And then there came the rough voices of men, and the clang of metallic heels on stone.

*

Wilde ran towards the house. Sunny Somerfeld was on her knees, shaking. He pushed past her into the light of the hallway. He saw that the door was damaged, but at first sight he could not understand what she had seen that had so terrified her. He looked to the left and immediately understood. Blood seemed to be everywhere. It streaked the floor and spattered the wallpaper. The corpse of a large brown and black dog was splayed across the floor, half in and half out of the little side room. Its head had been reduced to a bloody pulp.

His stomach was churning, not so much at the sight of the dead dog, but at the prospect of what else he might find.

He carried on into the house. A woman’s body lay lifeless at the bottom of a staircase, a mass of grey, untamed hair covering her face. Wilde put fingers to her neck but felt no pulse. Carefully, he stepped over her and crept upstairs. There was no sound, but that did not mean that there was no one up there waiting for him.

The landing was large with three doors opening on to it – and a staircase leading to the top floor.

He went through the rooms one by one. Each had its wardrobe doors thrown open, every laundry chest had been rifled, beds had been turned upside down. The little girl’s room was the most poignant of all. Her dolls were scattered across the floor, her clothes flung about, the sheet and duvet ripped from the bed. The only thing untouched was a framed portrait of the Führer, gazing down balefully on the scene of chaos and destruction from above the bed.

Where were they? If the dead woman was Maria Rieger, then where was her husband and where was Klara?

More than that, what about the people who had come here? Was that their van outside? If so, then that meant they were still somewhere in the vicinity, and, judging from the state of the dog, armed with heavy-duty weapons, while Wilde didn’t even have a knife to defend himself.

He went quickly upstairs to the top floor and found the same situation: the rooms had been ransacked. Wilde hurried downstairs.

Sunny was at the foot of the stairs, staring with dismay at the woman’s body.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We need to get out of here.’

‘We were too slow.’

He clutched her arm. ‘Outside.’

At the front of the house, he went up to the van and put his hand on the bonnet. It was warm but not hot. This was the vehicle that had brought the killers, but it might have been some while ago. One thing was certain; they were still around here somewhere.

And then he heard a gunshot. In the echoing stillness of dawn, it seemed close by, but Wilde’s instinct told him it came from deep in the woods at the back of the property. Sunny clutched at him in terror. He put an arm around her and quickly guided her towards the woods where they could conceal themselves. Hopefully their presence here had not been noticed. Thank God they had left the car on the main road. What now?