In these psychological appraisals and studies of the motives and impulses which led the young to the armies of the People Inside, and then led them out again, Ah Mei found herself often the subject, the heroine, the chief commentator. Chiefly because, of course, she was not a S.E.P. She was that rarer bird, a C.E.P. (captured enemy personnel), and alive. C.E.P.s were hanged, or went to prison for life, for many years. Ah Mei was exceptional. Her crime, punishable by death, was deemed worth ten years rigorous imprisonment, but she was spared now, to dwell among the S.E.P.s.

‘She is thoroughly decommunized. She has been, from the beginning, a most able and a loyal helper of the Security Forces.’ Thus the Police Chief committing himself in a minute on Ah Mei’s personal file.

‘A Red is a Red,’ said Bob Stewart to me. He was the police expert on communism. Numerical inflation forced those officers who were making their number with their elders, keeping a watchful eye on promotion, to hack out for themselves niches as experts. There were experts on the art of writing pamphlets, experts on interrogation procedures, experts on Chinese methods of gambling, experts on opium smuggling, there was even a horse-betting expert in the Force. Among these experts Bob Stewart had been quite lost until placed in charge of the S.E.P.s and transformed in a week into an expert on communism.

Bob pontificated: ‘I’ve never read Marx, but I know a Red when I see one. That girl is fine. She’s thoroughly decommunized.’ (Bob looked exceptionally profound whenever he thus echoed the Chief.) ‘When we plant her with some former comrades, trust Ah Mei to come out the next morning with the goods … information? She’s worth ten interrogators.’

‘Does that make her utterly trustworthy, that she comes out with the goods on her former comrades?’ I asked.

‘She’s turned right round, she’s doing all she can to redeem herself. That girl is going to be our biggest asset, if we handle her right.’

Indeed Ah Mei was redeeming herself. I don’t know how many pages her confessions ran to, but she was for ever adding to them. Her usefulness, the way in which she fulfilled every task assigned to her, had made the police lenient to her case. Instead of being in a prison cell, Ah Mei was here, among the S.E.P.s.