Who the hell could be visiting him here? The only person who came to mind was Dr Gray from the DP camp. ‘Does this visitor have a name?’ he asked.

‘Mrs Lazzaro, but she says you would know her better by another name, Miriam Rabinowitz.’

‘She’s here?’

‘Just outside, Lieutenant.’

‘How did she get here?’

‘You can ask her yourself. I’ll bring her in.’

Miriam? His brain was still a fog and he wondered if he was dreaming. Was this a nightmare? Would her lips – the lips that had betrayed countless Jews – drip with blood?

He had almost erased her from his memory. The tale of her treachery was more than a young man could bear; Dr Kuhn at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin had insisted she was a catcher of Jews, sending her own people to their deaths and using the name Miriam Berenbaum.

But what of Maria Dienstag’s testimony. Maria had been Miriam’s neighbour and she had told him that Miriam had been saved by a group of anti-Nazi dissidents called the Red Orchestra.

‘Hello, Mozes.’

She was there at the door to his ward, almost exactly as he remembered her from their holiday in Switzerland. It seemed like a lifetime ago but it was what, eight years? The dates were fuzzy in his head.

Her hair was tied up like a woman of substance. She wore a suit of fine wool and a fashionable hat. Her face was full and her girlish figure had developed curves. Her mouth was smiling, but her eyes were etched with concern.

‘Miriam, is it you?’

‘Of course it’s me. I got a message from the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, via the Red Cross. You went there looking for me.’

‘Your name . . . why have you changed your name?’

‘Silly, I am a married woman now. My husband and I live in Zurich with our small daughter. I had to come and see you though.’

‘Married?’

She nodded and, for a moment, he thought her eyes were a little watery. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘very happily married. We have a good life, and I feel guilty for it every day. My parents were murdered. I think my elder brother is alive – and I am on my way eastwards to a displaced person’s camp near Theresienstadt. Please God he is there and safe.’

Suddenly he felt foolish, standing here in this surgical gown. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I can’t find my clothes.’

‘That’s all right, Mozes, you look just fine. Shall I sit beside you on the bed?’

Now she was there, at his side, and he could smell expensive perfume. ‘I went to your apartment,’ he said. ‘A foul Nazi woman lives there. Name of Ursula Ganzen. She moved in as your family was being moved out. You must evict her and claim your home back.’ Not that you would want it, he thought. Who would want to live amid rubble and dust?