The Censorship department; where smiling Chinese girls opened the letters of the detainees and translated their contents. The Accounting department; where scrupulously the detainees’ pocket money was recorded, their small daily pay, and any money sent to them by their families. And then going swiftly through the remaining ‘grey’ section of the men, and through triple wire fences they were at last in front of the women’s and children’s section. Mr Poh and Sir Moksa were getting tired, but Hinchcliffe did not perceive it. Jovial, he turned on the group, and suddenly motioned in front of him, through the last fence: ‘I think our detainees have got up a small welcome party for you,’ and pointed at the children of the camp, carefully graded in size in three rows, who on a shouted order raised their hands to their foreheads, screaming ‘Tabek, tabek!’ with great glee. Hinchcliffe looked happy, proud: ‘We’ve got one hundred and fifty-four of them, with the babies, and a healthier lot of kids you couldn’t find anywhere.’

Hinchcliffe’s own small unpretentious bungalow, to which he now brought back the party, was within the outer wire, surrounded by its own fence and a fairly large-sized garden, where geese, hens, and a turkey roamed. The inevitable red and yellow canna lilies stood at the door and two young detainees, good, hand-picked boys, cut the grass. A third one helped Cookie with the drinks, padding in with the trays on soft naked feet. Clerkwell was not sure that he liked this comparative freedom and made a mental note that Hinchcliffe was again becoming too kind. Mr Poh also thought that it was dangerous.

‘They may shoot you,’ he said, and laughed the high-pitched, cackling laugh which reminded Hinchcliffe of his prize turkey.

‘Are there any questions, gentlemen, before we leave?’ asked Clerkwell. The iced beer and the fruit squash had been distributed and sipped, and he leaned back, benevolent, implying: ‘I defy you to find anything wrong with our system. We are doing our best for these people.’

Sir Moksa wanted to know the exact numbers of men detainees, women, and children, and wrote them down in a tan leather notebook. Mr Poh wanted the police guard to be tripled. He thought there were not enough. He also thought that the detainees should be kept more busy.

Quo Boon asked: ‘Tell me, Mr Hinchcliffe, who and what decides whether a detainee will be white, grey, or black? Is it their files, or the police reports while they are in the camp?’

Clerkwell jumped into the breach which the question had riven into the smooth landscape of the committee’s approval.

‘I don’t think this concerns Mr Hinchcliffe,’ he said. ‘It concerns the Revision Board. Every two years the detainees have a perfect right to appeal to the Revision Board for revision of their cases.’

Quo Boon withstood him.