Milton adjusted the strap under his chin to make the crash helmet as comfortable as possible. Victoria had led him to a small thatched garage near the hotel that had a dozen scooters lined up, explaining that the resort rented them out to guests. She had given Milton a quick lesson in what to do if the police pulled him over; being a foreigner, Victoria explained, meant that he would almost certainly be stopped at some point. He was to ask for a ticket, then, when that didn’t work, to ask for a superior. If that didn’t work—and, according to Victoria, it probably wouldn’t—then a small contribution to the policeman’s back pocket would grease the wheels and he would be good to go.

Milton kept the scooter at a steady pace as he navigated his way back to the bridge over the Gulf of Benoa, grateful when the potholed and unlit roads around the hotel gave way to the modern two-lane carriageway. The road was busy despite the late hour, with cars and buses and trucks vying for space. It was loud, too, with the whine of the scooter’s engine and the sound of nearby horns mixing into a discordant racket. Although a six-foot-tall Westerner on a tiny scooter could not help but stand out, he tried to keep himself within a gaggle of younger riders. One of them would peel off from the group every once in a while, only to be replaced by another. None of them seemed to mind the fact that Milton had muscled his way into the shoal, and they shouted loudly at each other across him. A young woman on the back of one scooter gave Milton a broad smile and waved at him.

He was only a few moments away from the hotel in Kuta when he saw the first flashes of blue lights in his mirror. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw three police cars in the distance, their roof bars casting a blue wash under the overhanging leaves of the thika palm trees that lined the road. Milton looked left and right. The same black and white breeze blocks that had slowed the police down earlier that day lined the road here, too, but beyond them on both sides were deep storm drains and concrete walls that extended as far ahead as Milton could see. There was no reason to think that the cars were after him, but the sight of them made him nervous in any event.