There is a tarpaulin and they wriggle under it. The sound of the Battalionists’ trucks is much louder, and Zoë can hear drunken yelling. The smell under the canvas is nauseating: evidently, the last people to travel like this had been dead for some time. As the van, an old pre-war Ford, grumbles and jolts down the unpaved streets of Kokkinia, Zoë wonders whether, in fact, she is dead herself, whether this is all an elaborate joke being played on her by Charon. But when they bounce over tram lines and the tyres start to hum against tarmac, she has a different thought. What if this is a trick, not of Charon’s but of Ioannis Pandelis, and they are heading for Stournari Street, to the Security Battalion torture chambers? She squeezes Efi’s hand and listens to their breathing, amplified by the stiff canvas above them.

‘I’m frightened,’ she whispers, though she can’t say how she really feels: hollow with fear.

‘Me too,’ Efi whispers back, and Zoë hears the echo of her own terror. Then the road gets bumpy again. They are bouncing over cobbles. The truck stops and the handbrake screeches. Then the doors open.

‘Here we are!’ a young man with a pox-scarred face says, smiling, and she takes his offered hand and climbs out of the van, Efi sliding out behind her. He is wearing an Italian Army tunic, civilian breeches and army boots. His companion, coming round from the driver’s door, is even younger, a boy of about eighteen, and similarly dressed; and they both, Zoë notes, have German machine guns under their arms. The scarred one leans into the cab and there is a ripple of quiet laughter, then the van drives off. The street they are standing in is a sloping, unpaved track lined with single-storey hovels even smaller than the RSC houses of Kokkinia. EAM-ELAS has been painted in large, dripping red letters across two of the nearest ones. ‘You’re safe now,’ the scarred-faced one says, while his friend fishes around in his jacket pocket and finally produces a key.

‘Where are we?’ Zoë asks.

‘Kaisariani,’ says the one with the key.

‘Just around the corner from the clap hospital,’ says his friend, grinning toothily.

‘Do make an effort, Kosti.’ The boy has walked over to a particularly ramshackle hut and is rattling the key in the lock. ‘Better get inside, ladies. Don’t worry …’

‘Don’t worry?’ Efi demands. ‘Who in Christ’s name are you two peasants, anyway?’

‘Shh. I’m Evangelos and this is Kosti. Third Battalion, 26th Regiment ELAS. You’re a medic, aren’t you? Welcome. We need you. And you too, of course,’ he adds, nodding to Zoë. ‘But right now, let’s get out of sight.’