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  But Ion had a plan, which he laid out to her over the next hour. It involved Camelia, which immediately put Alina’s back up. But Ion had already spoken to the little slut and she’d assured him that she knew someone through her pole-dancing club who would be interested in buying the drugs. ‘I can’t sell them back home,’ he said. ‘It’s much too risky. If the gang who originally owned the drugs found out, I’d be dead.’ So they needed to get the coke to London.

  Alina stared at him. Carrying the drugs into Hungary was stupid enough, but taking it through an airport, or on a boat, into the UK? That was insane. They argued for a while about Eurostar, and how risky it actually was, when Ion let slip that he would surely get searched at customs because of his previous conviction for possession, which Alina hadn’t known about.

  ‘But you could do it,’ he said. ‘If you love me . . .’

  ‘Who said I love you?’ she asked. ‘I’m not doing it. I’m not risking going to jail.’

  They fought some more until, eventually, Ion said, ‘Then we’ll have to find someone to take it for us.’

  Before that, they decided to head back into Romania, to Sibiu. They would have to cross the border again, but on the train here the guards had been half-asleep. If they took the night train back, the guards would probably be comatose.

  They spotted the English couple at Budapest Station. They didn’t look like typical backpackers: they had a more well-to-do air about them; they looked cleaner, and the guy was carrying an expensive camera. Ion nudged Alina and whispered his plan to her. It was a crazy scheme.

  ‘Why,’ Alina asked, ‘don’t we go to the airport and find an English couple there?’

  Ion shook his head. ‘What opportunity do you think we’ll get at an airport to put the drugs into somebody’s bag? This is perfect.’

  Yet again, they argued, until Ion eventually sighed and said, ‘OK, let’s see how it plays out.’

  She agreed, almost certain that nothing would happen. That they would end up back home with the drugs.

  Except . . . the opportunity did arise. Ion chatted them up, spinning a lie about how they were going to see her parents, who were actually both dead. Alina felt awkward and withdrawn at first, intimidated by this wealthy English couple, until she realised that she had no reason to feel like that, and she had decided to play along, to be friendly. She actually quite liked them, especially Laura, who was sweet and far less pretentious or stuck-up than Alina expected. She felt genuine sympathy for Laura when that creep stared at her. Daniel was OK too, even if he was typically eager to talk about himself. But she still didn’t think they’d get the opportunity to put the cocaine into the couple’s backpacks, unless one of them could lure the English couple to the buffet car, or hope they both went to the toilet at the same time, leaving their bags in their new friends’ care.

  Then Ion spotted the empty sleeper compartment and persuaded them to go for a nap, promising to keep an eye out for guards. After they went, Ion and Alina sat in tense silence for a while, before Ion said, ‘Wait here’, and carried his own bag out of their carriage. When he came back five minutes later he was sweating.

  ‘Well?’ she whispered.

  ‘I did it,’ he whispered back. ‘They were sleeping like babies. Two hundred and fifty grams in each backpack. They each had a small bag of dirty laundry at the bottom of their packs. I put them in those.’

  ‘In dirty laundry?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, I figured they’re not going to stop to wash their underwear on the way home. I took their passports, tickets and bank cards too. I got some keys too, in case Camelia needs them, and the girl’s phone, a nice Samsung. Daniel just has a crappy, scratched-up iPhone 5 with a cracked screen so I didn’t bother. Why don’t people take care of their gadgets . . .’

  Alina shook her head, wondering if she was dreaming. ‘What are you talking about? What about the guards? When they come through to check passports, what will they do? Won’t they arrest them?’

  ‘What for? This is why I’m a genius. They’ll tell them they need to leave Romania. That as soon as we get to the end of the line they’ll have to head home. I imagine they’ll escort them to the airport and put them on the plane back to England. Whatever, they’ll be forced to go home.’

  ‘A genius.’ She laughed and he looked hurt.

  ‘Why do you have to be such a bitch? You won’t be complaining when you get your hands on the money.’

  Feeling a little contrite, she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  He harrumphed. ‘Good. I’m starving. The buffet car will be open now. I’m going to get something to eat. Maybe while I’m gone you can think about why you have to be such a bitch to me.’

  She watched him stomp off through the carriage, in the opposite direction to the sleeper carriages, contrition turning to anger. She was sick of being called a bitch. Maybe she should put him in her comic book, one of Mirela’s misogynistic victims . . .

  After Ion had been gone a few minutes, the door he’d left through opened and the border guards entered. They woke the few other people in the carriage and checked their passports. They spent a while talking in low voices to one passenger who was outside of Alina’s line of vision.

  She felt sweaty and tense. She didn’t share Ion’s confidence about what the guards would do when they discovered the English couple’s passports were missing. What if they searched their bags? The plan would be over before it had begun, though she reminded herself there was nothing to link the drugs to her and Ion. Still, it would mean the loss of the money she was already counting on. She tried to relax but when the guards got to her she fumbled with her own passport, dropped it on the floor, making them snap at her to hurry up. For whatever reason, they were in a bad mood and highly alert. So much for them being semi-comatose. As she retrieved her passport, someone stepped past her, heading in the direction of the sleepers; she just caught a glimpse of a man’s legs.

  Eventually, after asking her a dozen questions that made her sweat, the guards left the carriage and headed towards the sleepers. Where was Ion? Chatting up the girl in the buffet, no doubt. She got up, went to the other end of the carriage and peered into the next one, but there was no sign of Ion. When she turned around she saw the old man whose bags she’d carried walking towards her through the carriage, presumably on his way back from the toilets, which were located just before the sleepers. She smiled at him and waited for him to take his seat then went towards the sleepers and peered through the greasy glass.

  She could see the guards standing outside one of the compartments. Daniel and Laura’s? Then a border guard broke away from the group and came rushing towards her, through the door, almost knocking her over, and hurried away out the door at the far end of the carriage. She returned to her seat and waited, wishing Ion would come back. What if Ion was wrong about what the guards would do? What if they arrested the English couple and searched their bags? She had a sudden attack of conscience. She liked them. They seemed nice, harmless. A happy couple with a bright future, planning to have a baby and get married. If the guards found the drugs, Daniel and Laura’s lives would be destroyed. And, she thought selfishly, the money Ion had promised would vanish before she ever got her hands on it.

  The border guard came back through the carriage, the ticket inspector following. Holding the door open, she could hear raised voices, Daniel protesting. What should she do? The passports and tickets were here, in Ion’s bag, and she could grab them, tell Daniel and Laura that they must have dropped them on the seat.

  If she could reason with the guards, persuade them that she had seen the English couple with their tickets and passports when the Hungarian guards came through, that they were innocent victims of theft, that they were foolish foreigners who didn’t understand that they shouldn’t be in the sleeper carriage . . . It was her best option. She slipped through the door and went to join the party.

  But it hadn’
t gone well, had it?

  That was the fucking understatement of the century.

  Treading her way into the forest, twigs cracking beneath her feet, her eye on a spot a few feet ahead where she could piss, she almost laughed. The guards had been hostile, called her a ‘punk bitch’, and she had got angry, lost her cool, called them ‘fascist lapdogs’. That had been it. The next thing she knew they were being marched back to the carriage—Ion still AWOL—and the train was slowing to a halt and then they were thrown off. Her phone was left behind and she had no cash. She couldn’t wait to get to a pay phone, to call Ion, to tell him what a fucking idiot he was and how this was all his fault.

  She unbuttoned her jeans and pushed them down. The jeans were so tight it was impossible to squat without toppling backwards or getting urine on her clothes. This was ridiculous. She unlaced one boot and pulled it off before pulling one leg out of her jeans. OK, this would work. She was even more happy that no one was watching her.

  As she crouched, she thought about how, despite this hiccup, the situation could still be redeemed. The plan could still work. The cocaine was still in the backpacks, undiscovered. Daniel and Laura had no passports or access to money. They would have to go home. When they reached town they would be able to hitch-hike, or sell that fancy camera to get some cash for train tickets. She would escort the English couple to Bucharest, encourage them to take a plane home and let Camelia know their flight number. It would be Camelia’s job to intercept the couple, enlisting one of her dodgy friends: a pair of muggers with knives. Daniel and Laura wouldn’t put up much resistance.

  Yes, it would still work. And then she would have her share of the money. No harm done apart from a truncated holiday for the English couple.

  She finished and stood, pulling up her knickers and slipping her leg back into her jeans. She reached out for her boot and heard a noise. Her heart paused.

  Was someone there? She peered into the darkness, and heard more noises—a crunch, a rustle, something snapping—but before she could cry out there was a hand over her mouth and another on her throat, breath warm in her ear and a voice whispering that if she struggled or tried to scream, she would die.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  W here the fuck was Alina?

  Back home in Sibiu, Ion couldn’t do anything—couldn’t eat, couldn’t shit, couldn’t sleep—without this question flashing in neon lights inside his head. It had been more than two days now since he saw her standing on the train platform, a figure that grew smaller and smaller as the train gathered pace. The two Brits stood beside her, the backpacks beside them on the ground. He focused on the bags, a knot growing in his stomach as the precious drugs, all that money in powdered form, vanished into the distance.

  But, he had thought, sitting down before he attracted the attention of the guards, it would be fine. Alina was there. She would ensure the plan went ahead, that Daniel and Laura got on a plane home. Maybe it would take a while for them to get to Bucharest and onto a plane, if none of them had any money. But Alina was smart. Ion knew, despite his constant references to his own genius, that she was cleverer than him. He wished he’d been chucked off the train too, or had seen what was going on in time to jump off after them, but he’d been too busy chatting with a pretty girl in the buffet car. Still, at least the Brits hadn’t been thrown off on their own. Left to their own devices they’d probably wander into the forest and be eaten by bears!

  So Ion waited. He was tired out by all the excitement and slept a lot, like his pet cat. He made sure his phone was charged and beside him at all times. Needing to score some weed, he sold the British girl’s Samsung and spent a happy few hours indulging his herbal side. He watched a lot of porn on his old computer. And he waited for Alina to call or knock on the door.

  But she didn’t do either.

  So where the fuck was she?

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Alina woke up and instinctively tried to roll over, but her legs wouldn’t move. Every morning started the same way: she would try again to move her legs and then jerk awake, remembering that her ankles were chained to the bed. And then, with daylight creeping through the narrow gaps between the wooden boards that covered the windows, all the other memories, the horror of her situation, would come rushing back.

  When she got over the daily shock she always sat up—she was able to do that—and peer towards the cot, checking that little Luka was OK, waiting for the monster to come and take him from his crib and hand the baby to her. And she would cuddle him and kiss his head, that soft, fragile patch beneath his downy hair, and even when he cried she didn’t mind. Despite everything—all the things the monster did to her, the terrible fear that her fate would be the same as Luka’s mother’s—while she had the baby to look after, she could endure.

  She heard movement on the stairs and braced herself. Sometimes he would bring her breakfast—bread rolls, water, meat. Animals he’d trapped in the forest, she assumed. He would inspect the room, wandering about while she ate, browsing the display of Polaroid pictures on the wall like a visitor to a ghastly exhibition. That first night, there had been a little coffin over there, but that was long gone.

  The monster was shorter than her, like Ion, with a beak-like nose and stringy hair the colour of a sewer rat. The top of his head was bald and pocked with scars. He had the pallor of a man who never sees sunlight and his skin was always coated with grime. His teeth were yellow and gappy and his tongue was covered with a white layer.

  Other times he would come in, ignore her and hand her Luka along with a bottle of milk before leaving the room. He would unchain her and lock the door, leave her to roam the room, to play with Luka. She tried not to look at the Polaroids, the babies and the women who had died here. She knew that Luka’s photo was there. But hers hadn’t been added yet even though the monster had flashed the camera in her face one morning. Perhaps he wouldn’t add her to the wall until she was dead. Maybe that was how it worked.

  The monster always left food for Luka, baby food in jars, along with shampoo and creams and nappies. He instructed her to ensure the baby was fed, clean, in good health. She realised very quickly that this was her role: an enslaved nanny. And this wouldn’t have been so bad—terrible, but not the worst fate in the world—if it wasn’t for the other role she had to play.

  Because on the worst mornings, once or twice a week, he would pull the covers off her, tie her wrists to the rusting bed posts and, after squirting some kind of lube onto himself, he would climb on top and push himself into her. She would close her eyes and tried not to inhale his stinking breath, the stench of body odour that came off him. After he came and hoisted himself off her, she would be desperate to wash in the basin in the corner of the room, to use a little of the baby soap on herself. But he wouldn’t let her. Instead, every time, he lifted her bottom and pushed a cushion beneath her, elevating her so his semen remained inside her. He always left her like that for an hour, naked and exposed, hands and feet chained to the bed, before returning and untying her. Sometimes, flies would land on her body, crawling about on her skin, and she would buck and thrash, unable to shift them as they sipped at her flesh.

  Every time, she would lie and sob for hours, clutching little Luka to her, praying to God that the monster’s seed would not find fertile ground. That her body would reject it.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Ion stepped off the bus, wrapping his coat around him, and looked up and down the street at the prefabricated buildings, the grim-faced women pushing prams, the cars with ancient licence plates. He’d looked it up online: Breva used to be a prosperous gold-mining town, and there was even a museum of gold here. He laughed humourlessly at the thought of tourists visiting this place. Ha! He bet Daniel and Laura didn’t have this ghost town on their fancy itinerary.

  After a few days had passed and Alina still hadn’t called, Ion began to get really worried. He called Camelia in London and asked her t
o check if Daniel and Laura were home. Rather bad-temperedly, she had agreed and called back to report that there were lights on in their flat, that she had seen people moving around inside. She hung about until someone matching Daniel’s description came outside to put some trash out.

  So they had gone home.

  ‘I’ll post you the keys,’ Ion said to Camelia, ‘and you can go inside, check their backpacks. They must have found the stuff by now—’ He was paranoid about mentioning the drugs on the phone. ‘Can you check the English news? Any reports of tourists finding, um, stuff in their backpacks?’

  Camelia had laughed in a way that made his balls crawl up into his body. ‘Ion, I can’t believe you.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘You really think your girlfriend’—the word dripped with contempt—‘would have followed your original plan? What would you do if you were her? You’d take the stuff and vanish. Sell it and keep all the money yourself.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Well, I would. And that’s exactly what Alina would do. She’d take the money and use it to buy pens and pads so she could work on her stupid comic books. I bet you a thousand pounds—shit, I’ve been living here too long—that’s what she’s done. She wouldn’t risk the English couple taking it through customs which, let’s face it, was a ludicrous idea, probably the worst you’ve ever had, and that’s saying something.’

  ‘Hey. It was genius.’

  Camelia laughed at that for a while. He amazed himself: even when she was mocking him, he found it impossible not to picture Camelia’s lovely breasts, which she’d showed him once in exchange for an eighth of weed. ‘Face it, Ion. The drugs—’

  ‘What? Who is this?’

  ‘The stuff is long gone. Your punk princess has taken it and you’ll never see her again. And after you promised me a share of that money, I’m stuck here pole-dancing for limp-dicked perverts. Thanks a lot.’