by Gian Bordin
I stay with them for a cup of tea. When I leave, Lucy accompanies me to the door and asks: "Ceci, are you still doing your martial arts?"
I nod.
She smiles and says: "Thanks, Ceci, for coming. Albert told me of your concern, but he thinks that we should be safe."
How silly of me to think that she wouldn’t see straight through me and know why I came, nor is she somebody who scares easily. "Lucy, please, it is serious. Convince dad to take all of you away."
"You really think we should? And what about the girls’ schooling?"
"Yes, I think you should, and it will only be for a week or two, until I have this whole matter sorted out."
"I’ll talk to Albert when he comes back tomorrow."
I cannot hope for more than a promise.
Tuesday, 5:10 p.m.
I figure that late afternoon will be a good time to catch Silvio at the restaurant. I have no other phone number to reach him. He answers on the third ring. His voice reveals his pleasure at my call.
"How curious! I just entered my office, intent on calling you. How are you, amore?" He hasn’t called me ‘love’ before. For a moment I waver. Should I ask him whether he is married or should I just let it go for the moment? But then my need for clarity wins.
"I’m fine, Silvio. I have to ask you something."
"I’ll say yes to whatever it is."
"No, Silvio, I’m serious." I pause for a moment, mustering my courage. "Are you married?"
"What an unexpected question! Why?"
"Because it’s important for me to know."
"Yes, I’m legally married, but —"
My heart sinks. I don’t let him finish his sentence. "Oh Silvio, why didn’t you tell me?" Tears come unbidden to my eyes.
"It didn’t seem relevant or important."
"But it is to me. I swore never to get involved with a married man —"
"But Ceci, I love you and my —"
"No, Silvio. I’m sorry, I should never have invited you to my apartment." My throat constricts, breaking my voice. "Ciao," is all I manage and hang up.
The phone rings a few seconds later. I let it ring, each ring tempting me to answer, each cutting deeper into my pain. I realize that I’ve fallen head over heals in love. In love with a married man.
Tuesday, 11:25 p.m.
I park the van in the alley behind the building where Lewis have their offices. As expected, the windows on level 4 are dark. In fact, the windows on all floors are dark. It seems that everybody is heeding the power company’s plea to conserve power and turn off lights after work, rather than let them burn, as was still the case half a year ago.
I sit on a cushion in the cargo hold of the van and switch on my laptop. A search finds eleven active networks in the area, Lewis’ being one of them. I log on under Edward Long’s user name with the password I previously observed: Aussie19. An error message appears. So he changed his password. I try 23. Still the same error message. If the third attempt fails, I will be blocked out for four hours, unless the system’s supervisor clears the blockage, which won’t be the case for me. I hesitate. Should I try 29, the next prime number, or 20, the next number above 19. Reason tells me to go for 29. I do and it works. With a few keystrokes, I have access to his files. My intention is to search first through his past trading record for any transactions in Sanvino shares. I doubt he would have been that stupid and execute the sale himself, but then one never knows; some people have a greater gift for doing more ingeniously stupid things than others. As expected, the search fails to find a reference to ‘Sanvino’.
The next step is to check through his e-mails. Bank statements may reveal hard evidence. In any case, they could give circumstantial evidence through his spending pattern.
I open his e-mail program. He has several ‘old mail’ folders, each containing hundreds, some even thousands of messages. It would take me hours to scan through them all. It makes more sense to simply dump the whole into my computer. I see one folder labeled ‘private’. Curiosity to take a quick look gets the better of me. I open it and slowly scan through the sender and subject entries, looking for bank statements. I soon find a copy from HSBC, dated 24th October. I open it in the Acrobat Reader and have a quick glance. Then I save it on my computer, and next do the same for the September and August statements. To my surprise, there is a second set of bank statements from a bank I’ve never heard of, ANZ. I open the one dated the 31st of September and discover its full name: Australia New Zealand Bank. I reckon that he took it along when he moved from Australia to London. It has only one entry, an opening balance of several hundred pounds. The statement for August lists two small debits, while the opening balance for July is the same as for August.
There is a second statement dated 31st July. It turns out to be a foreign currency account in Australian dollars with a current balance of zero. Its presence though suggests that at some time in the past he must have transferred sizable sums that he may have left in their original currency for some time before converting them into pounds. Given that there is no statement for this account since then, I figure that they are only issued every three months. Checking farther back, I find another one dated 30th April. So my guess is correct. It also has a zero balance. I make a mental note to retrieve the next statement to be issued for the 31st October, only a few days off.
I check the time on my machine. I have already been in the system for close to an hour and have barely got started. Since all his e-mail records are stored on the network server, rather than on his own computer, the way I do it, copying the whole lot promises to be a tedious task. I can’t simply locate the file for each folder on his computer and download it. For that I would need access to the network server. So, I have to download each message individually. However, I’m really only interested in the more recent ones, say the last two or three months. Anything before that is unlikely to be of any relevance.
As I start with the ‘private’ folder, I hear low voices, no more than murmurs, coming from directly next to the van. ‘Security?’ is my first reaction. Listening more carefully, I conclude that one sounds like a young male’s with a heavy Liverpudlian accent, while the other is the unmistakable voice of a girl. I remain perfectly still, so as not to make movements that might rock the van. A hooded head appears on the passenger side of the driver’s cabin. The only thing visible is a bit of nose, the rest of the face remains in the shade of the hood.
"I could try to wire it," a male voice says. "With wheels we’ll be out of town before your old man wakes up. I’ve wired cars before. It’s easy."
"You think so? Wouldn’t we get in trouble with the police?" The worried voice of a teenager, probably no more than sixteen.
"This old wreck looks like it’s been abandoned here. Look, the phone number isn’t even a local one."
"Should we? I’m scared."
"Don’t be daft. The police will never catch us. By the time it’s missed, we’ll be in Birmingham and there we simply dump it somewhere."
I put the laptop into hibernation and place it at a safe distance on the floor of the van.
"But it may not have enough petrol to get us there."
"Then we dump it earlier, silly, and I’ve a fiver to buy some."
"But how’ll you get in?"
The guy tests the door. "It’s open," he exclaims. "I bet it’s stolen and was dumped here. Come Sally, we’re in luck. Get in!" The latter is again said in a hushed voice.
I rise silently, keeping in the dark shade of the cargo compartment.
When the girl slams the passenger door shut I quickly move into position to grab the guy by the neck when he enters on the driver’s side. He opens the door fully, but rather than climb in, he puts his head under the steering wheel and pulls out several wires. He holds a small knife in his left hand. There is no way to grab him, unless I wait until he has wired the van and climbs into the driver’s seat. I don’t like the idea of having the van wired. I must have moved slightly, or the girl has
finally become aware of me. A frightened scream followed by a cry: "Harry, there is somebody in here!"
He bolts instantly and runs down the lane. I scramble over the seat. By the time I’m out, he has already gained thirty yards. I’ve no chance of catching him.
In the meantime, the girl has also climbed out and clumsily runs after him on her high heels, shouting: "Harry, wait, Harry!" Her voice sounds desperate. After a few steps, she kicks off her shoes, but even so I easily catch up with her. She fights me like a cat. A quick Aikido move and I have her right arm twisted up her back.
She starts to cry: "You’re hurting me. Let me go. Please, I have done nothing."
I relax the hold a bit. In the meager light of the street lamp I can see that she is even younger than I thought. It takes little guessing that she is running away. From her timid responses, I surmise that it is home. "Hold still, and it won’t hurt." She does.
"Sally, how old are you?"
"Eighteen. I’m eighteen," she says, sobbing now.
"I don’t believe you. Don’t lie." I tighten the grip a bit, and she cries out. "How old? The truth!"
"Fourteen," she sobs, "fifteen in a month."
"And how old is Harry?"
"I don’t know exactly."
"Make a guess."
"Over twenty."
"Did he use a condom when you had sex?"
She doesn’t answer, looking away like a cornered animal. Again, I tighten the grip a bit.
"No."
"Was this your first time?"
"Yes," she murmurs.
"And what did Harry promise you if you went with him?"
"He said he has friends in Birmingham who’ll help me earn money."
"Didn’t it occur to you that he might force you to become a sex worker?"
Even in the meager light of the street lamp, I can see her go all white.
"Do your parents know where you are?"
"No."
"You’re trying to run away, aren’t you?"
She only nods.
"You tell me where you live and I’ll drive you home, where you belong."
"No, please, lady, no. Don’t." She is in panic. "My father’ll kill me."
The girl needs help in more than one way. She needs to be checked at a clinic and possibly given an after-morning pill. And somebody needs to have a serious word with her father, although the girl might be exaggerating. The obvious person for both is a social worker, but where can I raise a social worker at this time of the night. Bringing her to nearest police station, which happens to be Snow Hill, is the only feasible choice, and bound to get me into trouble. What will it look like if I report that Harry tried to wire my van while I was inside? The girl saw me in the cargo section. What was I doing inside a van parked behind the building where I worked for the last two years? I can’t afford this sort of complications, nor am I willing to simply let the girl fend for herself. She is clearly frightened, and she doesn’t strike me as a streetwise kid, but rather as a naive, gullible girl who was promised paradise by a hardened criminal.
"Look, Sally. I want to help you. Trust me. Do your parents know that you’re missing?" I release the hold on her arm, but still hold on firmly to her wrist.
"I guess, yes. I told them I was going next door to a friend and would be back by ten."
"So when you didn’t return they would have checked with that friend."
"Yes."
"So no way to sneak into the house. You don’t have much choice but to face your parents."
"No, I can’t."
"I’ll take you there and have a serious talk with your father. I’ll tell him that I will report him to the police if he as much as touches you."
"He’ll thrash you too."
"He won’t get a chance. Sally, please trust me. I will protect you. There is also another thing that we’ll have to do first thing tomorrow morning, namely get you to a family planning clinic, have you checked out for venereal disease and given a morning-after pill. You know what that is?" She nods, lowering her gaze. "You wouldn’t want to get pregnant at your age, would you?"
I march her back to the van, picking up her shoes, as we go. She doesn’t make an attempt to run. Instead, she seems relieved to be taken care of.
Wednesday, 29th October, 2:30 a.m.
It turns out that Sally lives way south in West Croydon. So it is at a rather inhospitable time when I ring the bell of her home in the somewhat bleak street of brick houses, one looking exactly like the next, except for a variety of curtains and entrance door colors. Sally is holding my hand. I press it lightly for reassurance. On the drive there, she told me a little about her home situation. There is no doubt that her father is a rather sullen man who seems to have one answer for everything, a slap, while her mother is meek, suffering in silence. A conventional approach, pleading with him to treat Sally as a young adult rather than as a stroppy six-year-old, to use reason rather than force, won’t get me far with him I figure. I have to shock him into the realization that his behavior is driving Sally away.
It takes a second ringing of the bell before a light turns on upstairs and a corpulent man in a T-shirt opens the window and looks down. He does not seem to recognize his daughter.
"What the hell do you think making a racket at this time of night? Get lost or I call the police."
"Mr. Harper, I’m here with your daughter. Let us in," I answer firmly.
He stares at us for a moment and then his head disappears. There are a few shouts. A smallish woman quickly looks out too.
"It’s me, mom," Sally utters, on the verge of tears.
"Thank god," the woman replies and withdraws.
"Sally, don’t be afraid. I won’t let your father hit you." I can see that she wants to believe me but is too scared. "Just stay behind me, all right?"
The lock turns and the door is ripped open. The man charges out, shouting, clearly intent on hitting Sally: "You slut! I’ll teach you getting us worried like this." Seeing his way blocked, he attempts to push me away, snarling: "Get out of my way."
I stand firm. He isn’t able to move me an inch. "No, Mr. Harper, you are not going to hit your daughter. This is a time for talking, not for hitting."
"Who’re you to tell me what to do? Get lost, before I belt you too."
I don’t move. As his raised hand comes down to slap me, I shift a bit to the side, grab his wrist and use the momentum of his arm and body to turn him around, twisting his arm sharply up his back. He yelps like a wounded dog, struggling to get free. I tighten the hold, saying at the same time in a low voice: "Stop struggling, and it will stop hurting."
He actually does.
"Now, let’s go inside before we wake the whole neighborhood and then we will have a quiet chat." I shove a bit and he goes through the door. His wife presses herself against the wall to let us pass and then embraces Sally. The girl told me that there is a sizable table in the kitchen. That is where I want them to be, father and mother on one side, Sally and I on the other, with the table between us as a barrier. "The kitchen," I order, as I let go of Mr. Harper.
Once inside the kitchen, I say: ""Mr. Harper, Mrs. Harper, I want you to sit on that side." I point to the side nearer the wall. "And Sally and I will sit on this side, and then we’ll talk without raising our voices, without interrupting each other. Is this understood, Mr. Harper?"
To my surprise, he sits without a word. I quickly discover why.
"Are you from the police?" he questions.
"No, I’m a stockbroker. I worked late in the city and I found Sally in distress after I chased away a guy who, I suspect, wanted to abduct her."
"So you’ve no right to barge in here," he shouts, while rising. "Get out, or I’ll call the police."
"Sit!" I order sharply, while also rising. I stand half a head taller than he. "And I said no shouting. Besides, the police will surely be interested to investigate why your daughter has marks on her buttocks and back from the last hiding you gave her."
Sally told me that he had belted her; the rest is just speculation, but it seems to work. He sinks heavily onto the chair.
Suddenly I know how to shock him. "Mr. Harper, did you ever run away from home when you were a child?" A question chosen to take the immediate focus away from Sally and put it squarely on him.
"That’s none of your business. Who do you think you are?"
"I’ve made it my business, sir. Answer! Did you run away?"
The muscles of his jaw tighten repeatedly before he replies. "Yes, the bastard hit me once too often."
I judged him right. He yields readily when firmly confronted. "Your father? … And now you want to make your daughter hate you like you hated your father? Make her run away from you too?"
He seems shaken, as if that thought has never occurred to him.
"You know what will happen to her then. She’s bound to fall into the hands of an unscrupulous fellow, as she almost did now, and end up in the street, selling her body. Is that what you want for your daughter? … Sally is your only child, isn’t she? Don’t you love her?"
It takes him a moment to respond, this time in a truculent voice. "I do, but she’s lazy. She doesn’t do her homework for school. I tell you she needs firm discipline."
"How can you expect her to be able to concentrate on her homework if she constantly worries where the next slap or cuff will come from?"
"It’s none of your business how I discipline my daughter."
"How can she know you love her if the only reaction she ever gets from you is physical violence? Slapping her, shouting at her, as I just witnessed, that’s violence, which doesn’t solve anything and only creates resentment. There are other ways of discipline that show respect for what Sally is, a young adult. Look at her. She’s no longer a child. Talk to her. Reason with her. Show her what the consequences of her actions will be. Maybe even let her participate in deciding what penalty she has to do if she misbehaves."
"Ha, that’s a daft idea. We all know what she will do."
"I think you are wrong. You might be surprised how tough she will be on herself, and the penalty she chooses will be constructive, like doing the dishes for a whole week all alone … But what’s most important is that she gets proof you care for her. Be interested in what she learns at school, discuss her homework with her — I don’t mean do the work for her, but ask her questions that force her to think it out." Seeing his pretty wife, another thought occurs to me. "And mind me, sir, if your behavior drives Sally away, you’re also likely to lose your good-looking wife. I bet she made heads turn when you courted her." Mrs. Harper averts her gaze, blushing. "She can still make heads turn if you buy her a few nice dresses and take her out. Aren’t you a football man?"