My resentment was muted by fear, however: I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a dirty job. With the war over, there were no longer any hard and fast conventions to follow - or if there were, we certainly weren’t following them. I remembered the righteous anger that had overtaken us all the previous year when we’d heard about Hitler’s Commando Order, which said that we could be shot without trial. In avenging the men killed under that order, weren’t we committing the same crime?

By the end of August, four of the targets were dead. But the final name on the list was the one Father wanted most: Gustav Meier. He was an SS officer, and there was compelling evidence that he had raped and tortured the families of suspected members of the Resistance in France, including children. We hunted for him throughout September, but with no luck. Father was acutely aware that the chances of finding him were fading with every day that passed: he might have jumped on a boat to Argentina by now. But in the last week of September, there was a breakthrough. Father returned from a long excursion and barged into my room. ‘I’ve found him!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve found the bastard!’

He had discovered from the papers of one of Meier’s colleagues that he had relatives living near Hamburg, right across the road from a British army barracks. We had conducted surveillance on the area for several days, but to no avail. But Father had returned for another look and had chanced to spot Meier as he had driven through the nearest village. He was working as a gardener, and further enquiries revealed he had been living with the family under an assumed name.

Father had come back to the farmhouse for a very particular reason. On the two previous targets, he had found pea-sized suicide capsules hidden in their clothing, similar to the potassium cyanide ‘L-pills’ SOE gave its agents. Himmler had bitten into one when he had been captured in June, and Father was determined not to allow any of our targets to take the same way out: he didn’t want them to have that control, and I suppose also felt they deserved to know that vengeance was being served on them. Some reports had claimed that Himmler had been equipped with two capsules - one in his clothing and one that he had kept in his mouth. Although they were rubber-cased to avoid accidents - they could be swallowed with no harm done - there was clearly a danger that in a tussle someone might bite down without meaning to. Father wanted very much to deal with Meier on his own terms, so to be doubly sure no accidents happened, he needed another pair of hands: mine.