Wilde had been listening as he drove, wondering uncomfortably where this conversation was going. Why was Sunny allowing herself to be taunted by this child? Nothing good could come of it.

‘I’m sure there will be some food on the boat,’ he said by way of changing the subject.

And then the car crested a rise and there, stretched out before them like a seascape by Caspar David Friedrich, was the vastness of the great Baltic.

‘I do believe we must be almost there,’ he said, noting with relief that there was still a little fuel in the tank.

*

‘Your son’s not fishing, Herr Schmidt.’ Jung had removed a small jewel-handled pistol from his inside jacket pocket. ‘Where is he? Or shall I blow a hole in your brains?’

The old boatman barely reacted to the threat.

‘I thought there was something bad about you. I saw you earlier, going to their house. What are you, Gestapo? Himmler’s damnable crew?’

The tightening, the throbbing, was beginning in Jung’s head. A sensation he knew all too well, one that had been there since childhood when first he gave the cricket captain a beating for suggesting he might be better off further down the batting order. The boy’s parents had wanted him expelled; the head had given him one last chance.

He was panting. He swung the butt of the pistol into Schmidt’s temple, throwing him to the deck of the yacht.

Through the red mist, realisation was dawning on Jung. He was in the wrong place. They weren’t coming here, were they? Far too dangerous with all this military activity. They’d be at a quieter stretch of coast. God, yes, it was clear enough now – all the checkpoints coming here, the endless lines of military vehicles, the air patrols overhead, the ever-present flak guns poking their dark noses into the sky as though this sparsely populated place was a great city. Usedom island across the water must be one vast naval and air force operation. And of course the Schmidts, living here, would know all about it. And so they had had to go elsewhere to pick up their passengers.

‘Five seconds, Schmidt, where is he meeting them?’

The old man lifted himself from the deck. Blood was flowing from his ear. Still clutching his varnishing brush, he painfully pulled himself to his feet, using the railing to steady himself. He wiped blood from his head and gave Jung a withering look of disdain.

‘Either shoot me or put your stupid little gun away, you pathetic excuse for a man.’