‘Revenge is not necessarily the best motivation.’

‘Ha!’ She waved her hand dismissively. ‘It’s the best one I can think of. At my lowest points in the camp I would motivate myself by thinking of what I would do to those bastards after the war. I lost count of the number of women whose hands I held as they slipped away, with me promising them that they wouldn’t be forgotten and their death would not be in vain…’

‘Yes, but…’

‘…and this is my opportunity to be true to my word.’

Chapter 7

England, September 1945

He’d been released from prison at the end of 1943, though for six months after that he’d been obliged to stay at a boarding house in south London, just down the road from the police station where he was required to report once a day.

The duty sergeants were invariably hostile to him, making it clear they knew who he was and what he’d been imprisoned for. They’d make him wait for up to an hour, alongside the filth, the cheap criminals and the strays of the district. Most days he’d hear the words ‘traitor’ or ‘Nazi’ and look up to see heads turned in his direction. And it was quite common for them to use his rank when they loudly called out his name, the word ‘Admiral’ laced with as much sarcasm and malice as they could muster. Often as he approached the desk the sergeant would remark, ‘Defence Regulation 18B, are you?’ and then no one would be in doubt as to who he was: a person of ‘hostile origin’, as the hateful regulation called it, ‘concerned in acts prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of the realm…’

More than once he’d been followed from the police station, and it was only his guile that kept him out of trouble. But he’d avoided the pubs and cafés in the area and spent most of his time in his tiny room, which smelt of gas and mice, marking off the days on a cheap calendar, just as he used to do at boarding school, a constant draught whistling in through a cracked window pane.

One July afternoon in 1944, a letter was grudgingly thrust at him when he checked in, and he was instructed to open it there and then. It told him he was now free to return home: once there, he’d have to report to the local police station twice a week. There was a list of various other restrictions, which he began to read, but the sergeant told him to sign the form agreeing to the conditions before they changed their minds.

His large Victorian house in the country was unchanged. His man had stayed on and kept the house and its grounds in reasonable enough order, and he greeted him as if he’d just returned from a round of golf rather than a few years in prison without trial.

Of course they watched him all the time, and he didn’t doubt his letters and telephone calls were being monitored, so for the rest of 1944 and the early part of 1945 he did nothing. It was a strange existence; one that reminded him of being back at sea on one of those voyages where one would sail hundreds of miles from land for weeks on end with the weather unchanging, and a torpor settled on the ship that led to strange behaviour, particularly among younger officers, who became prone to making wrong decisions, such as altering course for no reason.