Heck moved towards him, but trilby man started to edge away. Two seconds later, he was running through a side street in the vague direction of Wolfsstrasse. Heck was fit, but so was the young man.

Trilby man raced around a corner into a small square filled with rubble which hadn’t been even partially cleared; there was no way through, merely a mountain of bricks and concrete. The trilby hat was on the ground, spinning to a stop, but the man was nowhere to be seen. A group of laughing children was climbing in the half-buried hulk of a tram. A thin trail of smoke rose from the huge heap of debris.

Heck picked up the hat and tried to get his bearings, tried to see how his pursuer had disappeared. Suddenly, he spotted a woman’s head, then her upper body, and within moments, she was on top of the mound of bricks looking about her as though afraid. Thin and haggard, in a light summer dress that would look pretty if she hadn’t been so gaunt, the woman was walking tentatively towards Heck, stumbling occasionally over the debris that had once been proud buildings. Never once did she make eye contact.

He ignored her and moved to the place where she had emerged and found a concealed flight of steps down into a cellar. That must be where his pursuer had gone, because there was nowhere else. Pistol in hand, Heck looked down into the darkness and saw that there was actually a little light down there in the pit. He tossed the trilby like a discus down the steps into the gaping cellar entrance, then followed it down.

Mozes Heck wasn’t easily shocked, but the scene he found seemed like one of the circles of hell. Dozens of women were crowded here, camped along a narrow basement lit by candles, little oil lamps and cooking fires. The stench of the farmyard hung heavy; sweat and manure and something like stale milk. Also, the familiar miasma of boiling cabbage. As he approached, the women receded deeper into the shadows.

Rodents scuttled before his feet. He scanned the dark corners, looking for his man, but could see only women. He began to wonder whether he had been mistaken about the sex of his pursuer. Now that he thought about it, he realised it could have been a woman in male clothing. He approached one of them, a girl in her late teens clutching a baby, but she hurried away. He tried to talk to others, but they either fled or shrank into themselves, like hedgehogs.

He moved around, from corner to corner, looking for his pursuer or a second exit from this basement where he or she might have escaped. But he couldn’t find a way out, nor any sign that his tail had even been here. Nothing. Nobody.