There was silence. The coffee came in. Clausen poured three cups of strong black coffee and handed one across to Heck. ‘I’m sorry, please accept my heartfelt condolences. And I admit that there has been an unforgivable security lapse. The only thing I can say in our defence is that the great majority of our inmates have not the slightest interest in escaping. They are a pathetic, beaten-down, no-hope bunch of inconsequentials. Maybe we let our guard down in the case of Boden.’

Heck nodded, nothing more, but his fury was still barely contained.

‘There is one other thing, which might be of interest to you,’ Clausen said.

‘Go on.’

‘You are not the first people to come here looking for Julius Boden. Three days ago, a woman arrived asking if he was here and if she might be permitted to speak to him.’

‘What woman?’ Wilde demanded.

‘She was French, short-haired and extremely beautiful. Her name was Lilly Marais.’

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

January 1945

Lilly Marais kept her head up as she was marched through the village and commune of Ste-Estelle-sur-Seine. The placard around her neck was all that covered her, but she was defiant and met the eyes of all those who stared and spat and barracked. At the edge of the village, the mayor, Jean Étienne, tossed a threadbare blanket and a pair of her clogs in her direction. They landed on the ground, in the mud at her feet, and he told her to pick them up and go.

With the blanket wrapped around her body, covering her modesty and affording her a little warmth, she walked away without once looking back. When the baying of the villagers diminished, she removed the collabo placard and threw it into a ditch.

She walked eastwards simply because that was the road they had put her on, but then the road turned south and she followed it. She knew it was the Rouen road, but the city was twenty-five kilometres away and she was ill-equipped to walk that far in such bitter cold.

Anyway, she had no thought as to where she might go. All she knew was that she could never return home.

Her feet and lower legs were becoming numb, yet still they moved forward, mechanically. Slowly her head drooped, as metres turned into kilometres, and she began to stumble. She could no longer feel her frozen fingers. A British armoured car trundled to a halt at her side and a sergeant leant out. ‘Parlez vous, mademoiselle?’

She knew what they meant and walked on without responding. She was horribly cold, but she wasn’t ready to sell her body. The people of the village, her own father, might despise her and banish her and call her a whore, but they didn’t know her if they thought she would ever stoop so low. Better death than dishonour. Her love for Julius was real, yet they couldn’t see it.