London, present day
‘Vedad was the son of my mother’s best friend, Ariana. We grew up together. He was a few years older than me, the same age as my sister, Sabina, but we all spent lots of time together when we were small. Their house was the one along from ours. Where I come from, in the mountains, it is not like London, you understand. It was a good place to live, the families in the village looked after one another.’ Eva’s posture softens as she retreats into the memory.
‘Every Saturday night when Sabina and I were small, my mother would take us to the square in the village to listen to the music that filled the streets. Together, my mother and Sabina would dance the kolo. They always asked me to join them, but I was too shy so I would sit on the wall opposite and watch them, swinging my legs to the beat. I thought these were happy days but later I started to feel the cloud that loomed over everything. I wasn’t even born when war broke out, but what it left behind was everywhere.’
Madeleine knows their time is limited but she cannot risk urging Eva along in her story. Besides, it’s impossible to know what details will prove fruitful, at the time. If she has learnt one thing in this job, it’s that you have to pay attention to all of it.
‘My father’s brother, Uncle Arizote, was killed, attacked in our village along with several other men. At first, Ariana told me later, my father kept himself busy trying to get the case investigated by the United Nations Mission in Kosovo who had arrived at the end of the war; she said he nearly drove himself mad trying to convince them that Albanian gangs were to blame. When it became clear that those who attacked Arizote and the other men did so with the support of the foreign Kosovo Forces who were brought in to help keep the peace after the war had officially ended, my father … he gave up.’
Eva pauses. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t so bad when my mother was there. She would tell us stories and shield us from my father’s tempers, but when she left to find work in Belgrade … There was no work and no money. My mother said she would come back. She sent money for me and Sabina every month, but my father kept it. It wasn’t very much. She never came back.’
Her voice dips and Isobel leans forward, proffering a white plastic cup.
‘Would you like a drink of water?’
Eva nods, taking a sip before returning the cup to the table between them. She closes her eyes and composes herself. ‘After my mother left, Ariana started to look after us, Sabina and me. I had a crush on Vedad, I suppose, but as we got older he wasn’t interested in playing with me, only Sabina. I found them once together in the barn when they were fifteen. You know …’
Eva blushes with shame, looking away before focusing on her hands. ‘And then a few months later, just after Sabina’s sixteenth birthday, Ariana told me that Vedad was taking Sabina to England, that he had found her work.’
Madeleine rearranged her legs beneath the table, sitting forward slightly in her chair.
‘My father was so angry, I was never allowed to say Sabina’s name again after she left. My father could do that; if he wanted to put something out of his mind, he could simply cut it out and he would never mention it again. It’s what he did with my mother, too. I don’t know if Sabina tried to get in touch but I never heard from her, for years. And then one day Ariana came to the house, when my father was out, and told me that Vedad had found work for me too. She said Usuf would help drive me to the port in the middle of the night when my father was asleep.’
‘Who is Usuf?’ Madeleine asks gently.
‘He is Ariana’s husband. He was a good man, I think.’
‘Do you think you could tell us about that night?’ Madeleine asks, glancing up at the clock.
‘Usuf was waiting in his truck for me. When I got in the back, I saw there was another man in the front passenger seat. But he didn’t say anything. I was scared even though I was excited because I was going to another country, and I couldn’t even say goodbye to my father. But Ariana had some cake for me and she hugged me and told me it would be OK, that Vedad and Sabina would be waiting for me in London.’
Eva wipes her nose on her sleeve. ‘It was so cold as the car took off, and eventually I fell asleep, wrapped in a small rug I had stolen from the foot of my father’s chair while he slept. I kept thinking he would wake up and tell me I couldn’t go, but the truth was he had been so comatose from drink that he wouldn’t have noticed if the house had been on fire. I don’t remember the journey too clearly. I remember the weight of the rucksack pressed against my knees, the truck making a roaring noise as it bumped along in the darkness, the smell of salt rising to meet the gasoline from the boats as we reached the port. Usuf slowed the truck and pulled into a queue of tankers and cars, and then for the first time, he turned and spoke to me. He said the man next to him would look after me and that I should do as he said.’
‘Five minutes,’ the guard at the front of the room announces and Madeleine feels Isobel bristle beside her.
Understanding time was running out, now that she has finally caught her stride, Eva speaks more quickly. ‘Once Usuf had driven away, I followed the man over to a café set back a little from the dock. There was another man at a table outside the café. He was wearing a denim jacket and had long hair pulled back into a ponytail. They spoke for a few minutes a little away from me so that I couldn’t hear, and then the man with the ponytail told me to go with him, in English. He took me into the back of a truck sealed with panels of wood. There was another girl in there, who looked younger than me. I think she was happy to see me, she was shivering it was so cold. She said she was from Braşov, a town in Romania, and she was going to Greece to work in a café as a waitress. She said she was going to stay in Thessaloniki, which was where the boat was headed, and I was confused because I was going to London, but I thought maybe this was just how people travelled.’
Eva laughs at the absurdity of her own suggestion and then carries on.
‘Just before the truck boarded the boat, the man with the ponytail stepped inside and gave us both a glass and told us to drink. After that I fell asleep and when I woke up there were men shouting and heaving things about outside and daylight was coming in through cracks in the panel of the truck, and the other girl had gone.’
The guard at the front of the room starts to walk towards them, signalling that they must leave.
‘It’s OK,’ Madeleine leans towards Eva reassuringly. ‘I’m a police officer, I can arrange to come in the next couple of days and interview you formally and you can tell me everything.’
Eva nods, her jaw clenched. ‘I loved Vedad,’ she says, matter-of-fact. ‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I was confused and he said he would make me go back. I couldn’t go back – you don’t understand what it was like. Every day they would make me have sex with men and they would film me. And Goran, he would …’
Madeleine turns to the guard, showing him her identification, knowing that even without official authorisation this will be enough to stall him at least for a few moments.
‘Who is Goran?’ Madeleine asks, remembering one of the names pinned to Isobel’s wall.
‘He ran the studio, as he called it. It was this building near Tottenham Court Road where they made us work, and they sold drugs from there, too,’ Eva says.
‘Goran Petrović,’ Isobel interjects.
‘How did you know?’ Eva looks shocked but continues, understanding that the guard will be back in a moment and then she will have to wait until Madeleine returns. ‘Goran liked me. Sometimes he would let me sit out for hours at a time just to talk to him while the other girls worked. I think it pained him to see other men having sex with me. He never said anything to Vedad, of course, and when the bosses were due to visit he would make me go back in – and he always made me do enough that it wouldn’t be obvious when the films were watched back that I wasn’t pulling my wei—’
‘What other men?’ Isobel cut in.
‘I don’t know all their names,’ Eva says, flustered. ‘But there was one. A Greek, he was the one who brought me over. The one with the ponytail. His name was Jorgos.’ Eva looks away as she says his name. ‘He used to watch, and sometimes he would join in. I don’t know his surname.’
‘Eva,’ Isobel says. ‘Have you spoken to the police about this?’
Eva snorts. ‘What, the police who put me in here for trying to protect my baby? The ones who did nothing to help me when I was being raped every day for three years?’
The guard returns. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve spoken to my senior and—’
‘It’s fine,’ Madeleine says, looking at Eva. ‘I will come back. We’ll fix this. OK?’