The Versailles Memorandum

From The Versailles Memorandum pp.89-91

The bright green van came to a halt directly outside the shop, its siren wailing loudly now as two officers in black cloaks and green berets leapt out and hammered on the shop door. Aisha looked at him in panic.
'I told you they'd trace you,' he said, avoiding her accusing eyes.
He put down his teacup on the coffee table and left her where she was sitting as he went downstairs to open the door. As he left the room, Aisha went to the window and looked down into the street.
Two Mutaween were at the shop door, another sat behind the wheel of the van, and a fourth was opening its rear doors. Already, the siren was attracting a crowd of curious onlookers, mostly Asian men, but also some white converts in their tell-tale tunics and beards. One of the boys with the bicycles was down there, talking animatedly to a group of adults. Suddenly he looked up and saw her peeking from behind the curtain.
'There she is!' he cried, pointing to the window. A group of them looked up at where he was pointing.
Somebody cried out: 'He's got a Muslim girl in there. I just saw her at the window.'
Hastily she let go of the curtain and scurried to the back of the room. As she had anticipated, the door led to a kitchen. She ran inside and went straight to the rear window. She'd done it once today, she could do it again. She unscrewed the bolt, raised the lower sash and peered down into the yard below. But there was no roof she might clamber onto, no drainpipe she might climb down, just a sheer drop onto concrete.
She left the window open, hoping they might think she had escaped that way, and ran back into the lounge. She could hear a mounting commotion downstairs, shouting, the sound of glass breaking, and footsteps on the lower stairs coming up towards her.
She took the staircase to the second floor, rushing the stairs two at a time, stumbling as her legs got tangled in her long robes, and trying all the time not to make a noise. She emerged onto a small landing with two doors facing her. She took the one on the left, the rear bedroom.
There was a single bed, too low for her to slide under, a chest of drawers and an old walnut wardrobe. Only one place to hide. She opened the wardrobe door, pushed the jackets and shirts along the rail, and squeezed in alongside them, pulling the door closed as best she could with her index finger.
Only a few seconds later she heard someone enter the room. Heavy, booted footsteps headed straight for the wardrobe. The door swung open and she was face-to-face with a young man in a green beret and a heavy black beard.
'Aisha Shirazi?' he smiled.
A strand of green cabbage was stuck between two of his upper teeth.
'We've been looking for you. I think you'd better come with me.'
He took her firmly by the arm and led her back down the stairs to the lounge.
'I've got her, Ali.'
His colleague came out from the kitchen to join them. The noise from downstairs was getting louder - angry shouting, excited shrieking, and the crashing of furniture being overturned.
'Stay close,' ordered the policeman who had discovered her, and they started down the second set of stairs towards the storeroom, he leading, and the one named Ali following behind her.
The storeroom was empty, but the shop at the front was full of people. Some were grabbing watches and rings from the front window display. Others were forcing open drawers and snatching necklaces, earrings and broaches. Several were fighting over the till.
At the open doorway, a third police officer was standing motionless, a look of indifference on his face. On the floor in front of him, lying in a pool of blood, was Julius Rose.
Her captors pushed their way through the crowd, prodding looters with their riot sticks and dragging her along with them as they edged toward the door. In the middle of the shop, four or five men were kicking Julius's unconscious body around the floor, crunching his ribs, smashing his cartilage, spitting on his bloodied face.
'Jewish monkey!'
'Keep your filthy hands off our Muslim women, kos okhtak!'
The police dragged her outside and bundled her into the back of the van.
'Let's go,' said the one called Ali, bashing on the driver's cab. And turning to Aisha, he leered: 'You have a date tomorrow, up at Mile End Stadium.'
The electric whine of the van's motor started up, and they pulled out from the kerb. Aisha looked back through the barred rear windows. The boy on the bike was waving to her, a wide grin on his face. Behind him, a young man in blue jeans, a camouflage jacket and a knitted balaclava was lighting a taper stuffed into the neck of an orange juice bottle. But the contents were blue, not orange.
Suddenly, the mob was scrambling to leave the shop, people running in all directions, pushing each other out of the way, shouting and screaming, as looters fought in the street over their spoils. As the van turned the corner into the main road, the last thing Aisha saw was the youth in the balaclava tossing his flaming torch through the doorway, and Julius Rose's jewellery shop bursting into flames.

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