‘Good God, no,’ said Welser. ‘He’s a damn good worker. Ex-convict trying to live an honest life. I hope you’re not going to spoil that for him.’

‘Herr Welser, I just want to ask him one or two questions, not rubber him and take him back to Tegel Prison in my trunk. Is he here now?’

‘Yes, he’s here. He’s very probably in his hut. I’ll take you over there.’ We followed him to one of several long, single-storey wooden huts that had been built at the side of what had once been forest, and was now destined to be the autobahn. At the bottom of the hut steps the foreman turned and said, ‘They’re a bit rough-and-ready, these fellows. Maybe it would be better if the lady didn’t come in. You have to take these men as you find them. Some of them might not be dressed.’

‘I’ll wait in the car, Bernie,’ said Inge. I looked at her and shrugged apologetically, before following Welser up the steps. He raised the wooden latch and we went through the door.

Inside, the walls and floor were painted a washed-out shade of yellow. Against the walls were bunks for twelve workers, three of them without mattresses and three of them occupied by men wearing just their underwear. In the middle of the hut was a pot-bellied stove made of black cast-iron, its stove-pipe going straight through the ceiling, and next to it a big wooden table at which four men were seated, playing skat for a few pfennigs. Welser spoke to one of the card players.

‘This fellow is from Berlin,’ he explained. ‘He’d like to ask you a few questions.’

A solid slab of man with a head the size of a tree stump studied the palm of his big hand carefully, looked up at the foreman, and then suspiciously at me. Another man got up off his bunk and started to sweep the floor nonchalantly with a broom.

I’ve had better introductions in my time, and I wasn’t surprised to see that it didn’t exactly put Bock at his ease. I was about to utter my own codicil to Welser’s inadequate reference when Bock sprang out of his chair, and my jaw, blocking his exit, was duly hooked aside. Not much of a punch, but enough to set off a small steam kettle between my ears and knock me sideways. A second or two later I heard a short, dull clang, like someone striking a tin tray with a soup ladle. When I had recovered my senses, I looked around and saw Welser standing over Bock’s half-conscious body. In his hand he held a coal shovel, with which he had evidently struck the big man’s head. There was the scrape of chairs and table legs as Bock’s card-playing friends jumped to their feet.