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lunatics are usually the most ruthlessly logical of people. That’s why they are lunatics.’ He took out the banana-leaf package and laid it carefully on the bed, a slight gloating in his face.
    O’Toole looked over. ‘You got it then? Not from the Javanese, I hope. You know how dangerous that is. They’re all bloody informers.’
    Pilchard nodded. ‘They’re all right.’ He unfolded both ends carefully, unwrapped and peeled back the flaps of green leaf to reveal the treasure inside, held it up to the light, sniffed it. It was smooth and translucent, a relic of a higher civilisation now fallen. ‘Looks good quality. Not even second hand.’ Jeyes, onion-skin, medicated, interleafed for box dispenser—sheets of toilet paper blessed with the holy cross of Izal. Worth its weight in gold. He went over to the crouchhole toilet. This convenience had so impressed local inmates that they had nicknamed the prison ‘King Georgie Hoteli’ but, under British occupation, it had been unanimously decided at a meeting, that crouchholes should not be used for the purpose designed. “Point of ordure, Mr Chairman!” Pilchard had quipped at a sea of stonily uncomprehending and disapproving faces. Pilchrd flicked up the grill and reached inside. Another Player’s tin. He stowed the paper inside, carefully keeping back one sheet, replaced the lid and slid it back into concealment under the rim.
    â€˜How much did you pay?’
    Pilchard smiled. ‘I didn’t pay. I traded. A bulb from the headlight of Spratt’s truck.’
    â€˜How the hell did you manage that?’ Grudging admiration showed.
    â€˜I didn’t. His driver did. A Korean. I gave him Gracie Fields for it.’
    O’ Toole sat up, all ears. ‘A Korean? You’re bloody mad. And your postcard? The one with her in a headscarf? The one outside Rochdale town hall?’
    Pilchard nodded.
    â€˜What the devil did a Korean want that for?’ He lay back again, frowning.
    â€˜Maybe she reminded him of his mother? No. He just wants it to trade with. Some homesick Yorkshire lad, like as not, would give his eye teeth for it and eye teeth are worth a fortune in here.’
    O’Toole shook his head.
    Like most Western males, Pilchard cared nothing for matters of hygiene, whereas some of the women next door were almost incapable of doing without toilet paper and literally wept daily with humiliation over its absence. The Javanese, who had sold him the paper, would naturally have nothing to do with it. They washed carefully, with left hands, after defecation. Western practice was to them shocking, scandalously filthy, but they had experimented with using the paper for rolling cigarettes, the disinfectant flavour being the welcome revenant of the cloves they normally worked in with their tobacco. For Pilchard, it was the paper’s literary potential that attracted. The Japanese were obsessively opposed to the keeping of records and diaries and Pilchard simply accepted this as one of the irrational obsessions to which armies were prey. In a while, they would probably forget all about it in favour of some new idiocy, the possession of combs or torches. Toilet paper was easily hidden, might even pass disdainfully unexamined, could be disposed of without arousing suspicion. Occasional searches were made and anyone caught with informational contraband could expect to be dragged away to Kempeitei headquarters and tortured hysterically. At the museum, they regularly heard the results of such searches, the screams of their neighbours in the former YMCA, often followed by an abrupt silence even more terrifying. It was clear from those screams that the Kempeitei did not favour exquisite subtlety in their interrogations. No slow dripping of oil on the head, in steady rhythm and darkness, over the course of a month. Their methods were a matter of ripping boots and fists, ropes and barrels of water.
    He and