After the death of the British agent in Dijon, the Ferret was banished from Paris. His superiors there rather hoped he’d be sent to the east, where he’d do less damage and might even learn a lesson or two. He was sent east, but only as far as Amsterdam, thanks to his father’s intervention with two more members of the Österreichisches Clique: Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who as Reichskommissar was effectively the ruler of the Netherlands; and Obergruppenführer Christian Winkler, who ran the Gestapo there.

For a while the Ferret behaved. He spent most of his time keeping his head down in the Gestapo headquarters on Euterpestraat, just about smart enough to realise that a period of avoiding trouble was advisable. Out of hours was a different matter, when he frequented the brothels around the canals, always looking for the youngest prostitutes and always doing his best to avoid paying.

By the end of April, he was told that he needed to impress with some cases of his own. He hadn’t broken any Dutch resistance cells yet, or caught any British agents. Perhaps he’d like to get a move on. So when he heard about a resistance member being arrested in Enschede after trying to kill his neighbour, he headed straight down there and much to the chagrin of the local Gestapo took over the interrogation.

He seem to be vindicated, as the elderly schoolteacher called Johannes broke down under torture and gave the names of the other members of the group, even revealing that they’d recently been joined by a British agent. He also admitted – though he only revealed this minutes before his death in unimaginable agony – that the British agent and the woman called Frieda had explosives and were planning to blow up the railway lines east and west of Enschede.

Once Johannes died, however, it became clear that this pair had gone to ground, and now Amsterdam was on the Ferret’s back: how could he have allowed a prisoner to die before he’d extracted the information they needed?

But then he had a stroke of luck. A farmer was arrested after his truck tried to turn round as it approached one of the many roadblocks round Enschede. There was nothing on the truck, and the farmer’s story about returning from market seemed plausible enough, but evading the roadblock was suspicious and there was no question that the man was particularly nervous. The Ferret insisted on conducting the interrogation himself, and even he had to admit it was hardly the most difficult of tasks. The farmer was clearly not cut out for this: in return for a promise of freedom the Ferret had no intention of keeping, he told them everything: where the British agent and the woman were hiding, and the exact stretch of railway line they intended to sabotage.

And now the Ferret was back in Amsterdam with the two prisoners in cells in the basement on Euterpestraat. It was suggested that a more experienced officer should conduct the interrogations, but he was having none of it, appealing directly to Obergruppenführer Winkler: he’d sorted out the mess in Enschede, he’d been responsible for capturing the group and stopping the sabotage; he’d be the man to do the questioning.