Free The Knives by Richard T. Kelly

talents for delinquent nastiness, and driving ambitions, apparently supported by holy writ, to become nastier still. These were petty-criminal converts, for whom Islam seemed to be a handy means of rebranding the society against which they offended – the authorities that had, quite reasonably, punished them – as a den of corrupt kuffars . Others in the pile of warrants, though, appeared to be model pupils, ‘clean skins’, and yet observed to have been keeping company with existing ‘subjects of interest’.
    Blaylock found himself staring at one such application, made against a youth whose sins amounted to ‘accessing extremist material on the internet’. Considering it a worthwhile exercise toquery the spooks once in a while, Blaylock picked up his secure telephone to MI5. In the next moment his BlackBerry beeped and he checked the screen. It was a text from his ex-wife Jennie: Just heard the news about your run-in this morning!? You okay? Jx
    He thought for a moment, picked up the device, and started to tap out a reply. The effort to sound both laconic and glad of her concern took him some moments more than he had planned for, such that when Geraldine knocked and re-entered he had forgotten his qualms over the stray warrant. He signed it and passed the pile in toto over to Geraldine.
    *
    At lunch-hour Norman Dalton, Minister for Policing, rapped on Blaylock’s door, back from the first morning of the Chief Police Officers Conference and instructed to debrief Blaylock on the mood. Dalton bore two bacon butties from the greasy spoon in the next street, and he and Blaylock stepped out to seek one of the seated areas dotted round Level Three where staff members could eat lunch. Passing the line of black pod-like soundproofed cubicles provided for quiet solo work, Blaylock found himself, as ever, imagining staff accidentally trapped inside and shrieking for help unheard; or else stealing crafty naps with their heads cradled in their arms.
    They found chairs and Dalton unwrapped his treats. Blaylock found Dalton canny and competent, a seasoned fifty-something albeit with the look of an outsized schoolboy, perpetually pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose.
    ‘So, Bannerman’s speaking tomorrow?’
    ‘Yes, that’ll be your pleasure if you get there early. I hear he’ll go big on reasserting the Met’s operational independence. Anyone would think he was feeling threatened. I had to listen to Martin Pallister being his irrepressible self, giving it the full class war. “Them bloody Tories, looking down their noses at the honest British bobby, they just want a better class of officer what talks proper, don’t you know?”’
    ‘He didn’t actually say that?’
    ‘He certainly said that Tories have a problem with the, I quote, “ordinary working-class make-up of our rank-and-file police”.’
    ‘Well I never …’
    If pushed Blaylock would have said he had greater problems with the Rotarian petit bourgeois make-up of police chief constables. He had suffered enough dinners with them as they dawdled over desserts and digestifs , their waistlines and self-estimations swelled by six-figure salaries and gold-plated pensions.
    ‘Anyhow, Pallister got cheered to the rafters. I dunno, it feels like a bit of a goading atmosphere in the place, chief. Take your tin hat.’
    ‘I’ve a few bones to throw. It’s not all make-do and mend. We’re saying there’s money for hi-tech innovation; there must be some in the crowd who think it’s better the cops have gear that’s at least as good as the phones they’ve got in their pockets?’
    ‘Maybe. But, you know – stick a camera on every copper and there’ll be some reckon it’s there to watch them, not the baddies. You might need one or two more bones …’ Dalton wiped ketchup off his fingers. ‘You know, after you they’ve given the big evening speech to Madolyn Redpath? She’ll give us a pasting, you know what she’s like.’
    ‘I don’t. Never