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The posters worked. The Americans took Viktor and the doctor away for questioning at once and nobody came to the farm to search for Noemi.

Nobody knew for certain what had happened to the arrested men either, but the rumours flew as thick as crows after harvesting as the town’s busybodies competed to fill in the blanks.

‘They’ve been taken to Munich, to the old Gestapo prison. They’re going to be charged with making false statements in order to hide their pasts.’

‘No, it’s worse than that. They’re going to be charged with actual war crimes, to do with the Jews who were rounded up, like the posters said, and the sick kids who disappeared.’

‘You’re out of date. It’s moving very fast. Both of them have confessed to everything that’s been said about them. They’re going to be made into examples; they’re going to be executed.’

Every time Ute went to the marketplace, she brought back a new version of the story.

The town was also busy speculating about who had put up the posters.

Noemi was, of course, the main suspect, but nobody seemed to be in a hurry to confront her.

Peace didn’t always mean peace, and everybody knew it.

The end of the war had papered over the cracks the conflict had caused but not fixed them.

The summer was hot, and tempers were short.

There were past grudges – and new ones – to be settled, and old patterns of taking revenge that could very easily do that job.

Which put a new candidate in the frame every day.

‘So don’t go down there, okay? Or at least not until we’ve got a proper sense of what’s happening. Plenty are worried that if Viktor goes down, they’ll be pulled into trouble along with him, and they’re looking for scapegoats to denounce in their place. Don’t offer yourself up on a platter.’

Noemi did as Ute asked and stayed out of sight while the town boiled.

And, also on Ute’s advice, she made no attempt to contact Pascal.

The days when Unterwald’s gossips had joined their names together in one breath were long gone, but even the smallest risk that someone might think to do that again and implicate Pascal in the poster campaign was too great – Noemi didn’t want to give Viktor any more ammunition against her if he was to return.

She stayed put, but she couldn’t stay still.

Instead, she threw herself into the kind of work she’d loved doing in more innocent days.

She stripped the farm’s orchards and made use of every scrap of fruit she could find, until the kitchen was so crammed with jellies and jams and bottles of cherries in syrup which all required tasting, Ute had to plead for her waistline and beg her to stop.

Noemi put away the copper pans, but then her idle hands turned to baking, and the kitchen became filled instead with apple cakes and streusel -topped sheet bakes and trays packed with vanilla-scented sweet pretzels which Ute was equally as powerless to resist.

It was a relief for them both when a note finally arrived from Pascal and put an end to the waiting.

The allegations are being taken seriously and the Americans intend to keep Father in detention.

I’ve spoken to Niehbur, and he thinks it might be worth revisiting your property claim – he doesn’t want to be accused of complicity if the legality of the transfers is open to question.

He’s made some suggestions we need to go over.

Come to the farm tonight, but meet me in the far barn – you know the one – not the house.

It’s not clear yet what’s happening with Brodmann as there’s less evidence against him, and I don’t want to risk the two of us being spotted in case he’s allowed to come back.

Let’s put our heads together and see what we can do to at least make the legal process move quicker.

Everything about the message was good news and exactly what Noemi wanted to hear. And far too much about it was wrong.

‘I’ve never had a letter from Pascal before – we were rarely apart when we were young, and he was hardly one for putting his thoughts, or anything else, down on paper then – so I’ve nothing to compare this with.

But the writing is far neater than his scrawl used to be and the style doesn’t feel like him either. ’

She was even more certain of that when she read the message aloud to Ute; the cadences and the content didn’t fit with its supposed author.

‘Pascal’s always had a very direct turn of phrase.

He’d say charges, not allegations, and prison, not detention, and worth revisiting isn’t him at all.

The style is too formal. And even if that’s a product of officer school, there’s too many other oddities.

Why would he go to the notary without checking with me first, when the transactions were none of his business?

And why would he suggest meeting in the far barn in such an oddly coy way?

You know the one . That’s just peculiar when he knows what bad memories it would be sure to bring back.

And why would anyone notice me going to the house?

Pascal knows I’d take the back road if I went there. ’

Ute didn’t waste time trying to respond to questions she couldn’t answer. She went straight to the heart of the matter instead.

‘Do you think Viktor wrote this then, not Pascal? Do you think he could have sneaked back without anyone knowing, and this is a trap?’

Noemi let out a breath and nodded. That had been her instant assessment, but she’d wondered if her imagination was spinning out of control. It was a relief to hear Ute – who was built from common sense – suspecting the same thing.

‘It could well be. The writer knows enough to almost hit the right marks, but he’s done it the wrong way. And if Viktor has been released, it’s me he’ll come after.’

‘And are you going to share these suspicions with Pascal?’

I can’t stand by and let him hurt you again.

He’d meant it – Noemi had no doubt about that. In the same way that she had no doubt Viktor wouldn’t care what he did to his son if he found himself cornered. Or if he cornered her, and Pascal leapt to her defence.

‘No. This could be a trap for us both, and I’ve no way of getting a message to Pascal in time anyway.

We don’t have a working phone, and I can hardly make a call like this from the post office with the customers, never mind the switchboard operator, listening in.

’ She paused as the years began rolling back and made her mind up.

‘This is a confrontation that’s been a long time coming.

Whatever Viktor’s planning, I have to deal with him by myself. ’

‘Then you’ll need to take this.’

Ute went over to the old dresser which took up most of the kitchen and returned with a metal strongbox. She unlocked and opened it carefully, gently putting aside the medals and photographs it contained, until the only thing left inside was a gun.

‘This was my son’s. He died at Stalingrad.

There was no body, no burial. One of his friends returned this to me so that I’d at least have something Stefan touched.

’ She blinked and stared at the gun. ‘It was an odd thing to do, given how my boy’s life ended, but there was a kindness in the act that helped me at the time.

Now I’m glad of it. I presume you know how to use it? ’

Noemi took the pistol from the box and nodded. It was a Walther P38, standard German army issue. She’d taken more of them from dead bodies for reuse in the ghetto and on Warsaw’s streets than Ute ever needed to know.

‘I’ll take it for protection, but I won’t use it. This isn’t about more killing.’

She said that for comfort’s sake, but she didn’t fool herself or Ute. Both women knew that if it really was Viktor who’d sent the note, he’d have a gun of his own. And he would be more than ready to turn it on Noemi.

She circled the Lindiger farm using the high path she’d walked along with Carina on the day she’d fled from the round-up, all too aware of the route she retraced and the consequences of that meeting.

The path brought her down through a copse of heat-crisped trees which ended a few hundred metres from the barn.

She’d assumed tonight meant after dark, but she was in place long before sunset.

Crouched down, covered by the treeline; invisible but with a clear view of anyone entering or leaving.

In the best position to ensure that Viktor went into the barn first and she would be the one closest to the door.

Because it would be Viktor who came. She’d stopped telling herself she was wrong and the writer could be Pascal the moment she’d accepted the gun.

Viktor arrived as the sky’s edges blurred from indigo to black and the shadows stretched out to swallow the barn.

Unlike her, he hadn’t made any effort to conceal his approach – he was carrying a lantern before him whose light bobbed around his bulk in a hazy yellow arc.

There was an arrogance to that which released Noemi’s tight shoulders.

His overconfidence made him more vulnerable than he knew.

She still stayed where she was for another ten minutes, and let him wait and wonder.