We headed out and did the tour of the estate, rounding up the posse – Cinq-Pouces, Garcon-de-Café (we call him Bidochon), Togo-au-Lait, Manchot, who’s only got one arm, and Idir-Quoi who can barely get a sentence out he stutters so badly – then we all went up to offer our condolences to Moussa’s family. There were crowds milling outside Block 22 and all the way up the stairs. We waited our turn. Fuck sake, it was tough . . . You had to feel for Nadia’s mother, she just sat there, saying nothing, staring down at her hands clasped in her lap, whimpering like a cat that’s been run over, Moussa just stared at us and nodded, and we stared back at them, holding our breath. After that we went over to Christelle’s salon, where Nadia worked. The minute she saw us at the window, Christelle flinched and reached for the phone. Since I’m the only one with blond hair, I went in on my own and told her why we were there. She came out and listened to us blethering on about how sorry we were. We didn’t know what to say. Besides, she was crying so hard she couldn’t hear a word anyway. It’s weird, offering condolences to people you don’t even know. When we saw her crying, we started crying, we looked like fucking idiots standing there trembling in the wind. Eventually we stopped crying and headed off to the cafeteria in the train station and held a meeting in the upstairs room. We had to do something, we had to show we had balls, we had to save the estate. The cute couple making out by the window left as soon as we piled in – there were eight of us and we did look pretty dodgy. The owner came over with his big backstabbing smile, brought us our drinks then went back and stood next to his panic button. Pretty quickly we all got angry. A bunch of the guys, that gimp Momo was one of them, reckoned there was nothing we could do, then there was Raymond (we call him Sting-Ray when he gets riled) suggested we start a counter-jihad. One extreme to the other, same old, same old.

I said, ‘We have to cut off the head, and the head, that’s the imam.’

Silence. Whispers. The imam, fuck, that’s heavy . . .

‘What the hell is with you guys? They’ve fucked every single one of us over – they fucked me up, and you Momo, and you Raymond, going around calling yourself Ibn Abû Some-shit, all ready to fly off and gun down a bunch of Afghans. And what about you, Cinq-Pouces, down at that mosque from four in the morning until midnight bowing and scraping . . .’

‘I . . . I . . . I . . . I think we sh . . . sh . . . should t . . . t . . . talk to our pa . . . parents.’