Read The Knives for Free Online Page A

garbage that’s totally detrimental to what we call “social cohesion”, right?’
    ‘Do you not think he’s rather beneath your paying attention to him? Or dignified, let’s say, by your picking a quarrel with him. You are a scalp to him in that sense, no?’
    Not caring for Dame Phyllida’s tack, Blaylock was glad to see Mark Tallis sauntering up behind her, furled papers in one fist. But Dame Phyllida held her ground. ‘I expect you heard the complaints about police funding from the Lancashire Chief?’
    Tallis eased into the single armchair set before Blaylock’s desk. ‘David’s already got his rebuttal in. Actions speak louder and all that. I just told Rob Gritten at the Mail , “Our message is that every citizen has a part to play in reducing crime on the streets, and the Minister has shown us this very day that he doesn’t exempt himself from duty …”.’
    Dame Phyllida, ignoring Tallis, gave Blaylock some moments’ worth of a meaningful look, then turned and left. Mark unfurled and passed the papers he carried to Blaylock.
    ‘My polish on Phyllida’s draft of your speech to the cops.’
    ‘The last draft wasn’t Phyllida’s, was it?’
    ‘Not formally, but didn’t you spot how what had been crystal-clear was suddenly turned into mud?’
    ‘Right. So, what’s your beef with the Post ?’
    ‘Didn’t you see? “The error-prone and volatile David Blaylock”? And Martin Pallister got two whole inches just to whack away at you.’
    Pallister, Blaylock’s shadow on the Labour frontbench, was a seasoned media performer with aged-heartthrob looks and the dim aura of a lost leader. But Blaylock was unbothered by him, and vexed to see Tallis fret – hopeful of one day conveying to his spad that what the papers called a ‘crisis’ was usually manageable, and that he would pay no heed to such panicky language until the morning they had gathered sufficient dirt on him as to run a big thick-eared close-up of his bleary 6 a.m. face with DISGRACE etched above in big capitals. And on that day, maybe, they would be right – maybe he was a disgrace, maybe more than he or they knew. Today, though, was not that day.
    ‘Mark, listen – I don’t want you forever on the blower to thehacks and hounding my critics on Twitter. Okay? You could use a bit of Deborah’s sangfroid. You’re not an attack dog. I see you as a deep thinker.’ He smiled. ‘Will you sit in with me and the Sheikh?’
    Mark – having stiffened at the comparison to Deborah Kerner, Blaylock’s policy-specialist spad – seemed mollified by the boss’s jocular compliment and clasp of his shoulder, as Blaylock rose and moved to the door where Geraldine stood wearing her brightest ‘Now?’ face.
    *
    ‘I was sorry to hear al-Kasser’s praises being sung on my Roberts radio this morning,’ said Sheikh Hanifa, making pained and rueful shapes with his hands. ‘Poison in the air. He speaks for no one. And it so wearies most Muslims. To be tarred with his brush.’
    Blaylock had once assured Sheikh Hanifa that his door was always open, and the Sheikh had taken this literally. But his sexagenarian presence – round-faced, mild-eyed, silver-haired under a green-banded turban – was no burden, and his credentials were unimpeachable. Chaplain of Russell College, a twenty-year veteran of ‘inter-faith dialogue’, Hanifa was a man on whom successive governments had relied to provide reliable definitions of what in British Islam lay within the pale and what lay beyond.
    As the tea trolley was trundled into the office Blaylock took the chance to discreetly look over the stranger Sheikh had brought with him, introduced as Ashok Mankad, Russell Professor of History and Head of Pastoral Care – a slight, doleful man in big black-framed spectacles.
    ‘Home Secretary?’ the Sheikh ventured. ‘We have, of course, just had our freshers’ weeks, and in chatting with Ashok I saw that both he and I noticed similar things, disturbing things,