Now he was here, in Miriam’s street, outside her home. But he wanted to be sure. A thin woman with a headscarf was pushing a dusty pram past him. Her feet were shoeless, wrapped in rags and her face was almost obscured by the scarf. He stopped her, grasping her twig-like upper arm with his powerful hand. He looked in the pram and saw that the baby – or whatever it was she was transporting – was completely concealed by a bundle of grubby blankets. ‘Excuse me,’ he said in German. ‘What house is this? What number?’

She shied away from him, her sunken eyes wide with fear.

‘I’m not going to hurt you. Just tell me the number of this block.’

‘Eighteen,’ she said. ‘Eighteen.’ She tried to scurry away but he still held her.

‘Is anyone living here?’

‘Yes. Yes. Please, let me go. I must take my baby to the doctor.’

‘You know the people who live here?’

‘No, no. Perhaps. One or two.’

‘Miriam Rabinowitz?’

‘No. I don’t know her. Please, let me go, sir. I was never a Nazi. I never hurt or denounced a Jew. I am so worried about my baby. He is so poorly.’

‘Who mentioned Jews?’

‘I thought you said you were looking for a Jewish lady, sir. The name you said . . .’

‘So is she here in this tenement? Miriam, daughter of Solomon and Gila Rabinowitz. Big apartment on the first floor, I believe.’

She was shaking her head violently. ‘I don’t know this lady. I am not a Nazi. Please let me go.’

He released her. ‘Go,’ he said, and she pushed the pram away from him, along the road. He watched her a moment, then turned back to the building. Why was he holding back? Fear that she would be here or that she wouldn’t? At last, he stepped through the rubble that had already been shovelled apart to allow a pathway to the front entrance.

There was no door on the hinges, and so he was able to enter. A woman in the hallway was brushing up dust and chips of plaster and scraps of old wallpaper into a pail. She looked at him with surly eyes, then turned back to her work without a word. The staircase had survived and so he climbed it. Wooden slats creaked beneath his feet and he wondered how safe this building really was.