Bitter Sweet

by Mason N. Forbes

  The girls wore tracksuits; all with hoodies. The way they walked left no doubt – female. And, they were loosely encircled by the men.

  They all entered Martha’s apartment. I checked the time on the CCTV footage; 3.45pm.

  Ten minutes later Erjon came back out, walked along the passageway and gave Ivonne’s door and mine the finger.

  I let the recording run on. Nothing more happened. I sat down and started to think. Mike had wanted to take the recording of Erjon attacking Markus to the police. And he had also wanted to run to ground who had been working on the Merchant Building’s own surveillance system; we knew it hadn’t been the security company responsible for its installation and maintenance.

  Mike had also been concerned that Alfred, the caretaker, might have been in cahoots with whoever had been working on the system. I found it hard to believe that Alfred was involved; he was a pensioner who wouldn’t retire, a man who didn’t know what to do with himself if he wasn’t at work. He grumbled a bit, as his age group is inclined to do, but I didn’t suspect him of dishonesty. If anything he’d been hoodwinked.

  I decided it was time to get to the bottom of the matter and find out if the CCTV system on my floor was working. With Erjon and his cronies now ensconced at the end of the passageway the harder element of society would be passing my door. Security and safety was important, one of the considerations in choosing the Merchant Building, a factor now under threat.

  At five I walked out of the lift. In the foyer the first wave of office workers were returning home. Alfred was busy with their requests.

  I used the opportunity and crossed over towards the bin room, veering right at the last moment. I was now behind Alfred, who along with another occupant had their heads down filling out a form.

  I checked that no one else was watching and sidled along the wall to the office door. After five o’clock the office was no longer occupied, but I knew that Alfred never bothered to lock the door. I pushed gently down on the handle – no click. In one fluid movement, I slid through the gap and eased the door closed.

  I took a moment to let my adrenalin level settle and looked around the office.

  Too good to be true; one of the computer displays was on screen-saver mode, not something I had been banking on. In fact, I’d planned on distracting Alfred with some errand in the hope of having a peek at the console located behind his desk.

  I couldn’t let the opportunity go, despite being in a room with only one door, a room restricted for personnel only.

  I tapped the return key; the screen sprang into life. Whew – no login; direct access. I brought up the program menu and scanned the list. Shit, nothing resembling CCTV or surveillance. Next option; desktop icons, again nothing. Beginning to feel desperate, I opted for the hard drive. Click, click, open a folder, close a folder; nothing. Fraught with worries about being caught out and having taken a risk with no reward, I gave it one last shot – the menu bar along the bottom of the screen. Got you!

  An external hard drive – CCTV backup.

  What to do? I couldn’t sit here all night wading through hours of surveillance footage; Alfred might pop his head in any minute.

  I didn’t have a memory stick. Hell, I had no idea how many megabits, for that matter gigabits, were on the hard drive.

  Burning disks? Nah.

  Inspiration struck: email it to myself.

  I slipped over to the door, opened it a crack and peered out. The guy who’d been filling out the form with Alfred dashed his signature along the bottom.

  I rocked up and down on the balls of my feet. Should I make a fast exit, or wait and get trapped in the office? What if Alfred decided to bring the form in here?

  Oh shit, Alfred lifted the form.

  I turned and rapidly scanned the office, deciding to take the risk and stay put. If need be, I’d hide under a desk.

  I peeked out around the doorframe, half expecting to have to dive under a table. Reprieve. A woman in a charcoal suit took the guy’s place. And even better, she and Alfred headed for the lifts. A real gentleman is our Alfred, always willing to help the ladies, bless his soul.

  I raced back to the desk and brought up an internet explorer, and stopped.

  Could the email be traced? Yes, but not with a casual inspection, and not if I deleted the web history. And, even if I didn’t get to delete the web history, all it would show was a hotmail webpage.

  So what? Assuming everything went wrong and Alfred walked in, catching me in the act, I’d have time with one mouse click to dump the internet explorer.

  I opened my Hotmail account, typed in my AOL screen name, clicked attachments, found the external hard drive and clicked on it.

  Shit, problem. The attachment function wouldn’t accept the hard drive.

  Start again. I looked at the contents of the external hard drive – it was full of numbered folders.

  Click, click, click. The attachments started to upload to my AOL account. I set the mouse directly over the close-webpage symbol and looked at the office door – better check.

  Carefully, I poked my head out the door. People were queuing for the lifts. I looked at the displays above them; one was on the tenth floor, the other on the seventh. But, most importantly there was no sign of Alfred.

  Back to the computer – still uploading. Back to the door; the one lift showed six, and descending. The other one was still on ten.

  Another look at the computer – frigging hell, would it ever finish?

  I raced back to the door.

  The one lift showed three, and going down. Sod’s law; Alfred was bound to be on that lift.

  Wow! It stopped on two.

  Back to the computer. Yes, yes, yes. Clicked the mouse, closed the webpage. Brought up internet options and delete history. Done. Better be safe; I pressed the on-off button for the monitor.

  I stuck my head out the door. No Alfred, but the lift display showed G. The bell pinged.

  Out I went, head down, watching the lift’s doors. Halfway to the bin room, the lift opened, and out stepped Alfred.

  Whew!

  ‘Hi, Tina.’

  I looked up, recognising Ivonne’s voice. I was halfway between the office and the bin room. Had she seen me coming out of the office?

  ‘Hi, Ivonne.’

  She came over and gave me the European-double-kiss, one on each cheek and then squinted at me.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s go up together.’

  She didn’t move. ‘What have you been up to?’

  I took her elbow, steering her towards the lifts. ‘I’ll tell you upstairs.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I tried to steer around Alfred, but the other people in the lobby were in the way and it seemed as if Alfred was veering towards us.

  ‘Hi, Alfred,’ I said, my face brightening with a smile. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Rushed off my feet.’

  Ivonne gave him a sympathetic smile. And then we were passed.

  ‘What were you up to?’ Ivonne asked. ‘You were trying to avoid him, and then you gave him a real cracking smile.’

  ‘Upstairs,’ I repeated.

  Good, no one wanted out of the lift. We were the first stop on four. The doors opened, we went out.

  Ivonne stopped, bursting with curiosity. ‘Now tell me!’

  ‘Okay, okay. First, Erjon has got three girls in Martha’s apartment.’

  Ivonne stared at me, her mouth forming an O.

  ‘Second, I had to slide past his goons. They were on their way out; I was on my way in. You know, the male-macho-shit, tried to squeeze me up against the wall.’

  Ivonne let out a Polish expletive.

  ‘Third, you remember there was work being done on the CCTV system?’

  Ivonne nodded.

  ‘Well, Mike checked. It wasn’t the Merchant Building’s contractor on the job.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We never found out who it was, kinda forgot. So, I sneaked into the office. Wanted to check and se
e if it’s working on our floor.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Don’t know yet. I didn’t have time to look.’

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘Ivonne, I didn’t try to look at the monitors.’

  ‘What were you up to?

  ‘I emailed the surveillance backup to myself.’

  ‘Clever.’

  ‘Still have to see what’s on it.’

  Ivonne looked at her watch. ‘First appointment is in half an hour. Let’s have a look.’

  We started off along the passageway, only to stop. The door to Martha’s apartment opened. A girl’s head appeared. She looked around, before easing the door closed behind her. Then she took off at a run.

  ‘Oh, oh,’ I said, starting to walk towards the fleeing girl.

  Ivonne let out another Polish expletive and followed me.

  The girl ran straight into my arms. She was shaking, her eyes darting wildly in every direction. She opened her mouth to speak; the lower jaw shivering.

  ‘Shush,’ I said. ‘Don’t speak.’

  I looked at Ivonne who stood beside me, her lower lip trapped between her teeth.

  That single eye contact said it all. We both knew, instantly, that there was no turning back. We had to help the girl, cost us what it may.

  We got the girl, who was now babbling incoherently in her mother tongue, into my apartment and sat her down on the sofa.

  ‘Make her a tea,’ I said to Ivonne.

  I hurried around the apartment, drawing all the blinds, double checked that the door was locked and that no lights were burning.

  In the sitting room, the girl had her arms wrapped around her chest, the odd shiver still coursing through her body.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Take it easy.’

  Everything was far from being okay. We were trapped in the building with no obvious way out and with no obvious recourse to help.

  If the girl had just run out of the building she might have had a chance on her own. Had we fled with her, what then? We’d all be on the run. And as before, the police were not an option, not with Detective Sergeant Driscoll in Erjon’s pocket. Community care programs, or women’s’ support groups; I didn’t know of any, and would they help at this time of the day?

  I glanced at the laptop, knowing that it was now essential to find out if the CCTV on this floor was operating or, God forbid, that it had been hijacked by Erjon: then we would really be sitting in the shit. A real farce; a tart with a heart, doing the good deed, only to be ensnared within minutes.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Maria.’

  ‘Can you speak English?’

  She nodded her head. ‘Yes . . .’ Tears sprang from her eyes.

  Oh God! I fought back my own tears. What had she been through? What suffering? Jeez, it didn’t bear thinking of. Her voice had a south-eastern European cadence. It was a dead certainty she’d been coerced or trafficked.

  Ivonne came over and held out a mug of tea. Maria took the mug, cupping it in both hands.

  ‘Ivonne,’ I said. ‘Sit with her, get her settled and try and find out what she was babbling about earlier. I must check the CCTV system.’

  I leaned over and whispered into Ivonne’s ear; ‘It probably won’t be long before she’s missed, try and find out how she escaped. That way we’ll have an idea as to how soon they’re going to be after her.’

  I booted up the laptop and immediately accessed my AOL account. There it was, good. I started the download process, and whilst waiting I brought up the feed from the mini CCTV system Mike and I had installed; nothing happening.

  Next, I checked the mobile tracking device to see if I could locate Erjon – he was in Bedford Street, well away. There were some texts and calls on his phone. The computer pinged; the download had completed. I put the tracking phone aside; the calls would have to wait. Maybe I could try using Google translator to find out what Erjon had been talking about. Somehow, I knew we’d need every edge.

  Jeez, there were so many folders. Where to start? I ordered the folders by date created, and decided to work my way backwards.

  Each folder was for one specific camera: twelve floors, twelve cameras, minimum. And all the floors looked the same.

  Ivonne came over, distracting me from my frantic attempt to find the fourth floor.

  ‘She’s been trafficked. Looks like she wacked the minder on the head,’ Ivonne said, ‘and with the lid of the toilet cistern.’

  ‘That should keep him down for a while.’

  ‘You bet. Just deserts,’ Ivonne said. ‘I hope she didn’t split his skull. That would be a real travesty.’

  ‘Yeah, not only would Erjon be after her, but the police as well for manslaughter.’

  I turned back to the laptop, redoubling my efforts to find the folder for the fourth floor, spurred on by the thought of Erjon and the police, chasing not just Maria, but us as well.

  Bingo. I found it and clicked play. Damn it, this would take forever. Use your brains, I chided myself. I sat back and took a deep breath. Inspiration struck: the camera must have caught the two goons at the lift at approximately 3.45pm.

  I clicked on rewind and sped the thing up to factor sixteen, as fast as the program would go.

  With the time showing 3.45pm on the top right hand corner of the screen, I let the program play at normal speed. And . . . nothing!

  Hey what? Even if Erjon had hijacked the camera, it must show the same event. Puzzled, I leaned back. I couldn’t make sense of it. What was the point of fiddling with the camera? What did Erjon gain?

  Obviously the camera was functioning; otherwise there’d be a fuzzy, black and white blizzard, but there wasn’t. Devious.

  I knew that the cleaning crew went along the passageway at around ten every morning. I spooled back. There they were, but the time showing was ten thirty. Okay, they start on the ground floor and work up. I found the folder for the fifth floor and spooled back to ten thirty: the cleaning crew. I double checked the times and the dates on floors four and five: identical.

  Okay, it looked like the data from the camera on five was being fed into the feed from the fourth, my floor. I went back a couple of days, after all it was my ass on the line, and checked again; same thing.

  But, did that prove that the camera on four was not recording? No, it didn’t. It was possible the data from camera five was being duplicated and appeared as the feed from camera four and, that way, no one would be any the wiser.

  And I was none the wiser as to whether Maria’s dash into my arms had been recorded and observed. Shit, if we stayed in here we’d be caught. If we made a bolt for it, someone, Erjon, would know Maria had been in my apartment, and they’d see us making a break for it.

  Shit, what if someone had been monitoring camera four since it had been tweaked? That would mean they knew we had our own mini system.

  Calm down, my mind was racing away, covering all the angles and getting terribly het up in the process. One thing at a time and no jumping to conclusions.

  ‘Tina?’ Ivonne said, startling me. ‘We’ve got a problem.’

  ‘So have I. And it’s how to get out of here, unseen.’

  I turned to look at Ivonne. Maria was staring at me, her eyes alive with hope.

  ‘Maria says her cousin and her friend Yana are in Martha’s apartment.’

  I sat very still, trying not to allow this disastrous piece of news to unnerve me completely.

  ‘And?’ I said.

  Ivonne’s face resembled a sad-faced smiley. I stared into her eyes, waiting for her, someone, anyone to articulate the suggestion.

  No one did and no one moved.

  ‘You can’t be serious?’ I said.

  I stood up, my mind whizzing with thoughts; all centred around danger. We had to get Maria out of here and PDQ. That was dangerous enough. I shook my head. No, this can’t be. No, we can’t . . .

  Catch a grip. If some had been watching, then the door to my apartment would have lo
ng since landed with a crash on the floor.

  ‘Ivonne come with me.’

  I closed the door to the spare bedroom behind us. ‘Are we going to go in there and get the two girls?’

  ‘It’s either that,’ Ivonne said, ‘or we tell Maria some story and get her out of here.’

  ‘Getting out might be the hard part.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because I don’t know if the camera on four is working. It’s showing what’s happening on the floor above us.’

  ‘Disconnected?’ Ivonne asked.

  ‘Don’t know.’ I shrugged. ‘It might have been rerouted.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ivonne said, and closed her eyes.

  ‘Yeah, exactly. Maria’s flight into this apartment might be on tape, somewhere.’

  ‘Somewhere?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ I exhaled. ‘Worst case; Erjon can see it, live.’

  ‘Then we’re sitting ducks.’

  ‘Not quite. Just a moment, I’ll be right back.’ I sped into the sitting room, smiled at Maria and grabbed the tracking device for Erjon’s phone.

  Back in the bedroom, I showed it with some relief to Ivonne. ‘Erjon is still in Bedford Street.’

  ‘What if we zip in quickly, grab the girls, get them in here and then create a diversion?’

  ‘What are you thinking of?’

  ‘We call the police and the ambulance. Make it look as if the girls have escaped, and whilst the police and the medics are milling about we slide out with the girls.’

  ‘Someone,’ I said, ‘is going to have to watch the lifts, whilst someone else fetches the girls.’

  Ivonne nodded.

  I dropped on to the bed. We stared at each other.

  Ivonne spoke first; ‘any which way, we have to know the score with the camera on our floor.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said glumly.

  ‘We could smash it, disconnect it. Then get the girls.’

  I shook my head. ‘It might be too late for that.’

  ‘Erjon is going to suspect us anyway.’

  ‘If, he doesn’t already know.’

  ‘I’ll move to a new apartment.’