Heck laughed. ‘It will have to satisfy Mr Appache’s chiefs when they ask him what happened to their asset. But there was something else in the phone call. He wasn’t just saying goodbye. He authorised a murder. The Frenchwoman. She led us to them, so she had to die.’

‘How long ago did you hear this?’

‘Ten minutes.’

‘Then we have no time to lose.’

*

Wilde slung the M3 over his shoulder, ran from the office and grabbed the Harley. A few minutes later he pulled up outside the CIC base at Garmisch. Heck was there waiting for him, his arm in a sling.

‘You can’t ride pillion with one arm out of action, Heck.’

‘We’ve got the colonel’s Packard Sedan, and a couple of his men. They’ll be here with it any moment, along with a bunch of small arms and ammo.’

When they arrived, Wilde took the wheel and they drove up the now-familiar roads to Schwarzenkirche at high speed, stopping only briefly for army checkpoints. He knew this was almost certainly a lost cause. If the Bodens had decided to murder Lilly, why would they wait?

The village was in turmoil. Men and women were standing in groups around the Bauernhof Edelweiss. As Wilde jumped from the car, he saw a man sitting on the doorstep, covered in blood, his head hung low.

A bloody dagger lay on the ground at his feet. At first Wilde didn’t recognise him, but then the man slowly unfolded his body and their eyes met. It was Ingrid Zinke’s father, Joachim. Tears were rolling down his cheeks, streaking the blood.

‘What have you done?’

‘I couldn’t wait for God’s justice.’ The grief-stricken father held out his hands like a criminal waiting to be cuffed.

‘You must tell me what has happened, Herr Zinke.’

‘She wanted to silence my daughter. Well, I have silenced her.’ He smiled through the blood and the tears. ‘Have you come to arrest me?’

Wilde signalled to one of the two soldiers who had accompanied him to go into the house with Heck. He told the other soldier to control the assembled crowd of villagers. ‘Stand back and don’t interfere,’ Wilde barked. ‘This is a US military matter and will be dealt with in accordance with the law.’

Even as he looked at their sullen faces, he wondered what roles they had individually played in the torchlit events here when Boden had been shot and Heck stabbed. He quickly searched their faces for clues, but they were blank. Where, he wondered, had they hidden their uniforms, their swastika pennants and their Nazi insignia? What had they done with the body of the man killed in the woods by Heck?

He turned back to Zinke. ‘You’re going to make this easy, yes?’

‘I have done what I came to do.’

‘You’ve killed Frau Boden?’

He nodded.

‘Is there anyone else in the house?’