Read Redlaw - 01 for Free Online

and disgust that his policies evoke.”
    There was braying from across the floor of the House, cheering from Slocock’s own side.
    Slocock raised his voice to make himself heard. “Furthermore, does the Secretary of State not realise— does he not realise —that to continue to pursue those policies is simply to invite repetition of the events of last night? Were it an isolated incident, I could perhaps understand the right honourable gentleman’s apparent lack of concern. However, as we all know, these so-called bloodlust riots have shown a marked increase in recent months, both in frequency and severity. The Sunless, if we must use that word for them, are getting noticeably more restive and aggressive. On behalf of the Great British public, those who rightfully belong here, those with pulses and a dietary appetite that doesn’t extend to haemoglobin, I ask him what is the Department of Sunless Affairs going to do about these uninvited, unwanted immigrants? Their numbers are growing day by day, or should that be night by night? What is the government’s response to a situation which, no one is in any doubt, is becoming more and more untenable?”
    Slocock sat down. From the Labour front benches his opposite number rose to his feet.
    Maurice Wax, the Secretary of State for Sunless Affairs, was a gloomy-looking man with a sharp widow’s peak and a sallow, greyish complexion. The political cartoonists regularly depicted him with fangs and a black cape, often hanging upside down from the rafters of the debating chamber. More than one stand-up comedian had made the joke that the man with ultimate political responsibility for the Sunless could do with a little sun himself.
    Wax had been chosen for the post because he was widely regarded as a safe pair of hands, someone workmanlike and imperturbable who wouldn’t court controversy or fumble what was an exceptionally tricky brief. He lacked flash, but he knew his way around a set of statistics, and nobody could argue that he did not take his job, or himself, very seriously.
    “Mister Speaker,” Wax began, “at best reckoning there are a little over thirty thousand Sunless present in the UK. That is to say, one Sunless per two thousand humans. Or, to put it another way, the Sunless currently comprise zero-point-zero-five per cent of the overall population.”
    Slocock yawned elaborately for the benefit of the BBC Parliament cameras and the sketch writers in the public gallery.
    “In those countries where Sunless are a longer-established feature,” Wax went on, consulting his notes, “it has been calculated that the Sunless-to-human ratio needs to rise to one per thousand before the balance becomes unsustainable. In other words, before they become an active menace. We are, I would submit, a considerable way from that, and indeed this government’s programme of robust, proactive identification and containment will ensure the United Kingdom does not go the way of Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary and their ilk in finding itself burdened with Sunless superabundance—the cause, of course, of the Sunless’s initial westward drift some two decades ago. For the record, new SRAs have been established just this month in Liverpool’s Toxteth and Moss Side in Manchester, and we’re consulting with the Scottish Government and the Welsh National Assembly with a view to rolling out further SRAs in...”
    By that point Slocock didn’t need to pretend to look bored. He was. He tuned out Wax’s drone, his mind turning to his meeting at eight tonight with Nathaniel Lambourne.
    Knowing Lambourne, the restaurant would be an expensive one. But expensive didn’t automatically equate with good.
     
    Slocock arrived punctually at the Flaming Aubergine on Greek Street. He was mildly impressed to learn that the place had a Michelin star. What mattered, though, was that, judging by other diners’ meals, it served proper-sized portions, not namby-pamby little strips of this and that