The two men bundled him, unconscious, out of the driving seat, and one of them took his place. The car was driven into a clearing in some nearby woods. It was parked carefully in a position in which it was screened by bushes and trees from the sight of anyone driving along the road below. The two men dragged the Swiss from the car and emptied his pockets of all his money and valuables. Then they stripped him naked. They picked him up and laid him face downwards over the front of his car. With some cord that they took from their rucksacks they tied him securely in this position, with his legs wide open. They found a tin of water in the luggage-boot and poured it over his head to help him to regain consciousness. When he finally came to his senses, they opened the fronts of their trousers and, one after the other, savaged him brutally. Satiated, they sat beside the car, smoking, listening to his moans, and waiting for their virility to return. Then they savaged him again.

Wilhelm Franz-Ruller shivered again. No, he thought. Let other people pick up hitch-hikers, if they want to. A sensible person doesn't take chances.

He looked at the dashboard clock. Six-twenty. With any luck he would be home before midnight.

2

Five kilometres further up the road, two beautiful girls sat on a bridge, waiting for a car to pick them up. It was not a busy road and few cars had passed them. The few that had done so, and had failed to stop for them, had all had women sitting beside the drivers. The girls were not at all despondent. They knew they had only to wait for a car that was driven by a man who was alone.

One of them, a blonde, wearing a pair of very well-cut jeans and a light brown suede-leather jacket, was passing her time by firing a small pistol at the various objects that floated on the surface of the slowly-moving stream beneath them.