Twenty minutes later, eighty or ninety men, women and children were assembled in the square by the village hall, which was attached to the small school. The morning was dry and the sun was coming up. Most of the villagers were boys and girls or the middle-aged and old. Only five of those present were young men of working or military age, and even then at the lower end – perhaps sixteen at the most. An older man of about sixty with a large bushy moustache and an ornate pipe hanging from his mouth stepped forward and announced himself as the mayor. He was one of the few to have found time to put on trousers and a jacket. He stood at the front of the group beside the communal water trough, his hand on the pump.

A dozen American soldiers stood facing them, weapons trained on the ground with implicit menace.

‘OK,’ Wilde said to Clausen. ‘Look them over if you would, Major. None of them looks like your description of Boden, or the man in the picture I found in his house, but I’ll await your verdict.’

Clausen walked slowly along the lines of sullen villagers, stopping before each one to examine the face. When he had finished, he shook his head. ‘No, he’s not here. No one even vaguely like him.’

Inside the buildings, the soldiers continued their search. The sound of the clattering of boots on wooden floorboards and the occasional crash of broken glass or crockery could be heard in the square, to be met by yet more sullen glares from the crowd of disgruntled villagers.

Wilde joined the house-to-house search, trying doors, ensuring the men were doing a thorough job in going through cupboards, outhouses, attics, seeking trapdoors and hiding places. It became plain to him that the Boden house was a great deal more sumptuous than any other home in the village. It was also the only house without a Catholic crucifix in evidence on any of the walls.

The soldiers found plenty of incriminating property, including hidden swastikas and photographs of Hitler, along with military rifles and pistols which should have been surrendered. Curiously, the cleanest house of all was the Boden property. There was no evidence that the family had ever had any connection to the Nazis.

‘Well, Wilde?’ Colonel Appache said. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any sign of our man. What now?’

‘Keep your men looking. I’ll address the villagers.’

Appache stood aside. ‘Do your worst, Professor.’

Wilde stood in front of the gathered Germans and clapped his hands to get their attention. He spoke in their language, slowly, to make sure he was fully understood. Heck was at his side, stepping in with a correction if he misspoke or failed to get the Bavarian dialect right. There were no soft words, no ‘sorry for getting you out of bed and breaking down your doors’. Wilde went straight for the throat.