‘Don’t worry,’ I reply, hearing his gasp of relief, ‘but I may drop in on Mr Katzenberg tonight to discuss your progress.’

‘I don’t know if he’s in of an evening,’ says Peter, ‘and he’s kind of leery of strangers.’

Confused and exhausted, Peter bites his nails during the short drive to his home, on a council estate revitalised by the right that Margaret Thatcher gave tenants to buy their own flats. Mrs Stemp is peeking through net curtains. I would be happy never to see her again, her and her disloyal little boy, but I shall play the game to the end to avoid hurting their feelings. No need to pour fuel on their dry-stick racism.

‘Oldbridge,’ I tell the driver. ‘Canning Street.’

‘You’re sure you mean Canning Street?’ says Alfred, an amateur cornettist and semi-retired chauffeur who turns out for regular clients but refuses the new breed of Thatcher entrepreneurs.

‘Something wrong with Canning Street?’ I ask.

‘That’s where the funnymen live.’ He coughs.

‘Funny?’

‘Weirdos, wackos, men in dressing-gowns, women in wigs.’

‘Know any of them?’

‘Not me,’ growls Alfred, his neck reddening above the uniform. ‘Not my slice of pork-pie, if you know what I mean.’

‘Well, I’ll let you know how I get on,’ I say quietly, as he opens the rear door to let me out. ‘Wait for me here, I may be a while.’

A church clock is tolling six as I stand in the yellow glow of a street-lamp outside number thirty-two, taking deep breaths and listening for confirmatory sounds. There is no one on the street, but I feel I am being watched. The house is a two-up, two-down pebbledash terrace, built by a patrician mine-owner for deserving pit-workers. Modest as it is, it has two doorbells, indicating multiple occupancy. A foot-long mezuzah decorates the right-hand doorpost, which needs a coat of paint. The mezuzah, I know, contains four passages of Scripture, a reminder on entry and exit of the bond between God and man. The devout plant a kiss on it in passing.

I raise my arm towards the lower bell, marked ‘Katzenberg’. Then I hear the sound of a violin being expertly tuned, each string touched with the bow and tweaked at the nail. I wait for the music to follow.

It is a nig un from another world, a soul-wrenching lament with Hebrew words by the martyred Hannah Szenesz, who parachuted into Nazi-ruled Hungary, was captured, tortured, put to death. ‘ Eli, Eli, she-lo yigamer le’olam,’ she prays. ‘My God, my God, may it never end . . .’ And I am thinking, in perfect metre, ‘Eli, Eli, who never came home from the hall . . .’

Pressing the bell sharply, I stop the melody in mid-note. Heavy footsteps approach. The door opens. The man’s features are obscured by the hall light behind him. He wears a large skullcap and a belted black gaberdine, a capota. Daunted, I murmur, ‘Good evening.’