‘Listen up, I’m not going to say this twice, the imam is our problem, not yours. If you so much as say hello to him, I’ll have you hauled in for attempted murder. And I don’t want to see you and your idiot friends hanging round the mosque like you were yesterday, get it?’

‘No, I don’t get it . . . So, people aren’t even allowed to walk around the estate now?’

He grabbed my elbow again and slammed me against the car.

‘Listen, Malrich, I know where all this is coming from. It’s your brother’s diary. But you don’t understand, he didn’t go killing people just because other people did . . . He tried to understand . . .’

‘Yeah . . . and he died trying.’

‘Go on, fuck off home, and take your gangsta mates with you. I want you in my office at 6 p.m. . . . and take your hands out of your pockets.’

We headed in to Paris, we were sick of hanging round the estate. We wandered round Châtelet, then down to Beaubourg, we traipsed half way up the Boulevard Sebastopol to one of Togo-au-Lait’s cousins who does hairpieces and makes carcinogenic beauty products. It’s the family business. Then we went down to the river for something to eat. After that we headed up to the Champs-Élysées. It’s like a different world, makes you wonder if you’re still in France. Finally, we went back down to the Tuileries and sat in the gardens to talk. I had a question I needed to ask.

‘Obviously someone here is a snitch and I want to know who it is. Momo? Or maybe you, Togo? I mean you voted with him, you were all up for wimping out and doing nothing.’

After an hour of everyone throwing accusations around, I realised any one of them could be the snitch, or it could be some friend they’d mentioned our plans to, or even the guy at the station cafeteria, he’d been listening in. It was even possible that Com’Dad just guessed what we were planning when he saw us outside the mosque at 7 a.m. We’re nocturnal creatures, everyone knows that.

‘Well, I’m heading back, I’m freezing my balls off here and Monsieur le Commissaire is expecting me for tea.’

6 p.m.