Police Headquarters lies sweltering in the pre-storm mid-morning heat, upon its own little elevation, the cloud-shouldering upslope of a hill. The sky is now all white-grey patched, and the dark Nissen huts crouch under it with an air of surly resentful expectancy. The strident ticker-tape of crickets in the stubbly grass around the wire fences, the faint whirr of fans from the offices, and the spasmodic rattle of typewriters from the registry secretaries drag their certain noise through the ominous silence of heat. So it will be, a mounting sullenness, until that first startled rattle and clap of the coconut trees across the road as they strike and rub their fronds against each other, clapping heralds of the storm-bringing wind.

Our driver, our guide, Luke Davis, the white man with the grey shirt stuck to his back with sweat (for sweat comes readily off him in spite of his years in Malaya and his repeated assertion that the climate suits him), leads us to his office on the second floor, and immediately changes, metamorphoses himself into a uniformed figure of military bearing with a granite face; takes upon him as a garment the gestures of authority, presses a bell for lemonade, motions us to two straight-backed chairs, and shifts the papers on his desk. Lam enjoys all this, looks with black fond lively eyes that pat the shoulder at this display of power, and feels that he, Lam, must have power too, to be the friend of such a mighty person as a white police officer in Malaya in 1952. For, besides his business interests, never certain, his transitory opium dealings, his cautious and friendly procuring, his gambling and his three wives, in three cities, to manage his affairs, Lam is also a police informer, an agent of the British Government in Malaya.

Enters Che Ahmad, the Malay, who belongs to the silver people of the mosque, and brings with him under the clicking fan the spiritual posture, the cool repose of Islam, suffusing even the chair on which he now proceeds to sit, with knees outspread and feet tucked under him as upon a mat. He wears a pale pink shirt and lavender rayon tie, fawn corduroy trousers baggy round the hip and tapering to a tightness round both ankles as is the fashion. He looks a prince disguising greatness, and his large brown eyes rest on the white man with tolerant amusement, while on the floor stand his grey suede shoes, removed of course. He thinks best in bare feet.

‘Good morning, sir,’ says he.

‘Good morning and congratulations, Che Ahmad,’ says Luke, smiling. ‘I hear you have another son, the seventh, is it not?’