Bought and Sold (Part 3 of 3)

by Stephens, Megan

  There was a small, barred window high up on one of the walls of the cell, and by the time the light from it had gone, some of the girls were already asleep on the thin, hard mattresses that were strewn across the floor. Although I was exhausted, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. So I was still sitting on the wooden bench at the side of the room when two young Albanian girls – certainly no older than me – were brought into the cell, crying.

  I spoke to one of them in Albanian and she asked me, ‘Who is Christoph? Why are the police asking us about someone called Christoph?’ All the threats and warnings I had been given – by Jak, then Leon, Elek and finally Christoph – had made me paranoid, and my first thought was that it might be a trick. What if the two girls had been brought in – by the police or even by Christoph himself – for the sole purpose of seeing if I would say anything? So I shrugged and said I didn’t know anyone called Christoph.

  It was only when a policeman came into the cell a little while later and started questioning the two girls that I realised they were genuine, and I began to piece together some of their story. Apparently, the Albanian girl whose escape had resulted in me, five other girls and a child being locked in the apartment for four days – and whose own days, according to Christoph, were now numbered – had gone to the police and told them all about him. It was when they found his number on her phone that they had called him and set up the meeting at the hotel.

  When they had arrested Christoph, they had seized all the phones they’d found in his car. On one of them there had been texts about two Albanian girls who were arriving that day at the railway station in Athens, and who had consequently been met by police officers. I genuinely don’t think the two girls had any idea what was going on. When they left Albania, they had probably been really excited at the prospect of earning good money working as waitresses in Athens. Instead, they were about to spend the night on the floor of a cell in a police station in a foreign country.

  I really hoped it would all get sorted out for them and that the police would realise they weren’t to blame in any way. In fact, they were incredibly lucky. I don’t suppose they could even have imagined what would have happened to them if Christoph hadn’t been arrested on that particular day, and if it had been him rather than two police officers who had met them at the railway station. A night on the floor of a cell was a very small price to pay for having escaped the fate they came so close to sharing with me.

  From time to time during the night, one of the policemen would ask if we wanted something to eat or drink. I had reached that stage when you’re too hungry to eat, but I did have some water. Then I lay down on one of the mats on the floor, covered myself with a threadbare blanket and tried to sleep. I must have dozed off for a while, and when I woke up I talked to another Albanian girl, called Flori, who was waiting to be deported and was having to leave her two children in Greece with her husband’s family. Every time she talked about the children, she cried. I felt incredibly sorry for her and I was reminded, once again, that however bad things seem, there’s always someone worse off than you are.

  Flori and I were sitting talking quietly to each other – I think we were the only ones still awake by that time – when one of the policemen unlocked the gate and came into the cell. For a while, he and his colleague, who stayed outside, chatted and laughed with us. Then the policeman who had come into the cell said, ‘You’re very sexy. Why don’t you do a pose for us?’

  I had been very frightened when I was arrested and I was still scared, because I didn’t know what was going to happen the next day or the day after that. But I had felt safe in the police station and I was shocked and unnerved when I realised he wasn’t joking.

  Flori said ‘No!’ at the same time as I did. And suddenly the policeman’s attitude changed completely. ‘Get up! Now!’ he shouted at us. ‘Put your hands on the wall and spread your legs.’ I could hear the other women grumbling as they woke up and when one of them said something, the policeman spun round and shouted at her too.

  My heart was racing as I stood with the palms of my hands pressed against the damp stone wall. And then, while one of the men touched our bodies, his colleague took photos on his phone and they both laughed and said lewd, disgusting things to us.

  The other women must have seen it all before, and most of them pulled the dirty blankets over their heads and went back to sleep. For me though, it was another tremor in the small amount of solid ground that remained under my feet, another naïve illusion shattered. I had been stupid to believe that anywhere was safe for someone like me, a prostitute who didn’t matter. I did what I always did at times like that: I thought about my mum and wished I was at home with her, and then thanked God that she couldn’t see me now.

  The next morning, I was handcuffed and driven to court in a police car, accompanied by three police officers, who were nice to me and said that everything would be all right as long as I told the truth.

  I kept asking myself how it had all happened. How had a mildly disaffected schoolgirl who was trying to get her mother’s attention by bunking off school become a prostitute and end up sitting in the back of a police car on her way to court in Athens? I knew I had sometimes been wilful and difficult, but had I really been bad enough to deserve the miserable life I was now leading? I didn’t think so. But I knew I must be wrong and that what had happened to me must somehow be my fault.

  When I walked into the waiting room at the court house, Christoph was already there. He looked up as I came in with the three policemen and nodded almost imperceptibly. Then he turned and said something to the man in the well-cut suit sitting next to him.

  One of the policemen took off my handcuffs and said, ‘We just have to wait now. We don’t know how long it will be before your case is called. When it is, we’ll come in with you. And he’ll be there, too.’ He indicated Christoph with a movement of his head before adding, scornfully, ‘And his lawyer.’

  When our case was finally called and I was waiting to go into the courtroom, Christoph stood behind me and said, very quietly, ‘Whatever they say, they can’t prove you know me. Just tell them I gave you a lift to the hotel as a favour to a man you know but whose name you can’t remember. Tell them you’ve never met the man who gives you the work; you’ve only ever spoken to him on the phone.’

  We stood side by side in the courtroom: the three policemen, me, Christoph, his lawyer and the two frightened, bemused Albanian girls who had been within a hair’s breadth of becoming prostitutes. We had to say our names and then the judge asked me a question in Greek. I didn’t quite catch what she said, partly because Christoph’s lawyer started saying something while she was still talking. The judge told him, sharply, to shut up. Then she looked at me again and said, ‘Yes or no? It’s a simple question.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Suddenly everyone in the courtroom was looking at me. When I glanced anxiously at Christoph, he seemed to be on the verge of panic, and his lawyer was glaring at me furiously.

  ‘Clear the court,’ the judge ordered. I had begun to shuffle out with the others when she pointed her finger at me and said, ‘No, not you. You stay.’ As Christoph reached the doorway, I saw him turn his head and look at me with an angry, threatening expression that sent a chill through my body.

  As soon as the courtroom had been cleared, I told the judge, ‘I don’t think I really understood the question. Can you speak in English?’ She must have thought I was stupid and that I would have a very limited grasp of my own language too, because she spoke very slowly, saying, ‘I asked you if you had been trafficked, and you answered “Yes.”’

  ‘Oh no! No, that’s not true,’ I said, wiping the sweat from my hands on to my crumpled skirt. ‘No, no. I’m really sorry. I can’t believe I said that.’

  She looked at me coldly for a moment. Then she made an irritable clicking noise with her tongue, sighed and told the court officer to let everyone back into the courtroom. I forced myself to look directly at Christoph as he walked
in, and I prayed that somehow he would be able to tell from the expression in my eyes that I was sorry.

  After the judge had explained to everyone that I had made a mistake, I related the story of how I had ended up in a car with a man I didn’t know. Then she asked Christoph why the police had found thousands of condoms in the boot of his car, 10,000 euros and the passports of numerous women in the glove box, and a small arsenal of weapons under the driver’s seat.

  ‘I can’t answer this question,’ Christoph told her, his self-confidence clearly restored, ‘because it is not my car. It is a car I borrowed from a friend, who I haven’t seen or heard from in a long time.’

  ‘And what is this friend’s name?’ You could tell by the way the judge asked the question that she already knew that the name he would give her would belong to a man who didn’t exist.

  A few minutes later, the hearing was adjourned and Christoph and I were driven back, separately, to the police station.

  I saw Christoph briefly when we got back to the police station. We passed each other in the corridor and he gave me a warning look. Then I was taken into a small office where four police officers started firing questions at me. They were really pushing me to give them answers, I suppose in the hope that I would eventually slip up and tell them what they wanted to know.

  ‘You know him, don’t you?’ one of the policemen asked. ‘Why don’t you tell us the truth? You know him and he’s making you work. He’s trafficking you, isn’t he? Answer the question.’

  ‘I don’t know him,’ I insisted. ‘He just gave me a lift.’

  ‘Well, if you’re working for yourself, you must have some money. How much are you earning? How much have you got saved? What do spend your money on?’

  ‘I spend everything I earn,’ I said. ‘I buy clothes. I go out. That’s why I haven’t got any money saved up. I like the work I’m doing. I just want you to leave me alone.’

  I felt almost pleased with myself for outwitting the policemen and protecting Christoph, even though, by lying to them and refusing to answer their questions, I was blocking any attempts they might have made to help me. But I knew I couldn’t trust anyone, particularly after the way the two policemen had treated me and Flori in the cell the previous night.

  In fact, I thought it was all part of an elaborate test. Christoph had told me many times that he had contacts in the police, and I was (almost) certain that if I did say anything, they would tell him and he would send people to kill my mum, and then me. I was sure that the advice the girl had given me the night before was right and that the only way to survive was to keep my mouth shut. So I stuck to my story and answered their questions without telling them anything.

  Despite the fact that they were firing questions at me, I think, to begin with, the policemen wanted me to believe that they were on my side. Eventually, though, as their patience began to wear thin, they started getting really annoyed with me and one of them suddenly pushed back his chair, stood up and said, ‘Come with me. Come.’

  As I walked out of the room and into the corridor behind him, I heard a sharp sound like something cracking, and when he opened another door, I saw Christoph. He was slumped on a chair and a man was slapping him repeatedly across the face. I gasped and the man stood upright, stretching the muscles in his back. Then Christoph turned his head and looked at me, and I felt a surge of sympathetic affection for the weak, wounded old man he appeared to be. That sounds absurd, I know, that I felt sorry for the man who sold me many times every day to anyone who was willing to pay a few euros to have sex with me. Unlikely as it may sound, though, it is possible, when no one cares about you at all, to become attached to the one person who sometimes says nice things to you.

  I felt guilty, too, because I thought that what was being done to Christoph was my fault. ‘Please don’t let them hit him,’ I said to the police officer who had opened the door. ‘He’s done nothing wrong. You have to believe me. I barely even know him. He was just helping out a friend by giving me a lift.’

  The policeman didn’t answer. He just closed the door and opened another one, a little further along the corridor. One of his colleagues followed us into the small, cramped office and suddenly I felt really frightened because I was certain that the moment had come when, somehow, they were going to force me to tell them the truth.

  Instead of doing any of the things they do in films, though, one of the policemen took a bottle out of a cupboard, put a glass down on the table in front of me, poured whisky into it and said, ‘Drink that. It’ll help you to calm down.’

  Seeing Christoph looking tired and almost defeated, when I was used to him being strong and totally in control, had really upset and unnerved me, and I was crying. In fact, I cried a lot of the time when I was in the police station. So although I hated the taste of alcohol, I only hesitated for a moment before lifting the glass to my lips and taking a sip of the whisky.

  ‘Drink more,’ the policeman shouted, snatching up the glass and gripping my chin in his strong fingers as he tried to force it into my mouth. ‘Drink it. You will speak to us. We need to know the truth.’ Then he thrust the glass into my hand and as soon as I had drunk the whisky he filled it up again.

  ‘We need you to tell us the truth,’ the other policeman said, sternly but more calmly. ‘We’ve been after this man for a long time. We have to stop him. Isn’t that what you want too? All we need is one person to tell us the truth so that we can nail him. And then it will all be over.’

  I don’t know if it was the whisky that turned my fear into panic, or if it was guilt because I had been struggling with the thought that time might be running out for the girls in the apartment. But suddenly I burst into tears. ‘There are other girls,’ I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth as though they were trying to escape before I changed my mind. ‘There are other girls who need help. I’ve seen them. They’re locked in an apartment. There was a child there too – she was just a little girl. But men came and took her away. Please, you have to help them.’

  One of the policemen put his hand on my shoulder and I saw him exchange a look of quiet triumph with his colleague, which faded instantly when I added, in a completely different, sly tone, ‘But I don’t know him. I don’t know who he is.’

  It was almost as if someone was flicking a switch in my head that was making my emotions veer wildly between guilt and fear – for myself, for all the other girls who were trapped in the same spiral of hopeless despair and, paradoxically, for Christoph. I was desperate to get away from him: whatever some people prefer to believe, no one in their right mind would ever willingly live the sort of life I was living. The only way I had been able to survive at all was by locking my emotions in a box and throwing away the key. But I was scared, not only of Christoph, but also because I had been so brainwashed by him and by the controlling men who had owned my life before him that I didn’t know what would happen to me if I was set free.

  One thing I did realise, however, was that I was damned if I did tell the truth and damned if I didn’t. If Christoph went to prison because of something I said, he would send one of his people after me and, even more importantly, after my mother. If I didn’t say anything to the police, I would be condemning to a life of misery and abuse all the other girls he had already trafficked and all the ones he would go on to trick in the future. It felt like a huge responsibility and an impossible choice. What swayed it for me in the end, though, was the thought of something terrible happening to my mum.

  The two policemen continued to fire questions at me for what seemed like hours. And I continued to stick to my story, until eventually I was taken back to the cell.

  The next day, I was released, and as I walked out of the police station with Christoph, he handed me 50 euros and said, ‘Good girl. Go back to the hotel. I’ll be in touch.’

  Chapter 11

  I took a taxi back to the hotel, where I had a shower and then sat on the bed, not knowing what to do or what was going to happen next. I didn’t have to wa
it long. Christoph called that evening to say everything was back to normal and he was coming to pick me up.

  As he was driving me to a brothel that night, he told me again that I was a ‘good girl’. ‘You’re one of the clever ones,’ he said. ‘You’re not like the other girls. You’re special. I can trust you. I love you, you know.’ Only a fool would have believed him. Or someone who was so starved of affection and convinced of her own worthlessness that she clutched with both hands at the pathetic straw of comfort that was being offered to her.

  I don’t know what happened with the police. Christoph told me some time later that the court hearing had been adjourned, and then I never heard anything more about it. I didn’t do any more daytime escorting for a while after that. Instead, I worked in one of four different brothels every night, and occasionally during the day as well. None of them was far from the hotel I was staying in, so I would often walk to them on my own and then back again the next morning. Christoph ordered takeaways for me and phoned me regularly, and when I wasn’t working or sleeping, I sat in my dingy hotel room texting my mum.

  Despite the fact that everything got back to normal pretty quickly – or, at least, to what I had learned to accept as normal – it wasn’t long before something seemed to have changed.