Joe saw the steel on the toecaps, the blacking on the boots, and looked up. Hauptsturmführer Maximilian List. The Kommandant. Trude’s killer. Joe had seen him in the camp and on the fortifications. Knew he had orders to kill them all if the British invaded. Round them up in the tunnel that led from the camp to his house and shoot. Rat-a-tat-tat. He’d never been this close to him, one on one, not since that interrogation with Knackfuss. He wanted to swing his shovel, smash his head in, bury him with the cook. Joe was breathing hard, could hear his lungs creak with the strain. He gripped his shovel, poised to lift it. He didn’t have the strength, not to swing it like a caber and floor the bastard. He flung it on the ground.

‘I hear you killed a man last night.’ List’s English was excellent.

Joe breathed in again hard, stared out to sea. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he said, not looking at him.

‘Intention does not come into it. That man was in my charge.’

Joe’s intestines churned, an empty stomach that burned bile. He wanted to spit it out, but that would get him a beating. He was in enough trouble as it was. He looked at the ground, at the lugworm casts in the sand. The little dunlins and sandpipers would have a feast if they came now.

‘I heard you were a boxing champion,’ List said.

Joe nodded.

‘A runt like you, beat the Wehrmacht champion.’

How did List know? Joe had told no one, not on Alderney. Pierre had been right. Let him win. He had humiliated the Germans. They took their time, but they took their revenge. He knew then. Sylt was his punishment.

‘I have a job for you,’ List said. ‘My men. They’re bored in these long winter nights. You will teach them how to box.’

Joe looked at the Kommandant. Was that sarcasm playing on his lips? Was he being set up? Again? Fail my men, and there will be consequences. Joe could see Ernst run a finger across his throat. What choice did he have? He wasn’t fit, wasn’t fed like a boxer. When were they going to hang him? He could feel List’s eyes bearing down, the presence of the man, too close.

‘In the meantime, report to the kitchen. You are the new cook. The new Kapo.’

He nodded at the corpses waiting to be buried in the sand and Joe lifted his spade, ready to shovel again, List’s clear grey eyes boring into him.

There it was. Kruk-kruk-kruk. Joe couldn’t help himself. Looked up. Gannets. Not one solitary bird, but several.

‘Do you know these birds?’ List was training his binoculars on them as they flew over the waves.

‘Gannets,’ Joe said, despite himself. He didn’t want to talk to this man, this murderer.