‘I’ll be here as much as I can, but I have other things to do. If I’m not here, I want you to alert the doctor. And you, Angie, perhaps you could put a call straight through to me at CIC Garmisch.’

‘Yes, I’ll go along with that. But if he leaves with her, I’d have no way of stopping them.’

‘I don’t want him arrested. I want to follow him. Just make a note of their direction of travel. I’ll be on a motorbike and I’ll catch them.’

*

The Hungarian woman raised her skirts. Her thighs were pale and mottled, her skin saggy, her pubic hair thick and dark. Jerzy fixed his eye to the viewfinder of his Kodak 8 Cine camera and watched with astonishment and rising interest as she squatted down over the man’s naked belly. The man’s penis was engorged and hard and she lowered herself onto it so that it disappeared inside her.

What were they doing? He had seen animals do this at the farm in Poland, but these were human beings.

Now they were moving as one. The woman was arching her back, grinding the man like a millstone grinding corn. And he was responding by pushing upwards into her. What was happening? This scrawny dark-haired woman and the big man seemed to be mating like livestock.

It felt like a transgression to be watching these things, but they were doing it in the middle of open land between two of the camp’s huts in broad daylight so that anyone could see. There were hundreds of people about, but no one else showed any interest in what was happening. They walked past the couple with scarcely a glance. Yet he, Jerzy, could not take his eye away.

It didn’t last long. After two minutes, the man shuddered. Perhaps she had harmed him. Then she shuddered, too, and collapsed on him. At last Jerzy took his eye away from the cine camera and switched to his new box camera.

The woman rose from the man, smoothing down her skirt as she stood up. The man was on his knees now, putting away his penis and buttoning his trousers. The woman walked away without a word.

Jerzy was no longer interested. He looked around the dusty camp parade ground and his focus returned to the pretty Frenchwoman he had been watching earlier. He had noticed her before and she was certainly a strange one, kept herself to herself. Not like most of the people here in Apfelwald.

She spent most of the day sitting against the fence by the main gate, alone. Jerzy had an idea that it would be good to go and introduce himself to her, but Tom didn’t want that.