The journey to Neuengamme had taken all day, with a running commentary provided by August, the German communist, who’d somehow been aware of their destination when they’d left Peenemünde. They drove through Mecklenburg and into Saxony, dropping south before Hamburg, driving through the plains north of the mighty Elbe and eventually following the path of a smaller river towards an enormous complex surrounded by barbed wire and searchlights that pierced through the low cloud and mist.

‘We’re lucky,’ said August, chewing on the stub of a cigarette he’d found on the floor of the lorry.

‘It doesn’t feel like we’re particularly lucky.’ Prince spoke German with August. His companion had been a modern languages teacher in Berlin: English and French. Prince was aware that August knew he wasn’t French and may have even guessed he was British, but he didn’t risk hinting at it.

‘Look, Pierre, they suspect all of us in here of being involved in that air raid in some way or other. My psychoanalyst friends – assuming any of them are still alive, which I doubt – would say they’re being paranoid. The air raid threw them into a panic, and they’re being uncharacteristically irrational about it. They’re looking for anyone and everyone to blame for it. But we should take some comfort that they allowed us to leave Peenemünde; if they’d wanted to finish us off, they could have done it there and then. And if they’d wanted to torture us, there’re plenty of other camps they could have sent us to, even those terrible ones in Poland you hear all the dreadful rumours about. Neuengamme is bad enough, but they put the prisoners here to work. There are factories all over the area. If we keep our heads down and are very lucky, we may survive a few months, and who knows what will happen then? The war may well be over!’

August the Marxist, forever the optimist.

They’d ended up in one of the sub-camps of Neuengamme, this one on the banks of the Dove-Elbe river. It was a collection of badly built huts in a large and exposed field of mud arranged around a parade ground where the prisoners assembled at the beginning and end of each day for a head count. Nearby was a large brickworks to where they were marched at seven o’clock every morning, returning ten hours later if they were lucky. On occasions they were so busy they were kept there all night, allowed a few hours’ sleep on the filthy floor.

That was a good sign, according to the ever-optimistic August. Prince replied he was struggling to see it.

‘The foreman is from Bremen. My grandmother was from Bremen.’

‘And that makes it a good sign?’