They listened to the wind and the birds and the river for a while, Mahler’s notes and chords drifting between sound and silence through the evening air as if they belonged there, then Linda said, “Those numbers on Caxton’s arm. Did you find out what they were? Were they what I thought?”

“Yes,” said Banks.

“Can you tell me?”

“I don’t see why not. I knew from talking to Caxton’s ex-wife a while ago that he’d been sent to England as a young lad, when he was about three, I think.”

“So he can’t have been in a concentration camp.”

“No. He never went back. He was in England throughout the war.”

“So what, then?”

“She told me that his mother was in a camp and that his father fought with the Germans. This was in Poland.”

“People did that?”

“Apparently so. Places like Poland, Estonia and the other Baltic states were torn apart by the Russians and Germans. Some families fought against their own kin. Some found themselves in one side’s army one day and the enemy’s the next. Stalin or Hitler? Who would you choose?”

“So where did the numbers come from?”

“It was his mother’s camp number. He found out only years later, from someone who was with her then and survived. They have records.”

“He has his mother’s concentration camp number tattooed on his arm?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know whether that’s sick or sentimental.”