The Knives (12 page)

‘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.

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.

Both wore intent expressions as they took turns to issue prompts. One was tall and muscular as a basketball player, his eyebrows a black line, mouth set straight as a blade. His dark head swivelled to meet Blaylock’s gaze for a fleeting instant, then faced front again.

The other – shorter, wirier, more luxuriously bearded – suddenly crouched and raised his hands, and the boys began to step forward in turn to land slapping punches into his palms. His taller colleague’s face broke into a delighted grin, baring uncommonly white teeth.

‘Okay, green belts! Bow to me, bow to each other!’

As the children dispersed the two young men approached Blaylock, and Seema conducted introductions. Sadaqat, it transpired, was the taller, Javed the shorter and more self-contained.

‘
As-salam-o-alaikum
,’ Blaylock recited as he thrust out his hand.

Sadaqat’s eyes filled with mirth. ‘
Wa alaikumu s-salam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh
,’ he replied as they shook. ‘We are, uh, pleased and honoured to welcome you to our centre.’

‘Thank you. I like the look of this class.’

‘
Shotokan
? Yeah, it’s one of the most popular things we do. Everybody likes to throw a punch now and then, yeah?’

Blaylock smiled. ‘I’ve never had the discipline for martial arts.’

‘Me neither. My boy Javed here, he’s the proper eighth
dan
man.’ Blaylock took the cue to shake with Javed, too.

‘This is a fine-looking extension you’ve got, Sadaqat.’

‘Thank you. We raised the money in the community, and the
community helped us build it. So, yeah, we’re proud. May I take you upstairs, show you what else we got?’

As they threaded back down the corridor Blaylock ear-wigged Sadaqat’s cheery exchanges with Seema.

‘Did you sort out that bother you had with the little
hisbah
patrol?’

‘Oh yeah … Nipped that one in the bud.’

‘What was that?’ Blaylock enquired.

‘Ah, one or two of the boys we get in regular got it in their heads to go around locally like a bit of a gang – giving out to people they knew that their behaviour was, uh, not sufficiently Islamic? Telling their sisters’ friends to dress more modest, knocking cans of beer out of guys’ hands and that.’

‘How did you manage?’

‘Peer group pressure, innit? It’s amazing how people can be shamed.’ Sadaqat flashed his pearly smile. ‘Nah, we just had a word, told them to grow up and act like men. Not sad little boys trying to get back at girls who don’t fancy them, yeah?’

Blaylock was amused by the tale and the telling. Back out in the reception they now mingled with a stream of men coming in from the street, clad in down-filled coats, who joined them in climbing the stairs.

‘Prayers,’ said Sadaqat. On the upper floor he indicated a good-sized carpeted room into which the human traffic was headed, then took his guests aside to show by turn a ‘quiet room’ (‘for one-to-one counselling?’), a ‘seminar room’ (‘for short courses?’), and what he called ‘the den’ (‘to shoot pool or watch the football’).

There was, as it turned out, no football showing in the den, its walls painted black but enlivened by spray-paint murals. Rather, the flat screen fixed on high showed a young imam in waistcoat and hat, holding forth in Urdu from behind a desk piled with heavy tomes: the recognisable format of a TV phone-in. A big, pallid, stocky young white man, luxuriously red-bearded under
his
taqiyah
cap, was alone and peering up at the television with notable intensity from a capsized black leather sofa.

Sadaqat steered Blaylock over to a pool table where two young men stood swinging cues in anticipation. The first – ‘Mohammad Abidi, call me Mo’ – wore a lightning flash razored into his hair, a pair of perilously loose fit jeans, and the general air of one who liked his reflection. The second, one Nasser Jakhrani, was bespectacled, duffel-coated, shy-smiling.

The TV imam, though, was sounding ever more irate, since the young ginger-haired man on the sofa had suddenly jacked the volume right up. Sadaqat winced and strode over to him; the youth leapt to his feet in a manner Blaylock thought combative, and a sharp if muted exchange ensued before Sadaqat rested a solicitous hand on his shoulder. Then with an imploring mien he beckoned for Blaylock to come over. Blaylock exchanged looks with Andy before obliging.

‘You should shake this man’s hand, Finn,’ said Sadaqat, his own calming hand still in place. ‘He is the Home Secretary of the government, yeah?’

Blaylock saw a near-comically averse look cross Finn’s face, as one who had been told to pull on the leg of a live tarantula. Yet he took Blaylock’s hand.

‘Hi Finn. So, you like this centre here? Find the facilities good?’

Finn appeared to treat the simple enquiry with high seriousness, looking about him as one whose opinions were insufficiently heeded locally. ‘Gah. Ought to be more
rigour
in this
dawa
. Too many brothers know more about …
rappers
, and
footballers
, than know the companions of the Almighty Prophet,
alayhi as-salam
. But, uh, yeah, in my view, on the whole – my brother Sadaqat’s place is a proper reverent place. For a brother seeking the purer life and that. Sanctuary, from the cursed
Shaitan
, you get what I’m sayin’?’

But Blaylock did not, and so was relieved when Sadaqat engineered their exit, bidding his visitors adjourn to the quiet room
and closing the door behind them. There was a table with six chairs and a whiteboard that reminded Blaylock of his own set-up in Shovell Street. As the party chose seats Andy stationed himself by the door. Blaylock realised Sadaqat was looking at him ruefully.

‘I apologise for Finn, he’s, uh – he has problems.’

‘Of what sort?’

‘Bipolar disorder. Which they thought was just drug psychosis. No one figured ’til he pulled a knife on his foster mum. Said she was possessed by devils. Finn’s big on devils … He did three months in prison for it and when he got out – nobody cared about him, man.’

‘He seems to listen to you.’

‘I’ve picked up a few techniques, how to talk him down a bit, stop him listening to the other voices he’s got banging round his head.’

Glancing to a shelving unit rammed full of thick manuals Blaylock noticed a framed photograph: Sadaqat posed with a smiling redheaded woman and a beige-complexioned boy.

‘Your family?’

‘Yeah. My wife Rosie, we met at college? Our boy is Sacha.’

‘Huh,’ Blaylock smiled, liking what he saw.

Sadaqat smiled back. ‘You thinking to ask me how it is with my wife being English and that?’

‘Not at all, I—’

‘It’s not a thing. My dad moved us to England in the seventies – he knew it wasn’t rural Pakistan no more. Like, he’s an observant man but he doesn’t live in the dark ages. He said to me, where you grow up, that’s home. England is home, London is home.’

‘You’ve no … issue, thinking of yourself as British?’

‘British Asian Muslim, is how I’d put it. I tell you this, I’m not interested in race, it’s not meaningful to me, as a divider of men? All I care about is ideals we can share in common.’

Struck by this answer, Blaylock nonetheless found Sadaqat’s gaze so peculiarly intense that he wished to change the subject. ‘So this centre, it was all set up by the pair of you?’

Sadaqat glanced at Seema. ‘Yeah, originally I’d got something going at the mosque near me, a place for young people – they offered me their basement room, was meant to be for hang-out and discussion group but … a lot of the boys wanted to get fit, so we got in some gym stuff, then the imam got fed up with all that clanking metal, yeah? Boys shouting out, trying to bench their own body weight? Thing was, we wanted an open-door policy, but not everyone who came had their manners down perfect? And for work like this, in a community, you need somewhere people can come without feeling they’re just upsetting everyone by breathing.’

‘The mosque was a bit too rigorous?’

Sadaqat winced. ‘I’d call it – fussy? Hidebound. At least here we, me and Javed, we are responsible, we say what goes.’

Blaylock sought to engage Sadaqat’s taciturn partner. ‘Javed, Seema told me before this you were running your own business, but things got tough?’

‘Yeah. I had a corner shop. It was trouble, all the time. Drunks and druggies coming in. I don’t like to talk about it now. Even to think about it. But it made me want to do something, to address that problem. I’m happy now, doing this project, not dealing with all that …’

‘Poison,’ Blaylock filled in.

‘Poison, yeah. Ignorance.
Jahiliyya
.’

Sadaqat appeared eager to ride over Javed’s simmering silence. ‘What we do here is about instilling some discipline, some self-respect, some self-improvement. Of the mind and the body. This neighbourhood, you can see, we got problems. My Islam is about showing a way up and out of those problems. Helping young Muslims make better choices, stronger choices. To believe there’s
something better, even if you start from nothing. The guys you just met? Mo, he might have nicked a car or two in his time … But now he runs his own clothes shop. Nasser, he’s in a call centre now, but he’s applying to study medicine.’ Sadaqat sat back, shaking his head. ‘The curse of this generation is nihilism – not seeing the deep meaning in things. What we say to guys who come is, you can live your lives with honour. And that’s not about fussing over whether or not your
beard
is the right length, you know what I’m saying?’

A horn sounded. Blaylock’s hosts both got to their feet.

‘Will you excuse us?’ said Sadaqat. ‘
Maghrib
, we gotta go next door. But I’d be pleased to talk some more.’

Blaylock stood and paced the room, aware Seema watched him.

‘Are you glad you came, Minister?’

Blaylock nodded. ‘Yeah, sure. Great guy. He gets it. Uses his initiative. Good for him.’ He studied a handmade poster on the wall that called for volunteers to sign up to an outward-bound excursion, caving on the North York Moors. When Sadaqat re-entered the room with Javed minutes later Blaylock enquired after it.

‘Yeah, our guys, they don’t see a lot of fields or cows … It’s good to get them out and about. To stretch themselves, yeah? Their horizons. It can be a spiritual experience down there in them caves, man. But, whether we get enough bodies to go, or the cash, even …’

‘Look, it’s a terrific idea. If you can’t get the money let me know, I’ll see what I can do for you.’

‘Hey, if you help us out, you gotta come along too, yeah?’

‘Deal.’ Amused, Blaylock checked his watch somewhat regretfully and went to Sadaqat with his hand out. ‘Listen, I’ve been pleased to meet you both. Really impressed by your work.’

Sadaqat shrugged, with the look of someone who knew his own worth. ‘Eh, the day will come when we die, Mr Blaylock. Nothing belongs to us then but our deeds.’

Blaylock had reflected anew. ‘I hold a big regular meeting at the Home Office, a forum on extremism in the community, how we deal with it? I’d like it very much if you would come along to one if you could.’

Sadaqat, for once, looked abashed. ‘Uh, I’m not so big on speaking for people that way. You know? Making speeches like I’m telling everyone else how to do it?’

‘I’d be interested in your view. Let my office send you the details, please at least consider.’

While they filed from the room a hubbub was emanating from downstairs and as they descended – Andy moving firmly to the front of the party, Javed at his shoulder – the source of the disturbance became clear. A small throng, two dozen or so bodies, had gathered just outside the centre’s doors; a TV camera was jostling around, backed by lights; and young Sid seemed to be struggling to hold a line and keep calm against protest, assisted by Blaylock’s Met police team. With a sinking heart Blaylock recognised the burly
taqiyah
-sporting man at the front of the crush – ‘Abou Jabirman’, the former Desmond Ricketts. Clocking Blaylock in turn, Jabirman began to stab his finger over Javed’s shoulder.

‘You! Why are you here? What do you think you are doing?’

‘I was invited here, Desmond.’

‘My name is Abou Jabirman, call me by my name!’

‘You’ll always be Desmond to me.’

‘Shame on you, to show hospitality to this man!’ Ricketts’s associates aped him in wagging their fingers in unison at Sadaqat, who had resumed the stern mien Blaylock had seen in
shotokan
class – the brow a black line, the mouth straight as a blade.