CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #3
Deciding not to mention it yet – she wanted to find out first where the story was going next – Cristy smiled a thanks to Evie and glanced at David. He appeared pensive and worried, as if he too was mulling over the veracity of Lukas’s account of giving up Sasha.
‘There’s a turtle,’ Gabe said quietly, pointing down at the water.
Cristy watched the reptilian head bob up and down on the silky surface, its mottled shell glinting silver in the sunlight.
She glanced at Lukas and saw that he probably hadn’t even heard Gabe speak. Maybe he was focusing on how to continue lacing his story with enough truth for the falsehoods to sound more credible.
Evie said quietly, ‘Everything’s OK, Lukey. Just keep going.’
Lukas looked up and seemed to brighten a little as he said, ‘Do you have any questions? You must have some by now. Maybe I’ve left things out … It was more than twenty years ago, you understand.’
Since they were still recording, Cristy said, ‘Tell me more about Sasha and what happened to her. You said Janina didn’t tell you at first, but she did later?’
Lukas nodded and continued to nod as Gabe returned to the table and sat down quietly. In the end he was the first to speak.
GABE: ‘Janina didn’t tell us then. There was no time to. She was taken from me by Albescu.’
Though Cristy couldn’t see his eyes, she heard the emotion in his voice.
LUKAS: ‘We had no way to find out where she was. Sasha was gone, so was Nina. Our world was … empty, shattered, more frightening than ever. None of Albescu’s men would speak to us about it, it was possible they didn’t even know where Nina had been taken.
There were no leads, nothing at all to guide us.
Our only hope was that she would find a way to contact us. ’
GABE: ‘When we heard on the news, a long time later, that Albescu Senior had been killed in a police raid we waited and waited, but she still didn’t come.’
LUKAS: ‘And we still had no idea what she’d done with Sasha. It was a hellish time. We even feared for a while that she’d killed Sasha rather than see her fall into Albescu’s hands. Then one day the police turned up at the farm asking about Janina and Sasha.’
GABE: ‘The vicar had reported them missing.’
Recalling ex-detective Catherine Shilling telling how Gabe – George – had wept when they’d questioned him, Cristy regarded him closely now and wondered if he too was remembering his show of emotion.
LUKAS: ‘Gabe was afraid to tell the police anything in case he made things worse for Janina, so he said she’d gone back to Lithuania and taken Sasha with her.
It probably wasn’t the right thing to do, but neither of us knew what was.
Then I was stopped one day on the street and taken into custody.
After that I was deported without being able to speak to anyone first.
‘I couldn’t get back to the UK until a very long time later, after my country became a part of the EU.
That was in 2004, but it took me a while to sort out a passport, having been born in Georgia.
So it was in 2005 that I returned. I hadn’t heard from Janina in all that time, and by then I’d also lost contact with Gabe.
What I didn’t know until many, many years later, when I next saw him, was that Janina had managed to make her way back to him in the middle of 2005 and they’d fled the farm soon after.
So they’d gone by the time I managed to get there.
We worked out later that I missed them by only a few days. ’
Cristy watched Lukas look at Gabe as though waiting for him to speak, but Gabe simply nodded, as if to confirm what had been said.
LUKAS: ‘Gabe still finds it difficult to talk about Janina and Sasha, so we’ve agreed that even though this next part of the story is his, I will tell you what happened and if I make any mistakes he will step in to correct me.’
Lukas paused as Evie put a comforting hand on Gabe’s arm and for several moments there was nothing more than the sound of birdsong threading and flaring through the hum of the pool pump.
Then Cristy became aware of a beautiful scent, like peonies but sweeter and more pungent, and she glanced around to see where it might be coming from.
There was no obvious source, but there never was when she picked up this unexpected drift of fragrance.
It came out of nowhere, often when she was thinking about her mother, and it made her feel as though she was close by now.
She asked Evie where the scent was coming from and Evie seemed puzzled, as if she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.
LUKAS: ‘After I was returned to Lithuania Gabe was left alone at the farm. The traffickers had stopped using it after they took Janina and he had very few visitors …
‘He didn’t answer the door if anyone knocked.
He’d look out first to see who it was and if it was someone he didn’t know he stayed quiet until they left.
He went out only to buy food and to walk the beach; he read, listened to music and started to paint …
He waited and counted the days, the months and then the years, always believing that Janina would come back to him and then … then … she did.’
Evie’s hand tightened on Gabe’s arm.
LUKAS: ‘For almost five long years Janina had been enslaved to Matis Albescu’s son, a man with the same name as his father and whose depravity was perhaps even worse.
She wouldn’t tell Gabe what had been done to her, only that she would have killed herself if it weren’t for the need to see Sasha again.
It was what had kept her alive after the many cruel beatings she received for trying to escape.
Finally she managed it and made her way to the farm, in spite of knowing that Albescu would expect her to go there.
But she had no other way of finding Gabe, the farm was all she knew and when she got there … ’
GABE: ‘She was terrified and dirty, so thin that I hardly recognized her …’
Gabe’s voice failed and Cristy saw how pale he’d become.
GABE: ‘She was cold. So cold.’
Lukas waited a moment in case Gabe wanted to say more.
LUKAS: ‘He cleaned her up, bathed and fed her and then he took her to a hotel before Albescu could find them. They kept moving, one small hotel after another, all the time heading to Gloucestershire where Gabe’s parents gave them shelter, but only for a few days.
They were ashamed of the kind of person he’d become – they believed he was involved in the trafficking and that he’d fallen in love with one of his victims. They wanted no part of his world, or his crimes, so they made him leave. ’
GABE: ‘They are not kind people. There was very little love when I was growing up. I think they despised me for being the way I am. Not quick and clever like the rest of my family. I am sometimes slow to understand or to react …’
LUKAS: ‘Gabe’s only happiness in childhood was with his cousin Verity. She always cared for him and he cared for her, but then her parents moved to the States and eventually she married Sylvan …’
GABE: ‘I’m sure she’d have helped me with Janina and Sasha, but I was afraid of bringing her to the attention of the gangs. She would have despised me for that.’
LUKAS: ‘So after being expelled from Gabe’s parents’ home they continued to move from place to place, and it was a month, maybe more, before Janina was finally able to find out where the Winters sisters had gone after they’d left Exmoor.
By this time she’d told Gabe all about how she’d left Sasha on the beach below the sisters’ home and had watched from a short distance as one of them had come down from the house and taken Sasha in.
She truly believed the sisters would be kind to Sasha.
Everything she’d read about them had told her they would be, and when nothing was reported on the news about a missing child she took heart and went to the house early one morning.
She didn’t knock, she simply delivered photographs and some of Sasha’s favourite toys.
It was her way of letting the sisters know that Sasha had a family who loved her but who couldn’t take care of her right now.
She had no idea as she made her way back to the farm that day that Matis Albescu was already there waiting to take her away. ’
Gabe started to speak, but his voice was barely audible. Cristy leaned in and gently eased the recorder closer to him.
GABE: ‘I wanted to kill him. I would have. I had a knife, but he had men with guns. They locked me up … There was nothing I could do … I heard Janina screaming for me, and I shouted for her, but then they were gone and I still couldn’t break free.’
LUKAS: ‘She’d had no time to tell him where Sasha was.
She was helpless, they both were … I was the one who released Gabe from the cellar a couple of days later when I went to the farm to find out why I hadn’t seen Nina.
We were frantic and powerless to act. We knew no one and nothing that could help us.
At that point girls were still being brought to the farm, but the men who escorted them only laughed at us or beat us.
I am sure it was one of them who tipped off the authorities and that is how I came to be deported. ’
Needing to move things along, Cristy gently brought them back to when Janina and Gabe had finally found out where the Winters sisters were.
LUKAS: ‘Yes, they were in Guernsey, so Gabe and Nina went there, not to cause a scene, or to do anything to disrupt Sasha’s life, they simply wanted to find out if she really was there.’
CRISTY: ‘What age would Sasha have been by then?’
GABE: ‘She was seven and beautiful and lively, just like her mother. We watched her being taken to school and driven home again … We could see that she was happy, and healthy, but we wanted her so much. She was our daughter, she belonged to us, but we had no home; we were still running from Albescu …’
LUKAS: ‘It was an impossible situation, they had very little hope, but Janina needed to let the sisters know how grateful she was that they’d taken Sasha in and treated her as their own.
She was very eager to explain how desperately she and Gabe wanted to be a part of Sasha’s life, if they would allow it.
So they went to the house and left a note in the mailbox addressed to Emilia and Carlotta Winters saying who they were and asking if they would meet them at a café in St Peter Port. ’
So that was when the photographs had been taken, Cristy realized, long after Sadie had gone to live with the sisters, not before.
Hadn’t Anna suggested that, and Cristy had just dismissed it?
In any event, it seemed that what the photographer had captured wasn’t some sort of transaction in which Sadie was being bought and sold, it was her parents begging to be allowed to see her.
LUKAS: ‘They went to the café at the same time every day for over a week until eventually one of the sisters came. She listened to their story, sympathized with them even and understood how much it would mean to them to be a part of Sasha’s world.
At the same time she explained how disruptive that would be for Sasha, and confusing.
They were only going to bring sadness and even danger to Sasha and she couldn’t allow that.
‘Janina begged and pleaded with her, saying Sasha didn’t have to know who they were, they’d pretend to be old friends, or new neighbours, anything if they could just have some contact with their child.
She became so desperate that she threatened to go to the authorities to report the sisters for abduction.
Of course she couldn’t do that, they would all suffer if she did, Sasha most of all if she was removed from the home she’d come to know and love.
‘In the end the sister agreed to think things over and to meet them again in a couple of weeks. She said perhaps something could be worked out, she just couldn’t see what it was yet.
She asked where they were staying and promised to be in touch soon.
Eventually she did contact them and asked if Janina could meet her at one of the sisters’ other properties, further south on the island.
She wanted Janina to come alone while Sasha was at school. ’
CRISTY: ‘Why another property, and why alone?’
LUKAS: ‘She said it was because she didn’t want her sister, Mia, to know anything yet, and she didn’t want Gabe there because she was afraid he might try to harm her.’
Cristy glanced at Gabe. He didn’t appear at all intimidating now, but she couldn’t deny she’d considered him sinister in the photos she’d seen of him from that era.
LUKAS: ‘So Janina took the little car she and Gabe had bought to get around the island, while he waited at their rented apartment for her to come back with news. When she left he had no idea that was the last time he’d see her.’
Cristy’s heart clenched. This wasn’t what she’d expected to hear, although she had no clear sense of what she’d been thinking, where she’d imagined this would go.
GABE: ‘Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?’
Cristy stared at him helplessly, having no idea whether Gabe believed she could answer that, or if he simply couldn’t let go of what was surely a vain and desperate hope.
CRISTY: ‘You must have gone to the sisters’ house to find out what had happened to her?’
LUKAS: ‘Yes, he did, but Lottie told him she’d waited all day at the other property and Janina hadn’t turned up. He began searching the island, desperate to find her, and in the end Lottie said they should go to the police, as long as he swore not to mention anything about Sadie.
‘The car was found the next day, at the bottom of a ravine not far from the address where Lottie had waited. It was a dangerous stretch of road, there had been accidents there before, people who didn’t know the island … Nina wasn’t in the car, and they never recovered her body.’
Realizing that must be why Gabe was unable to give up hope of finding Janina alive, Cristy allowed several moments to pass before continuing.
CRISTY: ‘Do you think Lottie is responsible for whatever happened to Janina?’
Lukas looked at Gabe and more hushed seconds passed, filled only by the twitter and song of birds and, strangely, another drift of the exquisite, unidentifiable perfume.
GABE: ‘I did think that for a while, I was certain of it, but now I believe that Albescu Junior’s people managed to find us and they … they took her away.’
Cristy thought of the café photographs and wondered again who had taken them. Whoever it was, they’d ended up with Lottie, so did that mean Albescu had not only found Janina, but a way to extract money from the women who had the child?