wrong. The splash of colour was still there – a dress? -but a flesh-pink tone was moving against it. Moving insistently. With viciously impatient hands, George finally got the range right, brought the picture close. The splash of summer colours was a dress, yes. And the flesh-coloured tone was – flesh! Naked flesh.
George scanned the scene disbelievingly. They were in the grass. He couldn’t see Helen – not her face, anyway -for she was face down, backside in the air. And Yulian mounting her, frantic in his rage, his passion, his hands gripping her waist. George began to tremble and he couldn’t stop it. Helen was a willing party to this, had to be. Well, and he’d said she was an adult – but God! -there must be limits.
And there she was, face down in the grass, naked as a baby – George’s baby girl – with her straw hat and her dress tossed aside and her pink flesh open to this . . . this slime! George no longer feared Yulian, if he ever had, but hated him. The weird-looking bastard would look a sight weirder when he was finished with him.
He snatched his binoculars from his neck, tossed them down on the bed, turned towards the door – and his muscles locked rigid. George’s jaw fell open. Something he had seen, some monstrous thing burned on his mind’s eye. With hands numb to the bone he took up the binoculars, fixed them again on the couple in the long grass. Yulian had finished, lay sprawled alongside his partner. But George let the glasses slide right over them to the hat and disarrayed dress.
The straw hat had a wide black band. It was Anne’s hat. And now that fact had dawned he saw that it was also Anne’s dress.
The binoculars slipped from George’s fingers. He staggered, almost fell, flopped down heavily on his bed. On their bed, his and Anne’s. Willing party . . . had to
be. The words kept repeating in his whirling head. He couldn’t believe what he’d seen, but he had to believe. And she was a willing party. Had to be.
How long he sat there in a daze he couldn’t tell: five minutes, ten? But finally he came out of it. He came out of it, shook himself, knew what he must do. All those stories from Yulian’s school: they must be true. The bastard was a pervert! But Anne, what of Anne?
Could she be drunk? Or drugged? That was it! Yulian must have given her something.
George stood up. He was cold now, cold as ice. His blood boiled but his mind was a white snowfield, with the track he must take clearly delineated. He looked at his hands and felt the strength of both God and the devil flowing in them. He would tear out the black, soulless eyes of that swine; he would eat his rotten heart!
He staggered downstairs, through the empty house, reeled drunkenly, murderously towards the copse. And he found Anne’s hat and dress exactly where he’d seen them. But no Anne, no Yulian. Blood pounded in George’s temples; hate like acid corroded his mind, peeling away every layer of rationality. Still reeling, he scrambled his way through low brambles to the gravel drive, glared his loathing at the house. Then something told him to look behind. Back there, at the gates, Vlad stood watching, then started forward uncertainly.
Something of sanity returned. George hated Yulian now, intended to kill him if he could, but he still feared the dog. There’d always been something about dogs, and especially this one. He ran back towards the house, and coming round a screen of bushes saw Yulian striding through the shrubbery towards the rear of the building. Towards the entrance to the cellars.
‘Yulian!’ George tried to yell, but the word came out as a gasping croak. He didn’t try again. Why warn the perverted little sod? Behind him, Vlad put on a little speed, began to lope.
At the corner of the house George paused for a moment, gulped air desperately. He was out of condition. Then he saw a rusty old mattock leaning against the wall and snatched it up. A glance over his shoulder told him that Vlad was coming, his strides stretching now, ears flat to -his head. George wasted no more time but plunged through the low shrubbery to the entrance to the vaults. And there stood Yulian at the open door. He heard George coming, turned his head and cast a startled glance his way.