Spoder said he was not an islander, that everything he had ever said about being born on one of Salay’s islands was untrue. He said he was ashamed of this, that the lie had always been a background blight in his life, but when he was applying to join the Salay Raba police force he had mistakenly believed that advancement or promotion to senior rank, or transfer to the plainclothes detective section, would only be open to him if he was Raba born. Spoder said he wanted to graduate to detective work as soon as possible. He therefore presented himself in the best possible light, as he saw it at the time. He told me he had used identity papers that were copied and modified, and produced two false credentials from minor officials in Raba City. Later, he realized none of this was necessary, but he felt saddled with the lie and had never owned up about it. Over the years it had begun to seem true. Only now, with Jeksid trying to force his hand, was he able to confront it.

His beginnings were humble.

He came from Faiandland, the largest and most prosperous of the northern countries, and grew up in a suburb of Jethra, the capital city. He was born Yumi Spoder, a popular given name in the remote country area where his mother was raised, but he grew up hating it. The other children pronounced it ‘yummy’, a constant tease and affliction, as he saw it. As soon as he left school he used it as little as possible, a habit that persisted to this day. His father was a line engineer for an electrical supply company, while his mother was a junior school teacher. Yumi Spoder was therefore brought up by respectable and hard-working but not wealthy people. He had no brothers or sisters. In spite of the constant bullying, young Yumi was good at school and he intended to go to college when he left – but along with a great many young people in the same position he was to be denied that chance.

Faiandland was a country at war. Although it was a self-proclaimed liberal democracy, with an assembly of elected deputies, an independent judiciary and press, and a tradition of artistic diversity, Faiandland was embroiled in an unrelenting, shameless war with its neighbouring country, the Glaund Republic.

Glaund was the ideological opposite of Faiandland, a socialistic republic, a command economy, run by a military junta and using extensive techniques of repression and censorship to manipulate the populace. It too had an assembly of elected deputies and a tradition of the performing arts. Socially, Glaund was many years behind Faiandland. It too was fighting a dirty war.

Theoretically, the quarrel between the two countries was political, but in reality there were numerous areas of dispute over mineral deposits, oil fields, water resources and boundaries. Ancient grudges existed. Reasonableness did not. It was a war, and commonsense was the second casualty of war.