She must have looked startled. He placed a hand on her arm and said, in a voice full of reassurance, “Do not be alarmed. There is nothing for you to worry about.” His genial face fell. “I am simply performing an unhappy task which falls to this profession from time to time. Come, I will buy coffee. There is a small place around the corner.”

The man had such a pleasant air of authority that she followed him automatically into the Via dei Polacchi, even though she couldn’t remember any cafe in this direction.

They were halfway along when he stopped her in the shadow of an overhanging building. There was such sadness in his eyes, a sense of regret too.

“I am sorry,” he said in his low, calm voice. “There is no easy way to say this. Your uncle Henryk has been killed.”

Her stomach clenched. Her eyes began to sting. “Killed?”

“Murdered, as he worked. With two other people too. Such a world we live in.”

“In Warsaw?”

He shrugged. “This would never have happened before. Not in the old days. People then had too much respect. Too much fear.”

There were so many questions, and none of them would form themselves into a sensible sentence in Felicia’s mind. “I must go home,” she said finally.

The man was silent for a moment, thinking, a different expression in his eyes, one she couldn’t work out.

“You can’t afford to go home,” he observed, frowning. “What’s there for you anyway? It was never your country. Not really.”

The narrow street was empty. A cloud had skittered across the bright summer sun casting the entire area into sudden gloom.

“I can afford a bus ride,” she answered, suddenly cross.

“No you can’t,” he replied, and took her by both arms. He was strong. His blue eyes now burned, insistent, demanding. “What did your uncle give you? To come here?”

She tried to shake herself free. It was impossible. His grip was too firm.

“Some money . . . Two thousand euros. It was all he had.”

“Not money,” the man barked at her, his voice rising in volume. “I’m not talking money.”

He turned his elbow so that his forearm fell beneath her throat and pinned her against the wall as he snatched her fiddle case with his free hand. Then he quickly bent down, flipped up the single latch with his teeth and scrabbled open the lid.

“This is a pauper’s instrument,” he grumbled, and flinging the fiddle to the ground. Crumpled sheets of music followed, fluttering to the cobblestones like leaves in autumn. “What did he give you?”

“Nothing. Nothing . . . ”