The Satanic Verses

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 somedamage 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’.
    Also at this point, Saladin Chamcha, who had been dining with Allie Cone at her apartment overlooking Brickhall Fields, keeping up appearances, sympathizing, murmuring encouraging insincerities, emerged into the night; found a
testudo
of helmeted men with plastic shields at the ready moving towards him across the Fields at a steady, inexorable trot; witnessed the arrival overhead of giant, locust-swarming helicopters from which light was falling like heavy rain; saw the