Heinz plodded beside Ernst, hands clamped to his head. 'All this only a hundred paces from the dead. What's the word I'm looking for?'

'Surreal.'

'That's the one.'

They were walked along the sea front road. The beach, to the prisoners' right, was littered with the wreckage of boats and bodies, spread over the shingle. An old man was picking his way among the corpses, taking watches or wallets or even just cigarettes. Ernst wondered where the British police had vanished to; the 'coppers' he had got to know wouldn't have tolerated such disrespect. As they walked on Ernst heard the sound of a violin, played jerkily but sweetly. The tune was a simple one, but familiar: 'Lili Marlene'. 'Just as Alfie Miller used to play,' he murmured to Heinz, but Heinz didn't care. Some of the marching Germans began to hum the melody, or even sing the words, softly. After a few paces some of the British guarding them joined in.

They were marched to the Marine Parade, beneath West Hill with its brooding castle. It was crowded; people were congregating, looking for somewhere to celebrate, and there was a sound of laughter, as if some vast party were about to start.

The prisoners were halted and lined up regulation style, backs against a wall, too far apart to be able to conspire, faced with armed guards. It was a relief just to be able to lower your arms.

An English officer called out, 'Now you chaps just hold your horses here while we work out where you're to be kept for the night. I know there's no fight left in you, any more than in me, so let's just get through this business without any more drama. All right?' He called to a German officer, a hauptmann, who translated this for him.

Ernst leaned against the wall, exhausted, relieved he hadn't been called to translate.

Still the violin played. It was coming from the sea front. Ernst looked that way. He saw a boy playing, at the centre of a circle of English soldiers, the smoke from their cigarettes rising up around them. They were drinking, watched tolerantly by a couple of MPs. The boy seemed to be in the uniform of a Jugend. And now there was a fuss, as a girl with a shaven head tried to break into the circle, shouting. It was very remote, and Ernst couldn't make out what she was saying.

Heinz, a couple of yards away, called to him, 'Hey, Ernst. It's the second time today we've run into the bloody Miller family.'

'What do you mean?'

'The girl, the Jerrybag with the shaved head. Isn't that Viv?'

Ernst saw that it was true. And the boy at the centre of the circle of men must be Alfie. Looking closer now, he saw how Alfie wept as he played, and blood trickled from his fingers.

Ernst didn't think about it. He just ran, out of the line, across the road.

He heard running footsteps behind him. 'Oi! You get back here!' There was a shot, but it was in the air. People scurried out of his way, a woman screaming. He saw military police and soldiers converging on him; if not for the crowds he would surely have been gunned down. He got to the circle of soldiers before he was grabbed by a huge military policeman. 'That's as far as you're going, Fritz.'

Struggling, he called, 'Viv! Vivien!'

The girl turned, confused. He saw how her scalp was scraped where it had been brutally shaved. A drunk soldier was holding her arm, trying to get her attention. Ernst had heard of this; soldiers from both sides saw a shaved head as a sign a girl was available. She called, 'Ernst! Oh, Ernst! Make them stop, make them stop! They say they'll kill him!'

'Vivien!'

'Now what the Sam Hill are you doing here, Obergefreiter?'

Another familiar face swam before him. It was Gary Wooler from Richborough, who had taken him prisoner in the bunker. Ernst said, 'Corporal – please-'

The MP made to drag Ernst away, but the corporal held up his hand. 'Hold on, Angus.' He glanced at the girl, the boy who held the violin in his bloody fingers. 'What's going on here?'

Alfie blurted, his accent strong Sussex, 'I've got to play, and when I stop they'll shoot me. That's what they said. I've played for hours already, and I can't, my fingers, I can't-'

'Oh, come on, Gary, it's just a bit of fun.' Another man came out of the circle of soldiers. 'Look at the little prick. He's a Jugend! I mean we weren't really going to do it. But these lads say this pretty-boy took a pot-shot at them, out on the Folkstone road.'

The corporal's face darkened. 'You asshole, Willis.'

'Anyhow we're celebrating. Think of it. England's been invaded before, but not once have the invaders been chucked out. Boadicea couldn't get rid of the Romans, the Saxons couldn't kick out the Normans. We're the first!'

'Never mind bloody Boadicea.' Wooler waded into the circle, dragged out the boy, and pushed him into the arms of his sister. 'Just clear off home, and take that fucking Nazi jacket off. And you, Willis – come with me.'

'Where are we going?'

'Richborough. We've got another job to do.'

Viv and Alfie walked away. Viv put her arm around her brother's thin shoulders. She looked back once, at Ernst. Then she said, 'Come on, Alf, let's find Mum and Myrtle. But, listen, I have to tell you about Dad. Dad and Jack…'

The MP dragged an unresisting Ernst back across the street, and threw him hard against the wall, back in the line.

'You arsehole,' said Heinz. 'Get your bloody head shot off doing that.'

'If I hadn't been here you'd have done the same.'

'Well, that's true. But it's the principle. Hey, Tommy! How about a cigarette for an old man?'

The MP ignored him.

The soldiers who had been tormenting Alfie gathered in their circle again, passing around cigarettes and alcohol. A few girls came out to join them. One couple danced, though there was no music. The light was fading now, but the town was brightening, the lights of candles and oil lamps and even electric bulbs glowing out of windows, as for the first time in years blackout curtains were torn aside.

And Gary Wooler was coming back to Ernst. 'On second thoughts, Obergefreiter, I think you should come with us.'

XIV

6 July

Ben woke to a symphony of gunfire: the boom of heavy artillery, the angry cough of mortars, the popping of small-arms fire. Was it 1940 again, had he finally come unstuck in time and drifted into the past?

But he felt the bed under him, the prison-camp pyjamas that covered his nakedness. He was still here, still in the laboratory. Still embedded in the Loom, a Jewish fly caught in a Nazi spider-web.

His mouth felt sour, and there was an edge to his consciousness, a brittleness – a kind of false colouring to his sight, a high-pitched ringing in his ears, a scent of antiseptic in his nostrils. He knew these signs. Julia had made him sleep again. She had put him under and brought him back with opiates and stimulants, controlling him with a smooth expertise that had grown over the months, and yet left Ben with a sense of fizzing disorder each time.

And just as every time he woke, he felt a gathering dread of what Julia Fiveash might have used him to achieve while he slept.

One big crump, a shell landing nearby, was enough to make the bed shudder. That gunfire was real enough, then. The war had come to this place of horror, at last.

He opened his eyes.

The hard light of the electric lamps above him glared into his head. The glass wall of his cage was only a foot from his face. It wasn't as pristine clean as it used to be; a patina of dust covered it, plaster shaken from the roof. He could see his own reflection, a face half-buried in a pillow.

And he saw another face beyond his. Beautiful, hard, on the other side of the glass, it was Julia. He remembered how in Princeton he had woken to see that lovely face looking back at him, blonde hair tousled, how his helpless heart had hammered. In the end it had been just another supine seduction by a monstrous figure who had sought only to use him, in a long line of such seductions, such monsters. But even so he would never have imagined then that the two of them would be reduced to this, that she would use him so.