‘Your family is dead, Klara.’ Her voice was soothing but nothing could conceal the brutality of the message. ‘Men came in the night with guns. That is why your father sent you to safety. That is also why he asked Tom and me to help you, to bring you to a safe place. You cannot go home.’

No tears came. The girl’s shoulders did not slump as she received the dread news.

‘What of Bismarck?’

Sunny nodded sadly. ‘Bismarck, too. He is dead.’

For the first time, the girl’s lip seemed to quiver, but still she did not break down; the full enormity of the news had not entered her consciousness yet. Or perhaps she did not yet understand the finality of death.

Sunny put her arm around Klara, enveloping her like a mother.

‘They are dirty beasts,’ the girl said. ‘I want to kill them back.’

Wilde looked at the woman and the nightgown-clad girl, and then down at his own curious chauffeur’s outfit and wondered what anyone they encountered would make of them. They would have a lot of difficult explaining to do. The reality was that their chances did not look at all good.

‘Come, child, let us move on,’ Sunny said. ‘We must find you some food and clothes.’

Klara shook herself free from Sunny’s comforting arm.

‘I am ten years old,’ she said. ‘I am not a baby. What we must do now is find the Führer. He will look after us and deal with the bad men.’

*

Johanna Kalt looked at the telephone as it rang and rang. She did not like the device, did not trust it. She could not understand how voices came through it when there was no one there in the room with her. It was a witches’ device, a thing of darkness. She wished that Otto had never had it brought here.

But today it was especially disagreeable to hear its incessant ringing, because she knew that Otto would be on the other end – and she really did not want to have to tell him what had happened. At last, it was too much and so she picked it up and held it to her ear. She said nothing, just waited.

‘Johanna, is that you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Kill the woman. We have no more use for her. Cut her up and feed her to the pigs.’

Johanna Kalt said nothing. What could she say?

‘Johanna, did you hear me?’

‘Yes, I heard you.’

‘And you will do that?’

She was silent again.

‘Johanna, has something happened there?’

‘The woman has gone.’ There, she had said it.

‘What do you mean, she has gone?’

‘I don’t know. But she is not where I put her.’

‘And she was tied up?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shit, you stupid bitch, how did this happen?’

‘I went to her – she was gone.’

‘And the rope you tied her with?’

‘One length was there, not the other.’