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straightened the beds had taken the hand towel and not replaced it. He remembered seeing a pile of towels in the shower and toilet down the hall, so he took a short walk and grabbed one.
    ‘Good god, boy!’ an elderly fellow roared from behind as Marc headed back to the room. ‘This is an outrage!’
    Marc turned to see a man with a neat ginger moustache charging out of the bathroom behind him. He wore an army officer’s trousers and a white vest and his cheeks were lathered with shaving foam.
    Marc was startled by the shout and instinctively reverted to his native French as he turned around, ‘Pardon, monsieur?’
    ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing, boy?’ the officer roared. His voice was loud and boy came out like a bullet out of a gun.
    ‘There’s no towel in my room,’ Marc explained.
    ‘What?’ the officer yelled. ‘Speak up, speak up.’
    Marc realised that the officer was deaf. ‘No towel,’ he repeated loudly, before pointing at the door of his room. ‘The maid took it away.’
    ‘That’s a bath towel,’ the officer said, as he ripped it from Marc’s hand. ‘Not to be removed from the bathrooms under any circumstance under club regulation fourteen, paragraph nine F.’
    Marc couldn’t understand why the elderly officer was so concerned, but apparently he regarded towel theft as a crime comparable to rape or murder.
    ‘I just wanted to wash my face,’ Marc explained.
    ‘French, aren’t you?’ the officer said suspiciously.
    ‘Oui, monsieur,’ Marc said.
    The officer’s look of contempt suggested that being French was one of the few things in the world more serious than taking a towel.
    ‘You can wash your bloody face in that bathroom and use the towel in that bathroom. But you can’t take a towel away! What’s the matter with you, boy?’
    What’s the matter with you? Marc thought to himself, but he didn’t say anything.
    Marc remembered what Henderson had said a few moments earlier about pen-pushers and petty-minded bureaucrats and this fellow seemed to be a perfect example.
    ‘I’ll wash in the bathroom then,’ Marc said, shaking his head with contempt as he walked back down the hallway and stood in front of a sink undoing the top buttons of his shirt.

CHAPTER FIVE
    In the first six months after Britain declared war on Germany more people died as a result of blackout regulations banning outdoor lights after darkness than were killed in combat. Things improved as people adapted, but driving remained precarious, especially in snow and ice.
    Superintendent McAfferty had hoped to be on familiar ground before dark, but getting lost earlier in the day meant that she had to make the entire drive through the blackout.
    Troy and Mason huddled together under blankets in the back seats, their breath turning to steam in the unheated air. McAfferty drove in a stooped position, squinting at the road with her nose almost touching the windscreen.
    It was easy to lose concentration. Fortunately the boys kept her alert, by babbling away in French. Mason told McAfferty everything, from their mother dying shortly after his birth to their cruel treatment by Mr Williams.
    It was gone seven when McAfferty stopped at a guard post, with a wooden gate blocking the road ahead. Troy raised an eyebrow when he spotted a yellow-and-black sign with thunderbolts painted on it.

    THIS AREA IS NOW A RESTRICTED
MILITARY ZONE

    DANGER FROM UNEXPLODED SHELLS

    TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT

    ‘Home, sweet home,’ McAfferty said cheerfully as the guard raised the gate and the little Austin puttered onwards.
    The next few hundred metres took them up a gravel road. The trees beside it were interrupted occasionally by the ruins of cottages that had been on the wrong end of artillery shells. A sharp left took them into an evacuated village, with boards covering most doors and windows. The only occupied buildings were a sizeable farmhouse and an adjacent school building.
    McAfferty parked between these two