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the messy shoreline of boats, gangplanks, mud huts, dark wood jetties, behind them the large buildings of the Shanghai Bund, all now fading together into a single blur.
    ‘Well, lad?’ the colonel’s voice had said near me. ‘Think you’ll be back again one day?’
    ‘Yes, sir. I expect I’ll come back.’
    ‘We’ll see. Once you’re settled in England, I dare say you’ll forget all this quickly enough. Shanghai’s not a bad place. But eight years is about as much as I can take of it, and I expect you’ve had about as much as you need. Much more, you’ll be turning into a Chinaman.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Look here, old fellow. You really ought to cheer up. After all, you’re going to England. You’re going home.’
    It was this last remark, this notion that I was ‘going home’, which caused my emotions to get the better of me for -1 am certain of this - the first and last time on that voyage. Even then, my tears were more of anger than sorrow. For I had deeply resented the colonel’s words. As I saw it, I was bound for a strange land where I did not know a soul, while the city steadily receding before me contained all I knew. Above all, my parents were still there, somewhere beyond that harbour, beyond that imposing skyline of the Bund, and wiping my eyes, I had cast my gaze towards the shore one last time, wondering if even now I might catch sight of my mother - or even my father - running on to the quay, waving and shouting for me to return. But I was conscious even then that such a hope was no more than a childish indulgence. And as I watched the city that had been my home grow less and less distinct, I remember turning to the colonel with a cheerful look and saying: ‘We should be reaching the sea fairly soon, don’t you think so, sir?’
    But I believe I managed to betray none of my irritation with the colonel that evening. Certainly, by the time he boarded a taxicab in South Audley Street, and we said our farewells, he was in a splendid mood. It was only when I heard of his death just over a year later that I felt somewhat guilty I had not been warmer towards him that evening at the Dorchester. He had, after all, once done me a good turn, and from all I had observed, had been a very decent man. But I suppose the role he had played in my life - the fact of his being so overwhelmingly associated with what happened at that point - will ensure he remains for ever an ambivalent figure in my memory.
    For at least three or four years after that Waldorf episode, Sarah Hemmings and I had little to do with one another. I remember seeing her once during this period at a cocktail party in a flat in Mayfair. The event was very crowded, but I did not know many of those there and had decided to leave early. I was making my way towards the door, when I spotted Sarah Hemmings talking with someone, standing directly in my path. My first instinct was to turn and go another way. But this was around the time of my success with the Roger Parker case, and it did occur to me to wonder if Miss Hemmings would still dare to be quite so highhanded as she had been at the Waldorf a few years earlier. I thus continued to squeeze my way past the guests and made sure to pass right in front of her. As I did so, I saw her gaze move to check over my features. A look of bemusement crossed her face as she struggled to remember who I was. Then I saw recognition dawn, and without a smile, without a nod, she turned her gaze back to the person to whom she was talking.
    But I hardly gave such an incident any thought. For it came during a period when I was deeply engrossed in many challenging cases. And although this was still a good year before my name acquired anything of the standing it has today, I was already beginning to appreciate for the first time the scale of responsibility that befalls a detective with any sort of renown. I had always understood, of course, that the task of rooting out evil in its most devious forms, often just