Theo did not react. ‘Go on,’ he urged. He wouldn’t let him stop now.

‘Everything was perfect. These boys sometimes are so excited that they can’t stop themselves loosing off before time. But Henri held them back until they were just below us. First round, the windscreen of the car shatters, the driver is hit. The car swerves, hits a tree trunk. Truck can’t pass. The Germans jump out and take cover. We hit two more then, killed them. That cheered us, I can tell you, seeing them lying there. I tell five of our boys what to do: leave us to hold their attention while they take off, up the hill and round to outflank them. We’re exchanging fire now. They’re trapped, but we can’t winkle them out until our guys get down there, or Vernhes comes. He should arrive any minute. I hear an engine, more than one. Is this the first sign that things aren’t right? I think I start backing off already then, changing my position. Now I can see the staff car, the glass all smashed away. The driver is lying face down, tipped a little away from the door. Then I see who it is: our guy, Philippe Boysse. He isn’t going anywhere, for he is dead and his wrist is handcuffed to the steering wheel. Then I’m sure there’s something wrong and the trucks come round the corner. It isn’t Vernhes and his boys; it’s the rest of the Germans, the whole bloody lot of them. They’re out of the trucks in seconds, firing all the time. The next thing I know, I hear shots in the forest behind us. They aren’t just coming up the road, they’re already outflanking us. At that moment I know it’s time to leave. I get together the guys nearest me and we quit. We could hear the firing going on and on, as we made our getaway. I got five of them out of there, one with a wound in his head, another a scratch. You know what happened to the rest of them.’

In the silence that followed the wood on the fire crumbled, folding inwards onto the glowing ash.

‘And the SS major?’ Theo asked. He thought Nikola was going to finish the story for him. ‘Was it you who killed him?’

For the first time Nikola hesitated, breath indrawn, as if reflecting on the consequences of saying yes, saying no.

At last he said, regretfully, ‘No, I didn’t kill the bastard. I wish I had. I’d have done more than slit his throat. But, no, it wasn’t me. I walked thirty kilometres that night, so I didn’t hear what happened to Henri and the others until two days later. And by that time the Germans had gone. We were liberated.’

Chapter Twenty-nine

The next morning Theo’s head was pulsing like a lighthouse. Moving it was, he had discovered while tilting his jaw to shave, a painful manoeuvre. His eyelids were lined with sandpaper, abrading his eyeballs with each flicker in defence against the assailing daylight. His mouth, even after cautious toothbrushing, was a silage pit, sweet and fermenting.