Emanuel jumps down and fetches all the bowls from their caravan, and working up from the bottom of the field, starts to fill them up with strawberries. For every berry he puts into a bowl, he also puts one into his mouth. Should he try and stop him? Never mind. If he has a bit of looseness in the bowels later on, it’s not the end of the world.
Someone has propped their men’s caravan back up on its bricks, but it has a desolate and abandoned air-dead flies beneath the windows, cobwebs, a smell of must and staleness that he never noticed when they lived there. He looks at his old bunk, the dirty and sweat-stained mattress. He never noticed that either. The Andriy Palenko who used to sleep here was a different man-he has already grown out of him, like a pair of too-tight shoes. It has happened so quickly.
Hm. Here are some signs of recent activity: a couple of glasses in the sink with a faint whiff of alcohol in them, and a used condom on the floor at the side of the double bed. Some secret lovers have been meeting here. He smiles. Taking the condom, he wraps it in some paper and puts it in the bin before Emanuel spots it. But Emanuel has swung himself up into his old hammock, and lies there with a blissful look on his face, swaying gently. Just for a moment, Andriy stretches out on the double bunk and gazes through the window up the field to where the women’s caravan used to be. A misty feeling comes over him. He closes his eyes.
Holy bones! Suddenly it is a quarter past six! He shakes Emanuel awake.
“Come, my friend. Let’s go!”
To speed things up, they uncouple their caravan from the Land Rover and leave it to collect later. Quietly, without telling Emanuel, he takes the five-bullet gun from his backpack and stows it in his trouser pocket.
The strawberry farm at Sherbury is only a couple of kilometres further on. It seems more like a factory than a farm, a soulless industrial place with big packing sheds and lorries waiting to be loaded up. There are no strawberry fields here, but behind a low wire fence is a field full of caravans, dozens of them, anonymous oblong boxes parked as close together as cars in a car park. He pulls the Land Rover into the yard and looks around.
The brick building at the end of the yard has some steps up to a door marked ‘office’. It is closed, but people are hanging about down below. He approaches them at random-“I am looking for a Ukrainian girl. Her name is Irina.” They direct him to one caravan after another, jabbering away about who lives where, keeping him waiting. Come on, come on. Time is passing, and they’re getting nowhere.
Then he sees it-he is sure it was not there a few minutes ago-the gleaming black curvaceous dark-windowed chrome-barred leather-seated four-by-four, crouching half-hidden at the corner of the barn like a predator waiting to pounce. A pulse starts hammering in his head.
“Emanuel-you start at that side of the field. I start at this side. Knock on every door.”
There are Ukrainians, Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, everybody seems to be here. Some people know Irina, some even worked with her today. Yes, definitely the same girl. Pretty. Long dark hair. Not sure which caravan she is in. Come on, come on, you idiots. Now all his pulses are hammering. He races frantically from one caravan to another. Eventually he knocks on the door of number thirty-six.
“Yes,” says the girl, “Irina lives here. Irina Blazhko. But she went out somewhere. And Lena, too. Maybe twenty minutes ago.”
“Lena went out for cigarettes,” says another girl. “I don’t know where Irina went.”
They lead Andriy and Emanuel to the common room in the barn, where the cigarette machine and telephone box are installed, but neither Lena nor Irina is there. A crowd of strawberry-pickers has gathered, and now they’re all milling around looking for the missing girls in the caravan field, the packing shed, the barn, the yard. There is an air of excitement and chaos. Everyone wants to know what’s going on. Then he notices something that makes his heart stop-the black four-by-four has disappeared from the yard.
Is he too late? Where have they gone? Maybe they’re already on their way back to Dover. Or maybe, yes-the same place they stopped for lunch. Good place for make possibility. That’s where Vulk will have taken them. He tries not to think about what might be happening to the girls. Focus on what’s possible. Just get there quick. He’s glad he left the caravan behind.
“Let’s go! Let’s go, Emanuel! Dog! Dog!”
The useless animal has disappeared. He’ll have to come back for it later.
Without the caravan to slow them down, it takes less than twenty minutes to get back to the grassy picnic place. He stops a few metres short of the turning, then inches forward, as slowly and quietly as he can. Yes, as he guessed, the black four-by-four is there, parked a little way up the track, beyond the ruined picnic table, pulled well in under the overhanging branches of a tree. He brings the Land Rover in, so they are blocking the exit. Wait-are you crazy, Andriy Palenko? This type’s a killer. But the comforting weight of the gun on his thigh gives him courage. He jumps down silently. Emanuel jumps down too. Together, keeping close to the bushes, they sneak down the track.
As they get near the four-by-four, he notices that it’s moving-it seems to be bouncing up and down rhythmically on its springs. He hears some muffled moaning and grunting from inside. The monster! The devil’s bum-wipe!
They creep closer. The light has started to fade. The windows of the vehicle are of darkened glass and steamed up from inside, so at first it’s impossible to see what’s going on in there. Then he notices a centimetre gap at the top of the driver’s side window. He presses up close, cupping his hands round his eyes. Inside, the seats have been pulled down into a bed and he sees a woman’s figure lying there, naked, her pale breasts casually exposed, her head thrown back, her white knees spreadeagled. And between those fragile girlish knees Vulk’s solid rump is hammering away, up and down, up and down. “Stop!”
Rockets explode inside his skull. All his plans and tactics are blown away. All he can do is bang on the window with his fists, howling “Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!”
The couple inside the vehicle stop dead. Andriy glimpses a gleam of purple as Vulk, still massively engorged, withdraws from the girl. Raising himself on his forearms, he flings back his head and bellows, “Yrrhaaa!” Then he flops forward onto the girl with a groan.
The girl lifts her head and turns her face towards the window, her eyes like empty wells, her mouth sagging open. But what has she done to her hair? He realizes in that instant that it is not Irina.
As she catches his eye watching her at the window, the girl’s mouth opens wider. She screams. She cannot move; she is pinioned under Vulk’s vast belly. She tries to raise herself, struggling frantically. Suddenly Andriy is aware of a tremor from Emanuel, who is standing beside him, craning to see through the chink with apparent enthusiasm.
“Emanuel! Go back to Land Rover! This is not good for you to see.”
Emanuel turns to him with a cryptic smile.
“Canal knowledge!”
What has got into him?
Now the couple in the vehicle have started to scramble into their clothes, the girl is covering herself with her arms, her thin childish body trembling, and Vulk is trying to get a grip on his trousers, which are stuck on his boots around his ankles. But he can’t do it-he just can’t do it in the cramped space in the back of the four-by-four, so he opens the door, thrusts his thick legs out, and struggles into his trousers with a pained grimace. Andriy is waiting for him.
“What type of devil are you?” he shouts. His rage gives him courage-and the weight of the gun in his pocket. “Why for you take this young girl?”