I was housed in a small and unattractive three-floor apartment block for unmarried officers not far from Lam Son Square that was overseen – and I’m not sure if her role was official or self-appointed – by an elderly Vietnamese woman called Madame Binh who inhabited a first-floor apartment but seemed to have extended her residency to include the foyer and often when I entered or left she was sitting in a cane chair with a cat on her lap. She was more than just a kind of soi-disant concierge but someone who also nosed into all our business and rooms like the owner of a boarding house determined to ensure the propriety of her establishment. She moved as noiselessly as her cat and she might appear at any time in any part of the block, ostensibly on some errand that was supposedly in your interest or to impart some piece of news or gossip of a usually imaginary importance.

It was there that I met Corley Rodgers for the first time. I had left the door open in the vain hope that it might make the room seem bigger than it actually was as I tried to rearrange its meagre contents, when there was a light knock and I turned to see him standing there.

‘So you drew the short straw too,’ he said, brushing away the lock of blond hair that persisted in falling towards his eyes as he spoke.

‘The short straw?’

‘Yes, getting holed-up in this dump. No offence but you must be as far down the pecking order as me. If either of us were considered even half-important we’d be swanking it up over at the Duc until they found us something better than this.’

‘The Duc?’

‘The Duc Hotel, where you live in decent style. It’s the penthouse suite and this is a flophouse – the plumbing is ancient and always wants to let you down when you need it most.’ He walked in uninvited and looked at the view from the window. ‘The Duc has a good restaurant with Home Sweet Home food, a swimming pool with new sun deck, a cinema and just about anything else you might need to forget that you’re here.’

He dropped the flimsy curtain dismissively, as if the view had been as dismal as he’d expected, then turned and offered his hand. After our introductions we both struggled for something to fill the silence.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

‘Two years. You fresh out of training?’

I hesitated. It didn’t seem like a good start to my career to announce that fact to a complete stranger but he smiled, that boyish smile which together with the colour of his hair made him look like someone about to go surfing or cheer his team from sun-kissed bleachers, before he said, ‘We’re all Langley boys here but getting allocated to Madame Binh’s means you’re a water-carrier, a grunt in Uncle Sam’s secret army.’

There was something reassuring, an artless openness about him, that invited disclosure and like a new boy just arrived in school I needed to make friends who could show me the ropes. But I was nervous, too, in a David Copperfield–Steerforth way and half-expecting that he might suggest minding my spending money for me.