The first thing he did after looking round the flat was to unpick the lining of his rucksack and remove the Jesper Holm identity that had been sewn in there. He then stood by the kitchen sink trying to gather his thoughts. Hans Olsen felt reliable: he’d got through four identity checks and he was reluctant to confine him to ash. But his instructions had been clear, so he cut up the legitimationskort he’d used since Esbjerg, and all the papers that went with it, and dropped them in the sink before setting light to them.

He was now Jesper Holm again, an accountant from Copenhagen. The fact that he’d always been bad at mathematics felt like the least of his concerns.

Doing nothing for hours on end in the half-light of the day and the dark of the night had a strangely relaxing effect, especially for someone who was always on the go and hated wasting his time. He ought to have been on the edge of his nerves: a British agent in enemy territory, on his own in an apartment with papers unlikely to fool the Gestapo for very long. He must have been through the hands of a dozen members of the resistance since landing in Esbjerg – plus the men on the trawler – and all it needed was for just one of them to be arrested to bring the rest down like dominos. He didn’t like the fact that the plainly nervous Egon knew where he was, though Hendrie had given him a long talk about how he mustn’t look for flaws he could do nothing about, because no espionage operation was ever flawless.

But the isolation had the opposite effect: he felt calm, able to sit for long periods of time in the large armchair doing little more than allowing his mind to wander in no particular direction. Inevitably it often wandered in the direction of his family. On the second afternoon he was convinced Jane was sitting opposite him, but he didn’t feel any pain – not even when he saw little Grace next to her – just the warmth of Henry sitting on his knee, his head leaning back against his shoulder.

On his fifth night in the apartment, he woke in the early hours of the morning, wondering if he’d heard some movement outside the bedroom. He checked his watch, which showed it was just after three, and listened carefully, his ears so attuned he imagined he could hear all kinds of noise. He thought about getting up, but it was so cold he decided against it, and after ten minutes or so he fell back into a doze, still in the half-sitting position he’d hauled himself into.

He was still in that position when the bedroom door opened, the person framed in the doorway barely lit by the light from the kitchen.