The shot missed Romy Dietrich but cut a deep gash in the birch tree a metre to her left, making her knees buckle. Her eyes darted everywhere, and through a haze of confusion, she saw the blank face of Frau Kalt. She was crouching at a gap in the hedge ten metres away, a rifle at her shoulder. And then, even as Romy tried to dodge the second shot, she caught a glimpse of the man who had spoken, looming above her. Who was he? Why was he here?

Then something else was happening. The man who had spoken – who had said an amiable ‘Good day, Fräulein’ in a curious accent – was turning in the direction of Johanna Kalt, who was now beginning to turn the long, slender rifle on him.

He was much too quick and decisive for the farmwife. Even as the sights of her rifle were swivelling towards him, he was upon her, grabbing the barrel as she squeezed the trigger, the bullet burying itself harmlessly in the earth in front of her feet before the gun was wrenched roughly from her grasp.

Frau Kalt looked bemused as she struggled to get the rifle back from the stranger, baring her black and yellow teeth like a dog at bay. But the man was much too powerful, fending her off with one hand while he held the weapon out of her reach. Realising she could not regain the rifle, Frau Kalt pulled a short paring knife from the front pocket of her grubby blue housecoat. She lunged past the man and turned her attention back to Romy. But again she was too slow; the man brought the butt of the rifle down smartly on to the back of her head and sent her sprawling into the meadow grass.

Romy was retreating, scrabbling away in a panic, trying to make sense of what she was witnessing. Would the man turn on her now?

‘What is this?’ he said, stepping over the unconscious farmwife towards Romy. ‘Why are you bound – and why was that woman trying to kill you?’

His German was a long way from perfect and heavily accented, and then she noticed the identifying brassard on his arm, like a swastika band but with a large yellow ‘P’ rather than the Nazi emblem. It meant he was Polish, a forced worker. He was tall and thin – probably underfed – but his eyes were bright and kind.

‘Well?’

‘Please,’ she said, ‘won’t you cut me free?’

‘Of course . . . Of course . . .’ He picked up the farmwife’s knife. ‘Turn around, Fräulein.’

Romy still felt uncertain; if this man wore the armband of a Polish slave worker, he might have escaped – and might be desperate. The thought of turning her back on him suddenly alarmed her.

The man strove to reassure her. ‘Lady, I will not hurt you, I promise. I think I may have just saved your life.’