‘They may have heard a rumour or picked up some gossip, you never know.’

Hart said nothing for a while as he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, slowly nodding it, deep in thought. ‘I wonder… I wonder…’

‘What is it?’

‘Now that I think about it, one of my corporals – Harcourt – did meet a Jewish gentleman… Let me call him in.’

Corporal Harcourt seemed pleased that his advice was being sought, and yes, of course he remembered the gentleman. ‘He turned up in early August – he wasn’t registered in the area and his papers weren’t in order. When he told our chaps he was originally from the town but had fled the Nazis, they brought him here and I interviewed him. Would you mind if I sat down, sir?’

He pulled up a chair and angled it to face Hanne.

‘The gentleman was in his fifties, I would say, and really rather charming. His name was Mayer, and he was brought up in Villach but left when he went to university and hadn’t lived in the town since then. His parents had a clothes shop near the station, which is on the north bank of the Drava. When they died in the early 1930s, he inherited the shop and the apartment above it, both of which he rented out to a couple called Winkler. He’d return to the town once or twice a year to check on his property, and was last here in 1938, just after the Nazis came to power. He described the Winklers as good tenants and decent people. They knew what was going on and agreed he could sell the property to them for a very modest amount to prevent it being seized by the Nazis: the understanding was that after the war they would return the property to him, and they even exchanged documents to that effect, which was most unusual.’

‘And Mayer obviously survived the war?’

‘He managed to get into Switzerland and remained there for the duration of the war. Now he was back and needed us to verify his identity so the ownership of the property could be transferred back to him. Herr Winkler had died early in the war, but Frau Winkler had kept the shop going and lived in the apartment. It was untouched by the bombing and she told him the bombers must have known it was a Jewish property. Mayer said she readily signed back the property to him and asked him to take rent she owed, which he wouldn’t do. He said she could not have been more decent: not only was there not a hint of anti-Semitism about her, but she was very anti-Nazi.’

‘Well, they all are, aren’t they?’

‘Mayer said she and her husband always were like that: in 1938 it would have been easy for them to claim the property by saying a Jewish landlord had treated them badly, or she could have destroyed her copy of the papers that showed the property would be returned to Mayer.’