As Simba had in effect already been tried and convicted in what he had once called the ‘rainbow press – red as rags, yellow as streaks, blue as movies, green as slime’, his end struck many white people as rough justice, a murderous monster's retributive fall. But in another court, silent and black, he had received an entirely more favourable judgment, and these differing estimations of the deceased moved, in the aftermath of his death, on to the city streets, and fermented in the unending tropical heat. The ‘rainbow press’ was full of Simba's support for Qazhafi, Kho-meini, Louis Farrakhan; while in the streets of Brickhall, young men and women maintained, and fanned, the slow flame of their anger, a shadow-flame, but one capable of blotting out the light.

Two nights later, behind the Charringtons Brewery in Tower Hamlets, the ‘Granny Ripper’ struck again. And the night after that, an old woman was murdered near the adventure playground in Victoria Park, Hackney; once again, the Ripper's hideous ‘signature’ – the ritual arrangement of the internal organs around the victim's body, whose precise configuration had never been made public – had been added to the crime. When Inspector Kinch, looking somewhat ragged at the edges, appeared on television to propound the extraordinary theory that a ‘copycat killer’ had somehow discovered the trademark which had been so carefully concealed for so long, and had therefore taken up the mantle which the late Uhuru Simba had let drop, – then the Commissioner of Police also deemed it wise, as a precautionary measure, to quadruple the police presence on the streets of Brickhall, and to hold such large numbers of police in reserve that it proved necessary to cancel the capital's football programme for the weekend. And, in truth, tempers were fraying all over Uhuru Simba's old patch; Hanif Johnson issued a statement to the effect that the increased police presence was ‘provocative and incendiary’, and at the Shaandaar and the Pagal Khana there began to assemble groups of young blacks and Asians determined to confront the cruising panda cars. At the Hot Wax, the effigy chosen for meltdown was none other than the perspiring and already deliquescent figure of the community liaison officer. And the temperature continued, inexorably, to rise.

Violent incidents began to occur more frequently: attacks on black families on council estates, harassment of black school-children on their way home, brawls in pubs. At the Pagal Khana a rat-faced youth and three of his cronies spat over many people's food; as a result of the ensuing affray three Bengali waiters were charged with assault and the causing of actual bodily harm; the expectorating quartet was not, however, detained. Stories of police brutality, of black youths hauled swiftly into unmarked cars and vans belonging to the special patrol groups and flung out, equally discreetly, covered in cuts and bruises, spread throughout the communities. Self-defence patrols of young Sikh, Bengali and Afro-Caribbean males – described by their political opponents as vigilante groups – began to roam the borough, on foot and in old Ford Zodiacs and Cortinas, determined not to ‘take it lying down’. Hanif Johnson told his live-in lover, Mishal Sufyan, that in his opinion one more Ripper killing would light the fuse. ‘That killer's not just crowing about being free,’ he said. ‘He's laughing about Simba's death as well, and that's what the people can't stomach.’

Down these simmering streets, one unseasonally humid night, came Gibreel Farishta, blowing his golden horn.

At eight o'clock that evening, a Saturday, Pamela Chamcha stood with Jumpy Joshi – who had refused to let her go unaccompanied – next to the Photo-Me machine in a corner of the main concourse of Euston station, feeling ridiculously conspiratorial. At eight-fifteen she was approached by a wiry young man who seemed taller than she remembered him; following him without a word, she and Jumpy got into his battered blue pick-up truck and were driven to a tiny flat above an off-licence in Railton Road, Brixton, where Walcott Roberts introduced them to his mother, Antoinette. The three men whom Pamela afterwards thought of as Haitians for what she recognized to be stereotypical reasons were not introduced. ‘Have a glass of ginger wine,’ Antoinette Roberts commanded. ‘Good for the baby, too.’

When Walcott had done the honours Mrs. Roberts, looking lost in a voluminous and threadbare armchair (her surprisingly pale legs, matchstick-thin, emerging from beneath her black dress to end in mutinous, pink ankle-socks and sensible lace-ups, failed by some distance to reach the floor), got to business. ‘These gentlemen were colleagues of my boy,’ she said. ‘It turns out that the probable reason for his murder was the work he was doing on a subject which I am told is also of interest to you. We believe the time has come to work more formally, through the channels you represent.’ Here one of the three silent ‘Haitians’ handed Pamela a red plastic briefcase. ‘It contains,’ Mrs. Roberts mildly explained, ‘extensive evidence of the existence of witches’ covens throughout the Metropolitan Police.’

Walcott stood up. ‘We should go now,’ he said firmly. ‘Please.’ Pamela and Jumpy rose. Mrs. Roberts nodded vaguely, absently, cracking the joints of her loose-skinned hands. ‘Goodbye,’ Pamela said, and offered conventional regrets. ‘Girl, don't waste breath,’ Mrs. Roberts broke in. ‘Just nail me those warlocks. Nail them through the heart.’

Walcott Roberts dropped them in Notting Hill at ten. Jumpy was coughing badly and complaining of the pains in the head that had recurred a number of times since his injuries at Shepperton, but when Pamela admitted to being nervous at possessing the only copy of the explosive documents in the plastic briefcase, Jumpy once again insisted on accompanying her to the Brickhall community relations council's offices, where she planned to make photocopies to distribute to a number of trusted friends and colleagues. So it was that at ten-fifteen they were in Pamela's beloved MG, heading east across the city, into the gathering storm. An old, blue Mercedes panel van followed them, as it had followed Walcott's pick-up truck; that is, without being noticed.

Fifteen minutes earlier, a patrol group of seven large young Sikhs jammed into a Vauxhall Cavalier had been driving over the Malaya Crescent canal bridge in southern Brickhall. Hearing a cry from the towpath under the bridge, and hurrying to the scene, they found a bland, pale man of medium height and build, fair hair flopping forward over hazel eyes, leaping to his feet, scalpel in hand, and rushing away from the body of an old woman whose blue wig had fallen off and lay floating like a jellyfish in the canal. The young Sikhs easily caught up with and overpowered the running man.

By eleven pm the news of the mass murderer's capture had penetrated every cranny of the borough, accompanied by a slew of rumours: the police had been reluctant to charge the maniac, the patrol members had been detained for questioning, a cover-up was being planned. Crowds began to gather on street corners, and as the pubs emptied a series of fights broke out. There was some damage to property: three cars had their windows smashed, a video store was looted, a few bricks were thrown. It was at this point, at half-past eleven on a Saturday night, with the clubs and dance-halls beginning to yield up their excited, highly charged populations, that the divisional superintendent of police, in consultation with higher authority, declared that riot conditions now existed in central Brickhall, and unleashed the full might of the Metropolitan Police against the ‘rioters’.