyes to the table.

‘David had had some personal contact with Mr Osman through Rory’s office and this didn’t escape the notice of Mr Rahman at the point where he sought to bring his old college friend into the circle. Clearly there was a suggestion that Mr Osman should exploit that proximity. Among Rahman’s notes we found …’ Villiers consulted his papers. ‘“The
mujahid
undertakes to eliminate target at point-blank range. No escape plan.
Mujahid
cannot survive.” That said, certain other communications lead us to wonder whether Mr Osman considered this course of action but ultimately rejected it.’

Blaylock wanted very badly to speak for himself yet could not find the words. Patrick Vaughan moved swiftly into the silence. ‘Well, in any case, we can but count our blessings. I’m really heartened by the response, Adam, and I congratulate the team on their tremendous work …’

‘I want to second that,’ said Blaylock.

Retaking the chair of the session Vaughan drove the agenda on – the ring of steel, the agreed advice to the general public and to VIPs, the increased deployment of armed officers, transport police and CCTV vigilance, the necessary reassurance of the three-million-strong Muslim community. Preoccupied, unsettled, Blaylock merely indicated his approval of procedures. When matters were wrapped and he exited to the corridor Brian Shoulder drew near with some urgency, indicating his wish for a private word.

‘Sadaqat Osman, Home Secretary? He’s at Paddington and he’s not said a word to the interrogators but apparently he’s asked through his lawyer to see you. He wants to “address his remarks to you”. I mean, it’s ridiculous—’

‘Okay, fine,’ snapped Blaylock. ‘Let’s go.’

He went through the steel door into the silence of the drab interrogation suite, to meet the sight of Sadaqat, high and straight in his chair across a scuffed table, his eyebrows a black line, his mouth straight as a blade. His presence seemed to defy the indignity of his standard-issue white forensic suit and the brow-furrowed solicitor at his side. The two police detectives across the table leaned back in their mismatched chairs, determinedly laconic, eyes raised to the small skylight above. It was, for a moment, a tableau – then one officer rose to greet Blaylock and the other asked the solicitor if his client was ready.

Blaylock planted himself before the table and stared at Sadaqat, who stared unblinkingly back, and then spoke.

‘I understand, that you might feel some … grievance, with me? I’d only say, I never asked for your attention, or your friendship, or any such thing. It was put upon me. That was misfortune, for us both. It’s a fact I became involved in some plans, to do with the taking of life. I accept the gravity of that. Those plans were terrible. But, in my view, necessary. I’ll explain.

‘You, you were part of those plans. I decided in the end to spare you. By talking to you I realised, you don’t mean evil. You just can’t see past your horizon. Ignorant that way. I take no pride in what I was party to, I will not list any Koranic justifications, I can’t, there is no justification. But there is a reason. The reason is injustice.

‘Had I been responsible for taking life, I would not have said the victims were lesser humans than me, whoever they were. But their victimhood would not be greater than that of innocents who
die because of your constant bombings and invasions and occupations of Muslim countries – murder by drone, death raining down on innocent people whose names you’d rather not know. By “you” I mean the West. But that includes you, Mr Blaylock. Because, whatever you tell yourself, I do believe – I’m sure – you think that your lives are more precious than our lives. If a bomb falls on a school, what you call an accident? And dark-skinned children die? You might claim remorse, but I don’t believe you really feel it. It’s too much of an old habit for you that way.

‘You’re too accustomed to your … fiefdoms, and your spheres of influence. Drawing lines on maps of places you’ve never been, where real people live and breathe. As if, the world is still really your world, to go round and administer? You have a stake, you’ve got your local clients that you’ve bribed, outposts you’ve built … But just for that, you still believe you get to say how it should be – you know what’s best, you want to dictate things by force. Sometimes you dress it up with all anguish and sorrow. You say, “What should we do? What should we do in ‘the Middle East’?” Listen, what you should do is
disappear
.

‘You say there can be no accommodation? It must be our way, nothing can be done, you won’t shift a hair? Understand, that’s a worn-out excuse, and a grievous insult. Okay, so drones will kill, IDF will kill, settlers will bulldoze, mothers in Gaza will keep burying their children, the game of nations over our heads … Since this is not acceptable, and you will never change, I had to ask myself, “What is an honourable thing you can do? To demonstrate to these authorities how wrong is their authority?” And I believe that thing is terror – I see nothing else that gets through to you. Correct bombs, in correct places. So as to remind you, so you understand what it means to live in fear – that your life or the lives of those you love could be ripped away from you. Yes, it is terror, it is terrible. But, just know, it’s by your own deeds that you’re repaid. And that is all, yeah? The end.’

Blaylock had stood there, impressed all over again by the young man’s composure and fluency. It was only that the quality of conviction he had once admired was now purest poison. In any case he had ceased to truly listen from an early point, once he had been advised that he was ‘spared’.
I was spared? Or you got scared?
That others, ultimately, had been spared seemed to him the only thing of relevance, for which he was nearly ready to thank the lord.

He turned to the camera fixed high in the corner of the room behind him.

‘Got all that, yeah?’

Then, with a nod to the detectives, he departed.