‘Then I get you on a train. I know where the track is – and we follow that. Perhaps you jump a ride on a freight train. You will be OK. And on the way to the track you can tell me all about this terrible event.’ He picked up the gun, weighed it appreciatively in his hands, then squinted down the sight. ‘It’s an old Mannlicher-Schönauer,’ he said. ‘Good hunting weapon. I had one at home.’ For a few moments, he seemed lost in a reverie of a faraway place and time, probably gone for ever. ‘The question is, should I take it? I could kill some rabbits to eat.’

‘Dangerous to be seen with it, though.’

‘I think I take it all the same. But tell me, why was the witch hunting you, Fräulein? You still haven’t told me.’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Well, tell me on the way.’

He turned and saw that the farmwife was regaining consciousness. Casually, he spat in her direction.

Raising herself to her elbows, Frau Johanna Kalt clutched her head where she had been hit. She realised there was nothing left for her to do but go home, tend to the livestock and await another savage beating from her husband. Perhaps this would be the last one. Perhaps this time he really would feed her to the pigs, as he had threatened to do so many times before.

*

‘I knew this would happen one day. Pappi told me it would happen. I think the men who killed him must have been Jews or Slavs.’

‘That is nonsense, Klara,’ Sunny said. ‘You must not say such things.’

‘But it’s true. The whole world is against our dear Führer – and the Jews and Slavs are the very worst of our enemies.’

‘Your head is full of bees, Klara. Jews and Slavs are just people like the rest of us. Some good, some not so good.’

Klara stopped, then she stamped a foot. ‘No, that is not the case. There is a notice board in class and I have learnt it thoroughly. We are at the top – Nordic Aryan Germans – followed by Scandinavians, then the Dutch and English, the Scots, the Flemings and the Irish, though even some of those are our enemies now. Behind them come the French, Italians, Greeks, Poles, Czechs and other eastern and southern Europeans. There are others further down and then, right at the bottom, the Gypsies, the American Indians, the Jews, the Africans, the Arabs, the Aborigines, the Pacific islanders and Eskimos. Are you saying my teachers were all wrong – and that the poster was wrong?’

Sunny raised her hand and, for a moment, Wilde feared she was about to slap the girl. He could not help but share her dismay at the poison spilling from the mouth of a ten-year-old, but he reached out and gently moved the hand back down, shaking his head in warning.