Trafficked: The Terrifying True Story of a British Girl Forced into the Sex Trade (13 page)

I knew I must have earned at least 1,000 Euros, but however carefully I searched and however many times I counted, there was still just 600. I couldn't understand it; it simply didn't make any sense.
Think
, I told myself.
Just try to calm down and think. Where might you have hidden it? It
must
be there. There's nowhere else it can be.

I
had
to have made a mistake in the counting. The only other alternative was that someone had stolen from me, and that seemed impossible. One thing
was
certain though – Kas was going to kill me.

I was shaking and my stomach was cramping and churning when I woke him up, whispering to him, ‘I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I've only made this tonight,' as I held out the wad of notes to show him. He got out of bed immediately and, without a word, grabbed me by the arm and pushed me ahead of him into the bathroom, locking the door behind us.

When he smiled at me, it felt as though icy-cold liquid was flooding into my heart. He sighed as he said, ‘Ah!
Rrishit tim pak.
[My little grape.]' But then he snatched the notes from my hand and counted them and his voice was hard and pitiless as he hissed at me, ‘Do you think you can come home at 6 o'clock in the morning with just this? Just wait until my friends leave. We will deal with this later. And while you wait, you'd better think, woman. Think where my money has gone. I know you've cheated on me and
stolen from me, and I want to know what you've done with my money.'

‘I
haven't
. I promise I haven't,' I stammered. ‘The only thing that could have happened is that someone's taken some of the money I buried. I …'

‘
Why?
' he snapped, twisting my arm until I thought it would break. ‘Why would someone take
some
of the money? Are you stupid? Do you think everyone else is as stupid as you are? If someone was going to rob you, they'd take it
all
. Do you think they thought they'd stumbled on a bank, so they decided to take some now and come back for the rest when they needed it? Is that what you think? Don't you dare lie to me, woman. Just see what I will do to you when you steal from me.'

I didn't sleep at all that night. Instead, I lay awake, crying silently into my pillow, dreading what I knew was coming and wondering what my mother was doing and what she'd think if she knew the kind of life I was really leading.

The next day, as soon as his friends had gone, Kas slapped me across the face, shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘What you lost, you can make up today.' Then he switched on the television, lit a cigarette and turned his back on me.

His unpredictability was as unnerving as his temper because it meant that I never knew what he was going to do – and I sometimes wondered whether he did either.

For seven nights every week it often felt as though I was going round and round in a revolving door. I'd stand at the
side of the road, a car would pull up, the man would ask how much, I'd get in the car and we'd drive to the track beside the petrol station, then afterwards he'd drop me off, another car would pull up …

The nights had been cold right from the start, but the temperature dropped steadily as the weeks went by, until even if it was warm and sunny during the day, it was so cold once the sun went down that however many layers of jumpers and jackets I wore, I was always freezing. It didn't help that my weight had dropped to about 6½ stone and I was smoking up to 20 cigarettes a night, although I'd rarely have a chance to smoke one before the next car pulled up beside me. In England, I'd hardly ever smoked, and the fact that I did so now seemed to be just another indication that Sophie was disappearing. Perhaps because of my lack of appetite, loss of weight and a persistent cough – which the cigarettes and standing in the cold did nothing to improve – I seemed to be getting significantly weaker almost by the day. So sometimes it was a relief to be in a warm car for 15 minutes, particularly when I was with one of the men who were nice to me. One night, when it was so cold it felt as though ice crystals were forming in my bones, my teeth were chattering so violently that when a car pulled up beside me and the man asked ‘How much?', he could hardly understand what I was saying when I told him the price. I was so grateful to get into the warmth for a few minutes that I didn't look at him properly until I was sitting beside him in the car, and just as I realised that he was as high as
a kite on drugs, drunk or completely crazy – or all three – he locked the doors.

‘Let me out of the car,' I told him, struggling to keep my voice level so that he wouldn't know how panic-stricken I really was. ‘Open the door. I want to go.'

But he'd already pulled across the road into the traffic and when he reached towards me with one hand I thought for a horrible moment that he was going to open the door and push me out. Instead, though, he grabbed me by the throat and said, ‘No. Come. Come with me. It's okay.'

Just stay calm
, I told myself.
Don't struggle. It'll be fine
.

Although he loosened his grip, he kept his hand on my throat as he drove and then stopped the car in an alleyway a short distance along the main road.

‘Let me out,' I demanded angrily again. ‘Open the door.
Vai via! No scopare
.'

And, suddenly, both his hands were around my throat, his fingernails digging into my neck, and he was screaming into my face in Italian. I tried to push him away and shouted back at him, ‘
Vai via!
Go!' But I could barely breathe and the words came out in a strangled croak. ‘
Mio ragazzo è albanese
,' I stuttered. But he just laughed as he said, ‘
Dove è il vostro denaro?
Your money – where is it?'

I didn't have much money with me at the time – most of that night's earnings were buried in the soil behind the petrol station – and my first instinct was to give him what I had. But I knew that even if I gave him money, there was
nothing to stop him killing me – and if he didn't, Kas probably would when I arrived home again without the full amount.

When I'd realised earlier that he'd locked the doors of the car, I'd slipped my hand into my pocket and curled my fingers around my phone. Now I began to press Kas's number. I waited a few seconds to give him time to answer and then pulled the phone out of my pocket and shouted into it, ‘You've got to come. The alleyway by the dead tree. He's a psychopath.' The man reached out to try to knock the phone out of my hand, but I snatched it away, so he grabbed me around the throat again and started banging my head against the headrest.

I don't know where Kas was when he got my phone call, but it seemed to be only seconds later that his car came screeching into the alleyway behind us and, before the man had a chance to react, Kas was thumping with his fists on the window beside him. Still startled and bemused, the guy turned to look at Kas and I reached across and unlocked the doors. Immediately, the driver's door flew open and Kas dragged the man out of his seat and started kicking him. Then he pushed him, face-down, on to the bonnet of the car and punched him repeatedly on the back of his head so that his face smashed again and again on to the metal and I was certain Kas was going to kill him.

There was blood pouring from the man's face when Kas eventually lifted him up by the scruff of his neck, pulling
him to his feet and half-dragging, half-carrying him around the car to where I was standing, frozen to the spot by cold and fear.

‘Now tell her you're sorry,' Kas shouted, his fingers clamping on to the man's jaw as he forced him to look at me.

‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' the guy mumbled.

‘Now fuck off.
Go!
' Kas released his grip on him abruptly and the man stumbled back around his car and threw himself into the driver's seat. Then he locked the doors, started the engine and swerved sharply around Kas's car as he pulled out on to the main road.

I sat in the car beside Kas, waiting for the tirade of verbal abuse and the physical assault I knew was coming, but he just patted my knee and said, ‘Well done. You did the right thing – you didn't show him that you were frightened. You did really well.' And suddenly I felt as though the ordeal I'd just been through had been worth it for the reward of knowing that, for once, I'd got something right and Kas was pleased with me.

One of my main concerns as I stood on the street every night was trying to dodge the
Carabinieri
, who were always on the lookout for me. Sometimes, I'd see them coming and I'd have time to hide in the trees behind the petrol station. But often they'd pull up beside me before I could get away and tell me, ‘You can't stay here.
Go!
' So I'd walk along the road for a few minutes, waiting for them to drive away, and then go back to my spot.

On the nights when they picked me up and took me to the police station, they'd keep me there until about 5 o'clock in the morning and then let me go. In fact, once I'd got over my initial humiliation at being picked up by the police at all, it wasn't such a bad thing – at least it meant I could spend the night inside in the warmth and then have a good excuse to give Kas for not having earned any money. And the
Carabinieri
were usually all right with me.

So although I was always annoyed with myself for having been stupid enough to get caught, I wasn't actually worried when a police car pulled in beside me one night and I was told, ‘Not tonight. Get in the car. You have to come with us.'

This time, though, when we arrived at the police station, the two policemen started to ask me questions, insisting that they didn't believe my story about being South African and demanding to know where I really came from, until eventually it seemed pointless to keep up the pretence.

‘Were you doing this in England?' one of the policemen asked me. ‘What is your address there?'

For a moment, I thought about telling them, ‘I'm not what you think I am. I'm not Jenna. My name is Sophie and I don't do things like this. I had a good job in England and I've got a mum and a family and they love me.' But there was no point. Even if they believed me, even if they hadn't been sent by Kas to find out if I'd break under pressure and give him away, they couldn't really help me
because eventually he would know what I'd done and he'd hurt my family and then kill me.

So I gave them the alternative story Kas had told me to tell – that I'd been a pole dancer in England and had come to Italy to earn better money – and eventually they shrugged and said I could leave. But it was only midnight, I was tired and there was a small part of me that wanted to fight back against Kas for the way he treated me and for always being so worried about protecting himself and so indifferent to what might happen to me. Whenever I was picked up and asked where I lived, I had to give an address in the city. So I asked the policemen, ‘Can I wait here until I can catch a train back to town? I was supposed to meet someone, but it's too late now.' And they shrugged again and let me stay in the warmth of the reception area.

So I sat there for the rest of the night, praying Kas wouldn't drive past and see me through the window, and then, at 5 o'clock in the morning, I walked home and told Kas that the police had kept me at the station. And although I was terrified in case he ever discovered the truth, the fear was almost worth it for the sense that, for once, I hadn't been completely under his control.

One night not long afterwards, a people-carrier pulled off the road beside me and I bent down beside the open passenger window. Normally, I only ever approached cars on the driver's side, but it had stopped at an odd angle, and it was only as I looked in through the window that I real
ised that although the car was unmarked, the guy was wearing the uniform of the
Guardia di Finanza
, the police force that deals with smuggling and drugs. I took a step backwards and then froze as he pointed a gun directly into my face and shouted, ‘
Vai! Vai! Vai! Vai via!
'

I knew my life meant nothing to many of the men who stopped their cars on the road beside me at night, and less than nothing to most of the policemen, who saw me not as a person but as a low-life irritation. And I knew, too, that there was nothing to stop this man shooting me if he wanted to.

I ran behind the car, but he'd already opened the door and jumped out, and when I stumbled, he stood over me, pointing his gun into my face again and shouting at me to go away. The temptation to run was almost overwhelming, but I forced myself not to because I was afraid he might shoot me in the back and then make up some story about what had happened, which no one would ever bother to question. So I got to my feet and began to back away slowly from the car. And then suddenly, for no obvious reason, he lowered the gun, got back behind the wheel and drove away.

I was shaking violently and my mind was so numbed by shock that for a moment I couldn't remember Kas's number, and all I could do when he answered the phone was keep repeating the words, ‘Oh my God'. Eventually, though, I managed to calm down enough to tell him, ‘Someone's just pulled a gun on me.'

‘Stay there,' Kas told me, and I was sobbing as I walked to the back of the petrol station and crouched down on the grass behind the low wall separating it from the patch of woodland to wait for him.

A few minutes later, as I sat beside Kas in his car, he asked me, ‘What was the number plate?' and I tried to remember.

‘I think it had a two in it,' I told him. ‘Or … Or it might have been a three. I can't remember. I was so scared.'

Instantly he was angry and shouting at me, ‘How many times have I told you always memorise the number plate? Can't you even do that one simple thing? You're wasting my time, and what if someone saw me coming here to pick you up? Do you want to get me into trouble? What if he comes again, on another night? What if he ends up shooting you dead? Then what do I do? How am I going to know what's happened to you if you don't know the registration number of his car?' For some reason, though, there was little force behind his single punch and he never mentioned the incident again.