The Knives Read Online Free PDF

are you okay?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Are you okay to talk about it?’
    ‘Really. I’ve not got a scratch on me.’
    ‘Great, I mean, about how we handle it? The story? It’s going crazy here but my sense is the balance will come in positive for you, so it’s a definite opportunity to do something …’
    Blaylock interrupted, seeing in his head the tumult of press officers now fielding five hundred calls. Briskly he dissuaded Becky from anything other than a brief statement. Slipping his phone back into his jacket he saw that Andy was regarding him with a half-smile.
    ‘Sir, just to say, in any sort of emergency – there’s really no point in your getting involved. I’ve got your back, y’know.’
    Blaylock weighed his response for a moment or so. ‘Howay, Andy. We both know if I saw a real threat coming down I’d have that Glock off of you in two ticks. And I’d secure my own defence. But, cheers, yeah?’
    Andy reclined sizeably into the Jaguar’s leather, as though to signal his ease at a ribbing from the boss; just as likely – Blaylock was sure – so as to let his tracksuit jacket slip fully open, the better to display the butt of the semi-automatic holstered snugly under his arm.
    *
    Back at home Blaylock showered, shaved and donned his navy Austin Reed suit, dodging the long mirror’s reflection, since it rarely lifted his spirits, and he needed to keep lively. The morning’s adrenalin rush was worn off, and familiar gloomier thoughts had moved back in.
    He packed his ministerial red box with the day’s major pieces of paper. His speech to the police chiefs needed final sign-off. The latest – last? – round of objections to his legislation for identity cards had to be rehearsed. Cabinet would meet at 9.45 a.m. In two weeks’ time the House would rise for party conferences, and umpteen policy positions needed to be settled in advance. He had never felt more challengingly employed. And yet nor had he ever known such deep, overpowering moments of futility – not even at the lowest ebb of his tour in Bosnia.
    As he was knotting his tie he heard Andy’s courteous rap on the bedroom door. He looked around the silent bedroom, to which he would retire, alone, come the evening – the unmade bed, the identical pressed navy suits hanging from the armoire doors, the desk stacked with colour-coded files, the panic button by the bedside lamp, the greying view through bulletproofed glass onto the Kennington square outside. This was the life he had made for himself– its duties and burdens, its powers and restraints, its solitude and confinement. He threw the duvet across the mattress – Box your blankets, sir! None of that civilian sloth! – and opened the door to Andy.
    Downstairs as he exited the front door he recognised a hand-addressed envelope atop his private mail on the console table, and he doubled back and slipped it into his pocket.

2
    The Jaguar rolled up to the great glass-box estate of the Home Office on Shovell Street, SW1, and Blaylock shifted from the backseat. Evidently, word of the morning’s ruckus had spread. By the entrance the press had mustered a scrum – men in anoraks, some with heavy microphones, which they wielded as if to disconcert more easily jostled females. In his peripheral vision Blaylock clocked a second minor threat – a handful of placard-waving demonstrators, chanting in the standard spirited manner, but seeming now to shuffle down the pavement toward the entrance from the far-flung pitch where they had surely been told to stay put. Taken together, the two groups made a fair din.
    ‘STOP DETAINING WOMEN! RESPECT THEIR RIGHT TO BE FREE!’
    ‘Minister! Any comment on your punch-up this morning?’
    ‘STOP DETAINING WOMEN! RESPECT THEIR RIGHT—’
    ‘Mr Blaylock! Is this the first time you’ve hit someone?’
    Andy muscled a path through and Blaylock, blinking under the barrage of camera flashes, pressed on. Yet before he could get to the door a diminutive