The Knives

by Richard T. Kelly

  ‘What sort of a headline?’

  Tallis cleared his throat. ‘Uh, “Home Sec Decked By Legal Eagle Ex”.’

  ‘It scans, right enough,’ Blaylock muttered, rolling his eyes, finding that they came to rest on the whisky decanter.

  3

  Feeling a mite exposed in shorts and polo shirt Blaylock swished his borrowed racquet experimentally as he jogged up decked steps and down the central aisle separating the gleaming cell-like courts. On reaching Court Six he found a lone figure peering wryly back through the glass at him – Lord Waugh, a hairy-kneed sexagenarian with the craggy look of a matinee idol from Blaylock’s parents’ era, one who might have played Heathcliff and Hamlet before settling into middle-age and saturnine villainy.

  ‘Shall we knock up?’ asked the Lord Chief Justice.

  Sure, thought Blaylock, nodding. Let the weirdness begin.

  Blaylock had not struck a squash ball in anger for twenty-odd years, and had to reacquaint himself with the little rubber pellet and the needful speed of the racquet head. Conversely he was surprised, and not pleasantly, by the relative nimbleness of the older man. Having stooped to retrieve a shot he had failed to return, Blaylock straightened upright to see his opponent clearly impatient to get to business.

  ‘What’s on your mind this fine morning, Mr Blaylock?’

  ‘Human rights law. How our courts interpret it, following Strasbourg. I wanted to be sure I know your view.’

  ‘You feel there’s a problem? Been upset by a reverse or two lately, perhaps? On the distaff side?’

  ‘No, I never mind being beaten fair and square. But quite often the pitch looks to me like it’s prepared in the opposition’s favour. The public have a similar sense, I think. The effect can be to give human rights a bad name. Or do you never think that?’

  ‘Well, perhaps you’ll define for me the unfairness you describe?’

  ‘Oh, take the old lag’s plea of right to family life … Hardly a cloudless defence, is it?’

  ‘You get the odd generous decision, true. Still … in the specifics of each case there is often quite a tangle of thorns, as the great man said.’

  Blithely Lord Waugh smacked another serve, and hostilities resumed. The older man’s deftness of touch was quite a thing, and quickly Blaylock was once more scuttling from wall to wall of the cramped court. After savouring a couple of cleaner hits, he swung and missed, and heard a vexing Tsch at his back as he reached for the ball.

  ‘It gets thorny, as you say,’ Blaylock recovered his breath, ‘when foreigners who lied their way into this country and committed serious crimes get to hang around even after they’ve done time.’

  ‘Oh, be assured, I no sooner forgive wickedness than you. But I can’t ignore an Act of Parliament. We are signatories to a Convention.’

  ‘Meaning we’re bound to follow a foreign court.’

  ‘No, simply to consider any judgment or opinion of the court. We arrive, however, at our own decisions. And I would say the public still like the fact that judges are independent – not in anyone’s debt.’

  ‘You don’t think judges find it useful to keep their noses clean with the powers they know litigants will end up appealing to?’

  ‘You have no legal training yourself, do you, Mr Blaylock?’

  ‘I took the basic course given to all ministers.’

  ‘Basic indeed …’ Lord Waugh served again, and soon enough Blaylock was playing fetch again, Waugh standing over him.

  ‘It seems to me’, said Waugh, after a noisy clearing of his throat, ‘that the fraction of cases that go against the government is probably a salutary thing. It means our law gets good scrutiny.’

  ‘What’s the need? When we have a so-called Supreme Court? How many referees do we want in-between the state and the people?’

  ‘Tell me this, Mr Blaylock, if Mephistopheles called on you and said, “For the price of your soul, I guarantee you the government will never lose more than one in every two hundred cases” … wouldn’t you call that a deal worth shaking on?’

  ‘I’d need to look at that one case we lost.’

  Waugh let loose a rheumy chuckle. ‘Well, you may need to lower your sights.’

  As they resumed, Blaylock felt his calf muscles twanging with the strain of the sudden moves from standstill. He played and missed again.

  ‘Try not to thrash, eye on the ball, sir. You know, this Europe we have now, this common ground we’ve found … I think of it especially when I’m in Tuscany. My father fought with the partisans, you know. His father was of that generation who said, “Never again.” Now we have a Europe of eight million citizens sharing rights and freedoms guaranteed by an independent court. It seems to me we should be proud of that. Otherwise, what are we? Little Englanders?’

  ‘Where I want to be standing’, said Blaylock, trying to take charge of his erratic breathing, ‘is with law-abiding people in this country, who expect to be protected from the non-abiders. They’re the people I tend toward when I’m thinking about who I serve.’

  Waugh grounded his racquet. ‘Tell me, what is it that you want to see happen? The UK leave the Convention?’

  ‘No. But our own Bill of Rights? A different matter.’

  ‘Oh, best of British luck with that. It wouldn’t tame the judges, you can be sure. If you ruin their sport they’ll just make up a new game.’

  ‘This is not a game, Lord Waugh.’

  But Waugh met Blaylock’s hard look with a grimace, then struck another serve. Blaylock stepped in and lashed a backhand low to the corner. For once it was Waugh who lurched in vain to reach the ball and Blaylock, in His Lordship’s way, did not wholly step aside in time, such that the older man bumped off him and staggered slightly, occasioning a coughing fit that bent him double. Blaylock stood over him silently. When Waugh’s eyes flicked upward his gaze had lost its geniality.

  ‘Well now. I do believe you’re developing a game of your own.’

  ‘Strange, isn’t it? To be arguing over who’s got right of way? Speaking for the democratic assembly, if I thought our democracy really relied on the scrutiny of judges I’d have got into another line of work.’

  ‘You’d have stayed in the army, perhaps?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Look, Mr Blaylock’ – Waugh, straightened, abruptly revived – ‘the only people I’ve ever met who think politicians should have fewer limits on how they carry on are politicians. I quite understand that were I in your shoes I mightn’t care much for seeing my exercise of power made inconvenient. But that is the law.’

  Lord Waugh hit a whiplash serve, to which Blaylock’s return was ill struck, and Waugh’s fierce forehand drove him back to the far corner of the court where he found he had no shot yet made a furious slash backward – only to instantly feel and hear a jarring crack against the court wall. With the ball rolling at his feet, he dumbly inspected his racquet’s broken head. Lord Waugh trotted up to his side.

  ‘Dear me. If you’d like to play on I’m sure you can borrow another.’

  ‘Another day, maybe. I’m due at my usual meeting with MI5.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Blaylock. You must hear some stories …’

  *

  Showered and suited and back in the Jaguar to Westminster Blaylock took a call from Griff Sedgley, thoroughly expecting to hear of new obstructions and affronts. In the event the news, in relation to the attempted extradition of Vinayak Khan, was better.

  ‘The court has considered Strasbourg’s view and basically it wants top-level assurances from the Americans that Khan’s condition is accepted and that nothing will be done to jeopardise his health in violation of the Convention.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning he won’t be treated like a soldier, won’t be put in super-high-security or end up on Death Row. We need to guarantee that on arrival in the US he’ll go to a psychiatric referral centre and stay there until trial.’

  ‘I see no problem.’

  ‘The catch is we have thirty
days. Until four p.m. on the twenty-fourth of October.’

  ‘Oh, conceivably it could be done overnight.’

  ‘The Americans aren’t always so prompt.’

  ‘No, but they’re in town right now, as it happens. I’m seeing Secretary Aldrich later today, so I’ll have a word …’

  *

  They were a mere three round the table of Blaylock’s office, since no one else in the building had sufficient security clearance, and so the usual air of surreal decorum closed over their weekly session as dictated by the finical demeanour of the Director of MI5.

  Adam Villiers bore the air of a thinker, his head befitting a Roman bust, hemmed by a monastic tonsure. He was robustly constructed yet with something of a dancer’s off-duty elegance in how he carried himself; and however grave – at times pallbearer-like – were his manners, a dark humour was often discernible in his eyes and at the edges of his remarkably ruby-red mouth.

  In the chair beside Villiers was Brian Shoulder, Scotland Yard Head of Counter-Terror Command, who put Blaylock less in mind of the Emperor Diocletian and more of an Islington market trader, with his tidy crop, boxer’s nose and narrow eyes as grey as nail-heads.

  ‘So, Home Secretary,’ murmured Villiers, ‘you have joined the ranks of the surveilled? Vis-à-vis your threatening phone-caller?’

  ‘Yes, I’d forgotten about him,’ Blaylock lied. ‘If “him”’ it is.’

  ‘Let me not alarm you any further, but in the overnight chatter we did pick this up …’ Villiers slid his trusty matt-black tablet device across the table-top and tapped PLAY on a paused video. Blaylock peered down at footage of a sun-bleached African scene: two men in flowing garments and headgear, rifles in hand, clamouring and gesticulating at the lens.

  ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘Zanzibar. The gentlemen are clerics, members of a recently formed Islamist sect. Their rhetoric calls for attacks on all foreign tourists, occupying forces, local apostates—’

  Blaylock grunted, assuming this shopping list might run on.

  ‘They wind round, however, to making quite a specific threat against you, Home Secretary? The gist of what the chap in the blue turban says is that, should Ziad al-Kasser be thrown out of Britain, then not only will all Westerners be “erased” from East Africa but you personally will be made to pay.’

  ‘They can join the queue.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Villiers, appearing to think that agenda item had been settled. They turned to consideration of the broader watch list of individuals and groups being monitored, individuals lately arrested on suspicion of preparing offences, the perpetual focus on London and the Midlands. Villiers expressed a mild frustration over a months-old, still fruitless watch over members of a suspected cell in Birmingham. ‘We approach the moment where we wonder if we should carry on …’

  Blaylock appreciated that the picture didn’t easily cohere, the joins often inexact. A dozen or more officers assigned to each subject made him chary of the price tag, the manpower, in every case. They moved on to the roll-call of suspicious individuals whose movements were electronically tagged and monitored for set terms, the statutory process they called ‘risk certification’.

  ‘Mr Nadir Hamayoon breached his conditions yesterday. Decided for whatever reason to take a stroll near Brimsdown Substation? He may have done it to annoy us, as some of them are wont to. I am rather more concerned about Abul Rahman. His term is just about up for renewal, he’s kept his nose remarkably clean.’

  ‘So finish the risk certificate but put him back on surveillance?’

  Villiers nodded. ‘Yes. To have these chaps just pacing the length and breadth of a cage can be counter-productive. Whereas if the cage is unlocked, and they resume former associations, old habits …’

  ‘And if we don’t take our eyes off them …’ Blaylock added, since this part seemed to him sometimes neglected. But Villiers was moving on to a summary of concerns about suspected British-born extremists overseas, an issue over which Blaylock generally felt lesser levels of unease on the grounds that individuals who quit the UK to fight and die for a caliphate could, to some extent, be left to their fate.

  *

  The trio were then driven to Downing Street for a Cabinet Room meeting of the body Patrick Vaughan called his ‘National Security Council’, adorned by the heads of GCHQ and MI6, Dom Moorhouse, army chiefs and senior mandarins. The whole high-level shooting match had long smacked to Blaylock of homage to the White House; and tonight that sense was exacerbated by the guest-of-honour presence of Caleb Aldrich, US Director of Counter-Terror.

  Having met Aldrich before, Blaylock approached him directly before the meeting was called to order, and explained his situation over the extradition of Vinayak Khan. Aldrich made a pronounced show of listening as statesman-ally, exuding gravitas and empathia, though with his good suit, ivory cufflinks and widow’s peak he reminded Blaylock rather more of a glad-handing real estate broker.

  ‘I don’t anticipate a problem, David. Our interests are the same. We won’t bend over for Strasbourg but, yeah, I expect we could ensure Mr Khan goes some place where he’ll get a mint on his pillow.’

  Once all were in place Vaughan dispensed with an agenda and offered the floor to Aldrich, who stood and, hand in pocket, held forth on the American vision of the globe. His delivery had urgency, yet something about his eyes, dark-ringed and strangely inert, was suggestive of some vital missing part. He then offered to take questions.

  ‘Can you clarify the White House position on drones?’ asked Dom Moorhouse. ‘As a tool of policy in counter-terror?’

  ‘Sure, no problem. Always, we’d prefer to take the subject alive, debrief ’em, prosecute ’em. But let’s be clear, there are locations where the risk of committing US troops is unacceptable and local law enforcement can’t be trusted. There are just some jobs where only Hellfire missiles will do.’ He paused to let some nervy laughter pass. ‘Be that said, the bar we got to clear is high, we got to know we’re taking out a priority target, or significantly degrading enemy capability, or disrupting a planned attack. That doesn’t have to be, y’know, forty-five minutes away …’

  Blaylock cocked a hand as to speak. ‘What do you say to calls for greater transparency on your targeting policy?’

  ‘If we had to go get a warrant on every strike …? Listen, if we’ve seen behaviour on the ground by military-age males that gives us sufficient concern, our view is we don’t need to know the guys’ names.’

  ‘What about collateral damage?’

  Aldrich shrugged. ‘Sometimes in the nature of a strike-zone. We hate that. We go to great lengths to avoid it – we have the means to be extremely precise. But the risk will not deter us. For reasons I just said.’

  The talk turned to developments in Yemeni bomb-making technology and surveillance systems in US airports. Then Blaylock felt a familiar twinge of irritation. His junior-level Security Minister Paul Payne, evidently emboldened by his researches into state-sponsored cyber-terror, made an enquiry about some recent theft of fingerprint records from US Customs, allegedly the work of Chinese hackers.

  Aldrich, for once, appeared rattled. ‘We don’t envisage that stolen data as having any kind of real use-value to an enemy.’

  Payne persisted. ‘But if one were proposing a national identity card based on biometric data, such as fingerprints – the risk of such a compromise would be far greater, wouldn’t you agree?’

  Aldrich looked to Vaughan, grinned and spread his arms in supplication. ‘Ah, forgive me, I’m pleading the Fifth on that one.’

  Blaylock bristled at Payne’s arrant disloyalty. As the meeting broke up Vaughan zeroed in on him, but only in the high-flying mood that National Security seemed always to foster in him.

  ‘So we’re on for tomorrow morning in Slough, David? Shoulder to shoulder with Border Force? Shall we have a word about the drill at the Carlton, before dinner?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Patrick, I’m afraid I’ll be coming late.’ />
  The PM sniffed. ‘Why? What’ve you got on?’

  ‘Just a, uh, counter-extremism exercise.’

  Vaughan nodded soberly, as though he had a clue.

  4

  It was near 7 p.m. as they drove into Stapletree, and peering through the window Blaylock felt that the dusk cloaked much but arguably not enough of the vistas of characterless houses, garage forecourts, fast food huts and out-of-business pubs. He looked to a pensive Andy Grieve, and recalled that Andy had grown up nearby in Ilford. Seema Hassanli also sat in silence, hijab faithfully in place.

  They passed the Goresford Islamic Centre’s awning and parked around the corner. As they walked the fifty yards, Blaylock took a notion and yanked his tie loose, rolling it up and stuffing it in his jacket pocket.

  ‘Do I seem relaxed, Seema?’ he ventured.

  ‘As far as it goes,’ she murmured, glancing backward to Andy.

  They were buzzed into a cramped reception space, its lino wearied by footfall, walls plastered with ill-sorted posters and advertisements for meetings and services. At the threshold of an office a young man in a baseball hat appeared, wary-eyed and buck-toothed. Blaylock saw past him to peeling walls and listing shelves of box-files.

  ‘Hi Sid,’ Seema greeted him. ‘We’re a little early, you seen Sadaqat and Javed?’

  ‘They’re takin’ shotokan class in the extension? I show you.’

  He led them down a corridor, and Blaylock began to hear the muffled sound of high-pitched, strangulated cries and grunts. He exchanged bemused glances with Andy as Sid opened a door for them into a long fluorescent-lit studio space of whitewashed walls and laminated wooden floor space.

  A gaggle of Asian boys in white karate pyjamas and belts of various colours were striking poses, stepping forward and feigning kicks and punches, emitting falsetto martial cries in response to barked instruction from their coaches – two young Pakistani men standing shoulder to shoulder, whom Blaylock took to be the proprietors, Sadaqat Osman and Javed Mukhtar.