‘Who are you?’ Heck pulled the man back roughly by the hair and thrust his pistol square into his face. The man’s eyes did not open, but he grunted something unintelligible. He was a thin, underfed man in Wehrmacht field grey, with grey hair. Certainly not a young man, perhaps forty or fifty. ‘Who are you working for? Where’s fucking Hitler?’

Heck smacked his pistol into the side of the sniper’s head. He let out a prolonged groan, his lungs deflating, his jaw drooping, his eyes clenched in pain.

‘It sounds as if he’s alive.’

Heck looked up and saw Wilde silhouetted against the moon. ‘Oh, he’s alive.’

‘Get him up. We’ll take him in.’

‘Fuck that,’ Heck said. He pushed the hard-edged muzzle of his pistol into the man’s open mouth, shattering teeth with the violence of the act. ‘Who are you? I won’t ask again.’

The man made a strange retching, choking sound.

‘He can’t answer with your gun in his mouth, Heck.’ Wilde reached down and tentatively cupped the Dutchman’s gun hand, gently pulling it away from the would-be assassin’s mouth. ‘Let me take that.’

Heck allowed Wilde to take hold of the pistol, then he dragged the sniper away from the lip of the roof by the collar of his jacket. In the centre of the flat roof, there was a doorway leading to interior stairs. The door was open and electric light streamed out. Heck forced the man against the wall to the side of the door, his legs sprawled before him, his head lolling. Blood from his head wound flowed down across his eyes and cheeks.

‘Last chance.’

Words, low and growling, emerged from the injured man’s mouth. Blood bubbled from his mouth where the gunsight had cut him.

‘What did you say?’ Heck had his right hand at the man’s throat.

The sniper’s eyes opened and met Heck’s through a film of red. ‘I said go to hell, Jew.’ The words were muffled by the blood, but Heck heard them clearly enough. He drove his left hand hard into the would-be killer’s abdomen. He gasped again and a serene smile crossed the man’s bloody lips.

Wilde reached out and pulled Heck away. ‘That’s enough.’

‘OK, we’ll do it your way, Wilde.’

Heck pulled the would-be killer to his feet. And then, in one unstoppable movement, he lifted him above his head like a weightlifter raising a heavy barbell, leant backwards, then lunged forwards, throwing the gunman over the side of the roof down into the street. There was no cry, no scream, just the sound of the body hitting rocks and bricks and road. The sound of flesh and bone being broken apart.

‘Jesus, Heck!’ Not for the first time, Wilde was stunned into incomprehension by his companion’s insane bloodlust.

‘He would have killed you.’