The Knives

by Richard T. Kelly

  ‘No smoking in here,’ Blaylock snapped.

  ‘Fair do’s. But you’ll not mind me rolling one for when I’m outside … Where was I?’

  ‘You were telling me what a problem immigration is round these parts? When we’ve got maybe two thousand immigrants, in a population of a quarter-million?’

  ‘Those numbers are on the up, and you pretend you’ve a grip on them, and you don’t. Makes a difference up here, David. Don’t tell me you’ve not had people in your surgery saying they can’t see a doctor, can’t find a place to rent, nursery for their kids.’

  ‘That’s not on account of two thousand immigrants, Mr Scarth.’

  ‘They see how it is in the waiting rooms. They see the ethnic shops. They’re on the bus and they can’t hear English spoken. Or they’ve lost work on the building site because some blow-in has quoted cheaper. You’re telling them not to believe their lying eyes?’

  Blaylock could not take Scarth for an affable man, and yet his features were perpetually contorting into the look of patient amiability.

  ‘I know the facts don’t support that analysis. What I accept is people are having to deal with certain changes in the society.’

  ‘Changes, yes. Change can be disturbing. We’re not London, see, not got that exciting diversity you like down there, the Ethiopian food and the Polish brickies and Mary Poppins from Budapest. In my view it’s not a badness that’s in people, we just know what it means to be native British. You know what it means.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Howay. You know. A like-minded sort of people, living in the same place, talking the same language, believing the same things, respectful of the laws and traditions of the land. As I heard you at your conference, them who were here first have first claim, and them what come later, as guests, need to be good guests. Right? And if they’ve come to claim benefits ’cos here’s nicer than wherever they’ve been? Nah, forget it. If they’ve come to take jobs where we’ve got wor own people? Not needed, thank you. If they’ve come to wreak havoc on the streets of our cities? Howay, either respect the law or hop off to some Muslim country, right? I mean, what’s the United Kingdom for, David? To safeguard our island nation, isn’t it? We’re a bloody island and we can’t nail down who gets to cross our borders?’

  It had not taken much, Blaylock observed, for the canny veneer to wear thin. Having had the pleased demeanour of a man with a lunchtime pint set up before him, Scarth now wore the glare of one who had six beers under his belt already.

  ‘I’m sure you think you sound very reasonable. But what me and the public see of your group is hordes of young men, full of drink in the middle of the day, swarming into areas where Muslims live without bother, chanting a lot of hateful things and challenging the police when they’re told off. Or are you not aware of that impression you make?’

  Scarth raised two palms in concession. ‘Fair play, some of our members are lads who’ve been asked to leave football grounds in their time. Some, I’d admit, never even got through the turnstiles, right? And, god forbid, one or two of ’em might have thrown a punch at a man. But then so have you, haven’t you, David?’

  Blaylock returned Scarth’s grin with a scathing look. Scarth leaned in, serious again. ‘This is a young movement. Some of them who are drawn to us? Okay, they mightn’t cover us in glory. I might not love their company. But, see, our best recruiting sergeant is you, David. Because you talk and talk, and it doesn’t match up to what they see, and they’re sick of it. And they don’t reckon you’re bothered.’

  ‘My record is clear, what I’ve said and done, I believe in a fair immigration system, one that we control sensibly—’

  ‘David, David, I am always ready to hear a man plain about what he believes. You’ll always hear me say, “Speak up, that man! Tell us your truth!” But when I hear weasel talk from a so-called Conservative, like you … I mean, howay. You represent Teesside, not Tanzania. Forget what’s the done thing in Westminster or bloody Brussels. You owe loyalty to the people you represent. There’s you in power and you want to sit back and wash your hands while our country lets in any colour of toe-rag and all their filthy backward practices from the worst cesspits in the bloody world. And they’re just allowed to get away with it, with the blinds pulled down, funded by the fucking taxpayer—’

  ‘Mind your language,’ Blaylock snapped. ‘Where do you think you are, man?’

  Scarth’s face had reddened and he had begun to sound as if he needed to spit. Clearly he didn’t take well to a telling-off.

  ‘I’ve sat and heard you out, Mr Scarth. I can’t satisfy you, and that’s okay by me. I know what I stand for and who I represent, which is the basically decent, tolerant people of this region. And I know what I’m opposed to, which is thugs and bullies, wherever they’re from.’

  ‘If you think you know people round here so much better than me, let’s ye and me have a proper debate in public, see who comes out on top.’

  Blaylock shook his head. ‘Get away. You’ve not earned that. If you want a platform, if you love democracy so much, get yourself some policies and stand some candidates. No one’s stopping you.’

  ‘“No one’s stopping …”? That’s a bloody laugh, what with the time you put into suppressing us. We’ve abided by your rules to now, but I tell you what, we might have to look at that, Mr Blaylock. We’re sick of these confrontations with police, every bloody time we try to gather. Like east London? Where we’re penned in next to that shower of shit that want to crow and goad and give us stick – the commie anarchists, fucking wasters, students thinking it’s big to shout “Fascist scum!” into a megaphone? Not one of them has done a brave thing in all their born days but they rant on like it was them fought the Battle of Britain.’

  ‘That, too, is free speech. I’m sorry you’ve such scorn for people who disagree with you.’

  ‘Howay, even you can see! The glee on their faces, knowing we’re the ones who’ve been silenced – there’s something not right there. Naw, I’m past weary of our getting kettled. A movement has to make long strides, activists have to feel active – we need to break our cage. And, listen – if I really fancied it, if I’d a serious mind to, I could bring fifty coaches of lads right down your street, nee bother. I’d not tell the police about it neither. And I wouldn’t smile about that if I was you.’

  Blaylock could not restrain his contempt. ‘Y’know, you sound just like them, all the tin-pot jihadis. It all has to end in threats, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not a threat. Just a fact. I’ll not be talked down to in my country. Not by you or anyone. It is a war we’ve got on here. And – talking straight, like? – I see you as my enemy’s friend, Mr Blaylock.’

  Blaylock pushed back from the table and stood up sharply. ‘Right. You’ve had a good slot, you’ve been listened to. I know who you are now. Come see me again, any time. Just have the guts to give your own name at the door. And if you feel you’ve got to bring an army with you, well, I’d not be at all surprised.’

  He opened the door and held it open. Scarth made quite a performance of tying his scarf and lodging his roll-up behind his ear, without taking his eyes off Blaylock’s. Blaylock watched him walk out, then went to the foyer to check the CCTV. Andy Grieve came to his side. On the black and white monitor Scarth turned and looked up to the lens, ebullient again, sweeping off his flat cap in farewell.

  10

  7 a.m., and Blaylock was wet-shaving with one ear cocked to the review of news and papers on the radio. Distractedly he nicked himself, saw blood through the foam and was about the staunching when he heard Andy’s light rap on the bathroom door.

  ‘Ms Hassall has to be getting on her way, sir.’

  Andy grinned as Blaylock passed him heading down the stairs. The illicit air of the situation seemed to amuse him still.

  She was waiting by the drawn blinds of the living room window, tapping on a small tablet-and-keyboard contraption, wearing a short zip-festooned jacket of soft black leather over a belted
dress. She looked up and smiled slightly to see him, bare-chested with a bloodied old towel round his neck, in the style of a nearly finished fighter.

  ‘It’s a big old property you’ve got on your hands here. Just a bit of loving care could do wonders.’

  He looked about him and saw the décor anew: if clean and tidy, the place was spartan and tired, its appearance minded by hired hands in his absence. He had missed another weekend’s window to rescue his autumn garden from dereliction.

  ‘There’s never the time, it was bought as a family home. “Bought for happy people, therefore standing empty”, like the poet said.’

  He failed to resist a glance to the mantelpiece and the picture of his children, a copy of which he kept on his desk at Shovell Street. She followed his gaze – maybe a little ruefully, he thought.

  ‘You’ll be seeing your family later today?’

  He nodded, not wishing to elaborate on the prospect of Jennie’s new partner, the novelty of the camping trip, his unease over it all.

  They embraced, and it felt to him a lovers’ embrace, but equally that both of them were quite ready to get on with their respective days.

  ‘Off I go,’ she laughed lightly. ‘The thief in the night.’

  He led her down the step into the chilly and gloomy garage, disreputably disordered with its odour of cold concrete, exhaust fumes and unwiped tools. He lifted the garage door on a view that was a sfumato of drizzle and fog.

  ‘I didn’t get to see much of Teesside, then. Shame.’

  ‘Next time, eh?’

  He couldn’t see her green eyes through the gloom but the whiteness of her smile was strangely clear and she pressed her scented lips to his. Then she was into the driver’s seat, revving up, off and away.

  *

  On the train from Darlington Blaylock inspected the morning’s red-tops. What jarred him on a look inside the People was a splashy piece dedicated to exposing the apparent folly of Diane Cleeve’s ‘bizarre quest for mercy for her daughter’s killer’. The better part of a page explored her apparent ‘close relations’ with a ‘self-styled pastor’ who had previous convictions for armed robbery and GBH. The tone could hardly have been more pitying and dismissive.

  Disturbed, Blaylock stepped out to the juddering vestibule of the carriage and got on the phone to Mark Tallis.

  ‘Mark, I’m a little curious to see the papers going after Diane Cleeve. Any idea how that’s happened?’

  A sigh came down the line. ‘Well, full disclosure, I might have had a word there, patrón …’

  The train lurched with speed and Blaylock had to steady himself momentarily. ‘You know, had you raised this with me, Mark, I’m not sure I would have approved.’

  ‘I know, I know, I’m sorry, David, but I felt I had to make some enquiries. There was a sanctimony in that room that I just wasn’t having. And what I found out … well, it’s not made up. You’re a good man and I won’t sit back and see you get grief for no good reason.’

  Blaylock knew he could not upbraid his spad for such praetorian zeal. Mark was a born crisis manager – always prepared for the worst, ever watchful for tides in the affairs of men that might carry certain unfortunates out to sea unless defences were packed and stacked high. He let the matter drop.

  *

  He was waiting outside the Islington house when he received a text from Jennie: Running a shade late but on way, 5mins? Pls wait. Jx

  The black Cherokee duly swept up to the gates. As he ambled toward them in greeting, Blaylock found it somehow stunning to see Jennie in jeans again, indeed to see the whole clan so jumbled and besmirched and yet cheerful – even Alex cheerfully ruddy-faced and dishevelled. He had not seen this coming. That they should have enjoyed themselves so was unfathomable to him.

  ‘How was that?’ he asked Molly as she jumped from the backseat.

  ‘Great!’ she said, veritably breezing past him.

  Behind them, quietly amused, came his surrogate. Gilchrist was a big unit in the flesh, clad in a good outdoorsman’s shirt and jeans, his mane of thick silvery hair agreeably unkempt, his gold-rimmed spectacles clearly not those of a bookworm. He looked worryingly capable, not easily intimidated. They shook hands.

  Blaylock felt a strong, chastened need to pitch in with the hard labour, however belatedly. He offered to help shift indoors some gear, tents and holdalls and boxes of provisions. Upstairs, water was already thundering steamily into the claw-foot tub. It was wash-up time for the children. He had rarely felt so spare as he lumped Alex’s gear along the landing to the threshold of his bedroom wherein, predictably, the boy had already fired up his laptop and now peered at the screen.

  Blaylock leaned against the door jamb. ‘Hey, so did you see your dad get pranked in front of the cameras this week?’

  ‘Aw, yeah … Uh, sorry that happened, Dad. Embarrassing for you, I bet. Mum said it shouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘I thought it might have amused you … The mob who did it, they’re called The Correctors?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve heard of them.’

  ‘What’s it all about? The politics of it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think that’s sort of the point? It’s just a banner people sort of gather under. To protest with a bit of, y’know – humour.’

  ‘Against the likes of me. I admit, I didn’t find it quite so funny.’

  ‘Yeah, well, like I say. I thought it was out of order.’

  Blaylock thought for a moment, then thought better. ‘Okay. Cheers for that, son.’

  He came down the stairs and, seeing Gilchrist stood waiting formidably by the newel, prepared a tight smile.

  ‘David, I’m just going to brew up before I shoot off – can I make you a brew?’

  And so he followed Gilchrist down to the basement, welcomed at last into the forbidden kitchen, and watched Gilchrist’s broad-shirted back as he busied with kettle and cups.

  ‘Yorkshire Tea okay?’

  ‘Sure. Glad to have it. Jennie used to say it was too strong for her.’

  Gilchrist turned and looked about, momentarily baffled. Then his eyes brightened and he stooped and opened the dishwasher, whereupon he retrieved the ceramic teapot he had clearly sought.

  ‘I find it so hard to work without order,’ he murmured, in the manner of a man clearly content to think aloud in company. ‘Then you realise, there’s so much we can’t control … you might as well go for it.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve never lost the unfortunate tendency to run my house like a barracks.’

  Gilchrist spun round again, properly thoughtful this time, or so it seemed to Blaylock. ‘Am I right you soldiered in Belfast?’

  ‘Just one tour. Not the height of things. But a pretty torrid year for ambushes, as I remember.’

  ‘I cut my teeth in documentary over there, while it was still in a fair bit of turmoil. I’ve nothing but respect for that job.’

  Blaylock chose to glide over what struck him as a strategic courtesy. ‘Alex is very into his documentaries.’

  Gilchrist poured the tea. ‘He is. He has good taste. And a good eye, I’d say.’

  ‘You can offer him some guidance, I expect.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he has his own ideas. Which is good. Having the passion is the main part. I suppose my big thing is to advise him that if you want to do it then there’s more important things than lenses and lights and kit? Which is going to people and places themselves. Getting your hands dirty in the stuff of life.’

  ‘Are you working on anything at the moment?’

  ‘I’m, uh, reading, as my agent would say. Looking at fiction possibilities, actually. Just speculatively. But I find when I’m interested in something … I don’t know what I think. You ever find that?’

  ‘Very often. But when I finally make up my mind I realise it was what I thought all along.’

  Gilchrist had been leaning by the kitchen counter while nursing his mug but now he pulled a chair and sat next to Blaylock.

  ‘Listen, David, I want
to be direct, that’s my way. I appreciate this is a strange situation. I’m a divorced man myself. I’ve two grown boys of my own … I’ve seen all sides of it. I know what kids mean, however things are between parents. And I just want you to know I respect that.’

  Blaylock nodded, seeking to keep his expression judicious, before he saw from Gilchrist’s look past his shoulder that they had company.

  ‘There’s tea in the pot, Jen, or shall I brew coffee?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind …’ To Blaylock’s eye Jennie, clutching herself as she yawned, epitomised the term ‘tired but happy’.

  ‘C’mon, what do I always say? Between any two things you always have a preference.’

  ‘Tea’s fine. David, the kids are … shattered. I mean, I don’t know that they’re good for any more than flopping in front of the telly.’

  Blaylock stood up. ‘Look, let me go fetch you in some takeout.’

  He waved away her enervated gratitude and trudged back up the staircase and out of doors. Andy climbed out of the Jag and came toward him, quizzical. Blaylock explained the mission. He turned in time to glimpse Jennie and Gilchrist as darkened shapes in the hall past the front door – his kiss on her forehead, their shared embrace.

  Blaylock looked away, knowing nonetheless there were things he had to acknowledge and not seek to dodge. Yes, he had begun to picture a path to reconciliation with Jennie, allowed a seed to germinate within him. That hope had suffered a setback and now he would have to hold fire, review the unwelcome turn, practise tolerance. In his heart, though, he knew full well, he was uttering a kind of curse upon their union.

  Then Gilchrist bounded out to his Cherokee and they exchanged cheery waves. Blaylock stood watching his rival reverse and rev away down the street.

  ‘Are we heading then, boss?’

  He realised Andy was watching him closely – realised he had been gnawing absently at a knuckle – pondering, more deeply, he knew, than he ought, Gilchrist’s surely throwaway remark about preferences.