At the tail end of a dog of a morning, Dismas Hardy was beginning to fear that he would also be spending the whole stiflingly dull afternoon in municipal court on the second floor of the Hall of Justice in San Francisco.

He was waiting- interminably since nine a.m. – for his client to be admitted into the courtroom. This would not have been his first choice for how to celebrate his forty-eighth birthday.

Now again the clerk called out someone not his client – this time a young man who looked as though he’d been drinking since he’d turned twenty-one and possibly for two or three years before that. Maybe he was still drunk – certainly he looked wasted.

The judge was Peter Li, a former assistant district attorney with whom Hardy was reasonably friendly. The prosecuting attorney was Randy Huang, who sat at his table inside the bar rail as the defendant went shuffling past. The public defender was a ten-year veteran named Donna Wong.

Judge Li’s long-time clerk, another Asian named Manny See, read the charge against the young man as he stood, swaying, eyes opening and closing, at the center podium. The judge addressed him. ‘Mr Reynolds, you’ve been in custody now for two full days, trying to get to sober, and your attorney tells me you’ve gotten there. Is that true?’

‘Yes, your honor,’ Donna Wong declared quickly.

Judge Li nodded patiently, but spoke in a firm tone. ‘I’d like to hear it from Mr Reynolds himself, counsellor. Sir?’

Reynolds looked up, swayed for a beat, let out a long breath, and shook his head.

‘Mr Reynolds,’ Judge Li raised his voice. ‘Look at me, please. Do you know where you are?’

Donna Wong prodded him with her elbow. Reynolds looked down at her, up to the judge and his clerk, across to Huang sitting at the prosecution table. His expression took on a look of stunned surprise as he became aware of his surroundings, of the Asian faces everywhere he turned. ‘I don’t know.’ A pause. ‘China?’