So there we were, the eight of us, looking like a right bunch of fucktards. We’d come to fight a war and the other side hadn’t even shown up. We’d been so sure how things would go down. The jihadists are pros, when they organise something, they’re up and out at dawn, straight after the first prayer – Fajr, they call it – they’ve got their Kapos running round from shop to shop, from block to block, dragging people away from whatever they’re doing and bringing them along in their wake. An hour later, everyone’s been rounded up, herded onto the esplanade, packed in like sardines, and after a few cries of Allahu Akbar over the speaker system, they’ve got them all fired up. By the time they turn them loose, there’s no stopping them.

8 a.m.

Sick of waiting, we headed over to the mosque. It was closed. We were pissed off the jihadists had backed down. Were they the ones running scared now? Did they back down because of the support for Nadia and her parents? They’re better informed than the CIA, maybe they figured out people wouldn’t stand for it. Honouring a murderer, celebrating his crime and praising Allah in the same breath was going too far – the estate wouldn’t stand for it. It was a matter of decency.

But then I realised there was another reason the jihadists hadn’t shown: riot police. There were CRS crawling all over the place and we hadn’t even noticed. They were waiting in their unmarked SUVs all over the estate. The bastards had screwed up our revenge, this was supposed to be between us and the jihadists and from the silence all over the estate it was clear that we were winning. Now the jihadists could claim they were men of peace and had only called off their demonstration so as not to give thugs and troublemakers and Islamophobes the opportunity to hijack their ceremony to honour the victims. Islamists are expert spin-doctors, they could make a crocodile blush.

I was just about to track down the imam and carve a swastika into his forehead when I heard someone calling me: ‘Malrich! . . . Malrich! . . . C’mere a minute . . . Get over here now!’ It was Com’Dad. He was stepping out of an unmarked car. I wandered over, hands in my pockets.

‘Come here!’ he said, dragging me by the arm, then he had me spread my arms and frisked me to see if I was carrying a knife or a rocket launcher or something. He gave my mates a look that told them to stay where they were.

‘Don’t even think about bullshitting me, I know what you and your bunch of Looney Tunes are planning.’

‘We weren’t planning anything . . . We were just heading over to see if . . .’

‘Shut the fuck up!’

‘Honest to God, officer . . .’