The Abacus laughed heartily, and deftly ladled the pigeons’ eggs soup in silver bowls with a silver ladle. Mollified, she toasted him; he drank stengahs, and she orange juice. Obligingly, she proceeded to the business which lay behind the dinner.

‘My father wants to discuss getting some special constables for his rubber estates near Todak Resettlement Camp.’

‘I did not think it was love of us red-hairs which prompted him to give us such a banquet,’ replied Luke, grinning.

‘What you say, lah? On the contrary, he loves the Police Force. He calls you his friends.’ The Abacus reverted to Malayan English, bantering, teasing Luke. ‘We know how we depend on you … we are very grateful,’ she said.

‘Rot,’ said Luke. ‘Don’t rub it in.’

‘Anyway,’ said The Abacus, ‘we are your real friends, although you don’t know it, and you don’t trust us, the Chinese. But my father wants special constables for his estates, and you don’t give them to him. You give them to his neighbours on the right and on the left … and why? Because they are white skins, like you. You don’t give them to my father … and then you blame him if his poor estate manager pays subscriptions to the jungle, because otherwise he gets hacked to pieces.’

‘Special constables are not my department. You must ask the Chief.’

‘My father is going to. Your new Chief. What is he like? I hear he does not like us Chinese. He likes the Malays too much. A “good-old-days” man.’

Luke glanced at his Chief, freshly down from Kuala Lumpur, armoured with a higher rank than the previous one, and with the obvious advantage of having been ‘in the bag’, a prisoner of the Japanese at the fall of Singapore. People who had been ‘in the bag’ together now stuck together, and formed the higher ranks of the official hierarchy up and down Malaya, in the Police and elsewhere.

Due to the Emergency, the Police Force was now vastly swollen in power and in numbers. Inflation of ranks and salaries was going on at a brisk pace. One could not turn round without bumping into Senior Assistant Commissioners, Assistant Commissioners, and Superintendents, promoted in the course of months. ‘It is like a Police State,’ thought Luke, ‘and necessarily so, I suppose … The Force is promoting itself now, in view of the pensions to come. Look at India. All the high ranks got pensions as soon as India became independent. We’ll all get pensions when this country goes.’