Testing Boundaries Pt. 03

Corporate policy in these situations is that we must be in pairs when checking potentially traumatic material, ordinarily I'd sit with Vanessa, one of the support desk engineers but she's got young kids and had booked the day off to take them to Legoland. I'm not sure she didn't have the right idea. Instead, I asked Ieuan to sit in with me, he's twenty-three years old, quite sporty with an unruly mop of bright ginger hair. I chose him because he's gay and the dynamic of sitting all day documenting porn can get strained at the best of times, with some of the still living at home aged nearly forty, dragon T shirt wearing bearded types I work with it would be genuinely uncomfortable. Plus, Ieuan has a similar sense of humour to me so worst case we'd have a chuckle.

We checked ourselves into what is commonly known as the Adult Movies Suite, it's an office with its own internet connection that doesn't connect to our network at all, not even via firewalls, so it's safe to connect to questionable sites without compromising our own system's integrity.

I'd downloaded the meta data behind the links and noted that while they seemed to have wildly differing URLs, which mainly corresponded to what the site was about, they seemed to be hosted in half a dozen different domains, so we decided to work by domain alphabetically, just so we had a system really.

I was pleased to see Tim Cherry's tastes were mainly misogynist rather than traumatising, lots of subservient women serving their master; maids, cleaners, nurses, all submitting to men in positions of power or authority, all young with big boobs. He also seemed interested in restoring classic vehicles and machinery, and there were a few sites that combined his two areas of study. Veesntwins.com was one such, old motorbikes with tattooed naked women draped over them. I made a note to tease Rich about it when I saw him next. Another had a photo shoot on a steam engine, black smuts on plastic breasts as they stoked the fire, then a blanket on the footplate as something else got stoked, and one in what looked like an old biplane, leather flying jackets with stockings, chocks away, tally ho. That sort of thing. Ieuan and I were having trouble not giggling at some of it.

I had already mentioned Veesntwins to Rich, he's a friend of my husband who's into restoring old bikes and cars, he very kindly, nay selflessly, checked the website and returned a very scathing review. The supposed restoration on the bikes was to a very poor standard he told me. Parts seemed to have been bolted on using mole grips or hammers leaving marks on the metal work. There were parts missing, like fuel lines and brake lines and one series of films started with a four-cylinder Kawasaki engine and ended up as a two-cylinder Triumph engine, the supposed custom Harleys were apparently Chinese knock-off copies. Oh, and the girls didn't know what they were doing in a workshop, apart from the obvious.

We carried on, I skipped through the Intimate Encounters photo set, largely because I didn't want to spoil my own memories but also because it was on the milder and more tasteful end of the scale and after the shit had violated my house with his sleazy presence I was after stuff that would make him look worse. Fortunately, there was a fair amount of that as well. Casting what I now thought of as my own experienced eye over the images and movies the girls looked bored rather than aroused, their sex noises sounded fake and forced and most of them had really bad boob jobs that looked like half a football had been slipped under their skin, or half a basketball in some cases. Like I said, none of it was traumatising but it was clearly well out of any grey areas and well past the line that said, 'Acceptable private use of the Internet in the workplace.'

Things got a little darker in the afternoon, he went through a gang-bang phase where anything from three to ten people took turns penetrating one or sometimes two girls in every possible point of access. I say people because there were a number of series where tattooed short haired women used sex toys on seemingly reluctant women dressed as schoolgirls or cheerleaders.

The next set of websites were mostly stories about fathers and daughters, mainly with teenaged daughters, played by thirty-year-old women with cheap boob jobs, seducing their father or shagging him because he was lonely or asking him to teach them about blowjobs, I had to go and have some tea after those sessions. In fact, I had such a case of crawling skin I needed half a packet of Jaffa Cakes to sustain me.

We carried on through the afternoon finally finishing around five thirty which considering I was supposed to be on holiday was a lot later than I'd normally be happy about. Ieuan prepared the log and I signed it off as the senior member of the team, transferred the log and links to a new 64Gb data stick and signed out a clean laptop with a 4G connection ready for the disciplinary hearing on Monday.

Ieuan's partner was at thirty thousand feet until around seven thirty on his way back from Alicante as co-pilot on an Airbus A320 so when I suggested dropping into the Beggars Arms where my husband Jonny and his mate Rich were enjoying their usual Friday evening put the world to rights beer he jumped at the chance. Twenty minutes later my MX-5 was parked outside Rich's house which is a two-minute walk from the pub, and we were in the lounge bar with a large Frascati for me and a pint of Doom Bar for Ieuan, which disappeared almost as soon as he'd looked at it. I'd forgotten what twenty-three-year-olds can drink like.

Ieuan went off and got another round in, I tried passing but he came back with pints each for Rich and Jonny and another Frascati, cementing his bloke credentials with three packs of pork scratchings and a pack of sweet popcorn for me, because it was in a pink packet and I'm a girl. I gave him a daggers look, but I do like sweet popcorn and I hate pork scratchings so I found it hard to justify my annoyance. I was still annoyed mind.

While he'd been away Jonny had asked what my day had been like, he knew what I'd been doing and I think he was trying to get me to describe it in front of his mate, I played a straight bat and just said "Checking some confidential files ready for an HR hearing on Monday." Which was correct on every count but didn't tick the 'wife talking dirty to show off to my mate how hot she is" box. The thing is I knew Rich knew how hot I am, I'd walked in on him looking at a series of shots of me in lingerie a few weeks earlier. He didn't know I knew and Jonny certainly didn't know, I didn't want to ruin the friendship so hadn't told him about it. Of course, there was always a possibility that everyone knew and we were all double bluffing everyone else but I hope not, life's confusing enough as it is.

All that aside when Ieuan got back to the table Rich used all his cunning and ingenuity and asked what we'd been doing all day.

"Oh, you know, we've been paid to sit and look at Porn all day. Mainly man on woman, with a bit of lesbian stuff. Not really my sort of thing, we just had to log it for a disciplinary on Monday."

They totally missed the 'not really my thing' clue and went down the giggly schoolboy path with "Yeah, I'd hate that. What a tough life, not all heroes wear capes mate." Which set all three of them off. I shook my head and pretended to regret bringing my colleague along. Ieuan was recounting how I'd pointed out the shocking mechanical standards on the bike restorations, which got Rich puffed up with pride "That was me that was, I pointed that out. Do you want me to be an expert witness? I'd be great at that." He gripped his T shirt where Lapels would be on a jacket. "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I ask you to ignore the ugly slappers in the foreground and concentrate instead on the hideous work on the motorcycles. That Z1000 lump has lost two cylinders and the water-cooling jacket and is now masquerading as a 650cc Triumph twin."

I told him to stop as he was boring me now, but he was on a roll. "Hey Lou, is this the bloke that came round your place yesterday? He needs sorting out, properly. Where does he live? I could go past late one night..."

"Enough. No, well, yes, but I can't talk about it. And you are not going anywhere near anyone's house," I pointed at Jonny as well, "Neither of you. Get it?"

I stood up, leaving one of my glasses of wine unfinished. "Come on Jonny, let's go home, Ieuan? Are you ok from here?"

The younger man picked up his pint, looked at Rich who looked at the bar and went to get a couple of refills. "Yeeaahhh. Craig can pick me up on the way through. Hey, Rich mate, Curry?"

Blokes. Honestly, beer, curry, instant bonding.

The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur of normality, household chores, Jonny's team beat AFC Newtown three two, and Rich called on Saturday to complain we hadn't warned him Ieuan was gay.

"You didn't ask. Does it matter?" I listened to him flounder for a bit then he went quiet and finished with "well, no not really. They were good lads. "

"So, what are you worried about then?" he seemed happy enough with that as an answer and hung up.

Before I knew what had happened, I was driving into an anonymous commercial estate in Worcester to the Trust's administrative head office. Carol Wainwright, my director was there, as was Tony Rawlins, the HR director with Sindhu Patel as his wingman, woman, person. Tim Cherry was first of his team to arrive and greeted me with a slimy handshake and a smarmy grin, commenting that I was looking much better dressed today.

I spotted Ieuan being dropped off from a Mercedes saloon of some type, I tried to get a glimpse of the driver but the windows were tinted very dark and the inside was a mystery. He walked in to join the IT gang. I introduced him round, pointed out Cherry to him, and had to agree that yes he did look a bit like a few of the 'fathers' in some of the movies we'd had to catalogue on Friday.

Cherry was joined by the Union rep for the Paramedics in the trust, Graeme Fremantle, a short grey-haired man with a permanent air of annoyance, and a younger woman about five six or seven, ponytail, athletic build. She looked vaguely familiar, which clicked when she introduced herself as the local branch rep, I remembered meeting her when I'd been there to run the Antivirus remedial actions. From the back of my memory I got...." Hello Polly, nice to see you again."

Polly, Polly...something foreign, I remembered talking to her over a weak coffee, Polly Chekov? No, he was in star trek, Polly...Melnyk. Yes, I remembered. She was married to a doctor in the Emergency Department, Kosovan. Ex-Army, Kosovan army, not ours.

Tony led us all into a first-floor meeting room with a big oval shaped table, a 50-inch TV on the wall showing the trust logo and a speaker phone in the middle of the table. Sindhu organised drinks for everyone and set out the course of action for the day.

Graeme deferred to Polly, who quite forcefully made the case that Mr Cherry had been accused previously of inappropriate activity and comments, none of which had ever been shown to be substantiated and her concern was that this was a case of overzealous interpretation of the rules as part of a witch hunt against her colleague and fellow union member.

Tony thanked her for her opening statement and asked if anyone else had anything to add, which we didn't.

I was asked to outline the circumstances under which I'd found the alleged pornography on the computer in question, which I did, then to explain why I jumped to the assumption that it was Cherry who'd used it to view the alleged inappropriate material. I showed how I'd cross referenced to swipe-card entry records and time sheets to pinpoint who had been around each time the websites in question had been accessed and how the only person who had been there every time had been Cherry, to cap it off his sign in and password had been used on every occasion.

Polly responded to my initial statement by asking if I had any CCTV images, knowing that there were no CCTV records inside the location and if I could prove no one else had access to his password, and had I refused to entertain a discussion on that possibility on Thursday afternoon the previous week.

"I can't prove he didn't share his password, but that's a breach of policy in itself. And, no I didn't refuse to entertain a discussion, Mr Cherry called at my home uninvited and caught me half naked in my kitchen. I asked him to leave as it was entirely inappropriate. The Police have been informed and will no doubt be in touch with Mr Cherry in the fulness of time." I shot back.

Polly gave me a long stare, "And what exactly were you doing half naked in your kitchen at 4 in the afternoon?"

I shuffled some papers then tapped away on my keyboard before answering, "Sorry, I just wanted to confirm, yes, I've checked. None of your damned business."

She looked unaccountably smug at this, and with what I can only describe as a shit-eating grin told me "I think it is our business, Mr Cherry maintains he'd arranged to meet you at home and you chose to be naked in an attempt to intimidate him and he left when it became obvious you were not prepared to discuss anything but were simply trying to entrap him into a compromising position to make this show trial more believable."

Fortunately for me Carol Wainwright put a restraining hand on my arm and spoke up. "The fact that Mr Cherry has put these allegations into the record and they have been noted means they are now a legal matter, my colleague refutes these allegations absolutely and will have the full support of my department and the trust legal team should she wish to sue. I would strongly advise you to withdraw your allegation immediately and offer a full and complete apology to Mrs Hartley."

Ieuan leaned over and whispered "four in the afternoon, naked in your kitchen? Where was Jonny?"

I whispered back he'd been in the shower and it was lucky he hadn't been ten minutes earlier.

He offered me a fist bump and a "Mm mm You go girlfriend" in a fake American accent, which came close to getting me in trouble for laughing.

Nice to know my boss has got my back, but Polly stood by her comments. She went on to come out with some far-fetched theory about unknown people conspiring against Mr Cherry and the trust being complicit.

Tony Rawlins accepted her statement but noted in the absence of any evidence to the contrary he would proceed on the presumption that it had been Mr Cherry signing in and using his own password, he would however allow that if any contrary evidence was produced within a year of any decision going against Mr Cherry, he would allow a review of the case.

I was back on stage, they asked me to detail the websites found in the browser history, which I did, starting with the steam engine and motorbike sites, after which Polly was given her chance to respond.

Her line of attack was to ask if I'd seen any other restoration sites in the history, which she knew I had, and that these examples were simply bad luck on the part of Mr Cherry and he was not to know that there were sites including nudity and graphic images as well as restored motorcycles and other classic vehicles.

I deferred to my colleague on this point, it's a sexist world and men talking about motorbikes are still seen as more authoritative than women. He plugged the memory stick into our clean laptop and connected the HDMI port to the TV. With everyone watching he pointedly closed the internal blinds and fired up the web browser, navigating to Veesntwins.com.

Honestly, it was like Rich was in the room, he even did the lapel thing with one hand.

"As you can see, the restoration work is to a very poor standard, there is considerable damage to the fixings here, and here. There are no brake lines or fuel lines on this bike."

He fast forwarded through.

"This young lady is supposed to be working on a four-cylinder Kawasaki engine, almost definitely from a late 1970s Z1000. For some reason she is soldering the inside of the cylinder, although holding a soldering iron like that will result in badly burned breasts." He zipped on again.

"Here she's bolting the engine into a frame, and attaching the tank before the carburettors, so she'll have to take the tank off again." More fast forwarding. "And finally, the completed bike has lost two cylinders and now seems to be a 650cc Triumph air cooled engine."

My point here is that if Mr Cherry was serious about restoration, he would not choose to visit this site" he theatrically checked his paperwork "Seventeen times between March and July."

He sat down, I gave him a fist bump under the table and a whispered "nice moves, Rumpole."

Polly came back, handing me a memory stick of her own, I checked with Carol and Tony who seemed happy enough. I scanned it and opened it up, the stick contained a series of images from a number of the sites we'd been discussing, mainly topless shots with a couple of full nudes. No sex, all could almost be deemed artistic shots. "As you can all see this is in the main the sort of thing Mr Cherry was looking at, all very innocuous I'm sure you'll agree."

She went on, "It may be against corporate policy and Mr Cherry accepts he was ill advised to allow his password to be used to view this material but it's hardly job threatening. I suggest a reprimand, a record in Mr Cherry's file for two years and we can all go home."

Tony seemed to accept this, possibly because he didn't want to annoy the union, and made a move to accept Mr Cherry's apology and give him a verbal reprimand. Carol disagreed and asked me to pull up some of the actual websites so we could see the images in context.

I pulled up some of the Gang bang sites and flicked through quickly enough to register but also quickly enough that the images weren't burned into anyone's retina. I followed up with some of the father -- daughter ones, which finally seemed to be getting through to Polly, but she stood her ground, arguing that the principle had been agreed that nudity was not an issue and if this was acceptable in the home it was acceptable in the workplace, particularly if no one was around.

Tony Rawlins started to explain that it hadn't been agreed and whilst it may be acceptable in some homes it was by no means acceptable in all and serious questions of judgement...

I'd zoned out and largely in a move to get some particularly aggressive gang bang images off the screen I clicked on the Intimate Encounters link. It came up and automatically loaded the password Cherry had used to sign in starting a slideshow of a series of high-resolution images on the same bed I'd used a few days earlier. A slim, athletic looking woman was on her knees facing away from us, she had a penis in her mouth and one was just pushing into her pussy, her ponytail was resting.... oh, fucking hell." A green blur dived across the table, an unintelligible scream splitting the air. My laptop went flying off into a wall, I went over backwards with Polly trying to slam my head onto the floor.

"YOU FUCKING BITCH WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU FUCKING DOING WITH THOSE FUCKING PICTURES?"

The laptop was still working, the slide show moved onto the next image, a front on view of Polly, topless in full colour, with an erect penis in her mouth and a second being aimed at her chest with a jet of cum about to hit her on the breasts. Part of my brain was still working on a rational level and thought "oh, yes. That's another reason why she looked familiar" The other part of my brain was trying to stop her breaking my head into many small pieces. Luckily Carol and Ieuan, well Ieuan really, dragged her off and restrained her from attacking me again.

I grabbed my laptop and disabled the screensharing to minimise the impact on Polly, who had moved from naked aggression to collapse into a heap on a chair, sobbing, calling out "No Daddy, No."