“To celebrate what we all wrongly assumed to be a British victory, Private Sexton scrabbled in his pack and brought out his Queen Victoria tin of chocolate. There were six bars in each tin. He passed them round and we had one each.”

“What generosity! And what self-restraint! To have them still intact after—what was it?”

“Ten days. Considering the condition we were in, they were a lifesaver! Mine, eaten slowly at the rate of one a day, had kept me sane and ticking over! They meant so much to every man. More than cigarettes or money. Very few were traded. Fewer were stolen. And that’s unusual for the riffraff army that we were.”

Redfyre held back the compulsion to urge the man to get on with it. He sensed that the prisoner was not deliberately wasting his time. If he dwelt on the Victoria tins, he took them to be significant. The inspector knew well that, in a world of unimaginable pressure and hardship, men with few possessions would kill for a sixpence.