‘Stay here,’ Harry instructed David Wilson. The last thing he needed was a vicar’s progeny as a wingman in a dark alley late at night.

Harry hurried up the steps and emerged into a chill wind, the cobbled alley half lit by a single street-lamp. He heard voices, then a single, anguished cry. He walked into the gloom and figures gradually took shape. Carrington was at the back, an ineffectual, whimpering bystander. Amanda was somewhere in the midst of the sweaty throng, trying to fight back, grunting and crying in terror.

Harry could not quite discern the men’s intention—harassment, humiliation, assault, rape—but if he had learnt one thing in the tumult of his childhood, it was how to handle dangerous odds.

Attack with overwhelming force.

And then run fast.

He hit the men at the back of the group, like a runaway train. They were drunker than he had imagined and scattered like pins in a bowling alley. But the big man who had assaulted her first recovered quickly. He turned, faced Harry. ‘Scheisser,’ he grunted. He swung with a giant fist, but Harry was too fast. He ducked easily, then hit the big man such a devastating punch with his right that he careered back into a drain-pipe and smashed to the ground.

Harry picked up Amanda, threw her over his shoulder and ran, through the twisting fog, down the winding cobbled street beneath the ethereal glow of the night lamps.

The footsteps behind them faded into rancid curses.

They stopped running. He put Amanda down. She had a hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh, despite the trauma of the assault. ‘Whoever you are, you’re a bloody maniac,’ he said.

She smiled back at him. ‘Well, whoever you are, you’re a good man to know in a tight spot. How did you learn to fight like that?’

‘Wait here.’

Harry retraced his steps carefully, wanting to be sure their pursuers had abandoned them to the night. He lurked in the gloom by the entrance to a butcher’s shop not far from the scene of their crimes.

The Ratskeller was swallowing the last of the dejected Nazis. Carrington, the pimply youth, had vanished. And only the small, slight man who had been watching him in the bar stood outside still, playing with his moustache.

Who the hell was he?

Perhaps it was Harry’s imagination, but he seemed to smile as he raised his hat. Harry turned away from him and headed back, a spring now in his step, to the woman who had just exploded into his life.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements