‘Mr Young, look at me.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Don’t worry. I’m just an old lady. If anyone’s there, I’ll soon send them on their way. In the meantime, perhaps you should put some sort of gag on our guest.’

*

Mrs Vickery skipped down the stairs more lightly than she had done in decades. Finally she was doing something worthwhile. How she envied those lucky young things in the League of German Girls and the Strength Through Joy movements. How she wished she could have been one of them. In Germany she had heard the Führer speak, and had stood rapt among the vast crowds, beguiled by the raw power of his rhetoric. He spoke to her very soul.

Herr Bormann had introduced her to several among the Party faithful, including deputy leader Rudolf Hess. She had not thought a great deal of him, and her judgement had been proved correct when he showed his true treacherous colours with his insane flight to Scotland.

Ah, but how the movement had inspired her. Now, at last, she had a way of doing her bit.

The blackouts were all in place, of course. It wouldn’t do to attract attention from the air raid warden. She turned off the light, pulled back a little corner of the blackout and peeked into the darkness. Oh dear, Mr Young had been correct. There was the dim outline of a car. No, there were two cars. Her hearing might be going, but there was nothing wrong with her eyesight, even in semi-darkness.

The car had its lights off and she couldn’t make out the occupants. She thought she saw a movement but couldn’t be sure. Quickly she took a butcher’s knife from the kitchen and went back upstairs.

‘There are two cars out there,’ she said. ‘I think we have visitors.’

Jung looked flustered. ‘We need to get out.’

She looked at the prostrate figure twitching and moaning on the bed.

‘What about him?’

She held up the knife and raised her eyebrows questioningly.

Jung shook his head. ‘No, he’s coming with us. We need him alive. Cut him loose.’

*

The gag, torn from his own ripped shirt, was almost choking him. He had wanted to lose consciousness, nature’s anaesthetic. Now he knew he needed to stay conscious and alert. Jung and the old woman had been panicked. If they weren’t going to kill him, then there would be an opportunity, and he had to be in a fit state to grab it.

She was slashing at the cords that bound him, then Jung hauled him upright, quickly bound his hands and ordered him – at the point of the sub-machine gun – to the staircase.