‘Not much traffic,’ Ned remarked at one point.

‘April sixteenth,’ said Dieter. ‘It’s a public holiday here. The queen’s birthday, so they tell me.’

‘Ah, of course.’

They stopped for lunch outside Еrhus and here Ned made his first mistake. They were sitting at a table and Ned picked up a small object that Dieter had brought with him into the café.

‘What on earth is this?’ he had asked, holding it in his hand and staring at it in bewilderment.

‘You’re joking!’ Dieter smiled broadly. His eyes narrowed when he saw that Ned was completely serious. ‘Are you telling me that you don’t know what this is?’

Ned realised that he had blundered and tried to laugh it off. ‘What I mean to say is,’ he said, ‘I’ve not seen one like this before

‘Not seen one like this? Look around you, man!’

Ned glanced at the other tables and saw at least six almost identical objects.

‘Well, it’s the colour really…’ he said, with an attempt at heartiness. ‘Yours is red, the others are mostly black and grey.

‘Where have you been the last ten years?’ Dieter asked. ‘Where on God’s earth is there a place without mobile phones?’

Phones! Mobile phones. Ned cursed himself for not working it out for himself. Now that he looked he could see two people speaking into them. ‘I’ve… I’ve not been well,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in a hospital.’

‘A prison more like.’

‘No, no, a hospital. You must believe me, Dieter. I’m fine now. Totally well, but I have … you know, missed out on some things.’

Dieter let Ned back into the lorry, but he was more silent as they continued the journey south towards Еbenrе and the German border. Ned sat beside him, thinking furiously. He came to the conclusion that his best recourse was a kind of limited honesty. The last thing he wanted was for Dieter to flag down a police car. It would be hard to explain the quantity of drugs packed into his oilskin bag.

‘I’ll be straight with you, Dieter,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve escaped from a Danish hospital. My family put me there because of a drug problem, but I’m fine now. Really. Absolutely fine. I’m heading for Hanover to be with my girlfriend. I’ve messed up my life, but I’m better now. I just need help to get home.’

‘How long were you there?’ asked Dieter, his eyes firmly on the road.

‘Nearly a year.

‘Nearly a year and you don’t know what a mobile phone is?’

‘They gave me electric shock therapy. I forget things sometimes. What can I say? I’m not a bad man, Dieter, I promise you that.’

‘Sure,’ said Dieter and he fell quiet again.

After an agonising silence which Ned did not dare break with pleadings or further justification, Dieter spoke again, shyly and with some embarrassment. ‘Me, I had a drug problem too some years back. I am a trained engineer, you know? I had a very good job, lots of money. I got a little too fond of the heroin and I lost my job. With thanks to my marvellous wife Trude and the mercy and love of my saviour Jesus Christ I am now a clean and healthy person. I shall take you to Hamburg and introduce you to my church. A church is better than any hospital. Only the Lord can help people like us.’

‘Bless you,’ whispered Ned. ‘You are truly a Good Samaritan.’

‘I suppose,’ Dieter went on, after blushing slightly at the compliment, ‘that you do not have a passport?’

‘No,’ replied Ned. ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

‘They do not always require them at the border, but even if they do not, the customs will certainly need to check my consignment papers. It is better they do not see you. We are ten miles away. I shall stop at the next filling-station and you must hide amongst the cargo. They do not search.’

‘Let me give you some money for the diesel.’

For a terrible moment Ned thought that he had said something wrong. Perhaps diesel was a thing of the past and lorries were now fuelled by methane, or hydrogen or God knew what else.

‘Money? I do not want your money,’ Dieter said. ‘I do this for my Saviour. That is my reward.’

As they drove the ten miles to the filling station, Ned, as gently as he dared, probed Dieter about his drug habit and how much money it had cost him.

‘Heroin is that expensive?’ he said wonderingly.

‘Sure, but it is cheaper if you smoke it,’ Dieter said. ‘You must know this, surely? What was your drug?’

‘Cannabis.’

‘Your family sent you to a hospital for cannabis? My God! My mother smokes a joint every evening.’

‘My parents are very old-fashioned,’ Ned said, uncomfortably aware that there was much about the world he had yet to learn.

Approaching the traffic-lights at the outskirts of Hamburg, Ned felt a pang of guilt as he grabbed his oilskin bag, opened the door and jumped down onto the street.

‘Sorry, Dieter,’ he called back into the cabin. ‘But I really don’t think your church can help me.’

Dieter shook his head sorrowfully and pulled away with a hiss of brakes and a big double honk from his horn. Ned skipped aside and waved and waved until the lorry disappeared around a corner. He hoped that Dieter could at least see this last gesture in his wing-mirrors and know that his help had been appreciated.

Which indeed it had been. Ned had been crammed amongst the bales of pulp for no more than an hour either side of the border. The doors at the back had not even been opened, though the side of the lorry right next to Ned’s ear had been slapped twice as they had been waved through, causing him a ringing in the ears which was still with him. Dieter was amused and teased him about it all through Schleswig-Holstein.

‘It was the Lord speaking to you, Karl. Take my word for it.’

Ned turned now and looked around him. It was getting late and there was much to do. At a small Sparkasse he changed his kroner into Deutschmarks, then crossed the street to the underground station and took a train to St Pauli. He had a strong feeling that Babe was watching him now and would disapprove violently of what he was about to do.

From St Pauli he crossed the street into the Reeperbahn. Sitting at a window in the Bar Bemmel, opposite the Lehmitz, he sat nursing a glass of milk as the street outside warmed up into a whirl of touristic Friday night frenzy. The lights, the colour, the noise, the music were all absolutely alien to him. He saw men and women with jewellery and metal bars affixed to their noses, ears and eyebrows. He saw black men with dyed blonde hair, and orientals with orange hair. He saw men passing by holding hands. Once a woman with a shaved head poked her tongue out at him as she passed. There had been what looked like a metal stud in her tongue. Ned blinked and swallowed hard.

‘Oh, brave new world, that has such creatures in it … he murmured to himself and shook his head, like a dog that has just taken a bath.

At the U-Bahn station he had bought a map and three tourist information booklets which he had read twice through before a waitress approached him and told him that if he was going to stay here he would need to drink more than one single glass of milk over the course of two hours.

‘Of course,’ said Ned. ‘Bring me one of those,’ he commanded, pointing at a pink looking cocktail at the table next to his.

‘All cocktails five marks,’ said the waitress.

Ned supposed (indeed had seen) that his Danish fisherman’s outfit of jeans, thick white pullover and donkey-jacket were not the usual habiliments favoured by the night people of Hamburg and he smiled understandingly as he produced a ten mark note.

‘I have been fishing all day. Keep the change and have a drink yourself.’

The suspicious scowl was instantly replaced by a happy grin. ‘Thank you, sir!’

‘Er, I forgot to ask,’ he said when the cocktail arrived. ‘What’s in it exactly?’

‘Cranberry, grapefruit and vodka,’ came the reply. ‘It’s called a Sea Breeze.'