‘No, it’s this one. My friend described it precisely. And look at this.’ He held up the photograph of Miriam. It had been taken in this very room. Even the curtains behind her were the same.

‘That proves nothing,’ the woman said. ‘Your friend has written the wrong address. This is our home. It always has been. Are you Bavarian? You sound a little Bavarian.’

He ignored the question ‘Who else is here?’

‘No one. Just me.’ Her face was hard, but suddenly she tried to soften it, perhaps in response to his possession of the gun. ‘Look, please, I didn’t mean to talk to you so sharply, but you know we have had many unwelcome visitors here: Russian soldiers, English soldiers. I have not always been able to fight them off.’

He heard a sound from the next room. ‘I thought you said no one else was here.’

‘That is just my father. He is old and senile. My husband is a prisoner of the Russians and may already be dead. My son was in the Volkssturm, and he is dead.’

Heck put the letter and picture back in his pocket, then gazed around the room. There were picture hooks but no pictures. Probably, they had hurriedly burned their portraits of the Führer, or hidden them beneath the floorboards to be brought out when he rose again in glory.

On the mantelpiece, however, Heck saw a small family photo-graph in a poorly made wooden frame, half-hidden behind a vase. He picked it up and saw that the mother in the picture was the woman. The man at her side wore an SS uniform and their child wore his Hitler Youth outfit. The man was clearly a senior officer, perhaps the equivalent of a colonel or a brigadier. Heck was not entirely au fait with SS ranks and insignia.

‘It was a different time, sir,’ the woman said.

‘Indeed it was. A time when apartments were stolen from Jewish families and given to loyal murderers of the Third Reich.’

‘That is not what happened. This apartment was unoccupied when we were shown it. It suited us. My husband and I come from Leipzig and his work brought him to Berlin, for he was based at Lichterfelde for a while. We needed somewhere to live so we could be near him.’

‘Let’s say hello to your father, shall we?’

‘No, he is in bed, sick. He cannot move.’

‘Don’t worry, he doesn’t have to move.’ Heck walked to the first door on the left.

She came after him, clutched at his arm. ‘Please, he is an old man. He doesn’t know what is happening.’

Heck pushed the door open. A man of about sixty-five stood there in a brown shirt and swastika armband. He had a Hitler moustache and his arm shot out at an angle of forty-five degrees and stayed there, quivering. Heck turned back to the woman. ‘This is your father?’