It was a big, plush office with a high ceiling and some expensive leather furniture, and I saw that I wasn’t going to get the routine Gestapo chat over the kind of script that would have to involve the twin prompts of blackjack and brass knuckles. Not yet anyway. They wouldn’t risk spilling anything on the carpet. At the far end of the office was a French window, a set of bookshelves and a desk behind which, sitting in comfortable armchairs, were two S S officers. These were tall, sleek, well-groomed men with supercilious smiles, hair the colour of Tilsiter cheese and well-behaved Adam’s apples. The taller of the pair spoke first, to order the guards and their adjutant out of the room.

‘Herr Gunther. Please sit down.’ He pointed to a chair in front of the desk. I looked behind as the door shut, and then shuffled forwards, my hands in my pockets. Since they had taken away my shoelaces and braces at my arrest, it was the only way I had of keeping my trousers up.

I hadn’t met senior SS officers before and so I was not certain as to the rank of the two who faced me; but I guessed that one was probably a colonel, and the other, the one who continued speaking, was possibly a general. Neither one of them seemed to be any older than about thirty-five.

‘Smoke?’ said the general. He held out a box and then tossed me some matches. I lit my cigarette and smoked it gratefully. ‘Please help yourself if you want another.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Perhaps you would also like a drink?’

‘I wouldn’t say no to some champagne.’ They both smiled simultaneously. The second officer, the colonel, produced a bottle of schnapps and poured a glassful.

‘I’m afraid we don’t run to anything so grand round here,’ he said.

‘Whatever you’ve got, then.’ The colonel stood up and brought me the drink. I didn’t waste any time with it. I jerked it back, cleaned my teeth and swallowed with every muscle in my neck and throat. I felt the schnapps flush right the way down to my corns.

‘You’d better give him another,’ said the general. ‘He looks as though his nerves are a bit shaky.’ I held out my glass for the refill.

‘My nerves are just fine,’ I said, nursing my glass. ‘I just like to drink.’

‘Part of the image, eh?’

‘And what image would that be?’

‘Why, the private detective of course. The shoddy little man in the barely furnished office, who drinks like a suicide who’s lost his nerve, and who comes to the assistance of the beautiful but mysterious woman in black.’

‘Someone in the S S perhaps,’ I suggested.