Outside, the driver got down from behind the wheel and opened the door once more, poking his head inside, his face barely visible above a thick blue muffler. “Deserter,” he informed us. “We won’t be allowed to move on until this street has been cleared. The police have reason to believe he’s hiding hereabouts. Or being hidden.”

Everyone began asking questions at the same time, but the driver simply shook his head and closed the door. I was looking out the window, clearing the glass with one gloved hand, watching the play of torches against the windows and doors of the houses on my side as the police went on with their search. And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure in black slip down a service passage, disappearing into the deeper shadows cast by the houses on either side. There would be a stout wooden gate at the end leading into a back garden, and with luck, another at the bottom of that, giving onto another garden and another passage to the street beyond. Either a trap-or an escape.

It had happened so fast, I couldn’t judge whether it was a man or a woman. Or if I had imagined it altogether. The deserter? Or someone else nearly caught up in the tightening net?

A constable must have seen the figure as well, because he blew his whistle and ran forward. But when he turned his torch into the blackness, it showed only the closed gate. After a moment, he walked halfway to the end of the passage before coming back.

I sat there, trying to come to terms with my duty. As an officer’s daughter I understood the need for discipline and order in the Army. To walk away and leave one’s fellow soldiers to their fate was, in my view, dishonorable. And yet I’d seen the horror of war, the suffering and the awful cost of doing one’s duty. For some men that was insupportable.

There were other reasons too. For all I knew, the hunted man had risked everything to come home to a wife who was desperately ill or to see a newborn child. Even to sit by his mother’s deathbed. The Army was not always generous with compassionate leaves, refusing to allow a man torn between love and duty the few days he so badly wanted to comfort those who needed him at home. I’d seen men in despair driven to shooting themselves in the hand or foot in a bid for leave.