‘You did?’ Some of Heinrich’s friends who were now busy looting the clothes shop yelled to him to come and help. ‘I won’t be long,’ he called back to them. Then he said to me: ‘Where are they? The men who killed my father.’

‘One of them is dead. I shot him myself.’

‘Good. Good.’

‘I don’t know what is going to happen to the other two. That all depends, really.’

‘On what?’

‘On the SS. Whether they decide to court-martial them or not.’ I watched his handsome young face crease with puzzlement. ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? Yes, these men, the ones who murdered your father in such a cowardly fashion, they were all SS officers. You see, they had to kill him because he would probably have tried to stop them breaking the law. They were evil men, you see, Heinrich, and your father always did his best to put away evil men. He was a damned good policeman.’ I waved my hand at all the broken windows. ‘I wonder what he would have thought of all this?’

Heinrich hesitated, a lump rising in his throat as he considered the implications of what I had told him.

‘It wasn’t — it wasn’t the Jews who killed him then?’

‘The Jews? Good gracious no.’ I laughed. ‘Where on earth did you get such an idea? It was never the Jews. I shouldn’t believe everything you read in Der Stürmer, you know.’

It was with a considerable want of alacrity that Heinrich returned to his friends when he and I had finished speaking. I smiled grimly at this sight, reflecting that propaganda works both ways.

Almost a week had passed since I’d seen Hildegard. On my return from Wewelsburg I tried telephoning her a couple of times, but she was never there, or at least she never answered. Finally I decided to drive over and see her.

Driving south on Kaiserallee, through Wilmersdorf and Friedenau, I saw more of the same destruction, more of the same spontaneous expressions of the people’s rage: shop signs carrying Jewish names torn down, and new anti-Semitic slogans freshly painted everywhere; and always the police standing by, doing nothing to prevent a shop being looted or to protect its owner from being beaten-up. Close to Waghauselerstrasse I passed another synagogue ablaze, the fire-service watching to make sure the flames didn’t spread to any of the adjoining buildings.

It was not the best day to be thinking of myself.

I parked close to her apartment building on Lepsius Strasse, let myself in through the main door with the street key she had given me, and walked up to the third floor. I used the door knocker. I could have let myself in but somehow I didn’t think she’d appreciate that, considering the circumstances of our last meeting.