She opened an ostrich-leather bag and handed over the key. It was attached to a big brass oval fob. I threaded the key off the fob and handed it back. Then I turned and walked toward our attackers.

“Be careful,” she said.

Another stone sailed over my head.

“Yidd-os! Yidd-os! Yidd-os!”

“That’s enough,” I shouted at them. “The next boy who throws a stone will be under arrest.”

There were maybe twenty of them, aged between ten and sixteen. All blond, with young, hard faces and heads full of the nonsense they heard from Nazis like Richard Bömer. Germany’s future was in their hands. And so were several large stones. When I was about ten meters away I flashed the key fob in the palm of my hand hoping that, from a distance, it might pass for a policeman’s warrant disc. I heard one of them gasp, “He’s a copper,” and I smiled, realizing my trick had worked. They were just a bunch of kids, after all.

“That’s right, I’m a policeman,” I said, still holding the disc out. “Criminal Commissar Adlon, from the Westend Praesidium. And you can all count yourselves lucky that none of these other police officers you attacked are more seriously hurt.”

“Police officers?”

“But they look like yids. Some of them do, anyway.”

“What kind of cops go around dressed as yids?”

“Secret policemen, that’s who,” I said, and slapped the oldest-looking boy hard on his freckled cheek. He started to cry. “These are Gestapo officers on the lookout for a vicious killer who’s been murdering boys in this forest. That’s right. Boys like you. He cuts their throats and then dismembers their bodies. The only reason it hasn’t been in the papers is that we don’t want to cause a panic. And then you mugs come along and nearly blow the whole operation.”

“You can’t blame us, sir,” said another boy. “They looked like yids.”

I slapped him, too. I thought it best they formed an accurate impression of what the Gestapo was really like. That way Germany might have some kind of future, after all.

“Shut up,” I snarled. “And don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Got that?”

The members of the Hitler Youth troop nodded sullenly.

I took hold of one by his neckerchief.

“You, what have you got to say for yourself?”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Sorry? You could have had that officer’s eye out. I’ve a good mind to tell your fathers to leather the lot of you. Better still, I’ve a good mind to have you all arrested and thrown into a concentration camp. How would you like that, eh?”

“Please, sir. We didn’t mean any harm.”