Still he was there. He was two steep steps from the top of the path. He flung himself across the path. Sprinting, Aimee saw him reach out a bony hand to grab her ankle as she sped past. Aimee jinked to one side then jumped over his legs like a hurdler. The soldier snatched and missed. He fell face down on to the spot where her feet had been an instant before. The force knocked the breath out of him. He struggled to his feet and took a while to pick up speed again.

The soldier paused. He wiped the sweat from his eyes. Aimee was gone. Ahead of him was a broken clump of trees. She could be anywhere – hiding or running through. She would hide, he decided.

He waited in his sweat-stained grey shirt for the troop of Germans to catch him.

Before the war Aimee’s father had hunted deer and rabbits in the woods on winter weekends. ‘It’s poaching,’ he said. ‘And if I get caught I go to prison.’

And when the gamekeepers arrived to trap him he said, ‘If you are surrounded on all sides in a patch of land there is only one chance of escape. You mustn’t run for it. Stay in the one place, let your enemies search it and not find you.’

That worked for him, but how was she to escape notice in that postage stamp of a place? She burrowed beneath the trunk of a fallen tree where angry beetles scurried out of her way, and pulled ferns across to cover her.

In the quiet of the damp and damaged wood she heard the murmur of men speaking. Then one voice rose above the rest. It was the voice of the man with the silver hand. ‘Search every inch of this wood, under every branch, every twig, every leaf.’ Again she didn’t understand all the German words but she knew what he was saying.

A man in a black cloak, carrying a cane, and with his face shadowed by a hood walked towards the searching men.

‘Good day, Sergeant,’ he said in English.

‘Good day,’ Grimm snapped.

‘May I help you?’ the traveller asked politely.

‘Not unless you’ve seen a young girl with a pigtail on your travels.’

‘Ah,’ the hooded man cried. ‘She passed me ten minutes ago.’

‘Where?’

‘On the road to Cléry. I was climbing the road to this wood and I saw her run in then run out the other side. She looked afraid and very tired. I watched her run all the way down the hill. She seemed to be looking for somewhere to hide in the hedgerows. Is that the girl you want?’

‘It is,’ Silver Hand said. ‘She’s a runaway. We’re finding her so she can get safely home to her mother.’

‘Ah,’ the hooded traveller said. ‘Then I am so happy to have been of some help.’