They walked in the lower part of Todak, Oliver Daley and Luke Davis and Che Ahmad, between the emptied huts and the piles of refuse and the stubborn rotting trunks of coconut trees felled and left lying. Clumped like banana trees, six mata-matas stood guard round the spot where the body of Uxbridge had bent two stakes in the fence. The barbed wire sagged, a child could have stepped over it safely.

Stumps up to the knee stuck out of the grey-green ooze of the paths. Underfoot squelched the mud floors of the huts they entered, and even there were stumps, decaying, steaming forth that half-sharp stench which is the life-in-death smell of putrescence. The ditches were clogged with human dirt, cabbage stumps, like lopped white bloodless necks of midgets, and scum-spread water ran into the paths. Privies, urine, and rottenness. And the wire fence so close to the huts, the huts without space between each other, scarcely two feet between the last plywood wall and the stakes of the fence.

‘Hell, I didn’t know it was that bad,’ growled Luke. ‘Why wasn’t this reported before? Who’s been inspecting this village, anyway?’

‘There was an inspection, but only of the higher ground, and that was before the last four thousand squatters came.’

‘Four … and how many are down here?’

Daley moistened his lips. ‘I don’t know, about half, I should think … The others are up there, on the higher land …’

Luke Davis swore vigorously, abundantly. Oval beads of sweat collected on his brow, ran in single file down into his neck. ‘Four or five thousand of these poor blighters stewing in this cesspit, Daley. That’s bad.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Daley, and hated the tone of his own voice. Mustn’t think ill of the dead … must forget you hated him just for this …

They came to the last row of huts, farthest from the road and in view of the smooth thick glassy water which seeped out of the swamp under their feet. Luke pointed farther down. ‘What are those huts over there?’ sharply.

‘Those? Oh, those are the huts beyond the wire.’

‘I can see that. They’re out of the fence … are they Malay huts? Even if they are they should be brought in …’

‘No, sir, they’re Chinese too. They just were not wired in. Seems there wasn’t enough wire.’

‘But that’s murder,’ shouted Luke, exasperated. ‘Why, Daley, the whole point of tearing these b—rs off their own bits of land and carrying them here and putting them within the wire fence is to protect them … to keep them under police protection … control if you want to be nasty. It’s not fair … the bandits can get all the food they want from these huts outside the wire …’