Returning to the Kobes’ apartment, Laure stepped off the Charles Bridge. Instead of continuing straight ahead as she normally would have done, she turned right and followed the street running north for several metres and stopped in front of a shop with the sign ‘Truhlář Marionety’. Displayed in its window were a couple of marionettes: Pinocchio and a jester with a cap and bells.

Close up, she could see that the carving of this pair was sinuous, but the paintwork crude. She gazed long and hard at their white faces. We are aware, they were telling her, that we only have life when you say so. Yet we have souls too. We feel pain and suffer. We offer you the ecstatic and the surreal. We can be angry and malicious.

She lingered at the window, which, as she was also known to be working with marionettes, was legitimate. However, she was using the reflection in the shop window to track the movement of the man (today dressed in beige trousers and a white shirt) who had been following her. Cornered by her manoeuvre, he was loitering by the entrance to the bridge. He had flat features, a small mouth and looked tough.

She leant forward, ostensibly to obtain a better look at the jester marionette. Being followed had got to her and her bravado was replaced by the worry that she didn’t know how to cope.

By the time she moved off and continued on her indirect route back to the Kobes’ apartment, she had pulled herself together. Why should goons win the mind-game battle?

A couple of nights later, Anatomie were performing at a theatre off Wenceslas Square and the group were all there.

Laure was at the marionette theatre where the evening performance of The Bartered Bride was in jeopardy. The lighting was in melt-down and, with much cursing, the company gathered around to sort it. Unable to contribute, and with Lucia cold-eyeing her, Laure gathered up the used mugs and carried them into the kitchen. They required intensive scrubbing and there was no such thing as a Brillo pad to be had.

Milos came in for a drink of water and she stood aside so he could run the tap. He drank thirstily and said in his fractured English, ‘Tomas tells me your employer has been asking questions.’

Laure nodded.

Milos rinsed the glass. ‘Never answer questions,’ he said. ‘Or ask them. Never.’

‘But how do you find anything out if you don’t ask?’

‘You don’t.’ He replaced the glass on the shelf. ‘Nobody knows anything. It’s the rule.’

Hand on hip, she regarded him. ‘This country is like a maze. Never ask questions. Never answer them. Just blissful ignorance?’

Milos approved. ‘You’ve got it. Our greatest novel, The Good Soldier Schweik, is about a man who fights militarism and bureaucracies and wins but, I think, always by mistake because the good soldier is also very stupid.’